Marshall Tucker Band: All Our Friends Tour
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Osterhout Concert Theater
Doors: 6:30 p.m.
Show: 8 p.m.
When you wake up and want to put a smile on your face, you think of the songs that always manage to reach down and touch your soul the moment you hear the first note. The Marshall Tucker Band is one such group that continues to have a profound level of impact on successive generations of listeners whove been "Searchin for a Rainbow" and found it perfectly represented by this tried-and-true Southern institution over the decades. Ive been in tune with how music can make you feel, right from when I was first in the crib, explains lead vocalist and bandleader Doug Gray, whos been fronting the MTB since the very beginning. I was born with that. And I realized it early on, back when I was a little kid and my mom and dad encouraged me to get up there and sing whatever song came on the jukebox. It got to the point where people were listening to me more than what was on the jukebox! Theres a certain gift I found I could share, whether I was in front of five people or 20,000 people. I was blessed with that ability and Im thankful I can share with others."
The Marshall Tucker Band came together as a young, hungry, and quite driven six-piece outfit in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1972, having duly baptized themselves with the name of a blind piano tuner after they found it inscribed on a key to their original rehearsal space and theyve been in tune with tearing it up on live stages both big and small all across the globe ever since. Plus, the bands mighty music catalog, consisting of more than 20 studio albums and a score of live releases, has racked up multi-platinum album sales many times over. A typically rich MTB setlist is bubbling over with a healthy dose of hits like the heartfelt singalong Heard It in a Love Song, the insistent pleading of Cant You See (the signature tune of MTBs late co-founding lead guitarist and then-principal songwriter Toy Caldwell), the testifying Fire on the Mountain, the wanderlust gallop of Long Hard Ride, and the explosive testimony of Ramblin, to name but a few.
Indeed, the secret ingredient to the ongoing success of The Marshall Tucker Bands influence can be seen and felt far and wide throughout many mainstream digital outlets (Netflix, Amazon, etc.). In essence, its this inimitable down-home sonic style that helped make the MTB the first truly progressive Southern band to grace this nations airwaves the proof of which can be found within the grooves and ever-shifting gears of Take the Highway, the first song on their self-titled April 1973 debut album on Capricorn Records, The Marshall Tucker Band. We had the commonality of having all grown up together in Spartanburg, explains Gray about his original MTB bandmates, guitar wizard Toy Caldwell and his brother, bassist Tommy Caldwell, alongside rhythm guitarist George McCorkle, drummer Paul T. Riddle, and flautist/saxophonist Jerry Eubanks. The framework for Marshall Tuckers music is more like a spaceship than a house, Gray continues, because you can look out of a lot of windows and see a variety of things that show where weve been and what weve done, and how weve travelled through time to bring those experiences out in all of our songs.
Doug Gray sees no end to the road that lies ahead for The Marshall Tucker Band, whose legacy is being carried forward by the man himself and his current bandmates, drummer B.B. Borden (Mothers Finest, The Outlaws), bassist/vocalist Ryan Ware, keyboardist/saxophonist/flautist/vocalist Marcus James Henderson, guitarist/vocalist Chris Hicks, and guitarist/ vocalist Rick Willis. You know, I think it was Toy Caldwells dad who said, Theres more to gray hair than old bones, and we still have a lot of stories yet to tell, Gray concludes. People ask me all the time what Im gonna do when I turn 80, and I always say, The same thing that were continuing to do now. Were road warriors, theres no doubt about that and I dont intend to slow down. May the MTB wagon train continue running like the wind on a long hard ride for many more years to come. One thing we absolutely know for sure: If you heard it in a Marshall Tucker Band song, it certainly cant be wrong.
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