OREM — From the beginning of the performance to the encore, America had the audience riveted to the group's every note as the musicians closed out the season at the SCERA Shell Outdoor Theater on Monday.
The popular and legendary Grammy-award-winning 1970s band, led by singers and founders Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell, is on a nostalgia tour as the band continues the hectic pace of 100 concerts a year, a pace the musicians have kept up for some 35 years.
A tight three-member band backed them up as they rocked through some of their most popular hits to a capacity audience that covered the grassy amphitheater extending out from both edges of the stage. Included were "Ventura Highway," "It Could Be Magic," "Don't Cross the River," "I Need You," "Lonely People" and "Tin Man."
Other tunes included the Mama and the Papas' "California Dreamin'" and a rousing version of "The Sandman."
America formed as a trio in London just after the band members graduated from a London high school in 1969. The fathers of Beckley and Bunnell were in the U.S. Air Force stationed in England, and their mothers were British.
The third member of the group, Dan Peek, left in 1977, and Beckley and Bunnell continued on as a duo.
America recently released the group's first studio album in 20 years, "Here and Now," and performed a sampling from it, including "Chasing the Rainbow."
But as the more than two-hour concert neared the end, they still hadn't done one of their greatest hits that propelled them into superstar status in the early 1970s, "A Horse With No Name." Instead they finished with "Sister Golden Hair" and left the stage.
But the audience wouldn't leave. The band quickly reappeared and performed "Horse" as the encore.
Comedian Jason Hewlett opened for the group, performing his imitations of other celebrity entertainers including all four of the Temptations, Bon Jovi, Air Supply, Rod Stewart and Michael Jackson.
He finished with his outrageous impression of actor Jim Carrey.
E-mail: rodger@desnews.com