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Rock the Yacht

Setting sail on a sea of smooth Yacht Rock grooves

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Atlanta Rhythm Section

Walter Egan

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Yacht Rock Radio Presents

Rock the dock, saturday, april 27, 2024.

Yacht Rock Radio presents Ambrosia, Peter Beckett the Voice of Player, John Ford Coley, and Walter Egan. Saturday April 27 at the Bergen PAC in Englewood, NJ. Sail Away with these Ocean Size Yacht Rock Hits from the original artists! Biggest Part of Me, How Much I Feel, You’re The Only Woman, Baby Come Back, This Time I’m In It For Love, It’s Sad To Belong, I’d Really Love To See You Tonight, Love Is The Answer, Magnet and Steel, and a Yacht more!

Yacht Rock Radio is available for your terrestrial radio station. This 2 hour weekly show is perfect for Classic Hits, Light Rock, Soft Rock, Oldies, and Variety radio. Contact Yacht Rock Radio program director Captain Adam at [email protected] for more details.

Welcome to Yacht Rock Radio

Climb aboard with your Captain’s Hat and Cold Beverage and get ready to cruise thru the cool sounds of the late 70’s and early 80’s that will make you yearn for that Southern California sound that made the marina rock.

Our Captain

Yacht Rock Radio is captained by Adam Ritz. Adam is a 25 year veteran of radio and tv, and a 40 year fan of what we know now as Yacht Rock! The first song he ever played on Yacht Rock Radio was Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty. These songs, “take me back to a nostalgia that makes me smile remembering the easy life from 1976 to 1983.’ Adam also hosts The Adam Ritz Show, a nationally syndicated Public Affairs radio show, with recent episodes at The Adam Ritz Show .

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Cast Away Your Worries with Smooth-Sailing Rock

Drop your anchor and relax with our yacht rock channel.

At SiriusXM, it’s yacht rock season all year long as we bring you your favorite smooth-sailing hits from the 1970s and ’80s.  Yacht Rock 311 (Ch. 311) will remain available on the SiriusXM satellite platform and streaming platform on Channel 311.

Wherever you are, head to the SXM App by clicking above to start listening to the soothing sounds of artists like Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins, Boz Scaggs, Ambrosia, and many more.

Plus, look back at SiriusXM’s Yacht Rock the Boat with Kenny Loggins and Christopher Cross featuring Loggins and Cross performing their smoothest hits for fans as they sailed around New York City on the Horizon’s Edge yacht.

For more information about Yacht Rock Radio, click here .

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Yacht rock radio posts, daryl hall and john oates.

Hall and Oates Daryl Hall and John Oates are the NUMBER-ONE SELLING DUO in music history! Beginning as two devoted disciples of earlier soul greats, Daryl Hall & John Oates are today soul survivors in their own rights. They have become such musical influences on future generations of popular artists that Spin Magazine’s September 2006 cover headline read: “Why Hall and Oates are the New Velvet Underground.” One of the […]

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Welcome Yacht Rock Radio USA – 60s, 70s, 80s Smooth Sailing Rock….

Yacht Rock Radio’s – All Year Summer Long Beach Party! You’ll hear artists like Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Hall & Oates and other greats of smooth rock music. It’s the kind of rock that doesn’t rock the boat! So sit back in your lounge chair and soak it up!

Riding the wave all year long in your lounge chair, Yacht Rock, Soft Rock, Easy Listening Smooth Rock Music…

“So much better Sirius XM’s shallower playlist’s and using to many DJ’s and shows! What more could you ask for?! Just play me the music! Thank you Yacht Rock Radio! – Alexandra.”

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Hall and Oates Daryl Hall and John Oates are the NUMBER-ONE SELLING DUO in music history! Beginning as two devoted disciples of earlier soul greats, Daryl Hall & John Oates are today soul survivors in their own rights. They have become such musical influences on future generations of popular artists […]

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Yacht Rock Radio celebrates the smooth-sailing soft rock from the late '70s and early '80s. You'll hear artists like Michael McDonald, Christopher Cross, Steely Dan and other titans of smooth music. It's the kind of rock that doesn't rock the boat!

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Music | Review: Meet the most underrated band in Bay…

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Music | Review: Meet the most underrated band in Bay Area rock music history

Pablo cruise is way more than just the radio hits.

Pablo Cruise is the most underrated band in Bay Area music history.

