Over the course of four decades, NRBQ (short for the New Rhythm and Blues Quartet) has featured a vibrant, unruly take on everything from power pop to barrel-house blues to free jazz.
The band has a large and unwieldy catalogue, numbering countless foreign reissues and out-of-print obscurities. However, 1978’s “At Yankee Stadium” and 1983’s “Grooves in Orbit” remain the band’s perennial cult favorites and totemic hand-me-downs for pop-music obsessives the world over. Everyone from Bonnie Raitt to Steve Earle to Yo La Tengo has covered the band’s songs. Mike Scully, producer of “The Simpsons,” counts the band as one of his favorites and has used NRBQ songs in numerous episodes.
The group’s classic lineup of pianist Terry Adams, bassist Joey Spampinato, guitarist Al Anderson and drummer Tommy Ardolino regularly drew thousands of fans throughout the ’80s and ’90s to witness their live spectacle. When Anderson departed amicably in 1994 to pursue a career as a Nashville songwriter, Joey’s brother Johnny Spampinato nimbly replaced him on guitar, and NRBQ rolled on for nearly a decade longer.
Then, in 2004, Adams had throat cancer diagnosed. The band went on hiatus. The ride, it seemed, was over. A year later, however, Adams received a clean bill of health and was ready to resume life on the road. But, preoccupied with other pursuits, his previous bandmates were hesitant about continuing the old grind. Adams soldiered on and formed the Terry Adams Rock & Roll Quartet. In 2011, he thought that the band’s proficiency and energy made it worthy of the old moniker and rechristened it the New NRBQ.
Adams considers NRBQ to be his life’s work. In 1966, as a 17-year-old in Louisville, he “had a vision to put together a band that plays whatever it wants, whenever it wants.”
“That desire to make music, any music we want, any style, any time, regardless of the consequences, is a philosophy I am not going to let go of,” he said in a recent phone interview.
Adams’s decision to use the NRBQ name didn’t always sit well with his former bandmates.
“I guess nothing can really last forever,” says Joey Spampinato, who is fresh off a series of successful shows with his brother and his old bandmate Al Anderson. “I met Terry Adams in ’67. We thought the same. We put that band together. Terry’s gone on now, and I hear the band is great. When he decided to change the name to NRBQ I was a little bit put off and I was hurt, but I’ve come to terms with it and I’m ready to move on.”
Any unhappiness about the use of the band’s name was overshadowed by the death Jan. 6 of longtime drummer Ardolino.
“Tom loved music more than anyone I know,” Johnny Spampinato said.
NRBQ
performs at 6 p.m. Sunday at the State Theatre,
220 N. Washington St., Falls Church. $18.
.JPG)
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