Earlier this year I sat down with Kevin Sucher, founder and lead singer of The Docksiders, the wildly popular yacht rock band currently holding a residency at the 1923 Speakeasy inside The Venetian in Las Vegas.
Kevin, his wife Erin, and his band will be featured as part of our documentary series, Unbreakable, later this summer.
There are wonderful stories that did not make his particular episode but are worth sharing here.
We discussed Kevin’s early love for performing, his thoughts on modern music, the creation of The Docksiders, his relationship with entertainment legends like Tony Orlando and Criss Angel, and the emotional connection audiences have with yacht rock music.
GREG: Tell me about your first performance. Do you remember when that was?
KEVIN:
“My first performance was in musical theater. I was always the kid that was asked to sing a solo in music class in elementary school. For whatever reason, maybe I was just the loudest singer in the room, or I didn’t have fear standing up and singing in front of people.
In fifth grade, there was a high school production of The Music Man, and they were looking for elementary school kids to come and fill out the boys band.
I auditioned and performed in the high school production of The Music Man, and I fell in love with that feeling — the lights on the stage, the live audience in the room, the magic that could happen at any point in time, the feeling that you had to learn something and recreate that thing.
Later that year, we had a summer stock theater in Milwaukee called the Melody Top. When television stars would take their summer break from filming, a lot of these equity actors would go on tour and do summer stock theaters around the country.
That same year, they were going to do The Music Man, and Orson Bean, who was a pretty big star at the time, came in to play Harold Hill. And I read at 10 years old in the newspaper that they were holding an audition for kids.
I remember reading the audition notice in the Milwaukee Journal and going to my mom and saying, ‘I want to do this.’
And she’s like, ‘You got baseball that day.’
I’m like, ‘I’m not going to baseball. I want to do this.’
And she said, ‘Wow, OK.’
There were 350 kids that showed up for an open-call audition, and I made the understudy to the lead of Winthrop in the show.
The reason I was told I didn’t get the part was because the guy that got it over me had been a performer with the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee before it, and he had formal dance training. I had none.
So, the audition consisted of reading from the script, singing, and dancing.
Reading and acting always came very natural to me. Singing, obviously, came very natural to me. And then the dance — I was like — it was definitely not my forte. I could learn it, but it took me longer than some of the other kids that had training and picked it up quickly.
So, I was cast as the understudy, never given a run-through, and the show ran for a handful of weeks. And I’ll never forget — you had to have a parent sitting with you for the performances, and my mom and brother were home because my brother was sick, so my father was at this one particular night.
I was just coming on at the end to play in the band during the ending scene, and Winthrop’s first cue to come on stage happens.
It was theater in the round, by the way. So, the theater was down below the audience, and the audience sat all around it. They used members of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra to play all the music. It was a wonderfully produced professional production.
Mrs. Paroo was saying the cues for Winthrop to come on, and I’m sitting in the back of the theater, and there’s no Winthrop. She’s improvising now, saying, ‘And where is that boy? Where is that boy?’
And I looked at my father at 10 years old and said, ‘I got this.’
I ran down the aisle and stood in front of the performers, and they had this sheer look of terror on their faces. Here was a 10-year-old kid that had never had a run-through.
And I finished the scene.
The musical director, the choreographer, and the director rushed me into a rehearsal room. They were debating, ‘Do we send the other kid on, or does this kid finish the show?’
And they let me finish the show. I performed as Winthrop that night. At the end of the night, they lifted me up on their shoulders and said I saved the performance.
So, I had this instinct that even at 10 years old, I knew something was wrong, and I knew it well enough that I’d figure it out.”
GREG: You seem like kind of a throwback in many ways when it comes to music. Am I right?
KEVIN:
“I always felt like I was just missing my time.
The music that I was writing even in the late ’80s and early ’90s was probably flavored more toward what the previous decade was — more ’80s sounding.
If you remember, the ’90s were about less polished music. The ’80s were big, bombastic, polished productions. The ’90s were the antithesis to that.
The ’90s were, ‘We’re gonna throw on some flannel, we’re gonna barely tune our guitars, we’re gonna play this loud, and I don’t care if we sing out of tune.’
Actually, that probably should have been better for me in that moment. But quite honestly, my heart lied with these masters of soft rock and pop in the ’80s, where the productions were gigantic, the songs were masterful, and the performances were mind-blowingly world-class.
The ’90s were just the opposite of that, and I hated it. I hated what it did to pop music.”
GREG: Tell me about how The Docksiders came to be.
KEVIN:
“I started managing an artist from Chicago, and while I was getting his career on track, I put him out on the road with some of the biggest girl groups on the planet. He was playing arenas with Fifth Harmony and Little Mix.
