Sponge Cola to perform at the Beale Street Music Festival

Armo, Yael, Ted and Gosh of Sponge Cola

The Philippines is the country being honored in Memphis in May International Festival 2012. One of the highlights of this month long event is the Beale Street Music Festival happening on May 4-6, 2012. And since the festival is saluting the Philippines this year, it is only fitting that a Filipino band gets to shine on stage. And that privilege to perform in this music festival goes to no other than, Diamond selling pop-rock band Sponge Cola. A press conference was held recently at Shakey’s, Tomas Morato in line with the band’s upcoming high profile gig.

Band members Yael Yuzon, lead guitarist, Erwin Armovit, bassist Gosh Dilay and drummer Tedmark Cruz are geared for another milestone in their career as they take part in this festival alongside big name artists like Pitbull, Alisson Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, Evanescence, Megadeth, Herbie Hancock, Al Green and Little Richard (who replaces the injured Jerry Lee Lewis) just to name a few.

Yael Yuzon holds a copy of Araw Oras Tagpuan

Performing at the Horseshoe Stage on May 4 and 5, the band plans to play songs from their four studio albums (Palabas, Transit and Sponge Cola, and Araw Oras Tagpuan) and also their debut EP. They also mentioned that they would be performing covers like an Eraserheads and an APO Hiking Society song during their sets which will last for about an hour. The turnout of the Filipino community will also decide the number of songs in Filipino that they will perform although Yael stressed that language isn’t a barrier when listening to music. Yael also added that he’ll be playing the keyboards (hearing this pleased me a lot) during the festival which is something that he doesn’t usually do normally. One thing that Yael does normally is to talk a lot (but still very amusing) and he wants to cut back on the spiels during the festival. He recalled a gig that went on for hours but they only played like 15 minutes worth of songs and some of them were just snippets at that since he actually talked more.

Yael takes a snapshot of the Beale Street Music Festival poster

I do admit that it took me a while to warm up to Sponge Cola’s music but now, I’ve been seeing a lot more of Yael and the rest of the band. And this coming May 4-5 at the Horseshoe Stage, music fans who flock over to Memphis will finally get to see and hear why Sponge Cola has become one of the most popular, enduring and very fun bands in the country. And I couldn't be happier knowing that Filipino music (OPM) will be heard by a wider and diverse audience during the Beale Street Music Festival.