ARLINGTON, Wash., March 19, 2024—Los Angeles-based “Yacht Rock” band Yachtley Crew is headed to the Angel of the Winds Resort and Casino in Arlington on April 6, as part of the nautically suited ensembles’ Full Steam Ahead Tour. The tour, which kicked off in Indigo, California on February 3, is in support of the group’s debut EP Seas the Day via Jimmy Buffet’s Mailbox Records.
Seas the Day was produced and mixed by Grammy award winning Chris Lord-Alge (Stevie Nicks, Steven Tyler, Keith Urban, Bruce Springsteen, Green Day) and features the band’s first original song “Sex on the Beach,” accompanied by a video with a guest appearance by the Access Hollywood and iHeart host, Mario Lopez.
Lopez, a big Yacht Rock fan himself, first discovered the band during its residency at LA’s esteemed Viper Room venue. He showed up to a show one day with a whole entourage of people wearing captain hats and told the band whenever they released an original song, he would be in their music video. Needless to say, he kept that promise.
The video was directed by Myles Erfurth (Dead Sara, Ice Nine Kills, Twiztid). Yachtley Crew is managed by longtime industry icon Andy Gould (Rob Zombie, Pantera, Lionel Richie, Guns N’ Roses) and represented by Jim Lenz at TKO.
Yachtley Crew are a seven-piece “Yacht Rock” band who burst onto the Southern California club scene in 2017 selling out countless local venues before starting a nationwide Yacht Rock craze.
Yacht Rock is a sub-genre of music which encapsulates the revival of soft rock and Top 40 hits from the late ’70s to the early ’80s, which has become a nationwide phenomenon, inspiring fans to dress the part of yacht captains and sing along.
“Seas the Day is a love letter to the fans who have made this all possible, and a dream come true to be on the Mailboat Records roster, alongside their incredible artists,” said audio engineer Chris Lord-Alge, who has worked on a number of number of projects including the Green Day-inspired Broadway musical American Idiot. “Yachtley Crew brought new life to the songs we all know so well. The energy and enthusiasm in making the first EP was fantastic! There will be more to come, and I have no doubt Yachtley Crew will be full steam ahead of its time conquering the globe!”
Other songs on Seas the Day include fan favorites such as Boz Scaggs’ “Lido Shuffle,” Ace’s “How Long,” Robbie Dupree’s “Steal Away,” the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love” and all-time Yacht Rock pioneer Christopher Cross’ “Ride Like the Wind.” Other songs in the band’s set include Toto’s “Africa,” Looking Glass’ “Brandy” and Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Piña Colada Song).”
In addition to its song Sex on the Beach, the band also incorporates one other original song into their set but could not go into detail which this is, both to maintain the element of surprise and to refrain from divulging too much information about their upcoming album Seas the Night, which is in its final stages of mixing but does not have an official release date as of yet.
Yachtley Crew (also known as “The Titans of Soft Rock”), consists of lead vocalist Phillip Daniel (Philly Ocean), drummer Rob Jones (Sailor Hawkins), bassist Chaz Ruiz (Baba Buoy), guitarist Thomas Gardner Jr. (Tommy Buoy), backing vocalist Curt Clendenin (Stoney Shores), saxophone/flutist Paul Pate (Pauly Shores) and keyboardist Matt Grossman (Matthew McDonald).
The members of Yachtley Crew are lifelong musicians who have played in a number of bands both together, and separately, over the years. The idea to start a Yacht Rock band stemmed from drummer Sailor Hawkins (who has been friends and musical partners with bassist Baby Buoy for over 30 years) listening to Yacht Rock radio and sending out an ad on Craigslist looking for likeminded individuals to form a band in the same style. After finding a guitarist (Tommy Buoy) the band, in its early days, began rehearsing but was still looking for a singer. Tommy’s sister referred the band to her friend Phillip Daniel (Philly Ocean).
“It was a real organic coming together,” Daniel told the Lynnwood Times. “Now we’ve been doing this for seven years and it feels like we’ve known each other for our entire lives. We’re a family, we’re really close. It’s unavoidable when you’re touring all over the country together and playing all these shows. You either get really close really quick or it doesn’t work and luckily for us it works very well.”
What sets Yachtley Crew apart from other bands similar, Daniel added, is the energy they bring to their live shows. When people attend a Yachtley Crew Show they can expect to see a “high-energy show and have one of the best nights of their lives”, he continued.
During live performances Yachtley Crew dresses up in their iconic Yacht Captain outfits and encourages the audience to do the same, sing along, and to ultimately be in on the fun with the band. Daniel suggests anyone living in, or around, Snohomish County to pick up a captain hat, have a piña colada, and get over to the Angel of the Winds Resort and Casino in April adding that missing the show could potentially mean missing “one of the greatest nights of your life.”
“That’s my personal guarantee. You come to a Yachtley Crew show you will say ‘that was one of the greatest nights of my life,” said Daniel.
While most of the band’s set is covers it creates a “difficult standard,” he said because you have to both “honor the original while bringing something new in a way that doesn’t put people off or seem inauthentic.”
“We originally just wanted to honor the original artist but over time the show developed,” said Daniel. “It’s a bit of an uphill battle when you’re playing songs that are so iconic and so well known, because I think the audience tends to see you under a skeptical eye, so immediately you have to overcome that attitude. The way that we’re always done that is take the music seriously but not take ourselves too seriously.”
Yachtley Crew have appeared on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live, have helped ring in the New Year on KLAS and KTLA’s “Las Vegas Countdown to 2023” (the exclusive, Emmy-winning special syndicated program that reached reaches more than 16.5 million U.S. TV households), performed on countless morning television and radio shows throughout the country, have been featured on Fox News nationally and performed on SiriusXM’s Yacht Rock Radio “Yacht Rock 311” show as the first ever Yacht Rock band to perform live at the station.
Yachtley Crew have also performed at a cadre of charity and special events throughout the years including the Mario Lopez Golf Classic Tournament in support of the Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center.
Doors open for Yachtley Crew’s Angel of the Winds show at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 6. Tickets start at $39.
Author: Kienan Briscoe
