The Band Soars to New Heights at the Big Bear Balloon Festival
By Jason Dudas
HLN Today reporter
Grove City, Ohio - June 21, 2003 - As the headline event for a Saturday night, Huey Lewis and the News brought their uplifting music to the Big Bear Balloon Festival's near-capacity crowd.
As the show rocked on, the sun dropped in the sky and the hot air balloons drifted skyward producing a truly awesome site. (Pictured here by Jason Dudas.) Before the show started, the anxious fans thrilled to the acrobatic stunts of professional skydivers as they barnstormed the audience, just barely clearing the crowd to land at their prearranged safety zones.
Once Huey and the boys took the stage they cranked out the beginning of the concert with a few of the tunes from Plan B, namely "We're Not Here for a Long Time, But We're Here for a Good Time" and "When I Write the Book." Once again, Tal Morris brought his own unique style into the night as he filled in for regular guitarist, Stef Burns. The band used Tal's special contribution to bring a different feel to many of their standards, inlcuding "Power of Love" and "Heart and Soul." Other highlights of the show included a re-imagined version of "Jacob's Ladder" and the new a cappella song "Pretty Girls."
As the sun sunk and the balloons rose, the News continued with "Plan B", giving each member of the band a chance to shine. Huey also joked with the audience, mentioning that an awful lot of fans were seeing them for the very first time, considering that they had only played in the immediate area about 27 times.
The boys returned to the stage for an encore which featured "Doin' It All For My Baby" and, of course, "Workin' for a Living." Any fans who thought that the band might be showing their age were quickly shut down by their patented three-man jump performed by Huey, Tal and Johnny from the drum riser at the beginning of "Workin' For A Living." Huey and the guys may not be as young as they once were, but they are still young at heart.
