Wayne Nelson, the bassist and frontman for the Little River Band, acknowledges the obvious fact that concertgoers who hear “Reminiscing” or “Cool Change” — two of the hit songs that made LRB one of rock music’s biggest acts — might expect them to sound the same now as they did on vinyl 45 years ago.
Here’s what to know about that: Even though Nelson joined the band five years after its 1975 founding, and sang lead vocals on the 1981 hit “The Night Owls,” its last Billboard chart single, Little River Band’s lineup now is magnitudes different than at its peak.
But he says even the so-called “classic” lineup wouldn’t sound the same every show. The vocal blends on a recording are difficult to replicate live on any given night, a night when a cold or physical exhaustion stresses the vocal cords, or when someone just isn’t “on their ‘A’ game.”
“We don’t try to pretend that we are those people,” Nelson said.
And they aren’t.
Little River Band was formed in 1975 in Australia. Its Wikipedia page lists 33 former members over the years; contemporary acts like Journey, REO Speedwagon and Ambrosia might have just a dozen or so ex-members.
Even so, that’s not the point. Nelson — who’ll appear with Little River Band at Fayetteville’s Crown Theatre on May 4 — argues that attrition is a reality for most bands, and certainly any band that’s been performing and producing music under the same appellation for parts of six decades.
In fact, when Nelson became a part of the band’s rhythm section — and its first American member — LRB had already chewed through seven bass players in five years.
Even with its contentious legacy, legal wranglings and the disdain that some back in “Oz” have for this now all-American group, what sets Little River Band apart was, and is, what happens on stage. The band still brings the same layered and nuanced vocal harmonies that led the late Eagles founder Glenn Frey (who knew something about harmonizing) to characterize LRB as “the best singing band in the world.”
Plus: musicianship and a sense of performance that’s even earned the recent iteration of the band “best of” recognition among Las Vegas acts.
‘A different icing’
The group has sold more than 30 million albums and is named near the top of any list — along with AC/DC, Air Supply, INXS and Men at Work — as among the most influential Australian bands in history.
When long-time fans who attend the Crown show hear “Reminiscing,” or “Happy Anniversary,” or “Lady” or “Lonesome Loser” or “Cool Change,” Nelson says they’ll be remembering the past or remembering hearing a record, and that’s important.
“And we have to get as close to it as we can, to honor that memory,” he told CityView. “But what I’ll say is this: The cake is the same whenever we show up. The cake — the emotion, the whatever — is the same. We’re not messing with that essential part of the song for you. But we put a different icing on it.”
That icing — different people, with different guitar sounds and a more modern stage presentation — delivers, he says. It’s the same emotional punch the original LRB lineup offered up the late 1970s and early '80s, owing to the talents of the band’s current lineup, which Nelson anchors.
“We sound way more modern,” he said. “Our stage is clean. We used to have amps, monitors, sound roaring off the stage. It’s all going out front now, and is much more pristine and under control.
“And I think people really enjoy that aspect of what we do. We have to honor the parts. We’re still singing the songs in the same keys, and we make it feel like that memory.”
The payoff, he said, comes from conversations he has with fans after shows. It’s proof, he’ll tell you, that Little River Band isn’t sailing into Fayetteville as a glorified tribute group.
“We have people come up and say, ‘How do you guys still do this after 49, 50 years?’” — not realizing, Nelson says, LRB’s profusion of personnel evolutions.
Sharing the state with Nelson are Dove Award-winning producer and keyboardist Chris Marion, drummer Ryan Ricks and guitarists Colin Whinnery (who shares lead vocals) and singer-songwriter Bruce Wallace.
Many core Little River Band fans are now grandparents, but Nelson says young listeners and the band’s other newer fans are attracted to a sound that’s hard to find in the airwaves today: the group’s textured delivery of a song. That’s always been an LRB hallmark. He describes the first-time listening experience as being “introduced to that stereo vocal … that pillow of vocals and those guitars. That’s something they hear that’s hard to find in newer music.”
Each of the five band members contributes to the vocal parts. The experience of that sound, combined with what the lyrics convey, provides a particular experience — one Nelson says is like “kind of getting your hair pinned back by the power of that … you know, that human interaction. It’s good.”
A complicated legacy
Little River Band’s legacy is a bit complicated. On the one hand, its music was so ubiquitous and in such heavy rotation on top-40 radio stations that buying the band’s records (six of which charted consecutively in the U.S. between 1977 and 1985) almost wasn’t necessary.
