Yacht Rock Revue Charts a Course for Success

Yacht Rock Revue showcases a style of music of the past, one that has sometimes been looked down upon by self-styled captains of musical taste. But in a musical marketplace that’s drowning in a sea of tribute bands, this group has done more than keep its metaphorical head above water. A popular sensation even in landlocked cities like Denver, the band clearly has the wind in its sails.

Yacht rock didn’t exist as a descriptive term when the style enjoyed its heyday. Tasked with identifying a single song that exemplifies the core character of yacht rock, many listeners would point to “What a Fool Believes,” the 1978 single by the Michael McDonald-era Doobie Brothers. Other yacht rock touchstones include the music of Christopher Cross, much of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘70s output, the music of Toto, and Hall & Oates. Years after its peak, a 2005 online video series coined the term “yacht rock” to describe a kind of emotionally superficial, adult-oriented rock.

Nick Niespodziani takes a broader view. “Yacht rock is whatever we say it is,” he asserts with a smile. “It’s in our interest for the definition to be as all-encompassing as possible.” Pressed on the subject, Niespodziani relents a bit. “If you want to be pedantic about it, it’s soft rock music made between 1976 and 1984 by a certain group of session musicians in Southern California,” he explains. “If it’s 1977, and you’re Ted Turner sailing on your yacht and about to win The America’s Cup, what music do you want to listen to? To me, that’s what yacht rock is.”

Niespodziani is in a position to know. He’s an expert on the subject, and the skipper of Yacht Rock Revue, a ten-member Atlanta-based ensemble dedicated to preserving and sharing the form. But he didn’t start out as a yacht rocker.

The juggernaut enterprise grew out of a planned one-off show. In 2007, Niespodziani’s indie rock band landed a weekly gig in the basement of a bar in Atlanta’s hip Virginia Highlands neighborhood. Each week, that band would embark upon a unique musical voyage; one week might be a performance of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, accompanied by a wall-projection of The Wizard of Oz. “We had all sorts of harebrained ideas,” he says. One of those ideas was to present an evening of AM Gold music, pop singles that ruled the lo-fi airwaves on the AM dial in the early ‘70s. “We thought, ‘Let’s play all the one-hit wonders that annoy people,” Niespodziani recalls with a smirk.

But right before the show date, he and his band mates discovered J.D. Ryznar’s Yacht Rock video series. “We decided, ‘We should call this “yacht rock,”’” Niespodziani recalls. “And – out of no intention at all – it grew from there.” That maiden voyage was a success, and Thursday nights at the 10 High Club became a popular port of call.

It wouldn’t always be smooth sailing. In 2007, Yacht Rock Revue was somewhat ahead of the curve; widespread renewed interest in yacht rock lay several years in the future. But the group paid its dues, and started booking bigger and better gigs. “People were like, ‘This music would be perfect for our wedding,’ or ‘It would be perfect for our corporate event,’” Niespodziani explains. By 2010 the group had secured an agent, and built on the momentum it had established.

As Sirius XM launched a yacht rock station around 2012, understanding and appreciation for yacht rock spread across the land. But Niespodziani says that in the early years of Yacht Rock Revue, his band seemed virtually alone on the scene outside of Southern California. “But now,” he says with pride, “there are probably a hundred yacht rock bands in America.” Few, however, are as popular as his group.

Niespodziani allows that HBO’s 2024 series Music Box: Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary helped raise the subgenre’s profile even further. But he notes that his group already had a strong tailwind. “We had already done the tour with Kenny Loggins,” he says. “And we did a tour with Train and REO Speedwagon.”

The resurgence of yacht rock has shown that it’s not just boomers who are on board with the style. “There’s definitely that core segment of the audience, people who grew up with these songs, listening to them in the back of their mom’s station wagon,” Niespodziani says, noting that a decade ago, the group sometimes felt like it was “playing for grandmas.” But he observes that in recent years, social media outlets like TikTok “have given these old songs new life with a younger generation.” And that change is reflected in the makeup of Yacht Rock Revue’s audience.

And that audience gets into the show. “There’s a lot of dancing,” Niespodziani says. “The ‘sidestep sway’ is a dance that anybody can do; you don’t need to be Prince or Michael Jackson to dance to these songs.”

There’s an inevitable tongue-in-cheek character to Yacht Rock Revue’s performances, but Niespodziani emphasizes that he and his band mates take the music itself very seriously. “We’re serious players, paying tribute to the songs,” he says. “But we don’t take ourselves too seriously; that’s the line in the sand that we walk.” He asserts that his group is wholly unlike what people think of as cover bands. “The only way to really explain it,” he says with a tip of his cap, “is to come see us. They’ll have a good time; I promise.”