Bands then and now – Palm Beach Drive: Out of control

Long before Palm Beach Drive was founded, founding member, guitarist and singer Daniel Schiefer discovered his love for film and series music. “I’ve always liked film music very much and have always wondered why there are no bands that make film music.”

Schiefer had been thinking about starting a project in this direction for a long time, and he already had a name up his sleeve: “The name comes from the Bud Spencer film ‘Two out of hand”. There’s a scene where Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill are meeting at 2060 Palm Beach Drive. Hence the name. “

“I’ve always wondered why there aren’t any bands that make film music.” Daniel Slate

The hour of birth of Palm Beach Drive finally came when Daniel Schiefer told Marcin Kolodziejczyk about his idea of ​​founding a band that would specialize in cover versions of film and series music. This was immediately on fire and so the original line-up of Palm Beach Drive soon got together and began to rehearse in Waidhofen. In addition to Schiefer and Kolodziejczyk, the line-up also included Mario Plank, Martin Kirschbichler, Andre Krenn and Alexander Christian Aigner. At the beginning, rehearsals took place in the RockaRollics’ rehearsal room at Waidhofner Bahnhof, which was practical because Palm Beach Drive shared their bassist Alexander Christian Aigner with the RockaRollics in addition to the rehearsal room.

The repertoire of the new band consisted mainly of songs and compositions that are known from Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill films, such as works by the film composers Ennio Morricone and Franco Micalizzi or the band Oliver Onions. Soon, however, other songs and theme tunes known from film and television were also added to the program, such as the theme tunes from “MacGyver” and “Knight Rider”.

Palm Beach Drive celebrated their first concert in September 2013 at a private party. In February 2014 there was already a real concert marathon: Palm Beach Drive played on three consecutive days at the carnival session in the Aschbach market hall. In May 2014 the first appearance took place in Waidhofen, organized by the cultural association Förderband.

In addition to Palm Beach Drive, all three bands played, the members of which made up the new formation: Sankt Heinrich, Deaf by Unicorn and The RockaRollics. This line-up made for a sold out evening in the knight’s hall.

Popular live band at weddings and festivals

Over the next few years, Palm Beach Drive developed into a popular live band, which soon began to play, in addition to club and festival appearances, at numerous weddings and occasionally at tent parties. However, Palm Beach Drive never wanted to be a classic wedding or entertainment band.

The versatility of the band ensured that Palm Beach Drive concerts could function in very different contexts. So you played with Wanda as well as with Voodoo Jürgens or Skolka and Millions of Dreads. The concerts at Palm Beach Drive were not entirely spared from accidents: For example, there were three power outages during a very rainy performance in Amstetten, two performances in Vienna were terminated by the police due to disturbance of the peace and in Waidhofen smoke alarms were triggered due to a defective smoke machine a fire brigade in the knight’s hall.

New genre came with a line-up change

In recent years there have been some line-up changes, which have brought new pieces to the repertoire. The new drummer Lukas Salzer suggested John Williams’ “Cantina Theme” from “Star Wars”, which has now become a popular number for the group. In addition to Salzer, Mario Leitner on vocals and guitar and Robert Ebner on bass joined the team.

Schiefer recently came full circle in his enthusiasm for film music when he and accordionist Martin Kirschbichler contributed a few pieces to the soundtrack of Karl Leopold Furtlehner’s film “Halbmännerwelten”. Maybe one or the other of these pieces will be picked up by Palm Beach Drive and Schiefer can cover his own film music.

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