There’s something about the music that is just timeless.
With more than a dozen No. 1 hits, including “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays,” the Carpenters’ songs still resonate with listeners 40 years after they topped the Billboard charts.
“I think there’s just a lot more to the music than people realized at the time, because it was a protest time. In the ’70s when all of that came out, people just thought it was so, I don’t know, light fluffy, or just not deep, or these schmaltzy love songs,” singer Lisa Rock said. “But if you go back and listen to them again and realize how touching and meaningful some of them are. You can understand the words, which to me is a big thing. You can understand the lyrics. The arrangements are just timeless because we’re still talking about it. It’s still connecting with audiences.”
Rock and her six-piece band will perform “Close to You: The Music of the Carpenters” at 8 p.m. Saturday at Fox Valley Repertory at Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles.
Now in its fifth year doing the tribute, the Chicago area-based band performs the music as Karen and Richard Carpenter did, sounding just like them. In addition, Rock shares stories about the duo and the origins of some of their songs.
“We do everything of the Carpenters in the original key, the original arrangements,” Rock said. “My band listened to all the records and have emulated and worked very hard getting that same sound. We do it all in the original key that the Carpenters did, which is what makes us unique. And that’s what makes it familiar to the audience.”
While the band may sound like the Carpenters, the group is not trying to be them, she said.
“We’re not trying to dress like them and do that. It’s an homage to them,” Rock said. “It’s honoring them as musicians and honoring that music. When you’re in that original key of it, I think you can’t help but have that sound to it.”
Having performed at Fox Valley Repertory in the past, the group is adding new material to their concert, including a duet originally performed by Karen Carpenter and Ella Fitzgerald. Rock will perform the duet with her best friend and back up singer, Amy Malouf, whom Rock describes as “an amazing singer-songwriter.”
The duet begins with “The Masquerade” by the Carpenters, and then transitions to a medley of jazz standards.
“It was one of Ella Fitzgerald’s last performances, and Karen got to sing with her and do this amazing duet together,” Rock said. “It’s just a really cool duet.”
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The band, she said, worked hard listening to the duet, and all of the Carpenters songs they play, figuring out the music and transcribing it to sheet music.
While sheet music for piano exists for some of the songs, for the other instruments such as drums, saxophone and backing vocals, it does not, she said.
“All of that they had to listen to and painfully transcribe them all of them on paper,” Rock said. “They’re all just extraordinary musicians, every one of them.”
The idea for the “Close to You” tribute came about five years ago, Rock said. An Equity actor, she has performed in theater as well as music. She has written more than 25 cabaret shows, and also sang in church choir throughout the years. Having grown up loving the music of the Carpenters, Rock had wanted to do a concert version of their music.
When she booked the first “Close to You” performance in October 2010, it hit a note with audience members, selling out a month before the show.
“It made me stop and think that we had struck a nerve,” she said. “And here I am five years later, so I think we obviously did.
“We recently hit our 100th show, and are going also to be in our 26th state, so we’ve really expanded our audience base and our travels,” she said. “It’s really exploded for us in such a positive way, that we’re able to bring this music all over the country.”
The group has recorded an album of their show, which is available online in digital format or as a physical CD that can be purchased at performances. In the future, the band hopes to record a Christmas CD to compliment their holiday show: “A Carpenters’ Christmas.” The Christmas show will be at Fox Valley Repertory Dec. 9 for two performances.
Although Rock has sung the Carpenters songs more than 100 times, she still loves them and finds “some nuance to it every single time.
“I love the music, and I know it’s timeless by the reaction that the audiences give us everywhere we go,” she said.
Part of it, she said, is having seven people live on stage — musicians doing their own thing — that resonates with audiences, she said.
“People really do want to see that, and not this prerecorded stuff,” she said. “I think it strikes a nerve because we’re a band. We’re a band of talented musicians who are doing what we love and someone else’s beautiful arrangements of that.”
Rock said there is a reason Karen Carpenter often makes the top 10 lists of greatest female singers.
“I think that moves somebody, when somebody’s singing from their soul the way she did,” Rock said. “She was 19 when they did ‘Close to You,’ and when you hear that, it’s overwhelming to think that angst and passion could come out of someone so young.”
Kathy Cichon is a freelance writer.
‘Close To You: The Music of the Carpenters
When: Saturday
Where: Fox Valley Repertory at Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 E. Main St., St. Charles
Tickets: $32
Information: 630-584-6342 or www.foxvalleyrep.org