GILROY
– Garlic Festival visitors may find themselves doing a
double-take today as they walk by the Gazebo stage at Christmas
Hill Park. Did Simon and Garfunkel reunite?
GILROY – Garlic Festival visitors may find themselves doing a double-take today as they walk by the Gazebo stage at Christmas Hill Park. Did Simon and Garfunkel reunite?
“There’s a lot of people that say we’re like Simon and Garfunkel,” said Jeff Strametz, one of the two acoustic guitar gurus that make up Acoustic Preservation Society. “(Jeff Theroux) is a tall-red-headed guy, and I’m a shorter dark-haired guy. Our vocal harmonies are so close, you have to look to make sure.”
Not only are the group’s Simon and Garfunkel tunes the duo’s most popular of their cover songs, but they’ve been one of the main ways to pull people over to the stage. The group began playing covers of classic songs back in 1995, but they have been playing together for much longer than that.
“The band is basically me and Jeff Theroux,” Strametz said. “He and I have been playing together since the early 80s. We’re both originally from the Morgan Hill area, and we both graduated from Live Oak High School.”
Back then, Strametz was a drummer by trade, and he was drumming while Theroux played guitar in a country rock cover band called Fat City.
However, the two moved on and found that with Strametz joining Theroux on guitar, the two had something.
“I like to call it memory music,” Strametz said of the group’s long list of classic rock songs ranging from the Eagles to the Mamas and Papas to Jimmy Buffett. “You can see people going back to when that song was important to them.”
While the two do all cover songs on stage, they also have been working on their own original songs as well.
“We primarily do cover songs,” Strametz said. “We both write our own music, but we do more covers on stage. It’s a goal of ours to get into the studio and record some of our own stuff in the next year.”
While the two have very different writing styles, their songs are based on their influences of the classic rock songs they play during their shows.
“He’s got a great talent for creating word paintings,” Strametz said. “I write things that are more real-life situations.”
The two also bring their own interpretations to the songs they play.
“We try to find the oldies that are memorable,” he said. “We do add our own flair to it, but we don’t want to destroy the songs. The reactions we get are, geez, I haven’t heard that song in so long.”
As the two have played together – among the band’s appearances are shows at Solis Winery, the Garlic Festival and the Taste of Morgan Hill – they have picked up more songs just from requests from people in the audience
The group also will play as an opener for John Lee Hooker Jr. in early September.
This year is Acoustic Preservation Society’s third appearance at the Garlic Festival, and the two have earned a following by being able to play a wide array of songs.
“We cover a very large base,” Strametz said.”We’ve got about six hours of music, and that’s not even reaching into our peripheral bag.”
Strametz said Theroux’s ability to play by ear makes the band even more versatile.
“Sometimes we’ll get a request for a song, and he can hear it in his head and play it naturally,” Strametz said.
The band’s name came from Strametz’s friend, who wasn’t the biggest fan of classic rock.
“That name came from a friend of mine who was actually making fun of me,” Strametz said. “He said, ‘You should be call the ’70s Preservation Society.’ It was kind of a joke, but we took it and called it the Acoustic Preservation Society.”
“We could have called it the Acoustic Preservation duo, but it would look weird if we played together with a band.”
This year will be much more emotional for Strametz, who lost his 48-year-old brother Joseph Judnick in a vehicle accident July 4 outside of Hollister. Strametz started playing guitar with his brother at the age of 9.
“A lot of the music we play today is music we played together,” Strametz said. “Music was something that me and my brother shared.”
Two songs important to Jeff were “Ventura Highway,” by America and “American Pie,” by Don McLean. Strametz said he plans to close his Garlic Festival performance with “American Pie.”
“It does get difficult,” he said. “It’s not so much for me anymore, it’s for him.”
Acoustic Preservation Society plays at 11:45 today on the Gazebo stage.
