The Artimus Pyle Band, Six Gun Sally to close out Rockin’ on the Mon concert series
The bands will perform Saturday night at the Monongahela Aquatorium.
By MATT PETRAS
For the MVI
This year’s Rockin’ on the Mon summer concert series concludes this Saturday evening with a show featuring two performances: The Artimus Pyle Band with Mon Valley favorite Six Gun Sally.
Gates open at 6 p.m. and admission is $10 per person.
Pyle, known for his stints playing drums for Lynyrd Skynyrd at various points from the 70s through the 90s, often tours with Six Gun Sally and sometimes plays alongside them. This weekend, after Six Gun Sally, Pyle will play with his own band.
“Artimus Pyle loves to come to the aquatorium,” said Six Gun Sally founding member and current drummer Dave Barbe. “He loves to hang, he loves to talk to the people. And if you really think about it, this guy is now 77 years old. Still playing very, very well. He’s been in three plane crashes and multiple surgeries for this and that. He’s the guy that everybody adores.”
Pyle has put together an impressive band since his days playing with Lynyrd Skynyrd, according to Barbe.
Last year, after watching Bo Bice of American Idol fame play an acoustic set with Six Gun Sally at the aquatorium, Pyle asked Barbe if he could borrow Bice. Barbe happily obliged, and since, Bice has joined the Artimus Pyle Band as its lead singer.
“This is a monster, monster band,” Barbe said.
Six Gun Sally has been around since the late 90s and continues finding success. Earlier this year, the band released its latest album, “Stand Up,” available as both a CD and vinyl record. It has four covers and seven originals, one of which hit 49 on the top country charts, according to Barbe.
“It’s an extension of what we do,” Barbe said. “We’ve been labeled as somewhere between southern rock, country and Americana.”
This weekend’s show will contain music from “Stand Up” in addition to even newer work. The band plans to open with “Don’t Sweat the Small Things,” an upcoming single. Also this weekend, new for the band’s live performances, Maxi Werker will play fiddle.
“They’ll hear songs, a few they’ve heard before,” Barbe said. “It’ll be high energy.”
Barbe has found it’s best to never stop writing, he said. He’s been enamored by music ever since his childhood and channels that love regularly, at his piano.
Most of Six Gun Sally’s members hail from Mon Valley towns such as Monongahela and Charleroi, rounded out by others from the South Hills and Pittsburgh. This always makes playing at the aquatorium special.
“We’re all basically Valley people,” Barbe said with a laugh.
