Tom Keifer and Winger Take This Area Back In Time
by Alex Lloyd Gross
Jul 1 2023
At times, if you closed your eyes, it was just like a night at the Empire Rock Club, or maybe even the Galaxy. The Tom Keifer band was in town, in Glenside to play a concert at the Keswick Theater. Keifer used to front the band Cinderella. They started with 50 people in a dingy bar, opening for local bands. Soon, Cinderella would become a staple in this area for good, hard rock music. In their heyday, the band played the Spectrum. Cinderella has disbanded and lead singer Tommy Keifer went on to form the Keifer band. For this show, they brought out tons of classics from Cinderella.
Songs like “Last Mile” and “Shake Me” were played, as was “Bad Seamstress Blues”. This band looked good and more importantly,they sounded great. .
Playing direct support was Winger. This was a treat. This was not Kip Winger on a solo tour with an acoustic guitar, this was the entire band, live on stage playing songs like ” Under One Condition” ” Easy Come and Easy Go” and “Seventeen”. Reb Beach, and Rod Morgenstein were seen wandering around in the parking lot prior to the show. When they were recognized, they posed for selfies and signed autographs.
This band has a new record out it’s called Seven”. It’s damn good and you hear some of it here. While the crows sat for some of the power ballads, when they brought out the rockers like “Madelaine”, probably 90 percent of the house was standing. It was certainly a treat to see Winger, as they do not play live in this area very often.
Opening the show on electric acoustic guitar was John Corabi. He rock through a 20 minute set with songs from his career, such as “Hooligans Holiday”, from when he briefly fronted Motley Crue. He made it back to his merch stand to sign but by the time he showed up, Winger was already on. Corabi will be back in the area later, with the Dead Daises playing the Landis Theater.
Tommy Keifer closed out the show with Cinderella classic “Push Push”, The show was over just after 11:30 PM. In 1986 that’s about the time they would be going on stage at the Galaxy.