With a history of visits going back to 1971, members of the band Orleans seem to have as many happy V.I. memories as its residents have of the band.
Saturday night at the Reichhold Center, Orleans will be giving back to the islands that it loves so well by playing a benefit concert for the Nana Baby Children’s Home.
With the money raised by the concert, the Home will be able to retire some $40,000 of the mortgage debt on its facility.
The band has a long history of public service, and member Larry Hoppen said that it has a special devotion to children’s charities. Hoppen and his wife started Sunshine for HIV Kids.
“The children are our future,” Hoppen said. “We’re supporting children and betting on children because they aren’t corrupted yet.”
"Still the One," the band’s hallmark song, has turned out to be as timeless as its lyrics, and Hoppen hopes that the song will have concertgoers dancing in the aisles Saturday.
“We’re not here to have people just in their chairs,” Hoppen said. “But that’s fine, too.”
Playing all of their hits, Hoppen said that the band also will play some acoustic and electric pieces.
Orleans is made up of the three Hoppen brothers—Larry, Lance and Lane—along with guitarist Fly Amero and drummer Charlie Morgan.
Amero joined the band in the 1980s and came back again when one of the original founders, John Hall became a representative to Congress in 2006.
Morgan has some hefty credentials with 13 years drumming for Elton John, along with playing in bands with Paul McCartney and Nelson Eddie.
Together for nearly four decades, the band is determined to keep its music memorable, Hoppen said, expressing concern that much of pop music in the past 10 or 20 years is less memorable.
“When music doesn’t have a memorable melody or lyrics, there is less to hold onto,” Hoppen said. “Baby boomers have taken their music in a big way. Three hundred years from now the Beatles will still be played.”
Orleans performs Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Reichhold Center for the Arts. Tickets for the show are $20-50 and are still available online or by calling the Reichhold box office at 693-1559.