The Marshall Tucker Band and Jefferson Starship

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The two bands have a history dating back to the 1970s, and MTB lead singer Doug Gray couldn’t be more thrilled about reuniting with Jefferson Starship.

“We have a storied history with Jefferson Starship,” explains Gray.  “We toured together many years ago and the timing feels right for us to reunite.  We’re on Cloud 9!”

“We are really looking forward to touring with our buddies, The Marshall Tucker Band,” says Donny Baldwin of Jefferson Starship.  “We toured back in the day, and it will be a great night of music from two iconic bands.  See you there!”

The Marshall Tucker Band came together as a young, hungry, and quite driven six-piece outfit in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1972, having duly baptized themselves with the name of a blind piano tuner after they found it inscribed on a key to their original rehearsal space — and they’ve been in tune with tearing it up on live stages both big and small all across the globe ever since.  Plus, the band’s mighty music catalog, consisting of more than 20 studio albums and a score of live releases, has racked up multi-platinum album sales many times over.

A typically rich MTB setlist is bubbling over with a healthy dose of hits like the heartfelt singalong “Heard It in a Love Song,” the insistent pleading of “Can’t You See” (the signature tune of MTB’s late co-founding lead guitarist and then-principal songwriter Toy Caldwell), the testifying “Fire on the Mountain,” the wanderlust gallop of “Long Hard Ride,” and the explosive testimony of “Ramblin,’” to name but a few.

MTB features Doug Gray on lead vocals; B.B. Borden on drums; Ryan Ware on bass and vocals; Marcus James Henderson on keyboards, saxophone, flute, and vocals; Chris Hicks on guitar and vocals; and Rick Willis on guitar and vocals.

When founding member Paul Kantner formed Jefferson Starship in the ’70s, he envisioned the band as a cast of musical adventurers, contributing to his epic concept albums and eventual deep catalog of rock classics.  When the current lineup of the band came together alongside Kantner as a unit in 2012, with many members joining years before, he couldn’t have imagined that the band would become the road-conquering heroes they’ve been in the last few years.

Jefferson Starship’s five members describe themselves as both a “family” and a “gang,” and that comes across in talking to them, and in their robust live performances, which have taken them to all 50 U.S. states., five continents, and too many countries to list here, drawing from a massive setlist of hit after hit.

In addition to original member David Freiberg, the band includes drummer Donny Baldwin (whose Jefferson Starship roots go back to 1982), keyboardist Chris Smith (who joined in 1998), guitarist Jude Gold (who joined in 2012), and singer and guitarist Cathy Richardson who joined in 2008, after Kantner saw her tour with Big Brother and the Holding Company.

As Jefferson Starship approaches their 50th anniversary, the group’s members look to the future with the word Kantner, who unfortunately died in 2016, used to say to them all the time: “Onward.”

“To me that exploration — that Paul Kantner thing of just getting on a rocket ship and firing it as hard as it will go, and taking off and exploring the cosmos and the music, and everything in between — is really the spirit of Jefferson Starship, and that’s very much alive in the band today,” Gold says.  “And that comes straight from Paul. And always has.”

More information on The Marshall Tucker band can be found at www.marshalltucker.com.
More information on Jefferson Starship can be found at www.jeffersonstarship.com.