Ep. 54: Chase & Ovation, A Salute to the Music of Prince

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[00:00:43] Convention and Visitors Bureau. Welcome to So Much More. I'm your host today, Chris Gropp. And we're talking about Minnesota music and sitting here with a performer who has a great tribute and homage to Minnesota music royalty. Chase Innovation is the world's premier Prince

[00:01:02] tribute band and honors the creativity and passion and innovation celebrating Prince's legacy. You recently performed here in the Rotunda and you play across the country in a Minneapolis standing up, standing dates there. And then also joining me, Taylor Lindman from the experiential

[00:01:21] team who was one of the big brains behind our recent celebration for Prince in the 40th anniversary of Purple Rain. But just here to talk music and celebrate music with the two of you today,

[00:01:35] and I really appreciate you both being here. So thank you for joining us. It's cool to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. So I would be remiss if I didn't kick this off with

[00:01:43] this is a question that is starred twice by our producer, Julie. How did you get Prince to sign off on this? How did this become Chase Innovation? It was a long and daunting process

[00:01:57] in really was. Yeah, it really was because everybody knows how protective he is of his artistry of his craft of his music. And so prior to 2006 when this was kicked off, I had a couple different records out solo records traveled all over the place performing

[00:02:18] my originals. But every where I went, every time I got off stage people would ultimately say, Hey, has anybody ever told you that you look like Prince or that you sound like Prince?

[00:02:27] If I did a 90 minute set of Ozzy Osbourne material mixed in with my own people would say Prince. And while humbled by it, it was a little frustrating. I'm trying to get my music

[00:02:40] across. And so living in that shadow was very was very tough. So one morning in early jump to 2006, after having twice worked under Prince's umbrella, the first time was in 1989 on the set of a film called graffiti bridge, sequel to Purple Rain. I got yanked out of the

[00:02:59] crowd of extras one day because I wasn't eating my box lunch. I'm allergic to a number of different foods. It's ridiculous how much stuff I'm allergic to. But the ADN director on that particular shoot saw that I wasn't eating. He said, What's the matter with the food?

[00:03:14] I said, I can't eat it. I'm allergic to it. Come with me. We walked through this maze and there's this unbelievable tent scrimmed off in this craft room. And there was real food in that room. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't need it because Prince was in that room.

[00:03:31] And I just I couldn't eat, you know, I mean, that was it was it was crazy. But so now let me jump to back to it. By the way, second time was working with Brownmark in a band called Cryptic. Brownmark being Prince's bassist in the band, The Revolution.

[00:03:45] I was Brownmark's lead guitar player, vocalist, so on and so forth and so on. It's early 2006. And I woke up at about four in the morning and I said, you know, if I had a nickel for every

[00:03:56] time somebody said you sounded or look like Prince, well, that would be something. And I said, You know what? What if I just did a one off if I just did one

[00:04:04] concert of his music? Well, let's I should try that. But first, I'm going to have to get his permission. I called Paisley Park until my fingers were gnarled up and I couldn't get him on the phone.

[00:04:18] And the folks answering the phone at some point said, Chase, we love what you're trying to do. He's never going to say yes. So just move on and do your own thing. I said, Well, I'm going to give it a shot anyways. I called First Avenue. They laughed.

[00:04:35] I said, I want to do the show at First Avenue. They said, You know what? We'll book it for you. We'll give you the room. And but it's never going to happen. Jump to we do the load in the day

[00:04:46] of the show was I believe August 6th and 2006. We do the load in we're set up. We're doing soundcheck and three gentlemen walk in the front door of First Ave. It's closed. It's locked.

[00:04:56] Nobody is supposed to be able to get in there during the day. But but staff and those that no prints at that time 2006 know exactly what his security team looked like. And I said, Oh, Lord,

[00:05:09] we're all done. One of them walked up to the front of the stage where I wasn't. He said, What time is downbeat? And I said it's I believe it was eight o'clock. He said, Okay,

[00:05:17] the bosses across the street will be here. Yikes. Yeah, no pressure. Yeah, no, no pressure. You could hear a pin drop on carpeting. It got so quiet in that room. It was unbelievable.

