BRATTLEBORO-A newly formed rock 'n' roll band, Black Rover - made up of four professional musicians from Windham County, with three over the age of 60 - will bring the music of iconic British supergroup Led Zeppelin to the Latchis Theatre on Sunday, May 18.
"One phrase I've used about our origin story is that the band was 'born here in Vermont, the land of the ice and snow, during an eclipse,'" says David Bruce of Brattleboro, bass and keyboards player.
It all started when Darcy Ward, who plays rhythm guitar and is the lead vocalist, was staying at an Airbnb on Bruce's property. As the two took a walk during the total eclipse of 2024, they came up with the idea of starting a Led Zeppelin cover band.
"There was literally ice and snow on the ground when she and I had our first conversation. Honestly, between that and the eclipse, Darcy and I have felt a real, positive energy from the universe as this project has come together," Bruce said.
Since then, band members Bob DeSena and Ben Yelle signed on and, with some serendipity and a little bit of luck, a fully formed group has blossomed.
"Just when we needed it, the universe gave us a rehearsal space, a drummer, and a lead guitarist. And now that we're ready, we played Union Hall in Newfane this year and now we're playing at the historic Latchis Theatre," Bruce says.
Black Rover has strong ties to the Latchis since its first rehearsal took place in one of the building's commercial spaces on Flat Street.
"There was this space on Flat Street and we needed a place to play," he says. "It's part of the Latchis complex so we started rehearsing there."
There, they blasted out "When the Levee Breaks," and "we started having a good time musically right away," Bruce adds.
"We started jamming and getting to know this music, studying it more. I was learning some bass parts.
The band needed another rehearsal space and found one in Westminster at the "beautiful studio" of lead guitarist Yelle.
"We started playing together and building songs and doing arrangements, and then we had a rock band! Last summer is when we started working seriously, and we worked all winter," Bruce said.
'Our energy and our spin'
Black Rover, which "came together with a common mission of covering and interpreting the legendary music of Led Zeppelin," Bruce explained, is a cover band, not a tribute band.
"Tribute bands do note-for-note replication, and they dress like the band. A cover band is who we are. We don't copy note for note - we rearrange and do our own version of a particular song. We take a great song and put our energy and our spin on it," Bruce said.
The band's name comes from two Led Zeppelin songs: "Black Dog" and "The Rover."
The group spent much of the last year learning a host of songs and have developed enough material to perform a full 90-minute set.
In January, the band made its "official performance debut" to open the 2025 season at Union Hall in Newfane.
Black Rover performed at the Latchis in February as the opening act for the documentary film Becoming Led Zeppelin. The group played a short set of acoustic Zeppelin songs as a prelude to the film and then answered audience questions about the band's impact.
The group's lead singer and rhythm guitar player and a lifelong Zeppelin fan since middle school, Ward went on to a career as a rock 'n' roll musician.
Her most successful group, The Cover Girls, toured, recorded, and played hundreds of gigs in the U.S. and Europe, sometimes four or five sets a night, Beatles-in-Hamburg style.
Yelle, on lead guitar and mandolin, is the youngest in the group, in his 50s. His musical influences run from Jimmy Page to Tom Waits to the Grateful Dead to Django Reinhardt. He has performed at some of New England's largest bluegrass festivals and released two albums as a member of the bluegrass band Blackjack Crossing. He works in cybersecurity when not playing music.
DeSena plays drums and is a veteran of several bands in the region, including Sugar House. The veterinarian specializes in care and treatment of exotic animals at his practice in Marlborough, New Hampshire, which run the gamut from owls to ocelots.
Bruce, who plays bass and keyboards and is on vocals, was a professional cellist for many years and played all over the world in the classical music genre. In his youth, he was a fan of The Kinks, and he first encountered Led Zeppelin while playing pool at a friend's house.
Two guest musicians will join Black Rover at the May 18 show: Steve McPheters on harmonica and Phil Bloch on electric viola. The show will also feature special lighting and projections by Peter Wilson of the Latchis.
When asked what defines Led Zeppelin's sound, Bruce says, "Robert Plant's voice and Jimmy Page's guitar playing."
"These guys are at the top of their fields and are the best," he says. "It was the whole band, just like the Beatles. All four were extraordinary musicians, the perfect combination: John Paul Jones is the greatest bass player ever. John Bonham is the greatest drummer ever."
'It's not all about loud'
"I love that [Black Rover] got their start in our building," says Jon Potter, executive director of the Latchis. "We're glad about that. Hearing how important the band members are to each other and how they found their musical soul mates, by happenstance, is an important thing. That doesn't happen very often. That enhances the music."
Though he describes himself as "more a fan of the Beatles," Potter says he was nonetheless "a pretty big Led Zeppelin fan."
The band provided "the soundtrack to my pre-adolescent shenanigans with friends," he says, adding that Led Zeppelin was "always on someone's record player back then."
"The combination of bad snack food and Dungeons and Dragons and Led Zeppelin was the pinnacle of my experience," Potter adds with a laugh.
"They were the biggest band of that era. My favorite era was the early stuff, the blues-drenched stuff, and my favorite recording was the BBC Sessions (1997) when they are tearing it up," he says.
"They are cooking on that thing. I really love that stuff," Potter adds.
Can the Latchis sound board handle Led Zeppelin's volume?
"Led Zeppelin music is good for it," Potter says. "It's not all about loud. It goes through different dynamic swings and music complexities. It's well suited to our venue since it's so diverse and different."
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Black Rover plays the music of Led Zeppelin on Sunday, May 18 at 6 p.m. in the Latchis Main Theatre, 50 Main St., Brattleboro.
Tickets are $15 each at latchis.com or at the door. A portion of the proceeds from this concert will go to the Windham County Humane Society.
For more information about Black Rover, check out the band's Facebook page. Bruce has blogged about the band's embryonic days and the lyrics of the Zeppelin songs in the band's repertoire at blackroverblog.blogspot.com.
This Arts item by Victoria Chertok was written for The Commons.