By, Tom Baldino
It was a beautiful fall weekend, and Joanne and I had planned a long weekend getaway to Pennsylvania. We spent Friday in Lambertville, then crossed the river to New Hope where we were supposed to see her late cousin, Tim Bogert’s band, Vanilla Fudge, at the New Hope Winery. A late cancellation led to a change in plans, and we headed to the Amish country in Lancaster County for a full day of cruising in our Corvette and visiting Barry’s Car Barn for a tour of his extensive collection of my favorite nameplate, narrated by Barry himself!
This leads me to the Mark Margolies Band. Joanne saw that they were playing at the Creamery in Kennett Square on Saturday night, and since the Amish roll up the sidewalks at night, we decided to surprise Mark and the band with a visit. We took the hour drive down and went to the Creamery at Kennett Square, a quasi outdoor/indoor venue which was converted to a restaurant, event center, and family fun space several years ago. It’s a huge space with several large rooms that are accessed through some great outdoor areas. The band was scheduled to play that night, after a wedding reception which had been in progress since late that afternoon.
They were happy to see us as they had participated in the JSJBF IBC two weeks earlier at Salty’s. Joanne was under the weather on that day and with the remnants of hurricane Ian pelting us with copious amounts of rain, she made the wise choice to stay home.
This JSJBF member band was comprised of Mark on guitar, Eric Senderoff on guitar, nineteen-year-old David Scott on sax, Van Jones on drums with the addition of Randy Lippencott on bass, who didn’t play at the IBC. The band led off with “San-Ho-Zay” and many of the revelers including the bride, decided to continue the party. They hit their groove with a great rendition of Bo Didley’s “I Can Tell” and people from other parts of this cavernous venue wandered over to check out the sounds. A friend of Mark’s got a shout out, when he and his group arrived from seeing the Phillies win their playoff series against the Atlanta Braves. A little later in the set, Mark announced a contest they like to do at gigs, which rewards the first person who can name the following song title and band with a copy of his CD. Eric then put on his slide. As soon as I heard the first few notes played on his white Johnny Winter inspired Firebird guitar, I knew it was Santo and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk,” however, so did a young man who had been dancing in front of the band, so he won the CD. They then took a short break but returned to do an outstanding version of “Texas Flood,” a song written by Larry Davis but most closely associated with Stevie Ray Vaughan. The set also included the title track from Mark’s debut CD, an original, “Can’t You See,” not to be confused with the Marshall Tucker song of the same name. It featured the clean sound of his Telecaster with the solid backing of the band. David, whose sax was featured on many of the songs this evening, plays with a maturity that belies his age. Another highlight “If You Love Me Like You Do,” allowed Randy to stretch out with an excellent bass solo as well as Van chipping in with a nice drum solo.
This was the band’s first visit to The Creamery, and based on this night, it won’t be their last! Look for them to come up our way in 2023.