TOAST front man Jeff Clark (center) rocks with other band members in a tribute to the 1970s soft-rock band Bread. TOAST performed at the Ellen Eccles Theatre on Oct. 15. Also pictured (at left) are Ken Shumway on bass guitar and Sam Cottrell (foreground) on lead guitar (Image courtesy of Facebook).
LOGAN – It was another big night for Cache Valley baby boomers at the Ellen Eccles Theatre on Oct. 15.
The area’s older crowd turned out in force to catch a one-night stand of TOAST, the ultimate tribute to the 1970’s soft-rock band Bread.
The show lived up to their enthusiastic expectations.
Of course, there are two kinds of tribute bands. There’s the kind that just covers the genuine band’s music – can you say “Hotel California: A Salute to the Eagles”? I knew you could – and then there’s the tribute band that actually sounds like the genuine band they’re paying tribute to.
TOAST is a shining example of that latter, more entertaining kind of tribute band.
Hailing from Los Angeles, the original Bread had 13 hit songs on the Billboard Hot 100 charts between 1970 and 1977, practically inventing the soft-rock genre of music in that era. Most of those hits featured front man David Gates, providing those syrupy sweet tenor vocals that were Bread’s trademark.
Those 13 hits could easily have been TOAST’s play list for the Saturday night show, because their front man Jeff Clark could easily match Gates’ vocals note for note.
While TOAST performed some of those hit numbers – including “It Don’t Matter to Me,” “If,” “Guitar Man,” “Lost Without Your Love” and the wistful “Diary” – the band also provided a more varied bill of fare by diving deep into Bread’s lesser known album cuts and also solo hits by its members recorded after the band’s untimely break up.
In addition to Gates on vocals, Bread featured musicians Jimmy Griffin, Robb Royer and Mike Botts, plus a variety of studio musicians who played on their albums.
The band was famously named after a timely bread delivery truck that arrived just as the band members were debating what to name themselves.
Just as famously, the original band dissolved when their instruments were destroyed in a traffic mishap on the way to an engagement in Salt Lake City in 1973. Its various members would later reunite to perform and release albums until 1977.
Memorably, TOAST performed “Games of Magic,” an intricately orchestrated song penned by Griffin and Royer in 1972.
The tribute band also performed Gates’ solo hit “Goodbye Girl,” the theme to playwright Neil Simon’s movie of the same name, as their encore after receiving a standing ovation from the Cache Valley crowd.
TOAST featured the musical talents of Clark on vocals, guitar and keyboard; Sam Cottrell on lead guitar; Ken Shumway on bass guitar; Troy Jolly on keyboards; and Brett Hart on drums.
Back in 2017, Clark – whose tenor voice had long been compared to that of Gates – threw together “A Toast to Bread” concert at a local amphitheater in Salt Lake City with a few of his talented friends.
When requests for additional performances rolled in from 1970s nostalgia lovers, TOAST was born, reviving the name under which Royer and Griffin performed in 1994.
The tribute band’s advance publicity promised a “feel good” show in which TOAST would nearly duplicate the sound and flavor of the original Bread recordings.
The musicians of TOAST certainly delivered that and more.