“Reminiscing” (one of more than a dozen LRB singles that charted in the U.S., 10 of which were in the Billboard Hot 100 top-20 rankings) has been recognized as one of the most frequently played songs in the history of U.S. radio. Even listeners today favoring “yacht rock” formats and '70s and '80s satellite radio channels who don’t know the band’s name can sing the lyrics to songs like “Lady” or “Lonesome Loser” or “Cool Change.”
On the other hand, though, breakups, lawsuits, reunions and protracted legal battles over the band’s name — not to mention again that none of LRB’s current lineup are from Australia — haven’t burnished the band’s story.
The 13 “official” members who played in the band from 1976 to 1978 were enshrined, in 2004, into Australia’s version of the music hall of fame. But there’s a palpable dislike among some in the Australian music press, and some music fans Down Under, of the group, which is one of the reasons LRB doesn’t play there now. (The band was always more popular in America anyway, says Nelson, who lived in Australia twice and made, by his count, 43 trips back and forth there from the U.S.)
Time for a cool change?
Nelson persevered through all that, and has been a part of the group for the last 44 years — with the exception of a brief period in the 1990s (a hiatus that came after his 13-year-old daughter, Aubree, was killed in a car accident, struck by a driver who ran a red light in San Diego).
So how is rock-and-roll different now than then?
The travel is the same — “it still sucks,” Nelson says — but the size of the tour is smaller than in the '70s and '80s, when LRB churned out Top-10 hits six years running and had a road entourage transported from gig to gig in two large semis and three or four touring buses.
Like Nelson, most of the band and crew is Nashville-based, and the vast majority of LRB’s dates are weekend shows — meaning eight or 10 concerts per month. The Fayetteville date is the only North Carolina gig on the band’s calendar; a look at the schedule shows the band crisscrossing the country, but typically always home by Monday or Tuesday, meaning lots of family time.
“There's a lot more connection to home and family now at our age than there was,” said Nelson, 73, who also manages the band and decides on flights and hotels. “In terms of the band, we’re what Nashville calls 'weekend warriors.' We go out for three, four days. We come back. That’s the way it works.
“We own our own bus, and we can schedule to our own satisfaction, carry our own gear and hop on the bus, then show up and unpack and unload the same every day. Just a different time, right?”
A new album
Different, too, is the recording process and the marketing effort to promote new music. Today’s technology means individual song parts can be recorded at home and emailed to other band members and edited without splicing tape.
Market channels have changed, too, meaning short-form videos dropped on social media platforms instead of MTV videos, and singles from Little River Band’s forthcoming album — its first since 2020 — will be dropped digitally one at a time, months ahead of the actual vinyl (yes, we've cycled back to a real record) release.
The first single from the new “Window to the World” album, in fact, will debut the day before the Fayetteville show. The single (the album’s title track) and another song, “First Time,” are a part of the band’s current setlist, along with, of course, the band’s extensive catalog of hits and other fan favorites.
“We've been doing two of the songs live in the set, and we just don't announce that they're new — we just play them,” Nelson said. “People are going crazy. We announce that they're new and they're like, ‘Wow, they fit.’ They feel like hits. Some people even wrote in to us and said they went back home and scoured all of our albums looking for those songs.
“You know,” he continued, “it’s like, ‘How dare you fool us. But thank God you're doing new music.’ And all of that is starting to come together right now so that we can reach a younger audience first and try to let these songs catch on with them. And in the meantime, we're playing live, which is still our bread and butter, and we will have [a new album] out there.”
Nelson thinks it’s “all happening,” and has been, because the essence of the band’s songs, and its live performances, haven't changed.
“Some bands build their base, their songs, on a fad or on a haircut or on some keyboard sound,” he said. “You know what I’m saying? Little River Band songs are about life. They always have been. And that's what is resonating still with people, because life's really no different. The toys are — you know, we can drive faster, we've got internet, we've got cell phones. The toys are different, but the ups and downs of life are still essentially the same. For young people who didn't live through it when our songs were brand new, our music still hits home for them — because there's a message there that people can hang on to about life.
“And I think that as long as you can still get up there and do it and honor it and do it physically well, then that's how you beat the odds.”
LITTLE RIVER BAND ticket information.
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