The Sausalito-born group proved to be the complete package during its approximately 90-minute set at the lovely Menlo Park venue, solidly delivering 14 songs that appealed to listeners in various ways. There were the concise, hook-driven hits as well as other shiny pop-rock nuggets that should have been a.m. radio smashes back in the ’70s. There were also folksy numbers, jammed-out rockers and plenty of mesmerizing instrumental interludes.

And all of it was delivered by a band of first-rate players — founding members Cory Lerios on keyboards and David Jenkins on vocals and guitar as well as bassist Larry Antonino, drummer Sergio Gonzalez and vocalist Robbie Wyckoff.

Yet, the band rarely gets the credit for those kinds of things. Instead, many think of the group as a late ’70s flash in the pan with two, maybe three, songs you might want to hear and a career that was resurrected in large part due to Will Ferrell wearing a Pablo Cruise shirt in the 2008 comedy “Step Brothers.”

And none of that could be further from the truth (well, except for the Ferrell part). The band actually has a strong and deep songbook, built from seven albums that were released from 1975 to 1983.

Following a well-received opening set from Palo Alto bluesman AJ Crawdaddy (who once was a member of Pablo Cruise), the lights dimmed and a fun seven-minute video — covering the career arch of Pablo Cruise — was shown to the audience. (FYI: The video did touch upon the Ferrell factor.)

Then the five-piece outfit took the stage and opened with a charged-up version of “Worlds Away,” the title track to Pablo Cruise’s platinum-plus-selling fourth album from 1978. It was straight-up pop-rock joy — the kind that Journey and Toto fans would certainly appreciate — and performed with both great flare and meticulous care.

It was the first of many times in the evening when Jenkins would cause jaws to drop with his mighty guitar work. His playing, which has always provided the teeth to Pablo Cruise’s soft-rock hits and other recordings, has even more bite in concert than in the studio.

From there, the band peddled some fine yacht rock — the genre that championed smooth a.m. radio hits of the ’70s and early ’80s — as it sailed on with a pair of gorgeous ballads, “Cool Love” (from 1981’s “Reflector”) and “Raging Fire” (from 1977’s platinum-selling smash “A Place in the Sun”).

The latter was highlighted by incredible harmony vocal work and was so beautiful that it could have been a Crosby, Stills & Nash number. And if it had indeed been a CSN tune, it would have made it on their greatest hits album.

Next up was “Atlanta June,” which, believe it or not, was the original A-side to the single that gave the band it’s huge “Whatcha Gonna Do?” hit. And while that song failed to make it on the charts, it was one of the absolute highlights of this concert as it nicely showcased the powerful vocals of Wyckoff (who spent years singing with Roger Waters on tour).

Turning the calendar on “Atlanta June,” four-fifths of the band left the stage and Jenkins performed “Livin’ Inside of Your Love,” a mesmerizing solo acoustic folk-pop offering, filled with crafty and endearing lyrics, which was deeply reminiscent of the late-great John Prine. (And that’s about as big a compliment as we can give any folk-pop tune.)

Then Lerios — who grew up in Palo Alto, a stone’s throw (or so) away from the Guild  — took the stage and offered up a funny counterpoint to Jenkin’s softly romantic number with his own “I Get Tired Just Thinking of You.”

Humor was a huge part of the night, as Lerios and Jenkins playfully bickered and joked throughout the evening. The person sitting next to me compared the duo to the Smothers Brothers, a reference that probably says a lot about the age of both the band and their audience.

Lerios, for example, would draw big laughs when he discussed why he split ways with Jenkins in the ’80s, leading to the band’s breakup.

“We weren’t getting along very well,” he said, before adding with solid deadpan delivery and a sideways glance at Jenkins. “We still don’t.”

There was also a fun self-effacing zinger that came during the band member introductions, after Wyckoff explained how, before he got the call to join Pablo Cruise, he used to fly in private jets around the globe while touring with Roger Waters.

“After that phone call, I had to ask Robby, ‘Have you ever flown Southwest?’” Lerios joked of Pablo Cruise’s apparent means of air travel these days.

Lerios, however, probably isn’t hurting for money one bit. After all, he went on to have a very successful career in composing for TV and film after Pablo Cruise called it quits in the ’80s. His most notable work in that realm came when he landed the gig to do the music for “Baywatch” — and, as a reminder of such to fans, the band performed that TV show’s theme during the Guild concert.