[00:05:31] Show starts I've never been that nervous before before show. Show starts, I think we were three songs in there's a misconception that he stayed for the entire show. He did not. I think that we were in the middle of Take Me With You off of Purple Rain.

[00:05:48] And I see this with the light wall is very difficult to see but I see this spun and left. And here I am 18 years later still doing that very same show. It's actually expanded

[00:05:59] into a longer show with a lot more material. But since that show in the 10 years post that show, I've been tacitly or explicitly allowed to travel the country performing his music. Why? That's up for debate. That's up for conversation. But I'm just grateful humbled and I wake up

[00:06:21] unbelievably blessed every day to be able to do what it is that he's allowed us to do. To get that kind of recognition and approval that fast after that build up and not knowing.

[00:06:34] And then thumbs up, turn on the heels and out the door. How was the rest of that set after you got that thumbs up? That was the first time that anybody on the stage exhaled. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:45] Seriously, it was we got to just relax a little bit. I can't speak for everybody in the band, but me personally, it was like, okay, good. He's no longer in the room so I can play.

[00:06:56] But since then, this is important too. Since then, whether he's been here with us on earth or not, but you get choked up when you think about this. But we take every stage that we're on as if he's

[00:07:08] in the back of the room watching us. That's how we approach every performance. That's beautiful. Yeah. For lack of a better term and acknowledging that and recognizing that is really special. Yeah. I wouldn't have it any other way. We don't try to get cute and put things in

[00:07:21] the show that we would be unsure if he would approve of or like or enjoy. So yeah, we just keep that in the front of our minds as we're performing our work. Would he allow this to

[00:07:32] happen? So this wasn't intentional then. This was kind of a circuitous route doing your own music. And you know, I said it before I'm immediately suspicious of anybody who says they don't like Prince. But what was that like then starting to learn the catalog? Were you always

[00:07:53] a big fan of the music itself, of the man, what he's done for, just even beyond music, what he's done and the choices he's made are still resonant today. So where did that all

[00:08:10] kind of wrap in for you to what it is now? As a kid. Yeah, I've always been a huge fan since first hearing of him. I'm maybe at the time nine, nine or 10 perhaps the first time I heard any of

[00:08:23] his music. But at the time, I was listening to 70s Rock. I have an adoptive older sister who's 12 years my senior and she listened to everything from the Beatles, the Bee Gees,

[00:08:36] a ton of Motown stuff. And then one day I was sitting outside of her room in our basement, and I heard the song Bambi from one of his earlier records. And I heard the music

[00:08:52] and I smelled whatever scent was coming from underneath my sister's door. It was smoky, it was weird. I don't know what it was. There was a lot of giggling and hand clapping. But they were getting into the music and so was I outside the room. And I said,

[00:09:04] I don't know what that is, but I want to participate in it. But also listening to, I mean Van Halen is one of my favorite bands of all time. But like you had said,

[00:09:15] being suspicious of people that say, oh, I'm not a Prince fan, I may be able to get that. But at least even someone that can say that, I would propose that they would at least have to respect the musicianship. Exactly. Because learning guitar licks and riffs,

[00:09:32] whether it be on the bass, the drums or even vocally from some of my heroes is always daunting because some of my heroes are the best players on the planet. But it was when I approached

[00:09:42] Prince's catalog that I realized how absurd of an idea this was for me to try to tackle this and learn this music. It's unbelievably complex and nuanced. So for the first show we rehearsed

[00:09:56] for three and a half months. On a 90 minute set, we rehearsed multiple times a week for three and a half months just to do 90 minutes in front of people. So yeah, always been a fan. And but most importantly, if you're going to perform somebody else's live music,

[00:10:12] you got to do it right. You can take some liberties. I think I would agree with that. But when it comes to Prince, I don't think a lot of liberties are warranted. So I've always

[00:10:21] wanted to stay true to the music that I heard when it came out as he performed it. In other words, if he didn't take liberties with it live, I won't either. So a lot of the things

[00:10:31] that you heard at the show, those weren't variations of his songs that I just came up with or the band came up with. Those are actual treatments that he did to the songs while he was out

[00:10:41] live on the road himself. But yeah, huge, huge fan of Prince, no doubt. And then for you, what was it like to be there on that day? Well, we actually started the night before. We loaded everybody in on the Monday night.

