LIVE FROM JACKSONVILLE! with Amadeus
99.9 Gator Country morning show host Amadeus shares stories that did not make it on the air, and he takes a deeper dive into those that did make the cut. Fans of Your Hometown Morning Show will enjoy a more behind the scenes look at what goes into the making of a country radio morning show. Listen daily for this PG-13 version of the top stories making pop culture headlines, artist interviews, and much , much more.
LIVE FROM JACKSONVILLE! with Amadeus
From Wang Chung to My Fair Lady: Jacksonville's Must-See Entertainment Lineup
Ready to dive into Jacksonville's red-hot entertainment scene? Join host Amadeus as he unveils the most anticipated shows hitting Northeast Florida's premier venues.
The podcast kicks off with a comprehensive rundown of upcoming performances across Jacksonville's iconic venues. From Brit Floyd and Frankie Valli at the Florida Theater to Styx and Old Dominion at Daily's Place, music lovers of all genres will find something to mark on their calendars. The spotlight shines brightest on the St. Augustine Amphitheater's "I Want My 80's Tour" featuring Rick Springfield, John Waite, Wang Chung, and John Cafferty coming May 29th.
The heart of this episode features an engaging conversation with Wang Chung's Nick Feldman, who shares fascinating insights into the band's evolution as live performers. "I think we're like a fine wine," Feldman reflects, "I think we've hopefully matured well with age." He discusses the gratification of connecting with audiences spanning generations and even reveals his current musical obsession with genre-defying artist Lewis Cole – a recommendation worth checking out for anyone seeking fresh sounds.
Amadeus then shifts focus to Jacksonville's theatrical treasures with a spotlight on the Alhambra Theater & Dining, recently crowned the nation's best dinner theater by USA Today. Local actor Gary Webber discusses his role as Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady" (running through June 22nd) and eloquently captures why theater remains such a meaningful creative outlet: "Some people play golf, some people hunt or fish. I do theater and it's a great release."
Whether you're planning your concert calendar or looking to experience award-winning local theater, this episode delivers the essential guide to Jacksonville's most exciting entertainment offerings. Subscribe now to ensure you never miss an update on the shows and performances making Jacksonville a must-visit destination for entertainment enthusiasts!
Welcome to Live from Jacksonville, the podcast that lets you know exactly what's happening in town, whether it's a concert, comedian, broadway shows, even NFL alumni events. We're here for you. My name is Amadeus. On the last episode, rick Springfield joined me to talk about his I Want my 80s Tour coming to the St Augustine Amphitheater on Thursday May 29th, coming up. I have a conversation with Nick Feldman from Wang Chung, who's also on that tour, and I'll be chatting with a local actor named Gary Weber, who you can currently see in my Fair Lady at the Alhambra Dinner Theater. But first here's a look at some of the shows coming to the area in the next few weeks. The Florida Theater has the Pink Floyd tribute band Brit Floyd on Tuesday, may 20th, frankie Valli and the Four Seasons May 25th, and the first of the Jacksonville Rock Orchestra summer concert series shows the Music of Led Zeppelin on Wednesday, june 4th at the Florida Theater. Check out floridatheatercom for those shows and more. Some of the shows coming to Daily's Place in June Sticks with Kevin Cronin from REO Speedwagon and Don Felder that show will be at Daly's on Monday, june 2nd. Old Dominion with Ernest and Red Ferrin on Friday, june 6th. This show is completely well, not completely but almost completely sold out. Vampire Weekend will be here on Thursday June 12th and Avril Lavigne's Greatest Hits Tour hits Daly's Place on Monday June 23rd. Daly'splacecom for all those shows and more Coming to the St Augustine Amphitheater kind of a new guy on the country scene but already a huge following.
Speaker 1:For Sam Barber. He'll be there on Friday May 10th. This show kind of snuck up on me. Bare Naked Ladies last summer on Earth Tour will be at the Amp on Wednesday June 4th and tickets for Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's Heart are on sale now. They'll be at the AMP on Tuesday June 24th. The show I'm most excited about coming to the AMP right now is the I Want my 80s Tour, thursday May 29th, starring Rick Springfield, john Waite, wang Chung and John Cafferty. As I mentioned on the last episode, I had a chance to talk with Rick Springfield about the show and recently I talked with Nick Feldman from Wang Chung. Here's a bit of that conversation.
Speaker 2:Hey, Amadeus, can I call you Wolfgang?
Speaker 1:You can call me Wolfgang. I've been called much worse.
Speaker 2:It's a great name. I love Amadeus. Great name.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. I was actually working in a record store in the 80s when Rock Me Amadeus came out and I put that on my name tag. People started calling me that and it just stuck.
Speaker 2:That's great, I love it.
Speaker 1:It's turned out to be a great radio name, because no one ever forgets it.
Speaker 2:No, exactly A bit like Wang.
Speaker 1:Chung, how are you?
