No Wigs, No Gimmicks — Hey Jude Owned the Patio at Paradise Valley
There’s a moment about ten seconds into every tribute show where you find out exactly what you paid for. Sometimes what you paid for is a wig.
Hey Jude didn’t bring wigs. Six guys walked out onto the patio at Paradise Valley Golf Course last Thursday, August 13, in matching black and red ties — sharp, but nobody’s idea of a costume. No mop-tops, no collarless suits, no put-on Liverpool accents, nobody bowing in unison at the end of a song. They looked like six fellas who’d come to work. Then they opened their mouths, and I swear to you, John and Paul were standing right there in Fairfield.
That takes nerve. Dress the part head to toe and the crowd grades you on the wig. Walk out looking like yourself and there’s nothing to hide behind but the music. These guys knew they didn’t need the hiding place.
I’ve been in radio better than four decades. I have watched a truly punishing number of bands from a truly punishing number of bad angles, and I can tell you the difference between a band that dresses like the Beatles and a band that can play the Beatles is roughly the difference between a photograph of a steak and a steak. This was the steak.
And the crowd figured it out before I did.
They filled the dance floor before the first song ended
That’s the tell. Applause doesn’t mean anything — applause is polite, applause is free, applause is what you give your nephew’s garage band. People getting up out of a perfectly good chair with a perfectly good dinner in front of them? That’s the honest review.
Folks who’d been parked at the outer tables — the ones who came for the food and were fully prepared to tolerate a band — started drifting toward the dance floor while the first number was still going. By the time it ended, that floor was full. It stayed full for the next hour and a half.
The setlist wasted nobody’s time: “Help,” “She Loves You,” “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Twist and Shout,” “Penny Lane,” “Day Tripper,” “Got to Get You Into My Life,” “Lady Madonna,” “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Can’t Buy Me Love.” Then, because they apparently enjoy keeping a room slightly off balance, they swerved into the Monkees’ “Last Train to Clarksville,” Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman,” and the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
If you’re keeping score at home — no, I never heard “Hey Jude.” My guess is they thought it was a little on the nose, and honestly, I respect a band that won’t hand you the obvious thing just because it’s got their name on it. I also left before the end of the night, so for all I know they closed with it and I missed the whole business. More on that particular humiliation shortly.
The peak: “She Loves You”
The biggest reaction of the night wasn’t close.
They hit “She Loves You” and the women on that dance floor did the thing — the head-shaking, hair-flying, hands-in-the-air 1964 thing that apparently gets installed in you at fifteen and never comes back out. Somebody flipped a switch marked 1964 and about a hundred and eighty people found theirs at the exact same instant.
Then the band landed the hook, and every hand on that patio shot up, and the roar that came off that crowd could probably be heard from the ninth green.
You cannot manufacture that. You can only earn it. And you earn it by being accurate.
The lineup — and the man doing the heavy lifting
Here’s who was up there: Ed Ulibarri on keyboards and lead vocals, Guyle Taber on guitar, Howard Hastings on bass, Jeff Curtis on guitar and keys, Michael Gay on drums, and Tim Rose on guitar. Nearly every one of them sings lead and backing — which, if you think about it for about four seconds, is the whole ballgame. Beatles records aren’t hard because of the guitar parts. They’re hard because of the voices. Stack six singers who can actually find the harmony and you’ve solved the problem most tribute bands spend their whole careers faking.
Now, the man I want to point at, because most of the room won’t think to: Ed Ulibarri.
A Beatles catalog has a math problem. Those records are stuffed to the ceiling with horns, strings, orchestral overdubs, and studio trickery that a band on a golf course patio simply does not possess. Most tribute acts fix this by quietly running backing tracks and praying you don’t ask questions.
Ed fixes it by being, near as I can tell, an entire session orchestra wearing one man’s shirt. The trumpets on “Penny Lane,” the sound effects, all the little parts your ear has been waiting on since you were a kid — he’s covering it, live, in real time, and singing while he does it.
I know it was live, because he missed a note.
They were debuting “Penny Lane” — first time out with it in front of actual people — and Ed clipped one note in that piccolo trumpet part. One. Not a soul in that crowd flinched, because the other few hundred notes were flat-out gorgeous. And instead of pretending nothing happened, the band leaned into the mic, told everybody it was their maiden voyage on that tune, and got a laugh out of the room.
That’s not amateur hour. That’s confidence. Amateurs hide the seams. Pros show you where they are and keep right on playing.
The room, the breeze, and the golf carts
Credit where it’s owed — Paradise Valley knows how to throw a night.
The show was outdoors on the patio, free, open to anybody who wanted to walk up, part of the course’s regular concert series. The weather held up its end: clear evening, a breeze working just hard enough to be noticed, and the smell rolling out of that kitchen doing real damage to everybody’s willpower. Wait staff were carrying dinners through the whole show. There’s plenty of seating, and you’re welcome to drag in your own lawn chair, which is precisely what we did — ours live permanently in the Beat Machine, because I have made this mistake before and I learn slow but I do learn.
My favorite detail of the entire night had nothing to do with the stage. Every few minutes a golf cart would come creeping up the path outside the patio, and every driver’s head would swivel toward that band like it was mounted on a hinge. Not one of them was in any hurry to finish the round.
The crowd ran somewhere between 150 and 200 — packed, but comfortable, never once a scrum. Most of the room was in their 40s through 60s, which is to say: our people, almost exactly.
The outlier was Ry from Ry in the Afternoon, who is 38 years old and had no earthly business knowing every word to any of this. He never left the dance floor. Not once. That’s your data point right there — this music does not require you to have been alive for it.
They played about 90 minutes with one 15-minute break, and I’d argue the break shouldn’t count, because that’s when the entire patio lined up to talk to them. I got in that line myself, grabbed a card, introduced myself, and then got out of their way, because a man deserves fifteen minutes.
How the night ended for us — badly, and happily
We were packing up when Ry walked our chairs back to the Beat Machine and found the battery deader than disco. Friends whisked us home. We came back for it the next day, tail between our legs.
Here’s the thing, though. Sitting there stranded in a golf course parking lot waiting on a rescue, not one of us was complaining. We were all hunched over a phone replaying the video we’d shot, arguing about which song was the best one.
That right there is the review.
Where to catch them
Hey Jude formed back in 2011 out of Vacaville and the Bay Area — Solano County’s own, which makes this an easy one to root for. Public dates currently on the books:
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Aug 27 Thu
City of Windsor — Town Green
701 McClelland Dr., Windsor
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Oct 10 Sat
Vino Godfather
500 Walnut Ave., Mare Island, Vallejo
Our pick — daytime show, and it's our own backyard
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Oct 30 Fri
Coyote Sonoma
44F Mill St., Healdsburg
They’ve got private dates in September and November that aren’t open to the public. Full schedule at heyjude.band.
If you only make one, make it Mare Island on October 10. That’s our own backyard, it’s a daytime show, and trust me — you want a crowd around you when they get to “She Loves You.”
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