Displaying items by tag: gary contessa

SARATOGA SPRINGS - The David Cassidy Band returned to the stage this week to perform their first concert since the death of the singer last November. They chose to stage the show in Saratoga Springs, a place the singer himself had maintained was his favorite in the world.

The special tribute concert to honor Cassidy also acted as a benefit for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, an organization and cause close to Cassidy’s heart. 

The six-member band gathered in Saratoga Tuesday morning and toured the TRF farm, located on Route 29, where they spent time with Bold Mon and Rock D.J. - two of the farm’s retired horses - in advance of that night’s show at Putnam Place.

The band’s 18-song set featured standard’s from Cassidy’s Partridge Family era – including  "I Can Hear Your Heartbeat," "Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque," "I'll Meet You Halfway," and "I Woke Up In Love This Morning" – a nod to David Cassidy’s solo work (“Cherish”), and a slew of cover renditions that featured Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” The Beatles’ “In My Life,”  The Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket” – with drummer Teri Coté stepping up to lead mic – and a pair of back-to-back tunes popularized by the Monkees: “Daydream Believer,” and “I’m A Believer.”

Dr. Jerry Bilinski, and Gary Contessa – two close friends of Cassidy in the horse racing industry – each took a turn at the mic. “I miss him a lot, just sitting on the porch with a cigar and talking,” recalled Bilinski, before singing a few bars of “I Think I Love You.” 

Contessa said he first met Cassidy at a Fasig Tipton horse sale 23 years ago and was amazed by the singer’s knowledge of horses. “He was a rock star who wanted to be a horse trainer.” Contessa then reversed that role when he donned a bass and joined the band for a blues jam. 

The six-piece band featured Teri Coté (drums); Craig Snider (keyboards/vocals); Dave Robicheau (guitar/vocals); Matt Sullivan (guitar/vocals); Vance Brescia (guitar/vocals) and Darrell Craig Harris (bass/vocals). They performed admirably and provided a good time for many of the 250 or so in attendance, many of whom moved together across the dance floor, or released emotions in the way of pent-up tears. Some did both.  

“This is the first time we got together and it’s a real blending of his past,” offered Craig Snider, during an interview prior to the show. “Sully (Matt Sullivan) was his guitar player before the current fellah, who wasn’t able to make it. Vance (Brescia) has been a friend of the band’s and David’s for a long time. He’s Peter Noone’s music director and a great singer. When we did the Idol Tour – which was David Cassidy, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Noone – we were the house band,” Snider explained. “So, when we thought: OK, who’s going to sing the body of these songs… Vance is a lead singer! I’m a good singer and Sully is a good singer as well, so in essence what we have are three lead singers filling in for what we had with one,” he said with a laugh. “Three divas, for the price of one.”

The rehearsal prior to the show was somewhat surreal, Snider said. “It was trippy because in my head I still hear David. It’s hard to verbalize, but when we started doing those songs, even though someone else is singing, physical memory is like musical memory so I was at times still hearing him, and kind of flipping back-and-forth.”

The event included auction items, and a meet-and-greet the band opportunity. Local artist David Hill painted a horse using the band’s live performance as inspiration. The completed painting was to be auctioned off as well.

“There’s a common thread we share, and that thread is David Cassidy. We had him come out of the TV screen and into our living rooms,” event organizer Linda de Ambrosio neatly summed up.

The TRF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving Thoroughbred horses no longer able to compete on the racetrack from possible neglect, abuse, and slaughter. The organization said details regarding the amount of money raised during the concert will be announced next week.

Published in Entertainment

It was a wild ride sometimes and you never really knew what to expect from him, but we were all really close. He was always kind to us, always respectful and without a doubt the funniest guy I’ve ever known.”

–Teri Coté, longtime drummer of the David Cassidy Band, who will perform in a special one-off David Cassidy Tribute Concert in Saratoga Springs Aug. 14.

Teri Coté was 6 years old when the popular Partridge Family TV show concluded its four-year-run of 96 episodes in 1974. A year or two later, inspired by the music of Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind and Fire, she was drawn to the drum kit.  

“That’s when I discovered I wanted to be a drummer, or, actually when the drums chose me,” says Coté, who became a member of the David Cassidy Band in 2003. It is a role she filled for more than a decade.

“He was a really nice guy and it was a lot of fun. We had some wild moments - he was a wild character, you know? But, always very loving to the band, even during the times when he was having a rough time,” she says.

Cassidy’s musical inspiration came from people like Jimi Hendrix and the Yardbirds, but his massive popularity as a teen idol in the early 1970s cemented an image ultimately impossible to shed. “It was a cage he couldn’t break out of - and he did try - but it didn’t work. I think he had a lot of frustration with that,” Coté says.

As a bandleader, Coté says Cassidy liked to keep things fresh, at times changing pre-written setlists at the last instant and creating unpredictable moments. “He liked that energy, creating that intensity. After being who he was in his heyday, I think he really craved that energy, creating excitement in his shows. One way or another he would make sure that was happening.”