[00:10:56] And even immediately from the jump there, it was clear how not only professional but with what, how much care that you guys really take to the music and to the whole of the performance.

[00:11:07] It's not just like, you know, they don't just show up and play the music of Prince as much as that's part of it. There's set dressing and your lighting designer, Mitch Meyer came in and added in a few other lighting elements that really like expanded the

[00:11:24] even the production elements even further than we have them in the Rotunda as it is. It's was really just an incredible thing. And let me tell you, you guys are really loud in an empty Rotunda. What guys? Yeah, it was.

[00:11:42] But you got a private show out of the deal. Yeah, absolutely. It's you know, in the Rotunda at night when there's nobody there and there's no other noise in the mall and no screaming children on the rides in the background screams

[00:11:53] of joy screams of joy, of course. It really is like just a remarkable wall of sound that you guys can put out. And that's a impressive be thank God we had people there that we had

[00:12:09] some bodies to soak up that sound. Sure. But truly just the respect that you guys treat the entirety of the production and give it like actually, you know, every detail is accounted for rather than left to the wayside or just, oh, we'll come in and we'll play

[00:12:27] Purple Rain and we'll go home. Like there's there's so much more to it. And it's immediately clear from the moment that you guys stepped in the doors and got all your stuff there that that was important to you as important to you as it was to us

[00:12:42] putting together that show. Well, I think words matter. Right. And you're a tribute. Right. Not a cover. Right. Tribute. Yeah. And that's important and honoring that legacy. Yeah. You know, that can feel just as daunting as stepping on a stage and knowing the boss is

[00:12:56] coming. Forget about it. Yeah. That was oh man. Yeah. It's I like to think that the band delivers an arena caliber for performance. Sometimes it's hard for us to dial it back.

[00:13:09] Stage volume chase stage volume. I get it. But it but again, performing as if he was in the room. That's what we would do. Yeah. Because that's what you would do. Yeah. But you handle your

[00:13:20] business on that board because it you know, that sound I listened to that sound hit the top hit the back come back to me three times and I said, oh, this is going to be something but you

[00:13:32] corralled it. So that was cool. That was a lot of fun. Absolutely. Yeah. And we're fortunate to have the team that we do or we wouldn't be able to do things like this and deliver on our promise to

[00:13:43] our guests that we're going to put something in front of them that they maybe wouldn't expect in a mall. Certainly not a big mall, but the best mall. Absolutely. Right. We wouldn't expect less from the biggest and the best. And where did the name come from chase innovation?

[00:14:01] A gentleman that worked for me back in 2006, who's no longer here with us. He said, well, what are you going to call it? And I said, I don't know, but I don't want to

[00:14:15] call it something cute like one of the names of the songs. And so we just sat down and started scribbling on a legal pad. And he said, well, narrow of these 25 whittle it down to nine.

[00:14:27] And then I'm going to come back in here in like an hour and I'm going to pitch you your own nine names. And I bet you're going to pick one. And he got to chase and ovation. And he pitched it to me.

[00:14:39] He said, here's why this is the name you're going to pick because your name is chase. And what are you doing? You are giving an ovation to Prince. When you see Prince, you give bands, whether it's Prince or anybody, you give them a standing ovation.

