Weiss to play Weds. concert with Takes All Kinds

The first time David Weiss played with Bellingham band Takes All Kinds back in 2011, he was both opening act and headliner -- and he had no plans to be either just five days earlier.

“My neighbor came over one day, knocked on the door, said he played in a band and asked if I could fill in for their guitarist, who couldn’t make a show that Saturday night,” Weiss says. “He said he’d heard me playing on my back deck, and that I was pretty good.”

The show was at the now-defunct Fairhaven Pub and Martini Bar that weekend, and Weiss jumped at the chance. As it happened, the opening band had to cancel, so Weiss booked Evolution Trio, with whom he played at the time, to start the show.

“I don’t think I knew what I was getting into,” Weiss says from his second-floor office in the Humanities Building at Western Washington University. “When I walked into the club that night, it was completely packed.”

The show (both of them, actually) went well, everything clicked, and the band made Weiss its permanent guitarist shortly thereafter.

The group plays at noon Wednesday, July 17, in the third installment of Western’s Summer Noon Concert Series overlooking Bellingham Bay on the Performing Arts Center Plaza.

The series, sponsored by the WWU Associated Students, features a live act every Wednesday throughout the six-week summer session.

By day, at least this summer, the rattle and thrum of construction is the rhythm to which Weiss works. An information technology specialist with Western’s Human Resources, Weiss pecks away at his computer keyboard while brick-resurfacing work goes on outside his window.

But come closing time, Weiss trades the staid, if noisy, surroundings of white-collar work for the cacophanous glee of the nightclub, deftly fingering his guitar onstage with Takes All Kinds.

“We’ll be playing shows sometimes where we don’t even come onstage until after midnight,” he says from his office. “But I’m always back here at 8 o’clock in the morning.”

Weiss has essentially been developing two concurrent careers over the years, one as a computer specialist and the other as a musician.

“I’ve been leading a double life,” he says.

A 15-year vet of Western’s workforce, Weiss actually first encountered the university as a music student. He studied classical guitar and worked toward a major in musical performance. His ultimate goal, he says, was to make a living playing music. So when that opportunity came calling a little early, he dropped out of college in 1980 to hit the road with the rock band New Moon Rising (choosing that path over an opportunity to tour as the guitar roadie of Guess Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive guitarist Randy Bachman). The group toured Canada and the West Coast for years, at one point spending 22 straight weeks on the road.

But Weiss married and became a father in 1984, so he took time off -- 11 years, in fact -- from music.

He worked to reignite his music career in 1995, eventually releasing “Finger Noise,” a full-length album of guitar music, in 1999 and forming and performing with the groups The Letter Street Band (with whom Weiss played a summer concert at WWU about a decade ago), Jacapito and Evolution Trio.

Takes All Kinds is no occasional band of weekend warriors, Weiss says. Most of the musicians have formal training, and though they also have day jobs, they pay more than cursory attention to their craft.

“It’s more than just a serious hobby,” Weiss says. “It’s a labor of love. The people in this band are extremely talented. We all have a lot of training, years of experience gigging and success with prior bands.”

Led by the soaring vocals of lead singer Diva Menke-Thielman, the band plays a mix of covers and originals, mostly influenced by 1970s-era funk and soul (think Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Tower of Power and Janis Joplin) and a smattering of guitar-based rock from the 1980s. Modern influences include Gary Clark Jr. and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals.

“It’s a pretty cool marriage,” Weiss says, “because I’m older than them, but a lot of people in the band gravitate toward the '70s rock, funk and soul.”

Also in the band’s repertoire are a handful of covers of more obscure acts that many may not have heard of, he says.

The band plays a handful of shows throughout the year in Bellingham and throughout the Northwest. Upcoming local shows include an Aug. 29 gig at Bellingham’s Elizabeth Park concert series. The band is working to get an album out by the end of the year, Weiss says.

Takes All Kinds is Diva Menke-Thielman (lead vocals), Chris Flack (bass, vocals), Jonathan Berry (guitar), David Weiss (guitar, vocals) and Alex Sheldon (drums). Find them online at https://www.facebook.com/takesallkinds or www.takesallkindsband.net.

The rest of the Summer Noon Concert schedule:

• July 24: J.P. Falcon Band (acoustic, rock, reggae, jawaiian, country)
• July 31: Jake Barrow (rock, indie pop)