Top 1960s band, coming to State Theatre, reunites to let fans hear its music live

EASTON, Pa. — In the mid-1960s, The Lovin' Spoonful owned the music charts, with seven Top 10 songs in just over a year, behind only The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in sales.

The band also was at the forefront of bridging folk and rock, transitioning from flower power hits such as "Do You Believe in Magic" and "Daydream" to the scorching social consciousness of "Summer in the City."

But the original lineup of the band toured for just two years before frontman and principal songwriter John Sebastian left for a successful solo career.

More than 50 years later, The Lovin' Spoonful bassist Steve Boone has revived the group, in what he says is an effort to give those original fans — and new ones — the chance to hear the band live.

The Lovin' Spoonful will perform on a bill with 1960s pop-rockers The Buckinghams at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 28, at Easton's State Theatre.

Tickets, at $45-$75, remain available at the State Theatre website and the box office at 453 Northampton St., Easton.

“My thoughts are that the audience deserves a voice in this, too," Boone said in a phone call from his home in Flagler Beach, Florida, where he was packing up to move to Nevada.

"A lot of our audiences were college audiences. We were one of the first rock bands that were booked very heavily in college audiences.

“So they’re now at the end of their retirement … I can’t tell you how many people have told me going to a Lovin’ Spoonful concert is on my bucket list.

"But to have the opportunity to still entertain those folks that bought our records back in the ‘60s but never got a chance to see that music performed live, I think it will be really rewarding for the audience."

'It almost stuck to you'

Boone said The Lovin' Spoonful's role in the development of folk-rock music was spontaneous — as it was with other musicians at the time.

“Many of us, and I speak for the four original members, we all had our fingers in the folk music scene and we really liked it a lot," Boone said.

"And so we really tried to combine the best elements of folk music, which is telling a story, and then having a nice melody to it, which I think is so important to a good recording.

"The transition was from pure folk music to folk with a beat added to it. [Lovin' Spoonful drummer] Joe Butler and I were a heck of a good rhythm section."

Boone spent part of his youth in the Poconos — in Buck Hill Falls, 40 miles north of Easton.

"I remember a big hotel up there that’s not there anymore," he said. "I haven’t lived up there since the 1950s but I grew up there and my cousins were born in Allentown.

“Delaware Water Gap was where my first Boy Scout Jamboree was, where we all went out and camped on the banks of the river down there and it’s a very fond memory for me.

“I just had a great time growing up where it snowed in the winter and summer sports in the summertime and just a great place to grow up as a youngster."

The State Theatre show will be "like coming home for me," he said. "And it’s just very familiar territory for me — I look forward to getting back there."

He later relocated to New York, where he and Butler “played together in bands out on Long Island for about four years before the Lovin’ Spoonful started, so we were very tight as a rhythm section from Day One.

“And so we thought we could combine the music we loved from the folk music era and writing our own songs, and then using the beat that Joe and I brought to it with the rhythm section."

Perhaps the element that made it work, Boone said, was Sebastian’s "solid guitar playing."

There "was just no comparison," Boone said. "It was just so good at making the guitar parts sound so elemental to the record that it really created a natural atmosphere that was so creative, it almost stuck to you."

Significant contributions

Sebastian clearly was the creative force behind the band — also writing hits such as "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind," "Rain on the Roof" and "Nashville Cats."

But Boone contributed significantly to the band's repertoire, as well. He co-wrote "You Didn't Have to be So Nice" — the Top 10 follow-up to its debut "Do You Believe in Magic" — with Sebastian.

"I was lucky enough to work with him on several of the songs," Boone said. "We always had an emphasis that the melody knocks you out when you first hear it.”

Boone also wrote also wrote "Butchie's Tune,” the B-side to “Summer in the City,” which he said is "about a gal who kind of gave us cover."

"She had an apartment in Greenwich Village and we couldn’t afford to buy a sandwich," Boone said. "And she would let us come and have dinner — she would order dinner for all of us."

Boone also wrote “Full Measure,” the B-side to “Nashville Cats,” that he said to him "speaks to a time when quality — a full measure of anything you do means you’re really involved in making it as good as you can make it.”

But in the politically charged time of the Vietnam War when it was released, the song took on a deeper meaning, Boone said.

"A full measure in the military is when you’re killed in action," he said. "And I didn’t intend that to be the message, but I had a lot of people write in and say that’s such a touching song."

Perhaps Boone's biggest contribution was the piano break that builds the anticipation in "Summer in the City" — a song that fully speaks of the turmoil of the time.

Boon said Sebastian's younger brother, Mark, wrote the song, but "John felt it needed polishing up to make it a complete song that had a message to it, but also had a nice warm thought to it.

“And so when we went into the studio … John came back in a couple of days and had a piano player for one section. And they played the first section for us to hear and that just blew me off my chair.

"I was, like, ‘Man, this is going to be a hit record.’ I just knew it was."

The song was The Lovin' Spoonful's only No. 1 hit, and its biggest seller, reaching gold record status.

'Can't get more invigorated'

Boone, Butler and Jerry Yester resumed touring as The Lovin' Spoonful in 1991.

In 2000, the Spoonful was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was the last time original members Sebastian, Boone, Butler and guitarist Zal Yanovsky performed together.

Yanovsky died two years later.

In 2020, Sebastian, Butler and Boone reunited at a Burbank, California, sho backed by the Wild County Orchestra, a group of musicians from the Los Angeles scene.

“We went out and did a really wonderful night of bringing those songs back to life — without having the whole band behind us," Boone said.

"We were kind of ad-libbing it, but it was done real well. … That was a great night.

A year later, Boone said, he reunited with Sebastian in Woodstock, New York, where Sebastian lives, in a show to remember the folk scene's jug bands called Jug Band Village.

Butler stopped touring in 2023 leaving Boone as the only original member.

Despite that, Boone said his goal is to eventually put out "new recordings that the fans can enjoy.

“That would be a great punctuation on my career,” he said.

Boone said it's not only fans who are touched by performances of The Lovin' Spoonful's music.

“I can guarantee you it’s rewarding for the band members,” he said. “It’s a win-win; we’re still able to play and entertain people in our 70s and 80s.

"It still invigorates me. I’m not a 25-year-old anymore, [but] when that crowd is with me, man, you can’t get more invigorated than that."