This Thursday March 14 at 2 p.m. at the Rady JCC at 123 Doncaster Street, The Music ‘N’ Mavens Concert and Lecture series is putting on a show called Groovin’ Through the 60s and 70s. The show will feature the band called the Family Planners.
Known for their fun, energetic shows that feature funk and soul music, The Family Planners is a band that is guaranteed to get people up and moving and boppin’ to the sounds of yesteryear. A time before auto-tune, drum machines, and lip-syncing.
The Family Planners have been around since 2011. It started out as just five guys getting together to play music, the more they played together, the more they realized that funk and soul was the direction they were going to take. As band leader Tanner Lawton-Gusdal says, “We were kind of looking for and avenue or a genre to go down … our original drummer Daniel Burtnik thought we had this kind of funk and soul potential … so we just started going with that. Stevie Wonder, Stealy Dann, Michael Jackson … Funkadelic. We started rolling with that … it just felt good. We got a lot of great response from it … and that’s kind of where we went with it.”
The show this Thursday comes as a direct result of Music ‘N’ Mavens producer Karla Berbrayer seeing the band perform at Festival Du Voyageur in 2023. “As Lawton-Gusdal explains, Karla was in the audience and saw the show, and sometime after that she reached out to me and said ‘I really like the set you did. I would to see you come and repeat it for us.”
The Family Planners consists of a six-piece group. The line-up consists of Tanner Lawton-Gusdal on lead vocals and guitar, Anthony Peazy on guitar, Matt Filopoulus on bass, Tim Iskierski on drums, Addison Smith on keys, and Casimir Gruwel on saxophone.
The group will be playing tunes by Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and others, and also branch out to some rock classics such as My Way Own to Rock by Burton Cummings, and Benny and the Jets by Elton John. Added into the mixture the Family Planners will also be playing some original material as well as opening up some tunes for improv.
The show Groovin’ Through the 60s and 70s on Thursday, March 14th at 2 p.m. at the Rady JCC as presented by Music ‘N’ Mavens is a great way to spend an afternoon, and relive or perhaps discover classic songs that have stood the test of time. Let the Family Planners take you on a trip to the past.
For more details on Groovin’ Through the 60s and 70s visit The Music ‘N’ Mavens website.
