When The Band That Fell To Earth first took shape, the plan was to hold a concert to pay homage to David Bowie’s music. Then, on January 10, 2016, Bowie died.
Bassist Michelle Bacon, a writer and founding band member, says everything shifted.
“It was going to be this one-off, like, an excuse to play music from an artist that we love and all just get together,” Bacon says. “It changed from that to like, ‘Oh no, this is going to be a bigger deal.’”
After Bowie’s death, the band found new meaning in the pop-star’s music — not to mention a surge of new fans. To meet demand, their sold-out show was moved from Knuckleheads to the Uptown Theater, for a crowd of more than 900 people.
“It was so moving, you know, I saw a lot of people in the audience crying and also just filled with joy,” Bacon says. “I continue to see that every year.”
Ten years later, The Band That Fell To Earth is still celebrating the glam rock songwriter and performer best known for androgynous stage personas, and hits in the 1960s and 70s like “Starman,” “Fame,” and “Changes.”
“I always tell people: If you don't think you know any David Bowie songs, you probably do,” Bacon says. “He had such an illustrious career from that first hit ‘Space Oddity,’ all the way to ‘Blackstar.’”
Bacon says she was first exposed to Bowie’s music in high school. She counts his 1972 album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” as a personal favorite.
“As I was becoming a musician, it became really important to me to look back at how he innovated,” Bacon says. “He seemed to be just ahead of the curve on a lot of stuff.”
Since that first year, she says, more than a dozen musicians have performed with the group, and the event has expanded into two weekends of shows staged at recordBar in downtown Kansas City.
“I've had most of these people in the band all 10 years, and we probably have like 60 or 70 songs that we know at this point,” Bacon says. “It's been quite an undertaking, but to see it grow and to see it become what it is now is pretty incredible.”
‘We play deep, deep cuts’
With dozens of songs in their catalogue, singer Steve Tulipana, who co-owns recordBar, says The Band That Fell to Earth isn’t your typical tribute act.
“You have the Halloween bands, like dress-up bands — and that's fine,” he says. “I'm not judging any of that.”
But Tulipana says their focus is on honoring Bowie’s legacy.
“We're not just going to play the hits,” he says. “We play deep, deep cuts, try to turn people on to his whole body of work.”
The musicians also try to embrace Bowie’s energy and theatricality. Tulipana says, during the performance, a constant video stream of imagery from Bowie’s five-decade career lights up the stage.
“Yeah, we put on a show,” he says. “We make it look cool. Everybody sparkles up.”
Tulipana says audiences seem to appreciate the band’s effort.
“Every year I see people of all ages come to the show, and I see the young people singing every word,” he says. “The cool thing about being young and getting into an artist that is not creating anymore is that you don't have the music machine telling you what to like or what to listen to.”
The goal for Tulipana is for everyone to feel welcome at a show, and creating a musical space for outsiders of all kinds to honor Bowie’s work.
“It's OK to follow who you are truly inside, and I think that's always something we're trying to say,” Tulipana says. “We're always like: The doors are open and everyone is safe.”
To that end, a portion of ticket sales from the concerts this year will benefit Our Spot KC, a Kansas City organization that serves the local LGBTQ+ community.
With the band approaching its second decade, Bacon says she’s still finding inspiration from how Bowie lived his life.
“How he champions the misfits in all of us,” Bacon says. “As a queer Asian woman, just having somebody like that who was so ubiquitous to every part of culture — music, fashion, art, everything — who would champion the outcasts like us, you know, it has meant a lot to me.”
The Band That Fell To Earth: David Bowie Tribute 10th Anniversary, 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16 and Saturday, Jan. 17, and Friday, Jan. 23 and Saturday, Jan. 24 at recordBar, 1520 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Missouri 64108. For more information and to buy tickets, visit the recordBar website.
