Coast to Coast rocks Surrey like a hurricane while paying tribute to guitar great Michael Schenker

By Steve Newton

I don’t get out to too many tribute concerts.

I’ve been reviewing nothing but the real thing for over 40 years now, so why settle for imitations?

But I made the quick trip across the Scott Road border from North Delta to the Surrey Arts Centre last night because I believe Coast to Coast is something special in the overcrowded world of tribute acts.

The Vancouver-based quintet recreates songs by three of my fave hard-rock acts from the ’70s and ’80s: UFO, Scorpions, and the Michael Schenker Group.

Actually, they mostly cover Scorpions, as a quick look at the setlist indicates. They played 11 tunes by the Scorps last night, and only four each by UFO and MSG, but nobody seemed to be complaining much.

The audience–which appeared to be mostly white guys 55-and-up dressed in black Styx and Rush t-shirts–lapped it up. They were no doubt there to get a Marshall-powered refresher on the kind of music they were crazy for in their teens and 20s, and Coast to Coast didn’t disappoint.

The band is composed of singer Shawn Klatt, guitarists Dave Groves and Ken Scheller, bassist Tobias Haas, and drummer Ed Johnson. As far as I could tell, Groves handles the spiraling lead licks Matthias Jabs lays down on Scorpions hits like “No One Like You” and “Rock You Like a Hurricane”, while Scheller utilizes his trusty Gibson Flying V for note-for-note reenactments of Schenker’s thrilling fretwork on UFO tracks such as “Doctor Doctor”–the tune that Iron Maiden has been introducing its shows with for years–and the phenomenal “Rock Bottom”.

Blonde frontman Klatt–who looks a bit like Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil before the cheeseburgers kicked in–doesn’t sound exactly like UFO’s Phil Mogg, Scorpions’ Klaus Meine, or MSG’s Gary Barden and Graham Bonnet, but he’s pretty close. Definitely close enough for rock ‘n’ roll.

As well as keeping the rhythm going, Haas and Johnson supplied backup vocals throughout the two-hour show, which saw the group shine on several instrumentals. Those included their opening number “Ulcer”, from the Michael Schenker Group’s 1982 Assault Attack album, and “Coast to Coast”, the song they took their name from, off Scorpions’ 1979 Lovedrive album.

The group saved the best for last, encoring with a wicked version of the title track from UFO’s stellar 1977 LP, Lights Out.

To hear the full audio of my 1992 interview with Michael Schenker–as well as my conversations with Scorpions members Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker, and Uli Jon Roth–subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 400 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with the legends of rock.