The performance is on Oct. 20. It is the second show of the MVCCA season in the new Sinclair Centerville Campus location.
Previously working as a guitar-singer in the corner of restaurants — playing “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Margaritaville,” ad infinitum — Keo decided to take a break from vocals and focus on being a wedding DJ. It was through that gig that he first discovered Michael Bublé's music through a song called “Home.”
“Nothing has ever grabbed me as immediately, in life, as that song,” Keo said. “It could have been slow. It could have been fast. It could have been big band. It could have been anything. It was just his vocals that grabbed me. Vocals, vocals, vocals. That’s everything that brought me into it.”
Keo started studying the singer’s -isms through hundreds of hours of YouTube clips, eventually performing as a Michael Bublé tribute around 2011. A year in, Keo was invited to Las Vegas with a production company called Legends in Concert: a live concert series that pays tribute to multiple music icons, packaged into an hour-and-a-half show. There was a Britney Spears, a Michael Jackson, a Whitney Houston, an Elvis and, of course, a Bublé.
Legends in Concert is where Keo got his first big break, and where he also learned how to pump the brakes.
“I listened to some of my 2012 stuff from when I was in Vegas, and I was like, Oh, cringy… too much,” Keo said. “I backed off the -isms eventually. Now it’s a blend between me and Michael that sounds better, and sounds more authentic.”
A pre-recorded 29-piece band will be supporting Keo’s five-piece band on stage, giving the audience unseen clarinets, timpani, bassoons, tubas and French horns: the instruments and flair you’d normally find at a Bublé show.
Scott Keo will be performing many of Buble’s hits, including “Feeling Good,” “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Sway” and “Home”: the impetus to this tribute.
Because a majority of Bublé's catalog is made up of covers, Keo’s able to explore other big band staples like “Cheek to Cheek,” “Beyond the Sea” and “I’ve Got the World on a String,” heightened with signature Keo-isms.
“It’s all these beautiful, timeless swing classics that are going to be sung without the old-timey vibes,” Keo said. “I tell my drummer to play it more like rock and roll and less like jazz so it drives more. People are going to feel the kick drum. If you’re going to advertise it to someone who doesn’t know a lot about Bublé, you just say it’s your grandpa’s music sung by Bruno Mars.”
Keo has had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Reba McEntire, Ronnie Dunn, Kelly Clarkson, Josh Groban, David Foster, Kool & the Gang and Gloria Gaynor.
Big band music might be currently dying on the vine, but that’s not why Keo continues to perform it.
“I wish that more people would keep it alive, because it’s such a beautiful art form,” Keo said. “It’s an honor and a privilege to keep this thing alive the best I can, but that’s not my motivation.”
His motivation is his ears. And through this big band show, Scott Keo’s Michael Bublé tribute is a performance for both the ears and the eyes, -isms and all.
Contact this contributing music writer at branberry100@gmail.com.
HOW TO GO
What: Scott Keo, Michael Bublé Tribute
When: 7:30 p.m., Oct. 20
Where: Sinclair Centerville Campus, 5800 Clyo Rd., Centerville
Cost: $35
Tickets: mvcconcert.org/product-page/scott-keo-michael-buble-tribute
More info: mvcconcert.org/venue
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