Speaker 2:I know you're doing a radio tour today, so are you exhausted by now? I'm a little bit tired, but I'm okay. It's nice that people you know so positive and appreciative, so it gives you a bit of energy and uh, so I'm very happy you're the last one, so, uh, that's good as well I was gonna say I think I am the light at the end of your radio tour tunnel as opposed to an oncoming train.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you are hey, we're super excited about the. I want my 80s tour coming to the san augustine amphitheater. We saw you last year on Abducted by the 80s Tour at the Florida Theater and we were blown away by Wang Chong.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. We love playing live. I think we're what's the word like a fine wine. I think we've hopefully matured well with age and I think it's great to interact with the audiences. I well with age and I think it's great to interact with the audiences. I think I find it sort of easier these days. Maybe that's something to do with the internet and also the fact that there's more accessibility somehow. So it's a lovely experience playing live and it's great to know and find out how it resonates for people from back in the day and also to younger people who've heard our stuff in games or in films or TV shows. You know, it's very gratifying for us.
Speaker 1:For us as an audience. You know it was full of obviously diehard 80s fans and you know we had a great show before with the other opening acts. But Wang Chung and I had never seen you guys live and I didn't realize what truly amazing musicians you guys are.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, we do take it seriously. I mean, obviously our music has a kind of quite accessible front end to it, but I think if you drill down a bit deeper, there's a kind of musicality in what we do and we're committed. You know, we want to do a good show, we want to make good music and play well. So our band is you know we want to do a good show, we want to make good music and play well. So our band is you know there's a good chemistry between us and I think we've again sort of evolved in a good way over the years. It feels like we're quite a potent live act.
Speaker 1:Well, I agree 100%. As a matter of fact, there was one song it was an instrumental from the To Live and Die in LA soundtrack that really, I think, captured the audience and told everyone like these guys are not playing around, they're serious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. You said that. I'm pleased to hear it. Yeah, we weren't sure how that was going to go down when we first put that together because we never played that until you know recently that track You're talking about City of the Angels, which is the main instrumental theme from To Live and Die in LA movie. So we didn't know how that was going to go. But you know, we were very pleasantly surprised to see how well it connects with people and again, we worked hard to get that sounding, you know, strong and punchy, and faithful to the original recording.
Speaker 1:Well, as someone who attends as many concerts as possible and appreciates great live music, I can tell you that it was appreciated and we got it.
Speaker 2:That's terrific. I'm so really happy to hear that you make old men very happy.
Speaker 1:Well, you make old men very happy when they go see you live in concert as well.
Speaker 2:And I hope some younger men and women too. But yeah, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:Speaking of the younger, I know that you have some experience in the record industry as well as being on the Voice over in England. Are there any young artists that you're into right now? Anyone you're really looking at?
Speaker 2:I'm completely obsessed by Lewis Cole, who's actually American but he's like. It's hard to sort of categorize what genre he's in because he sort of came out of the jazz world a bit, but he plays funk, he plays soulful stuff. Brian Wilson, the influence stuff. He's a total I use the word advisedly genius. He's amazing and I'm completely obsessed by him. He played a concert in London last week. He's got this orchestral sort of. He's released an orchestral album and he did a show for it at the Round london last week which was absolutely brilliant. I went along to see it and totally loved it. I'd love to work with him sometime, if we can possibly uh persuade him, because I think he's an extraordinary musician and a great writer and a great arranger. So yeah, lewis cole, and I think he's what? Probably mid-30s, that sort of age, 30s, something like that. But great.
Speaker 1:I'm taking notes because I'm in my 35th year in radio and I think one of the things that keeps me feeling young is discovering new artists and kind of tapping into what's happening with the kids these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I just find it it's lovely to become excited about something that you hadn't heard. It was our keyboard player, dave, who turned me on to Lewis Cole. That was when we were on tour last year, probably around the time that you saw us play live, I think Dave played me some stuff by him and I was like, wow, that's really good. And then from then on, I just became obsessed.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll be checking him out this afternoon, for sure.
Speaker 2:It's very musical. I don't mean like musical theater, I mean he's very musically talented, so check it out.
Speaker 1:Absolutely will. Well, the I Want my 80s Tour is coming to the St Augustine Amphitheater on Thursday, May 29th. John Cafferty, John Waite, Rick Springfield and I talked to Rick last week on my podcast and he said he was very excited to work with you guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are with him. We've never worked with him before, so we're really looking forward to that. I think it's a good mix of artists that are performing on this tour, so I think, from a musical sense, I think it should be a nice experience for the audience and for us, so something we're really looking forward to.
Speaker 1:The tickets are on sale now at TheAmpcom. Nick Feldman, I know you've had a long day. I appreciate the time you gave me this morning. It's been lovely to talk to you. All right, we'll see you at the Amp on May 29th.
Speaker 2:Looking forward to it and remember Wang Chun at least once a day.
