We ushered in 2026 as we did the last new year—at the Middle Aged Dad Jam Band’s new year’s blowout concert! Led by comedian/actors Ken Marino (lead singer) and David Wain (drums), the band is a mix of fellow actors/comedians and musicians essentially singing “dad rock.” It was held at a small club venue called the Lodge Room, in the Highland Park area of L.A., on the other side of downtown from us. (It was also pay-per-view live streamed.) This year’s new year’s was rainy, but freeway traffic was surprisingly light, and everyone generally drove sanely, belying for once the stereotype that people in L.A. don’t know how to drive in the rain lol.
The MADJB always welcomes guest singers, and this year's guests included Tia Carrere (who sang Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker”), Ben Wang (Billy Joel’s “Vienna”), Cedric Yarbrough (“Conjunction Junction”), Tim Heidecker (“Born to Run”), Lisa Loeb (The Cars’ “Just What I Needed”), and Joe Lo Truglio. It was a treat when they went a little deeper into some bands’ songbooks, like the Beatles’ “I Got a Feeling” and Billy Joel’s “I Don’t Want to be Alone Anymore.” In keeping with the fact that they’re middle aged dads, during an interlude, a number of their kids come out to play a couple of numbers (the youngest being 10, the rest in their early and later teens), including a Billie Eilish song and Icona Pop’s “I Love It”)—they played their own instruments.
One of the band's running gags is their admission that they tend to go a little heavy into Billy Joel, saying they’ve been told that they “should go easy” on his songbook—so this year they announced they were only doing five Joel songs versus the four they did last year. (They also mentioned that the would be playing several gigs in San Francisco later this month, and one of those shows will be an all-Billy Joel song concert, adding, “So, if you don’t like Billy Joel, don’t go to that show!”)
They integrated a little bit more audio-visual bits into the show, partly to mark the 25th anniversary of one of their early films, “Hot Wet American Summer”—I do love that film, along with the sequels and series that have aired on Netflix. So they showed clips from the franchise (and other clips and photos) that they usually used to segue into songs or bits.
Since we arrived a little early, we even hit a small dive bar nearby to kill some time for some drinks and briefly chatted with some people there.
That said, during the show, what I thought was a drunken fight between two guys even started right behind me, making incidental contact with me. Though security came and broke them up, I kept an arm outstretched to make sure the fight didn’t spill out further. I have no idea what the fight was about, but the main guy I thought was the primary belligerent ended up standing behind us the rest of the show. But he was calmer and didn’t cause any more problems—although I thought he had been thrown out!
Below is a link to my Facebook post about this event with more photos and videos.
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