What could make a man like Simon Kirke - the famous drummer for the bands Free and Bad Company - stop a tour of the Northeast to pay Penn basketball a visit?
None other than one of the Palestra's institutions - the Penn Band.
The drummer-turned-music-insructor will perform Free's 1970 hit "All Right Now" along with the Penn Band when the Quakers takee on Harvard this Saturday, the Athletic Department announced this week.
The gig gives Kirke a chance to distribute and sign copies of his instructional drumming DVD, Lessons from a Legend, to the crowd.
But Kirke did not end up at the Palestra by accident.
That's where Jason Engelhardt came in.
Engelhardt runs Rockstarz, Inc., the firm that is presenting the event and that produced Kirke's DVD. He keeps up on his music as well, though.
Brian Greenberg, a keyboardist in Engelhardt's own band, attended Penn as a student and knew the Penn Band often played a rendition of "All Right Now" during basketball games. So Greenberg obtained a copy of the Band's rendition and sent it to Engelhardt, who forwarded it to the members of both Free and Bad Company.
The reaction was predictable.
"The first response was, 'Are we gonna get paid?'" said Engelhardt, who is also Kirke's business partner. "And the second response was, 'That's kind of cool.'"
In the end, logistics only permitted Kirke to pursue the idea of playing with the Band at the Palestra, and even that was a stretch.
"He decided to take a detour from his tour to come play with us," said Becca Goldman, president of the Band. "He contacted us first; it's not like we really sought him out," she said, adding that guest musicians are a rare commodity for the Band.
As for the song "All Right Now," it was Free's most popular song, one they never topped.
Engelhardt and Kirke owe their business relationship, in no small degree, to "All Right Now." According to a letter he wrote on Rockstarz's Web site, learning the drum line to "All Right Now" led Engelhardt to contact Kirke for help, and the idea for Rockstarz, Inc. was born.
Now the song is responsible for another business venture, even if this one is quite smaller.
"It's certainly not the normal thing we do," Engelhardt said. "We never would have gotten into Penn, but now we can say that we've been there."
