Family Music Business, Back at Santa Barbara’s Lobero

In the beginning, or near the beginning, there was the ’70s-born aggregate known as “The Section,” a group of versatile studio musicians who, like the earlier generation of Los Angeles studio players, the ’60s-based “Wrecking Crew,” lent their skill and impeccable feel to countless acts and stars. All these years later, a new moniker and enterprise have come into being out of the ashes of “The Section,” now bearing the friendly band name The Immediate Family. The band will pay a return visit to the Lobero Theatre on Sunday, November 20, after making a splash in that venue earlier this year. Its members — guitarists Danny Kortchmar and Waddy Wachtel, bassist Leland Sklar, drummer Russ Kunkel and new addition, singer-songwriter Steve Postell — have graced a vast host of albums and stages with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Brown, Warren Zevon, James Taylor, Carole King … and the list goes on, and on.

Reconnecting and branding with the trappings of an active new project, The Immediate Family has gotten busy in the past two years. They released a new EP in May, Live from Telefunken Soundstage, and have a forthcoming album. Their story has also been recently told in music doc form by director Denny Tedesco, the son of famed studio guitarist Tommy Tedesco, and who aptly also made the fine doc The Wrecking Crew.

Dropping in early 2023, the first full album by the band is fittingly called Skin in the Game — as in, they still have said skin, after all these years. For a sampling, check out the album’s first single, “The Toughest Girl in Town,” a sharp reworking of the tune by the quirky Los Angeles band Sparks. Sparks — the clever Mael brothers — gives the song an electronic new-wave spin and irony in its original version, from their 1988 album Interior Design. Circa 2022, The Immediate Family cleans it up real good, with the foursquare rock-pop values and the guts ’n’ sheen quality that is their coveted stock-in-trade, continuing into a new chapter all their own.

Check out the video here. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit lobero.org.

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