Ambrosia sings their hits at Beaver Creek
Iconic 5-time Grammy-nominated band has ties to Colorado
Get ready to hear hits like “How Much I Feel” and “Biggest Part of Me” and “You’re the Only Woman” on Thursday as Ambrosia takes the stage at the Beaver Creek Unplugged concert Series from 5 to 7 p.m.
The band got its start in 1970. Joseph Puerta was just out of high school and recruited a couple of friends, David Pack and Christopher North to join him. They found drummer Burleigh Drummond from a list of drummers and liked his name. Today, Ambrosia is three of the original members with the addition of guitarist Doug Jackson, contributing keyboardist Mary Harris, and powerful lead vocals of Kipp Lennon from the band Venice. Jackson has ties to Colorado.
“Doug grew up in Evergreen and his parents are in Golden and he likes to get out here any chance he can get and ski. He’s quite the outdoorsman and loves it out here,” Puerta said.
Denver is also where the band first learned that they had their first hit song.
“We were rehearsing in the garage, getting ready to go on tour and our tour manager came in and said, ‘your song, ‘Holding On to Yesterday’ just went to number one in Denver!’ and we said, ‘what? We’re the number one song on the radio in Denver?’ We’ll never forget that, it was a huge moment for us. From being this unknown band where you’re just rolling the dice to see where it’s going, and then somebody comes in and says ‘you’re number one,’ it was extraordinary,” Puerta said.
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Beaver Creek has been hosting its Unplugged Series on Thursdays from 5 to 7 all summer long and just brought in John Waite last week. Next week Face will take the stage, Maddie Poppe of “American Idol” fame will perform in a few weeks before Ottmar Liebert closes down the series on Sept. 14.
Although the series is called unplugged, Puerta said they are still bringing all their gear but may play a few more of their acoustic songs as he wants to showcase the talents of guitarist Jackson.
“Doug is an incredible acoustic guitar player so one of the things I really want him to do is something where he just gets on his guitar and does some of his solo work from his albums. He’s phenomenal, so that will be a big thrill,” Puerta said.
Puerta admits that the whole Yacht Rock phenomenon has helped Ambrosia reach an entirely new audience and has brought back that style of music.
“I think what’s missing in contemporary music for a lot of people are the melodies and the harmonies and the organic tracing of the music because everything now is pretty much done on computers, it’s not a bunch of people getting in the room anymore and working out a track and seeing what works between the drummer and the bass and the little subtleties that create an organic sort of feel to the music. I think people sense that there’s something in the way that our music was created, that it was created more organically,” Puerta said.
The Beaver Creek Unplugged concert series is free. To get more information, go to BeaverCreek.com. To hear more from Puerta, like his co-writings with Burt Bacharach and Kurt Vonnegut, how the band almost recorded the theme from the movie, “Arthur” (“Best That You Can Do”) but passed it up and watched Christopher Cross win the Grammy Award, check out the full interview on Vail Valley Live.