The show reached another high point with the incredible jam through “Zero to Sixty in Five,” a standout from 1976’s “Lifeline” album that thoroughly reminded us of the great instrumental numbers that the group has recorded through the years. (I actually wish the band had played more instrumental songs — especially “El Verano” from “A Place in the Sun” and the 12-minute-plus “Ocean Breeze” from the first album.)

From there, it was hit city as Pablo cruised through the favorites “Don’t Want to Live Without It,” “I Go to Rio” and, of course, the dual smashes “Love Will Find a Way” and “Whatcha Gonna Do?”

It was a superb showing by a group that should be mentioned way more frequently whenever the topic of best Bay Area bands comes up.

Pablo Cruise plays tonight (Friday, May 10) at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma. For more information, visit pablocruise.com/shows .

1. “Worlds Away”2. “Cool Love”3. “Raging Fire”4. “Atlanta June”5. “Livin’ Inside of Your Love”6. “I Get Tired Just Thinking of You”7. “A Place in the Sun”8. “Will You, Won’t You”9. “Baywatch” theme10. “Zero to Sixty in Five”11. “Don’t Want to Live Without It”12. “I Go to Rio”13. “Love Will Find a Way”14. “Whatcha Gonna Do?”

Pablo Cruise keyboardist Cory Lerios, left, and guitarist and vocalist, David Jenkins, perform in concert at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

Pablo Cruise keyboardist Cory Lerios acknowledges fans as the band performs in concert at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

Pablo Cruise performs in concert at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

Pablo Cruise guitarist and vocalist, David Jenkins, performs in concert at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

Pablo Cruise keyboardist Cory Lerios cheers with fans as the band performs in concert at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

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This Bay Area band was ‘yacht rock’ way before ‘yacht rock’ was a thing

S o many acts are claiming the yacht rock badge of honor in 2024, as fans of all ages embrace (or re-embrace) those pristine soft rock hits of yesteryear through Sirius/XM and other decidedly modern avenues.

For Bay Area band Pablo Cruise, however, the connection to the genre has been longer — and mote literal — than for most.

“Our headquarters was an 82-foot schooner in the Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon,” says Cory Lerios, who co-founded Pablo Cruise in 1973. “So, we were definitely yacht rockers back before yacht rock was a term.”

From that base, the band has delivered some defining gems in what is now known as the yacht rock genre, which celebrates the smooth a.m. radio staples of the ‘70s and early ‘80s delivered by such artists as Toto, Nicollette Larson, Poco and the Little River Band.

Most notably, Pablo Cruise was responsible for the meticulously produced soft-rock numbers “Whatcha Gonna Do?” and “Love Will Find a Way,” both of which were Top 10 hits and rank as first-tier yacht rock staples.

Those two songs — which sound as good today as they did when they first came out in the late ‘70s — are two of the biggest reasons why fans will turn out to see Pablo Cruise when it performs May 9 at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park. Showtime is 8 p.m. and tickets are $49, guildtheatre.com . The group also plays May 8 at the Felton Music Hall and May 10 at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, pablocruise.com .

The Menlo Park show will be a homecoming for Lerios, who now lives in Thousands Oaks but was born in San Francisco and grew up in nearby Palo Alto. It was on the Peninsula where he began playing piano and joined his first bands in junior high school.

“I never really thought I would make a career of it,” Lerios says of playing music. “But one thing led to another and I kind of never looked back.”

He’d find his first taste of real success as a member of Stoneground, a Concord-based rock act that released a number of albums on the Warner Bros. records label in the 1970s. After a few years, however, Lerios and two other Stoneground members — vocalist-guitarist David Jenkins and drummer Steve Price — would leave the fold and go on to form Pablo Cruise with the help of bassist Bud Cockrell (previously of the Bay Area act It’s a Beautiful Day).

One thing to note from that list of original band members is that none of them are, in fact, named Pablo Cruise. Neither are any other of the current or former members, for that matters. So, it’s probably a good time to pause and clear up the origin of the moniker, which Lerios says has certainly drawn plenty of questions over the years.

“The truth is that it was a nickname of a buddy of mine from Colombia, South America,” he says. “It was just a nickname I gave him — Pablo Cruise. He was a very bright guy, very charismatic. And I just called him Pablo Cruise.”

So, when it came time to name this new post-Stoneground outfit, Lerios remembered his ol’ pal’s nickname and thought it fit in with one of the trends of the era.