Speaker 1:There's still some great seats for the I Want my 80s Tour. Check out theampcom Now. A few episodes back, I had Craig Smith, owner of Jacksonville's Alhambra Dinner Theater, on as a guest. If you're from Jax, you know the Alhambra, but if you're not from town, if you're new here, this is a dinner theater that you really should definitely check out. It's been around for almost 60 years. It is a Jacksonville institution. The musical my Fair Lady kicked off this week. It's running through June 22nd and I recently talked to local actor Gary Weber about the show. We started off talking about his acting as a hobby.
Speaker 3:Some people play golf, Some people hunt or fish. I do theater and it's a great release, great time to just connect with people and get to know a community, and I've really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:I'm going to play this for my mom because she keeps asking when I'm going to retire and I'm like Mom, what am I going to do? I don't golf. I play this for my mom because she keeps asking when I'm going to retire. And I'm like mom, what am I?
Speaker 3:going to do. I don't golf, I don't fish. This is what I do. Yeah, I think people who have never experienced it don't understand, like the uh, the satisfaction it brings, not just from a sense of doing it. They think it's all about being on the stage. It's really not. It's a lot about the process and the people you're working with, and I find that very enjoyable and a great healthy distraction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Sometimes my pop will even ask like we'll see like the Rolling Stones on a news story and he'll be like why, do they still tour? I'm like, pop, it's what they do, they don't need the money.
Speaker 3:It's just in them. That's right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:So my Fair Lady is coming to the Alhambra Dinner Theater and you're in the production.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this has been sort of one of those roles I've dreamed about playing for years, and so the opportunity to play Henry Higgins is exciting, and to get to do it at the Alhambra is a privilege. I'm looking forward to working with Todd and Kathy and Shane and the whole crew over there again. I did my Fair Lady there in 2021. It's the first time I ever worked at the Alhambra. It is just a great community and just a great treasure here in the First Coast. You know they recently were named the nation's best dinner theater by USA Today, which is a huge, huge accolade for our local treasure. That's right here in our own community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had Craig on the on the podcast a few weeks ago and I was telling him like when I was like in fourth or fifth grade going to Mayport Elementary, we went to the Alhambra. Like that was one of the things we did every year. And you're right, it is such a huge accolade to win that award.
Speaker 3:It really is and I don't think people realize that. First of all, I believe I'm right in saying it's the longest continually operating dinner theater in the nation, but also the history of it in who they have brought in over the years, some of the nationally recognized stars who have performed on that stage. It's just, you know, when you walk around in the lobby you see the bills and the different playbills that are up, but backstage I'd never been backstage before and so when I did the Sound of Music a few years ago and I was back there, there's even more of that and I was just blown away by some of the people who performed there and some of the great shows that have been done. And people don't necessarily recognize Jacksonville as a theater town.
Speaker 1:You think of Atlanta or New York, chicago, all those but Alhambra has definitely made a great deposit in this community in terms of the arts and culture, and theater in particular. For those who haven't seen my Fair Lady I think I haven't seen it since I was a little bitty kid Tell us about that story.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is a great story. It's based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw and it was converted into a musical in the 1950s and then became a movie, with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn in the movie Now the stage show in Broadway and in London. It was Julie Andrews who played the lead. But it's a story of this very pretentious dialectician, grammarian, very uptight British guy, and he meets this poor flower girl on the road and he basically makes a bet that he can transform this girl into a duchess and that it's all based on how she talks. It has nothing to do with her looks or her clothes, that can all be changed. But really the thing that distinguishes class from class is the way people talk, and so he takes her on as a project and he basically teaches her how to talk like a lady, and of course she succeeds in that.
Speaker 3:And in the meantime you know he is just, he's a wreck of a human. Everything on the outside is all together, but he's lonely. The story is that he becomes attached to her and yet he doesn't recognize his need for that kind of a relationship. So it gets to the end of the show and she can now go off and live her life and be successful. She can marry whoever she wants, and he's kind of left alone, and so I don't want to spoil it. But that's the premise of the story. It's a great story. It's hilarious, it's poignant. There's a reason it's a classic and has endured this long. I think people will really enjoy the show.
Speaker 1:It's like the first rom-com.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's right. In fact, I think if you watch a lot of stories, you can see traces of that Pygmalion my Fair Lady story have been replayed over and over. I think when you tap into something that that's common to the human existence, people pick up on it in themes, and so, yeah, it's definitely a theme that people will recognize even if they've never seen the show.
Speaker 1:Are you the one that gets to sing? I've Grown Accustomed to See in Her Face.
Speaker 3:Yes, I do. Are you excited about that? It's the last song in the show and it's such a great picture into who he is and into the whole story and that's probably I could have danced all night. You know, the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plane. I've grown accustomed to her face. These are the songs that people, even if they've never seen the show, they'll recognize those tunes because they've become so popular.
Speaker 1:Gary Weber. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast today. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to share the information about the show.
Speaker 1:As I mentioned, my Fair Lady is running through June 22nd. Purchase your tickets now at alhambrajaxcom. That's a look at what's coming to Jacksonville in the next few weeks. We'll have another episode coming at the end of May just to let you know what's happening live from Jacksonville.