[00:14:53] You give you give them an ovation if you're happy with the work. And I said, you just sold me my own name. It's chase and ovation. Yeah, people, some people think they ask

[00:15:03] is that a play on Prince and the Revolution chase and ovation? It's not that was kind of an afterthought like, oh, I didn't I didn't see that one coming. But it does fit the naming

[00:15:11] moniker that he likes. Yeah, yeah. It's okay that it works on multiple levels. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. I like it. Are there certain songs you like to play more than others? Yes, but it depends on the day. Sure. It depends on the occasion, the event,

[00:15:27] the mood, who's in the room. But they're all the favorite. What are your three favorite foods? Name them. All the rest of them have to be burnt. You can only eat those three for the rest.

[00:15:37] It's an impossible question. It's a great question. So I say all of them are my favorite. Yeah. Purple obviously purple rain is, I mean, what are you going to do? That is, arguably one of the greatest ballads ever written. So that's one to, I look forward to

[00:15:56] playing that. I anticipate it coming even towards the beginning of the show. I'm anticipating that coming later in the set. And it's great placement on the album too. Yeah. Yeah. It works out well

[00:16:10] and it's right there. So yeah. How about you on the night of anything that struck you more than another? Well, I mean, like I said, it was just a fantastic performance. I mean, from start to finish, it was just a captivating tribute, as we would call it.

[00:16:29] But yeah, I want that beautiful guitar that you bring out for purple rain. You don't use it for the rest of the show or anything. Can you talk to me about that guitar? Was it something

[00:16:40] that you had custom made or was it something that like... It's a replica that I purchased that I had modified. And the same thing with the mad cat that I play, that Prince made famous

[00:16:49] around the world. I had that custom built from a number of different Luthiers around the country actually. And they all had a vision of what it was. And I said, well, as long as it has this,

[00:17:00] this, this, this and this, it will work. And actually, Vig guitars in St. Paul, I don't know if you're hip to them, but Vig guitars did all the internal workings of it. And it took a lot

[00:17:12] of tweaking to get it where it is. But yeah, so those are the two primary guitars that I use. A replica of the cloud. There's only a few of those, of course, that were made for Prince.

[00:17:22] So again, just trying to get as close to the music tonality, note wise, the overall feel of it, you got to be using the right gear. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And performing live, obviously, you know, if you've recorded and now you perform live,

[00:17:38] live music is important. And I think especially coming out of the pandemic too, we're seeing this crazy boom again of people recognizing how important these shared experiences are. It's fun to be on your device and go through the social media and whatnot. But

[00:17:53] to share those experiences in a room with people is really powerful. Yeah. The pandemic was brutal. What did you guys do? We lost a lot of money. There is that. Yeah, it was awful. For two, everybody was forced, well,

[00:18:07] I shouldn't say everybody, but the majority of people in our industry were forced into retirement for essentially two years. It was awful. And we learned quickly how important live music is.

[00:18:19] It literally was hurting our soul not to be able to go out and perform live, playing in your room or playing in your garage or playing with a few people. That's one thing, but not being

[00:18:30] able to share that experience and connect with other humans. It was a tough two years to get through physically, mentally, emotionally, not being able to do what you love. It was brutal. I still remember the first show that I did post initial lockdown because I was touring

[00:18:48] with another tribute group at that time. I was living in Chicago. It was a Dave Matthews tribute. And we did one of those... Did you guys have those drive-through shows here? Yes. We did those.

[00:19:02] It was one of those and it was just so wild to... It was set up on a stage that was 12 feet tall. So way above the normal stage height just to begin with. And I just had to walk around this crowd

[00:19:18] with an iPad because there wasn't a real front-of-house position, but that moment of being able to start doing this again and to start putting on shows again was just like that day is burned into

[00:19:29] my memory because it just felt like first day of school. We're all getting back together and doing this thing that we love to do so much and we're just unable to for so long. It's

[00:19:44] a remarkable feeling. There was a... One of our first shows back was put on by a local local national dude, a good friend, Mick Sterling. And he invited us to do an outdoor parking lot