“It was kind of at that point where you had Fleetwood Mac, Jethro Tull — a lot of two names for these bands — and Pablo Cruise just had a great ring to it,” Lerios reckons.

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Whatever they called themselves, these four musicians were bound to get discovered at some point — given that they were all great players and wrote memorable tunes. So, not surprisingly, it wasn’t all that long before A&M came knocking and Pablo Cruise was thrilled to sign with such a well-regarded record label.

“A&M was notable for sticking with a band,” Lerios says. “Today, labels barely sign bands. But they don’t support bands like they did a lot of back in the day. They supported tours. They supported the making of the record, the travel — all kinds of things that they don’t do anymore.”

The result was the band’s 1975 eponymous debut, which eeked its way into the Billboard 200 and began setting the foundation for the success that would later come. It didn’t produce any hit singles, but it did give listeners a wonderful 12½-minute instrumental number called “Ocean Breeze” that drew plenty of spins at album oriented radio (AOR) stations.

“If you want to check out some deep Pablo Cruise, you should listen to that — because it’s a phenomenal piece of music,” Lerios says. “And that (song) really got us going. Still, everywhere we play now, people ask to hear ‘Ocean Breeze,’ which is always nice to know that people have gone that deep into the repertoire.”

A second album, titled “Lifeline,” followed in 1976 and managed to hoist the band a bit further up the charts, but Pablo Cruise still lacked that hit to really take it to the next level.

All of that would change with the third album, 1977’s “A Place in the Sun,” although not overnight. In fact, the first single released from that album was “Atlanta June” and it didn’t live up to expectations. Oh, but the B-side was a catchy little number called “Whatcha Gonna Do?”

“(Radio stations) played ‘Atlanta June’ and it got some acclaim, but it didn’t really take off the way they’d hoped,” Lerios remembers. “So, somebody flipped it over and put on ‘Whatcha Gonna Do?’ and, all of sudden, it started to blow up.”

The song slowly climbed the charts, eventually breaking into the top 10. The group then scored a second hit with the album’s terrific title track.

“When it gets to that point, everything changes,” Lerios says. “The phones really start to ring. You are getting offers to be on TV shows. All of a sudden, it’s like you’ve arrived.”

The band quickly followed up that album with another winner, 1978’s “Worlds Away,” which produced three hits – including the slam-dunk single “Love Will Find a Way.”

Both albums, “A Place in the Sun” and “Worlds Away,” would be certified platinum.

That would be the zenith of the band’s career, although it did produce two more albums — 1979’s “Part of the Game” and 1981’s “Reflector” — which still did quite well on the charts. The same could not be said of the band’s last studio record, 1983’s “Out of Our Hands,” which failed to chart as listeners had moved on from Pablo Cruise-style soft rock to other styles of music.

“There was a certain instrumentation, a certain form of writing that was predominant back then,” Lerios says of the a.m. hits of the era. “Then, all of a sudden, like the Knack, Johnny Rotten and all these bands came in and punk rock kind of took over and just squashed soft rock.”

By the mid ‘80s, the band members parted ways.

“Success can change things and as we just evolved in our lives, Dave (Jenkins) and I weren’t hitting it anymore,” Lerios says. “We really weren’t writing a lot. And what we were writing, we didn’t really like – and nobody else seemed to like it either.

“I had other aspirations and I know Dave did. So, we split. We didn’t necessarily break up the band. We just went different directions.”

Lerios managed a really cool second act in Hollywood, scoring films and TV shows. In that realm, his credits include the 1993 Wesley Snipes action flick “Boiling Point,” the awesome 1991 horror epic “Child’s Play 3” and, most famously, “Baywatch.”

Jenkins also experienced a good deal of post-Pablo success, including spending a few years in the country group Southern Pacific and recording with Hawaiian vocalist Kapono Beamer.

About 20 years ago, Lerios and Jenkins decided to give Pablo Cruise another shot and they’ve been peddling the soft rock to eager crowds ever since. Yet, it’s not just the old-school fans who are showing up. Pablo Cruise — which now consists of Lerios, Jenkins, bassist Larry Antonino, drummer Sergio Gonzalez and percussionist Robbie Wyckoff — is also seeing a healthy contingent of younger listeners.

“One of my jokes is that ‘you are too young to be here,’” Lerios says. “Kids come up and say, ‘My parents played this music in the house all the time. I love it. Big fan.’

“You know, music — even though we try to compartmentalize it and try to give it a decade or a whatever – good music is good music.”