Featuring Bo Bice

It’s been five decades since drummer/producer Bobby Colomby and friends assembled the first group to successfully blend rock and jazz into a genre-crossing sound and style. So successfully in fact, that the band’s second album, Blood, Sweat & Tears, topped the Billboard charts for many weeks and beat out the Beatles’ Abbey Road for the prestigious Album of the Year Grammy award. That album produced three major hit singles: “You Made me so Very Happy,” “Spinning Wheel,” and “And When I Die.”

But now Colomby is looking for much more as he develops Blood Sweat & Tears into a contemporary voice, one that reaches beyond a single, nostalgic audience.

“I no longer want to target just one generation. That would be a mistake. With this updated version, I want this band to gain recognition with a wider audience. I want people of all ages to experience what this music has to offer.

Will Blood, Sweat & Tears have any of the original members?

“Not a chance,” says Colomby, who last performed with BS&T in 1976. I think of this band like baseball’s Yankees. “When you’re at a Yankee game you’re not going to see Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle or Lou Gehrig. What you do come to expect is a team of top-notch players upholding a tradition of winning. That’s the Yankee legacy. It’s what people expect from BS&T as well . . . brilliant musicians, singers, songs and arrangements.

“During the early years of Fox’s hit TV show American Idol (that just ended its 15 year production) Colomby received many phone calls from friends telling him to check out singer Bo Bice, saying that his was a fresh voice and that he did a masterful job singing “Spinning Wheel.” He is a well seasoned southern rock singer with a great stage presence. Many of my more musically knowledgeable buddies also suggested that I ask Bo to join the band. I’m pleased to say that that’s exactly what happened and by the reaction of audiences world wide it was a great match.”

Special Guest: Of The Dell

Of The Dell was founded by brothers Corey and Cody Hatton, of Huntington, West Virginia. “Young, restless and useless rock N roll created by four rough, rowdy and semi conscious West Virginia natives.”