All aboard for 60's & 70's rock ‘N Roll
About
Rich Friedland and Rick Kelly
Rich and Rick have been singing and playing acoustic and electric guitars for most of their lives. They met in high school in the San Francisco Bay Area and had two bands in the 70's, The Friday Knights and Zeus. They have also been in several successful acts and bands throughout the years. Now based in Las Vegas, R&R Express is open for bookings including special events, private parties and wherever there is a calling for some good old rock and roll!.
Beatles Fanatics
Back in the day, Rich and Rick were true Beatles Fanatics and consumed their time learning all the Beatles songs and followed each Beatles careers. A highlight of their journey with the Beatles is when they met Paul McCartney in 1976 when he was in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Classic Rock 'n Roll
R&R Express feature a wide variety of songs including such artists as The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Beach Boys, The Monkees, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. R&R Express reminds listeners of the fun and emotion we all experienced and the memories that only the music from the 60's and 70's can bring.
BIOS
Rick Kelly
Rich Friedland
Rich Friedland
One of my goals as a youngster was to be in a band and to try and make it big hopefully with a hit record. My first band, ‘The Friday Knights’ was a lot of fun. My friend, Rich Friedland and I formed the band and added a couple of our friends, Paul Inserra (lead guitar) and Cory Fernandez (drums). We performed a few shows here and there and I remember during one show at Taylor junior High School, how the young fans came up to the stage and just stared at us as if we were The Beatles. For that moment, I felt famous. The Friday Knights was my first serious band which launched my musical career.
A couple of years later, Rich and I formed our second band Zeus, which featured me on lead guitar, Rich on bass, John Hayden on rhythm guitar and Mike Brigham on drums. Two of my fondest memories was John always strumming The Beatles song, ‘All My Loving’ during rehearsals and we always warned him that he should not do that because he might accidentally do it during one of our shows, and sure enough the time came when he did it and we all had a great laugh. My favorite memory was headlining, as Zeus, at the first West Coast Beatles convention which was a lot of fun hanging out with other fans and meeting The Beatles staff.
I was also one of the band leaders in our Christian church for nine years and did some solo shows until my most successful duo to date, Chime Travelers, became a reality.
Chime Travelers formed in 2010 with my friend Jay Lewallen. Our format was cover songs from the Golden Era of music, the 60’s and 70’s. We were together a little over 10 years and played more than 1300 shows in Northern California. Our main venues were restaurants, wineries and special events including many private functions and parties. This was an acoustic duo and we both sang lead and harmony and played lead and rhythm guitars. One of my favorite memories was playing to standing room only crowds at Trek Winery in Novato, California.
Rich Friedland
Rich Friedland
Rich Friedland
Rich has been interested in most forms of entertainment ever since he started watching “The Jack Benny Program” when he was just a child. Since then his dream has been to perform comedy and music on stage in the “Entertainment Capital of the World”, Las Vegas.
His road to getting there would begin with his first band, “The Friday Knights” when he was in high school, along with Rick Kelly, who he learned a lot about music from as he began to play bass guitar and sing, mainly self taught. Following that Rich began performing his new comedy/magic act “The Magical Marvels of Professor Quay” for both stage and TV. It was about that time that he teamed up with Rick again and they started their second band Zeus, which was a little more successful as one of their highlights was headlining the first west coast Beatles convention playing all Beatles songs in Seattle, Washington.
All the while Rich was publishing his own bi-montly Beatles publication “The Inner Light '' having many subscribers from all over the world. Later he would start his next band Best Of Both Worlds which became his passion and livelihood for a couple years. Next, he started one of the most successful karaoke shows in the Bay Area, “The Sing Along With Rich Show” and won the opportunity to be on the national TV show “Karaoke Showcase”, where he performed his tongue-in-cheek version of Wooly Bully, which was one of the songs he was best known for. He later went on to direct and co-host SNL’s Father Guido Sarducci in the “Karaoke Music Awards” for TV.
As karaoke began to run its course Rich decided to live out his dream and moved to Vegas as he created Las Vegas’s first live game show, “The Fame Game” which he produced, hosted, built the props and wrote all the music for during the show's nearly 10 year run in Vegas. For fourteen years, Rich was the the emcee/host for “The Las Vegas Media Group” where he made many friends and connections in Nevada. He tried his hand at sketch comedy in “Wasteland Comedy Troupe” and then began his real passion, songwriting, which is still his favorite thing in the world to do.
Next, he created the world’s only live-on-stage prank telephone call show, “Jerk Prankers” where he and partners made hilarious calls inspired by ideas from the audience keeping everyone in stitches!
His latest venture is once-again teaming up with his old pal Rick Kelly after their forty-year hiatus, performing 60’s and 70’s rock. Friedland plays bass and keyboards as well as sings. All the white he is working on completing his fifth CD of all original songs of many different genres including rock, country, tiki, jazz, soul, novelty, pop and much more.
All of his shows and songs can be experienced at his website OffBeatRich.com