TINA L. SCOTT
EDITOR
The Glam Band brought their “Decadent 80’s Rock” to Normal Park in Merrill last Thursday evening, July 25, 2024, for the third Thorogood Thursday Gazebo Nights live concert series of the 2024 summer season.
“The Glam Band is made up of six guys with a love of 80’s Hair Metal,” reads the group’s web page. Those six guys – who go by the stage names Dennis Lee Roth, Skitch Rockett, Will E. Stradlin, Matt Savage, Dee Flatt, and Randi Schenker – rocked the Gazebo stage with their wild covers of 1980’s rock and heavy metal favorites, complete with 1980’s-era long hair, makeup, and flashy clothing and accessories. Attendees who closed their eyes may have had flashbacks to their teen or young adult attendance at a life-changing concert – or maybe to the raucous music blaring up from the basement of their teenagers bedrooms back in the day.
For those who don’t know, one band member, “Dee Flatt,” is a hometown favorite, having grown up in Merrill when he was better known as Dave Schepp, a band geek with a love of heavy metal who graduated from Merrill High School in 1986 when “Glam Metal” was in its heyday.
Schepp has been living out his high school fantasy since he joined the Glam Band in 2013. But … when he’s not playing keyboard and living out his fantasy life, “Glamming” it up wearing Aquanet-infused wigs and man-scara, Schepp teaches concert band, jazz band, and the Phanton Drumline at West De Pere Middle School. He actually studied piano and brass at a very young age and holds degrees from UW-Eau Claire and UW-Green Bay, his “real” bio confirmed.
The Glam Band was created when “a few friends sitting at a bar talking about how cool 80’s rock was, led to an inaugural show on a Tuesday night at Riders Saloon in Kimberly back in 2007,” their website said. It began as a five-piece gig and turned into a six-piece band when they added a keyboardist [Schepp] in 2013.
Now in their 15th year, the Glam Band is in high demand in Green Bay and the Fox Cities but also hits the stage at locations throughout the state as their schedule allows.
Here in Merrill, quite a few “head bangers” came out to dance, enjoy the show, and become Glam Band groupies for an evening – and more than a few graduates of the Class of 1986 showed up to support their “legendary rock” friend – and they all may or may not have been acting like teenagers again, out in public, much to the likely dismay of their now-grown children.
This was the Glam Band’s debut performance in the Gazebo, but it’s a safe bet they will be in demand again for future events, as they drew a crowd of more than 2,500 to hear rock classics from groups such as Journey, Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, and the Beastie Boys, according to Gus Caylor, one of the event’s organizers. “This is a new record that surpasses The Britins’ concert last year,” Caylor said.
“The Glam Band concert also set a record for the 50/50 raffle, as nearly $4,000 was raised for the Lincoln County Humane Society,” he said.
“The rock continues this week as the group Rising Phoenix, central Wisconsin’s 80’s party band, returns for another year,” Caylor said. “The concerts will then take a week off for the fair.”
