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Concert audience, Kiefer Sutherland charm each other in Morgan Hill
ZZ Lightfoot, Tommy Tutone, Gamma, Polo Jones and more played “Music For Heroes” benefit Aug. 16
Posted: Monday, August 18, 2014 5:12 pm | Updated: 6:40 pm, Mon Aug 18, 2014.
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Michael Moore Staff Writer
Posted on Aug 18, 2014by Michael Moore
During Kiefer Sutherland and his band’s Aug. 16 Morgan Hill performance benefiting the families of military service people, U.S. Navy veteran Tom Koff reached up from the front of the stage to hand the movie star his hat commemorating his early-1990s tour in “Operation Desert Storm” in Iraq.
“I hope he keeps it and hangs it on his wall,” Koff, a San Jose resident, said to a friend walking by just after Sutherland’s set.
Sutherland and his band ZZ Lightfoot played for a modestly sized crowd whose enthusiasm dwarfed their numbers at the Downtown Amphitheater. It was Sutherland’s first visit to Morgan Hill, and ZZ Lightfoot’s first performance in northern California.
“What a generous thing for him to do,” Sutherland, 47, said later. “I think it means a lot when someone gives you something like that.”
A movie and television star best known for his role as Jack Bauer in the Fox series “24,” Sutherland was in town to play for the “Music For Heroes” all-day concert which featured a full lineup of acts. ZZ Lightfoot, which includes Michael Gurley of Dada on lead guitar and vocals, performed after Tommy Tutone and just before headliner Gamma.
The event was a fundraiser for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which supports military veterans wounded or injured in service and their families. With recent revelations that veterans returning home from overseas deployments are not getting the care they need for injuries suffered in combat, Sutherland said it’s a shame that injured veterans can be so “abandoned” when they return home.
“The private sector is going to have to do a lot to fill in those cracks” in veterans’ care, Sutherland said after his 7 p.m. set while winding down with his band and assistants in the Community and Cultural Center’s El Toro Room. Sitting at a round table with Sutherland was guitarist Gurley, soaking his elbows and forearms in a tub of ice in front of him.
Sutherland added that society has a “responsibility” to care for the families of veterans who have paid the “ultimate price” of death in combat.
“Sometimes what we’re not thinking of (when a soldier dies overseas) is they were probably a parent. We have a responsibility to make sure their own children are cared for properly,” Sutherland said.
Many of the hundreds of audience members at the concert were veterans themselves, or “hardcore fans” of Sutherland’s like Adam and Claire Kupfer of San Jose. The couple displayed hand-written poster-sized signs depicting their affinity for the star. “I feel safe with Jack Bauer in town!” read one of the signs.
“Kiefer Sutherland and Jack Bauer bring us here,” said Adam Kupfer. “It’s amazing to have a celebrity in town, let alone Kiefer Sutherland.”
A couple dozen or so VIP ticket holders attended a 1 p.m. soundcheck preceding the official lineup, in which ZZ Lightfoot informally ran through a few bars of some of the songs they performed in the evening. After the soundcheck, Sutherland posed for photographs and signed autographs for each fan in attendance.
Some Sutherland fans, like Pat Harvey of Las Vegas and Cindy Santistevan of Torrance, Calif., traveled hundreds of miles to see the celebrity.
“When I gave him his birthday card (at a 2013 gig in Newport Beach), I said, ‘Follow your dreams and we’ll follow you,’” said Harvey, who once traveled to New York City to see Sutherland.
Koff, whose friend plays for the concert's headliner Gamma, added he was moved by the star-studded lineup’s devotion to the veterans. The lineup also included Polo Jones and Lighthouse for the Blind.
“I thank the country we live in, I thank God for blessing this country, and I thank the people that served and died for this country. And I thank everyone in this country who is working and serving every day. It’s what makes us willing to die for this country—because it’s a great nation,” Koff said.
Hollister resident Lyle Perez, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam in the late 1960s, said he encouraged his fellow vets involved with the Veterans of Foreign Wars to attend the show. He said the bands' outpouring of support for veterans was “heartwarming.”
“I’d like to see a whole bunch more because (deceased veterans and their families) deserve the recognition. It could have been your life,” he said.
ZZ Lightfoot spent about 90 minutes rocking through a list of seminal classics such as Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel,” ZZ Top’s “The Grange” and Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”
In a short interview following their set, Sutherland and Gurley talked about not only their support of veterans—a cause ZZ Lightfoot has endorsed numerous times before—but also about their brief visit to Morgan Hill, their love of rock-and-roll music and the camaraderie of playing together in a band that is among Sutherland’s lesser-known artistic endeavors.
Gurley, a Saratoga native, said his roots in the South Bay helped draw the band to the Morgan Hill event. An accomplished guitarist and composer who fronted the 1990s band Dada, Gurley cut his teeth on the San Francisco music scene, having attended Bill Graham productions of concerts featuring acts like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band when he was a teenager.
Sutherland noted how welcoming the crowd was at the Aug. 16 show.
“If you play a club in L.A. you might get hit by a beer bottle,” he joked. “ It felt like we were playing for family in a way (in Morgan Hill).”
While Sutherland is best known for his Emmy and Golden Globe Award winning performance on “24” and scores of silver screen appearances dating back further than 1986’s “Stand By Me,” he has played guitar for many years—mostly by himself, late at night in hotel rooms before regularly venturing out onto the stage.
He also co-founded the music label Ironworks with friend Jude Cole several years ago. “We signed seven acts over the years, and all of them (later) signed to bigger labels.”
Sutherland said the band consisting of friends Gurley, bassist Chris Karn and drummer Ryan Carmen is “our little gang.”
“This is the closest I got to a group of guys that always have my back,” Sutherland said. “The camaraderie of being in a band is something I’ve always wanted. That’s been a phenomenal force, to get to spend so much time with three of my best friends.”
Although Sutherland joked self-deprecatingly about his music skills (“a work in progress”) throughout the interview, Gurley was more flattering.
“Kiefer has a resonance in his voice that I don’t have, so I enjoy that,” Gurley said. “And it’s been a while since I’ve played in a band with another guitar player.”
The concert was produced by Morgan Hill based Arts Related Technical Training for Entertainment Careers (ARTTEC).
Kiefer Sutherland and his band ZZ Lightfoot
