There won’t be any tea and crumpets, but there will be plenty of British rock when Embassy Theatre host their annual Down the Line.

On Saturday, Feb. 22, Down the Line 19, with its Great Brit theme, will see local bands playing the music of U.K. icons. The night will kick off with David Todoran & The Ekphrastic Phono Band playing the music of The Beatles, followed by Los Electro playing The Clash, The Namby Pamby playing The Smiths, and Overlook playing The Rolling Stones.

“For that first, like, 15-ish years we were still calling it a fundraiser,” said Carly Myers, chief marketing director at The Embassy. “And now, we just recognize with the other fundraisers that we do and the other philanthropy efforts that we do, that we run this like a professional event on stage. It’s just another amazing show at The Embassy. 

“So, we’ve really pivoted away from it being a ‘fundraiser,’ and now we just consider it another amazing show.”

Electric evening

Many of the local bands will have a professional experience they’ve not known. Instead of setting up their gear in the corner of a bar, they’ll get first-class treatment at The Embassy.

“Last year, when we had our band meeting, the four bands who performed (The Craig Guy Band, The Snarks, Octopussy, and Pink Droyd), they all just came out and just stood and looked out from the stage into The Embassy auditorium,” said Janet MacKay-Galbraith, chief programming officer at The Embassy. “It was a really cool experience to watch them look at that, see that, and imagine what it was gonna be.”

One of those bands this year will be Los Electro, fronted by David Vaides, with his brother Daniel Vaides on keyboard and Jesse Gutierrez on drums.

Describing their sound as psychedelic cumbia, David Vaides said the trio are looking forward to trying something new at Down the Line.

“Our regular sets are pretty different,” he said. “But we’re good musicians and can adapt to whatever we’re playing. We’re just trying to put on a good show.”

And that good show will highlight the music of punk icons The Clash, who are known for such hits as “Rock the Casbah,” “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” “London Calling,” and “Spanish Bombs.”

“I definitely like a couple songs by them,” David Vaides said. “I dig them. Definitely like Joe Strummer.

“It’s always difficult learning a new song. Some of them, we’ve heard before but haven’t played. Learning a song and hearing a song are pretty different. But we’re giving it a go.

“We’re trying to get it pretty right so it can entertaining for everybody.”

Selecting the bands

With almost 20 years of experience, Embassy staff have pretty much gotten the preparation down to science.

“I would say we start talking seriously about things in the summer,” Myers said. “And we have gotten a lot of suggestions from patrons about the theme, because that obviously shapes everything. So, we kind of put our own heads down and start thinking about what maybe we haven’t done in a while or what we haven’t done before, and how that might work with local talent.

“It’s an interesting, fun collaborative discussion between what we wanna do and how we see the event. We go into it with a kind of preconceived idea, like, ‘Oh, it’d be great to honor these bands.’ And then there’s always some twists and turns with who the local bands want to cover. And it always magically works out really cool.”

In a city brimming with musical talent, new bands form all the time, with Los Electro, The Namby Pamby, and Overlook, who are now based in Nashville, Tennessee, being around a few years, whereas Todoran has been on the scene for decades.

“Dave Todoran actually played the first set of Down the Line 1, and we’re now on Down the Line 19,” MacKay-Galbraith said. “He is an extraordinary musician. He’s written a ton of albums. He’s a killer guitar player, but he is also got just stunning vocal range. He has been a part of the Fort Wayne music scene for decades. Yet he’s still as hip as can be. 

“He’s an English teacher by day and a rock star by night.”

Todoran is also a musician Myers has been familiar with over the years, back when live music was a bit easier to come upon.

“I remember back in the day when Little Professor Book Co. was out southwest at Covington Plaza where Planet Fitness is now,” she said. “I remember going there and seeing Dave perform there and at Borders bookstore, back when Borders was where Fresh Thyme is now. He had the whole singer-songwriter vibe, you know, a couple of decades ago when people were like hanging out at bookstores. He would always bring a large crowd to even those events because he had so much kind of soul and people loved him and really appreciated his artistry.”

Mixing the likes of Fort Wayne musical royalty with up-and-comers like the alternative rock of Overlook and The Namby Pamby makes the process of selecting bands exciting.

“This year we actually had a whole lot of fun crowd-sourcing within our staff,” McKay-Galbraith said. “We had a big whiteboard up and everybody threw up their suggestions and it all sort of sifted down. We’re really thrilled with the lineup that we managed to get.”

Celebration of the arts

Along with the diverse local bands, the covered acts also span decades. Some will be coming for music from the initial British Invasion of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, while others will be there for the punk Clash and melancholy Smiths.

“We wanted a little punk with The Clash and Los Electro, then tried to really change it up a little bit with The Smiths when Namby Pamby came on board, because that was just such a great fit for them,” MacKay-Galbraith said. “And it just provided a lot of programmatic variety within the bands as well as within the bands that they’re honoring and covering.”

The variety also leads fluctuating crowd sizes throughout the night.

“It’s just a really cool event because there’s an ebb and flow to the evening,” Myers said. “People come to see all four bands and will come in early and pay the premium to get in a little early to lock in their seat, because it’s a general admission show. Then you have people that will maybe wander in later and catch a couple of the bands.”

Along with hearing some iconic music, attendees will also see the artwork of Saint Francis graphic art students.

“We will have some incredible visuals that accompany the bands and we’ll have those visuals on screens and other parts of the facility as well,” Myers said.

“We’re always really thankful and humbled to be a part of that because they get to use that experience as a part of the curriculum. They get to support something in the community and have a direct hand in it. 

“But then it also gives us these beautiful visuals to accompany the bands on stage. It’s always really, really incredible to watch that all come together as just like a big art experience.”