TATTOO
Tattoo performs American Roots Music: Rock ’n’ roll, Soul, Swing, Cajun, and originals, with a strong connection to American musical traditions and its greatest exponents. Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, Hank Williams and Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, The Beatles, The Supremes, Van Morrison, and many others, all find a home on our set lists. We are connected to the musical traditions which began in New Orleans, and which helped to bring us together as a country. Indoors or outdoors, at festivals, private events, or on Town Commons, Tattoo transcends the boundaries of changing styles and generations, and proudly celebrates and delivers this musical message.
We choose songs from this vast reservoir and play them in our own inimitable, irresistible, acoustic-jam-band-style, while you dance, or just sit back and listen.
Tattoo is a long-surviving, well-traveled band. Formed in the late 1970s, Tattoo began playing for crowds on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco and on the U.C. Berkeley campus. We explored the club scene and festivals in the Bay Area before moving up to Oregon in 1980. The band played in bars, taverns and festivals around the Northwest, including opening for the Grateful Dead, The Flying Karamazov Brothers, and Peter Rowan, before traveling up to Alaska at the suggestion of Ken Kesey. We then moved to Ketchikan, AK and rode the Alaska Marine Highway, playing all over Southeast Alaska. In 1986, we moved east to New Hampshire, and restocked the band with new musicians. Since then, Tattoo has been a crowd favorite at events throughout New England.
We have learned from years of experience, on top of our native talents, the ways to get folks dancing while also giving an authentic and satisfying musical experience. Whatever age group you may be a part of, or whatever part of the country you may come from, we are all connected to the musical traditions which began down in New Orleans, and which bring us together. Indoors or outdoors, at festivals, private events, or on Town Commons, Tattoo transcends the boundaries of changing styles and generations, and proudly celebrates and delivers that musical message.
- Paul Day—vocals, drums
- Fred Simmons—vocals, trombone, guitar, tambourine
- Leslie Vogel—vocals, piano, accordion
- Dan Wheeler—bass
- Walden Whitham—vocals, saxophone, clarinet, flute, rubboard