[00:19:59] drive-in show in Burnsville like right... Everything was still closed but we did this show. There was a ton of people there in Burnsville, Minnesota. Mick... I don't remember what song we were doing, but Brother Mick Sterling ran out on stage and I'm looking go,

[00:20:15] What are you doing, man? We're in the middle of a... He taps me on the shoulder and has me turn around and up on the hill, I don't... To this day, I don't know if Mick had that sign

[00:20:24] up there or the city of Burnsville had it up there. If it lives in that park forever, I don't know, but it was a massive sign that looked like it was a half of a city block long

[00:20:33] and it said, You belong here. I saw that sign. I turned around. I saw the people. I missed the next verse because I was so choked up. We were back. Yeah. Live music was

[00:20:44] back. Even if at a distance, it was back. I got goosebumps just thinking about it. It was crazy. Yeah. But yeah, that's how important live music is. That is quite a moment to come back to. Thank you, Mick. Yeah.

[00:20:58] Could have waited till the end of the song maybe. He does a lot of really cool stuff for a lot of really cool people. He helps people all over the place, but that was one he helped

[00:21:08] everybody heal during and after COVID. Yeah. Any standout live performances that you've seen? All of them are, I think outside of our band. Just bands, period. There's too many to name. And if I name nine or 10 or 20, there's going to be some that are left out.

[00:21:27] I think just local live music period is good. Anytime there's a group of cats or kittens on stage playing live music, I'm in. Yeah, I'm in. Just music. To your question about favorite

[00:21:40] songs to play or ones to avoid or whatever. My thought is that any music at all, I don't care about the genre. If it makes me feel something, that's good music. I'm in. I'll take it. That's actually all just the sub frequencies. Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:58] It's not the tonality of the notes or the vocal. Yeah. If it makes you feel something sad, happy, indifferent, angry. Even if you don't like it, that's an emotion. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's powerful and it's an awesome gift to be able to share.

[00:22:16] You know, we're thankful that you were able to join us for our big celebration and hope you had a positive experience. It sounds like you did. It was awesome. To your point as well about the first walking in, first looking at him

[00:22:32] within minutes, if you look at somebody, I mean truly look at them. Within minutes, you're going to understand that person's nature. If you just look quietly and listen with your heart

[00:22:43] and within minutes, I knew that this is a cat I wanted to work with. Yeah. I very much appreciate that. It was awesome. It was a great experience. Thus completes your annual review. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. 10% goes to Chase. Thank you for the raise.

[00:22:57] 10% goes to Chase Innovation. No, no, not a raise. You get to do more work. Oh, right. Yes. More responsibility. No, but it is true and I would echo the same thing.

[00:23:07] I believe the team that we have in place isn't just here because it's a job. It's a passion and that comes through and that's why we're able to do things like this that in previous years we might not have been able to and it's really important.

[00:23:21] I'm sure you appreciate hearing that but I appreciate hearing that too. We want to be the best we can for our guests that are coming in to perform and for our guests that are spending

[00:23:31] their time with us. That was a cool event. Really, your brainchild? Yes. We had a tip off from someone, another event promoter that works in and around Minneapolis and she asked us if we were

[00:23:48] doing anything for the 40th anniversary and I was like, no, that seems like a wrong thing. That seems like something that we... A glaring oversight. With just how important Prince is to the Twin Cities and I don't know, it's just seemed like a

[00:24:05] home run to me and I ended up reaching out to you guys to see if you wanted to come and participate in it just knowing your connection to Prince and obviously to the seminal record

[00:24:16] and all that stuff. Yeah, I just wanted to do something special and something big and get a real festival style music event in the Rotunda to flex our capabilities and see what we can do here

[00:24:29] in our spaces when we really buckle in and get to it. And so really in previous years too, that event that you headlined for us probably would not have had the production value that

[00:24:42] it did. Our team has really made that space unique and special and we wanted to too. Kind of what you were talking about, like with the loss of hard rock and there's just not a lot of venues

[00:24:53] that can host music here so we've really been intentional with putting as many musical performances there as we can. Yeah. And really working to highlight Minnesota artists especially through our local connections. So it was a blast for us to be able to showcase as many

[00:25:11] Minnesota musical talents as we could on a day of some great significance. So... Absolutely. Hats off to you. Yeah, we had a blast. Are there any plans for any, be it commercial outsiders or you guys are there any plans to do anything music wise?

