‘No Greater High’: Getting the Band Back Together After Age 50

“I want to rock and roll all night and party every day.” That was KISS in 1975 and I feel the same way. In fact, I want Country, too. And jazz and pop for that matter. Whatever live music is playing nearby, I am willing to see it.

I have been a live music fan since I was a teenager hanging out in basements watching my friends practice their Who and Led Zeppelin covers along with sundry assorted originals.

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Band fights and delusions of grandeur interrupted many a practice. My friends played together, they fought, they broke up, they changed their line-up, and they re-booked at the neighborhood bars under a new name. Eventually, they moved on. I moved on too. The drama was too much, and my life was ahead of me.

Even successful acts such as KISS, who taught me about rocking and rolling all night, were notorious for their break-ups and make-ups. The on-again, off-again rivalries made for a great marketing gimmick, especially when the reunion tour had the band dressed in full regalia.

In 2023, KISS ended its “final” stadium tour — just in time, since I am pretty much done with the big concerts. But I still hit the local scene to dance to covers played by band members I used to know.

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Fortunately, there seems to be a trend in local musicians seeking out their former bandmates for another shine in the spotlight.

“I invited a couple of them over to my house,” Craig Fuhr, lead singer of Front Page, said of his former bandmates, whom he started playing with in junior high. “It was the keyboard player and the drummer, and I got them drunk, and I was like, ‘You know, we could go one-night only. Guys, it's just one more night.’”

Fuhr’s invitation came at the tail end of COVID in December 2022. The band had not played together since 1993, though the six members had stayed in touch over the decades. Having performed across Maryland for 13 years playing ‘80s hits in front of “tens of thousands” of people, Fuhr wondered if the band could still connect. It did.

Side-by-side images showing the band Front Page in 1986 (left) and in 2024 (right).

Courtesy: Front Page (left) and Ryan Donnell (right)

The band started practicing again. Fuhr got them booked at a local pub. Since then, the group has resumed playing about once per month.

“To be back with the guys, I never dreamed that we would be that good 30 years later,” Fuhr told AARP Experience Counts.

“When you're up on that stage there when you've got a packed house, there's no greater high, not one,” said Rob Baier, 52, former frontman for the Baltimore-based Faded Image.

A stylized image of the band Faded Image.

Courtesy: Faded Image

Faded Image played the East Coast from 1997 to 2016. It regrouped in 2024. When the band got together for its first practice in the new era, the chemistry came rushing back.

“Once we got in a room together, it was, like, ‘Why did we stop?’” said Baier, a two-time Sony Nashville-signed musician. “It was bizarre because whatever bad blood there was may have just kind of been made-up. We all got in the room and hugged.”

Baier, who later became a booking agent for local acts, said that because of the nostalgia factor, bands that reunite can earn decent money at venues where they once played.