By Jay N. Miller
“It is amazing how much U2 music fans can take in one night,” Joe Wilson was saying. “Their fans’ appetite is really endless.”
Wilson was talking about some of his band’s most exciting gigs,when The Joshua Tree played at The Harp in Boston, across the street from the TD Garden, on nights when U2 was headlining at the arena. Fans would pack the club to hear their favorite U2 numbers before the concertand then, remarkably, they’d also cram into The Harp for post-concert revelry.
That desire to hear more and more U2 music has made The Joshua Tree one of New England’s busier bands for the past 20years, and certainly the region’s premier U2 tribute act. The Joshua Tree will headlineThe Spire Center in Plymouth on Friday, Sept. 10, and if you miss them therethe quartet isplaying at halftime of Sunday's New England Patriots home opener at Gillette Stadium.
The Joshua Tree –named after the U2 album – had its origins in Wilson’s basem*nt in Hanson about the year 2000. Vocalist Mike Golarz, of East Bridgewater, was an original member. Guitarist Mike Courcy, of Wareham, has been in the band more than a decade.
Wilson, who plays bass, joked that like Spinal Tap, the band has had its share of drummers, but New Bedford’s Tom O’Leary has held down that chair for more than a year now, and there is an added benefit.
“Tom’s definitely the most Irish of all of us,” said Wilson.
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Over the years, the band built its stellar reputation by re-creating the music of U2 with precision and emotion, and it was consistently busy whether the real U2 was touring or not. From 2017 to 2019, The Joshua Tree averaged more than 120 shows a year, Wilson said, and most of the members were able to be full-time musicians.But then the pandemic hitand a slew of dates went out the window in a moment.
“We have managed to keep theband together,” Wilson said. “During the lockdown, and then more so this summer, we have played a few showshere and there, mainly private shows that took place outdoors. Most of our calendar now – including The Spire Center – is making up dates that had been postponed.I think the original Spire Center date we were booked for was almost two years ago. We still have just a handful of indoor dates, but a lot of outdoor dates over the summer.”
Keeping pace with U2
When the foursome started, the memberswere intent on playing the music from U2’s early days, with all its raw and fiery intensity.But as the years went on, U2 itself changed and evolvedand experimentedand became more of a pop sensation.The Joshua Tree had to keep pace.
“We’ve been doing this long enough to see a lot of different incarnations of U2,” said Wilson. “We started out doing the songs from the album‘The Joshua Tree.’ That was the music we loved and it had an immediate impact when we played it. We didn’t have the foresight to do a full-on tribute to them, which covered all periods of their music.
"But then it evolved and we learned more of their songs. We still focused mostly on the early catalogbecause that’s what we grew up on. We had also found, over the years, that fans really liked that early material. There are only so many songs you can do in a night, so we didn’t have to add many newer ones."
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Wilson said they learned the newer songs as time passed.
“We’ve had sets that still are pretty much centered on the early catalog, but with bigger portions of their later hits. We have also always concentrated on getting the music right. We can never replicate the massive budget or production of some of the more recent, multi-media U2 tours. We do as much as we can, depending on the venue, but most of them can’t take the hours of stage setup and so on that U2 does for their arena or stadium shows.”
Those limitations to the physical show led naturally to The Joshua Tree’s focus on the music and feel of a U2 concert, and their success at that has been the biggest part of their reputation.
The essence of U2's music
“We’re really focused on the essence of U2’s music,” said Wilson. “We try to get the music and the emotion of the music down. For a lot of people this is the soundtrack of their childhood, their early adult years, and so we really strive to put that intensity across.
"We are not impersonatorsand we don’t do costumes like some tribute acts. We just do our best to deliver the music in the spirit it was intended to have. I think we’ve found that the fans’ appetite is for just that, and music that is authentic is better than a Las Vegas costume act. You can try to fool the people with a visual copy, but if the music isn’t right, U2 fans will be disappointed, so we try to focus on getting that the way it should be.”
Many musicians start out as tribute band membersor playing a variety of covers, and then at a certain point transition to doing their own originals. The Joshua Tree followed the reverse path.
“We were all involved in original bands going into this,” Wilson said, laughing. “I know the tradition is that a lot of tribute acts start to toss their own original songs into the sets, and that effort usually crashes.
"We went in the opposite directionand we all have maintained our original work separately, so we have never had an impulse to inject our originals into this band. No matter how similar you make it, that can alienate your fan base, who, in our case, want to hear U2 music.”
Has the bandever had any contactor comment from the real U2?
“No, unfortunately, not yet,” said Wilson. “We always thought that might happen. But we did have some of their crew come across the street to The Harp when they played the Garden. I always found it interesting that these crew people would come hang out with uswhen they could see the real band in the Garden.
"But we’ve always packed The Harp for those shows, both before and after the concerts, and we also had a really fun show at The Black Rose in Boston, connected to one of U2’s concerts.”
And do fans on the way in, or just coming from, a U2 concert have specific requests?
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“There are some songs we perform that U2 doesn’t do live anymore,” Wilson said. “And in most cases, they don’t do a lot of the earlier stuff that we specialize in. But fans just want to hear more U2 music, both before and after the concerts, so we’ve always had awesome nights when they’re in town.”
The Joshua Tree will be returning to one of theirfavorite venues when they spend a weekend at The Chicken Box in Nantucket on Oct.22-23. They will return to The River Club in Scituate on Jan.14.
The Spire Center show begins at 8 p.m., and tickets are $26-$29. CheckSpireCenter.orgor call 508-746-4488 for more information.
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