[00:25:29] Maybe another venue, something in an event center where it's a normal thing on a weekly basis, monthly basis? It's tough to say what any tenants have planned. I know, I feel like of

[00:25:40] the mix that we have in here right now, the fair on four would be the one that's most primed to be able to do that and stand it up. Yeah. Really, we're happy to carry that forward.

[00:25:50] So programmatically we're doing... What's the Minnesota program now? I forget the name. Yeah, that's another one of my brain children if you will. The Minnesota Musician Spotlight, which is on the months that we do it, it's every Thursday we have a local spotlight of a local

[00:26:07] musician from five to six in the Rotunda and that's been a lot of fun. We work with our partner David Ostrom, he's with his agency Ostrom Entertainment and we really try to

[00:26:21] bring together all of the different types and styles of music that are in this city because it's a great city for music and there's a lot of really cool stuff out there. And David brings in people

[00:26:32] from all different walks to kind of give them a showcase in the Rotunda. So we do that, we're doing it in July and I think we're planning on doing it in September and October as well.

[00:26:44] Yeah, we try to build it out programmatically. So prior to that we worked with the Minnesota Music Coalition and we were doing two a week and we had a pretty good cadence for a while there

[00:26:54] and we've tried to change that up. We've also introduced Swing Dance Night and that's been a monthly occurrence and that has built a really significant following but same thing working

[00:27:03] with a local swing band and to see the people come out and dance with it has been a ton of fun. We've added in a salsa night so really we're looking for those opportunities too programmatically or

[00:27:16] otherwise we feel like the Rotunda is an iconic location and we want to give that stage to as many performers as we can. There's no reason to me why they shouldn't share the same stages

[00:27:30] when we have somebody with a national spotlight on them. It shouldn't be reserved for just that like let us celebrate this so when guests are there and it's maybe just passive entertainment for them but if we make it feel special then our guests are going to feel special

[00:27:45] and you know the shoppers and people that are here for the entertainment are going to feel like special. Yeah that's cool. Yeah I like it. So it's been a lot of fun.

[00:27:53] Yeah it's cool to get back I'm sure you hear it that a lot of people from Minnesota they don't come to the mall. I don't think that's entirely true. Yeah we know they're liars. Yeah

[00:28:03] the numbers tell us otherwise. Yeah but there was a time that I frequented the mall. I don't live that far away I'm just in the in the north loop area of Minneapolis so it's a 15 minute ride if

[00:28:14] there's no traffic. The point being I used to come a lot more but coming back and working with you and the staff it just kind of became new again and I missed it and so now and realizing

[00:28:25] of course that it's only 15 20 minute everything that you need is here and it's a feast to look at just to walk around and look even if you're not shopping you're going to end up shopping for something

[00:28:36] because how can you not with so much stuff to partake in but yeah it's cool and I'm happy that this is a venue that we have in Minnesota. It's pretty cool. I don't know if it's still

[00:28:46] the largest in the world or second largest or third but everybody's got to see it. And it doesn't matter to me. It's the best. I like it. As long as we're the best I'm fine. There you go.

[00:28:56] It just happens to be the largest as well but that's not important right now. Well thank you for joining us Taylor thanks for swinging by. Thanks man. You know it's so great

[00:29:07] to be here at the Mall of America. Other duties as a sign. No no no but thank you so much. Thanks for your passion and putting this together and bringing Chase and Ovation here for the first time. Not the last. Not the last. Definitely not the last.

[00:29:19] Cool thank you gentlemen thank you very much. That's it for now thanks for joining us. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of so much more. If you want to hear more be sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you find your favorites including Spotify,

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