Cassidy’s fan base, while not as large in number as once had been, was nonetheless just as energetic and intense. “We saw a lot of people in the front rows who were regulars. They would come from all over the world - which boggled our minds. They just loved him,” says Coté, who makes her home in Massachusetts, just north of Boston.

During some show segments, Cassidy and Coté would swap onstage roles - she picking up the microphone at center stage to sing the Pretenders’ song “Brass in Pocket,” and Cassidy taking a seat behind the drum kit, keeping the beat.    

“When he sat to play the drums, he looked like a 12-year-old kid with this huge smile on his face,” Coté says. “He was just…so ecstatic. I admired that he would just let it show like that. I think sometimes he just wanted to disappear into the band and just be an I’m-one-of-the-guys kind of thing.”

The brief role-swapping scenario was played out in a March 2017 show at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square. Coté, who took a short break from the band a year-and-a-half earlier, returned that night for a special appearance with Cassidy’s band. The set began with a performance of “C'mon Get Happy,” and concluded 15 songs later with a performance of “I Think I Love You.” It would be the final concert Cassidy and the band would play. Less than nine months later, the 67-year-old singer died from liver and kidney failure.

Coté and a varied alumnus from the Cassidy band will perform for the first time together since Cassidy’s death in a special tribute on Aug. 14 in Saratoga Springs. The show will also serve as a fundraiser for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation - an organization close to the singer’s heart. Vance Brescia, longtime guitarist and music director for Peter Noone, will handle a good portion of the vocal duties. Popular horse trainer and bass player Gary Contessa is also expected to join the band onstage.

“It’s going to be exciting. Everybody’s a great player and we’ll be getting together to rehearse the day before,” says Coté, who maintains a busy schedule between teaching assignments, performing gigs and showcasing her own jewelry line. She and her husband, who is also a drummer, operate a drum shop – soon to expand to three music shops in the state - where she teaches the art of percussion.

After more than a decade of performances with Cassidy, one of Coté’s everlasting memories of Cassidy was his sense of humor.   

“David would make us laugh so much. He was really funny. He got that from his dad (Jack Cassidy), I think. He really believed his dad was the funniest person he ever knew,” Coté says. “We had a good friendship, a joke-filled relationship. I have some friends who have a great sense of humor, but David really took the cake. His sense of humor…I really miss that.”

The David Cassidy Tribute Concert will take place 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14 at the Horseshoe Inn, located at 9 Gridley Ave., Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and will benefit the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

Tickets are $50 and available by calling TRF at 518-226-0028 or online at https://www.trfinc.org/event/david-cassidy-band-special-guests/.

Published in Entertainment
Thursday, 15 February 2018 13:41

David Cassidy to be Honored at Racing Museum

SARATOGA SPRINGS – David Cassidy, the popular singer, horseman and frequent fixture of the Saratoga summer scene who died last year, will be the focus of a dedication ceremony and the placement of two benches in his honor at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

The benches, which will be fixed with nameplates, will be set in the museum’s outdoor courtyard in the spring with a ceremony tentatively slated to take place in late April, said Brien Bouyea, communications coordinator at the Racing Museum, located on Union Avenue opposite Saratoga Race Course.

The singer, who died in November at the age of 67, charted more than one dozen Top 100 hits in the early 1970s, both as a solo artist and in his role as a member of The Partridge Family - whose TV series aired on ABC from 1970 to 1974. The museum neither publicized or solicited donations, Bouyea said. That two benches will be dedicated indicate Cassidy’s wide appeal. One of the memorial benches is the result of donations received from fans around the world; the other a fruit of a collaborative partnering between horse trainer Gary Contessa – who has more than 2,200 winning races under his belt - and Columbia County based horse owner, breeder and veterinarian Dr. Jerry Bilinski.

“We wanted to do something in his honor,” Contessa said, during a phone interview this week. “There were a couple of things we could have done - we thought about naming a race, but then Dr. Bilinski said, ‘you know, why don’t we dedicate a bench to him.’

“With David, we go back 20, 30 years. I play bass guitar so we had a music connection as well as a horse connection, going back at least the early ‘90s,” said Contessa, who fondly reminisced about his first public musical performance with Cassidy.

“He was at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, at a special outdoor thing he was doing under a tent there. I was in the audience when he called me up on stage: ‘I’m going to call up my trainer.’ I was like, holy… It was totally unplanned. He said to me: let’s play a blues in the key of C. I started playing. In the key of A,” Contessa recalled, with a laugh. “All of a sudden he starts looking at me… Nobody loved Saratoga like David did. He had a home in Saratoga, he came to the races every day and he loved the horses. During the meet he could be found at three o’clock in the morning reading the racing form and smoking a cigar at my barn.”   

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