His agent was in New York, and as I’m talking to his agent before we get into business together, he’s telling me that on the weekends he’s basically an aging rock star. He was an agent by day at ICM, and on weekends he would go play music on Long Island.
I said, ‘Tell me about this phenomenon with tribute acts playing concerts in theaters.’
And he said, ‘It’s a real business.’
I told him I was contemplating maybe dusting off my performance shoes. I hadn’t been on stage in 20 years. I was thinking maybe I’d put a band together, but I’d only do it if we could do it at that level.
I didn’t want to go play in the corner of a room in a bar anymore. I wanted to play concerts. I wanted to take my experience producing shows and create a real concert experience where people buy a ticket and are entertained for 90 minutes or two hours.
And he said to me on that very phone call, ‘I’ll tell you what.’
I told him, ‘I like this yacht rock thing.’ And yacht rock really hadn’t caught on yet. We were kind of early on it.
And he said, ‘I’m gonna sign you today. Go put a band together.’
I remember hanging up the phone and going to my wife and saying, ‘Interesting... and I kind of need you because I’d like you to be in the band.’
And that’s how The Docksiders were born.”
GREG: You have an incredibly close relationship with the legendary Tony Orlando. I think it’s interesting that he somehow led you to Criss Angel. That probably wasn’t on your bingo card when you were younger, right?
KEVIN:
“Tony Orlando is the greatest connector in the world. The people he has put me on the phone with are mind-blowing.
I happened to tell him the story about my failed record attempt with Arista Records and how Clive Davis was a huge inspiration to me. Growing up, I always felt that if Clive Davis heard me, he’d get me. I thought Clive Davis would be the one to open my dream up for me.
Tony used to run publishing for Columbia Records, and Clive was his boss. Clive hired Tony Orlando. That’s how Tony got in the business.
Tony called Clive Davis up and put me on the phone with him. He says, ‘Just tell him whatever you want to tell him.’
And I did. I said, ‘Mr. Davis, this is mind-blowing that I finally get to say these words to you.’
He’s in his ’90s and was so gracious.
I said, ‘Next time you’re in Vegas, I’d love to have you at our show.’
That’s Tony at his core.
Tony also connected me with Criss Angel. Tony and Criss are very, very close.
When I first met Criss, I found him to be one of the most gracious, humble, beautiful people. And if you go see Criss’s show, you realize he understands rock and roll and magic at a mastery level.
From the minute you walk into the Criss Angel theater, the experience begins.
He’s the GOAT, in my opinion, of magic. And I’m so grateful for my relationship with him. He’s such a sweet guy, and it’s such a big part of living in Las Vegas — being in that sort of company.”
GREG: Yacht rock is such a craze right now, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. When people come to one of your shows, they really let loose, don’t they? This music is meaningful to people too, right? It takes people back.
KEVIN:
“I had a man recently come up and tell me that his wife had passed away, and he was sobbing. He told me how much she had meant to him, and this was all they listened to together.
Being in our room that night and seeing our story play out on stage with the soundtrack of what he shared with his wife — he just said, ‘I’m a mess, man. Thank you.’
And it almost made me uncomfortable because I don’t like that kind of praise. I don’t do it for that. I do it to connect with people more than anything.
Then that same week, I had a gentleman who was a sheriff in Connecticut. This guy was like 6’5”, huge guy, and he said he’d spent his entire life in the military and law enforcement.
He looked at me and said, ‘Can I give you a hug?’
And he held me and said, ‘My life has been so hard, and I’ve seen so much crap that this made me forget about it all for the 90 minutes I was in the room.’
And it made me cry. He had tears in his eyes.
Those are our fans.
We see those people night in and night out.
And it feels like — and we say this on stage — our show is therapeutic.
There’s a lot of therapy in what we do. And it’s not just therapy for the audience. There’s therapy in it for me.
I feel it. I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be at this point in my life.
I’m grateful. It’s humbling. The success we’ve had is not lost on me.”
If you are ever in the Las Vegas area, do yourself and your friends a favor, visit 1923 Live and catch The Docksiders. You won’t regret it!
Note: We premiered Kevin’s episode of Unbreakable at a private VIP screening in late February in front of Tony Orlando and several other distinguished guests. At the time, we believed we would be able to release the episode instantly on Amazon Prime shortly afterward. However, we later learned that we need at least two completed episodes to launch Season 2. We were not ready for that! I’m hoping Kevin and his fans can forgive us for the later than expected release.
The good news is we are now very close to finishing both our second and third episodes featuring Chet Roberts and 3 Doors Down. As soon as those are completed, we’ll begin pitching the full slate of episodes to streaming platforms everywhere — including Amazon Prime.
We’re incredibly proud of Season 1 of Unbreakable on Prime, and in our humble opinion, Season 2 is shaping up to be our best yet. Thank you for your patience and continued support!