Robin Zander Band provides a range of magicical memories

Take some musical memories, good musicians, guys who enjoy performing live in front of an audience and you have the Robin Zander Band, who will play Friday at Wiens Family Cellars in Temecula.

Of course, the name will be familiar, considering that Zander is the lead singer of the legendary band Cheap Trick. But that’s not the end of the story. The band consists of Zander and the team of drummer Steve Luongo, guitarist Mike Hitt and bassist Larry Hobbs, who have all performed with a number of the greatest rock musicians of all time, including John Entwistle, Robert Plant and John Bonham.

“We are a lot of fun to see as a band and play the songs and bring back memories, and they are songs that everyone knows coupled with a couple from my solo records, as well as a couple fresh songs done by us,” said Zander. “You just never know what songs we could do. The set list changes from show to show, and believe me it is an ongoing process.”

The focus is on having a good time.

“Part of the fun is plugging out the songs we are going to do and then going out and play them with passion,” said Luongo.

Zander seconded that idea.

“If your band is having a good time that reflects on the audience,” said Zander. “Performing live is an adventure. You might even see a puppet on stage!”

It is clear that the band enjoys being around each other and doing concerts whenever they can.

“I do have another gig and that is still a viable one and going on for forty years, but the thing is when I have free time that’s when we come alive,” he said.

Luongo agreed.

“What better thing to do if you love what you do,” he said. “The reason we haven’t played in so long is its touring season for Robin and Cheap Trick. After all of these years we have all done music for a lifetime and it is a cool thing to do when we can all get together.”

It is, without a doubt, a night of rock and roll, but in their own way.

“This is a live band and I think the coolest thing is it is the traditional roots of classic rock, which used to be called rock,” Luongo ssid.

And these musicians have quite a background.

“Steve played with John Entwistle and Leslie West [Mountain], and we’ve got Mark Hitt who is a great guitarist from the East Coast and he’s worked with Plant, Rat Race Choir, which was Steve’s band as well,” he said. “Because of the Entwistle band, I’m a big fan of The Who and we have a bass player who has those kind of chops so we have all those Who covers. But he is also blues-based so there are a lot of possibilities.”

Luongo believes that the chemistry is what really works.

“If there’s one thing about the band is that there’s something intangible about it,” he said. “When you have the kind of chemistry we have, you don’t really rehearse There’s an unspoken language and that’s what make the magic for us.”

Zander agrees.

“Maybe we are rough around the edges, but it’s magical,” he said. “There are risks involved with doing the songs but if it doesn’t pay off then that’s something to laugh at. We are up there to just play the song the way we want to play it and have fun and the freedom to do it.”

And if you want to hear a song, almost any song, this is the chance.

“We do a pretty long set list in some places and at the end of the set we will get requests,” Zander says. “We will usually play it, but we might do it differently. Someone might yell out ‘I Want You to Want Me,’ and we will do it but we will do it a different way.”

So what songs make up the set lists? It could be Who songs, AC/DC songs (“It’s a Long Way to the Top” has shown up on the set list), Cheap Trick songs, Rolling Stones songs and Zander solo songs.

“We can do a lot of different things in the set that are familiar and we do it the way we do it to sound like us,” said Zander. “I’m not Robert Plant, so I’m not going to sound like him, but I sound like me and that’s how we sound.”

And that’s a very good thing.

“We get to pass this all on,” said Luongo. “A lot of the fans of us now have children and they are old enough to hang out and become a part of it. There’s a legacy we just set out to play.”

For Zander it’s about having fun with his fans.

“It’s about having fun and making them happy, so if someone wants to hear a song it’s neither here nor there,” he said. “There’s a magic and freedom here and nothing is completely planned out. Heck, my mistakes are better than anything I’ve thought out!”