A-ha: Dolyniuk embraces ’80s, adds symphony for Smith Center show

By John Katsilometes

Saturday, Dec. 6, 2014 | 6:30 p.m.

Before Brody Dolyniuk ever played the Monte Carlo, he owned one. It was a robust ride, a red 1972 model with “room for seven,” as he says. The car’s signature feature: A Pioneer sound system that was equipped with a pair of window-rattling, 6-by-9-inch speakers in the back.

This was in the 1980s, when Dolyniuk was a teenager, and from this car’s cassette deck blared the songs he was into at the time. But Brody did not press “play” on the music of the 1980s.

“I was listening to the 1970s music in the 1980s,” Dolyniuk says today. “I was into Led Zeppelin, early Van Halen, Rush. I was not into ’80s music when it was popular, originally. I was late to the party.”

But Dolyniuk is the leader of the festival now, bringing his latest symphonic production to Reynolds Hall at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts. The “Totally ’80s Symphonic Show” is set for 7:30 p.m. Sunday (tickets are $24 to $79, absent fees, and available at SmithCenter.com and by calling (702) 749-2000).

The founder of the untiring classic-rock band Yellow Brick Road, Dolyniuk left Las Vegas in the summer of 2011 to set up his rock ’n’ roll operation in Southern California. From there, he has developed the popular “Symphonic Rock Show" productions that have played Reynolds Hall during the past two years. Originally an adept mechanic, Dolyniuk has attached a four-barrel carb to his career, performing dates across the country as the frontman for the rock-symphony productions of Windborne Music of Virginia Beach, Va., and belting out tributes to such great classic-rock bands as Queen and The Who.

He has developed a Led Zep tribute act, ZUSA, which has played the Railhead at Boulder Station and still managed YBR and its ever-busy schedule throughout the valley.

But what Dolyniuk has yet to achieve is a show that samples, say, “Take On Me” by A-ha. That song, with an accompanying frame-by-frame, black-and-white video, similar to the 1985 original, is in the setlist Sunday.

It’s not a full-force rock extravaganza, not a return to “The Song Remains the Same,” but an ode to some of the more lively and inventive songs of the 1980s that can, finally, be deemed classics. Dolyniuk dug deep into the 1980s cassette case and came up with faves by The Tubes, Prince, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Wang Chung, Oingo Boingo, Madness, Modern English, INXS, Peter Gabriel and Thomas Dolby, among others.

For years around VegasVille, such 1980s-fashioned bands as The Spazmatics and Loveshack have developed loyal followings, similar to YBR, and more recently the genre has picked up a major Broadway-styled show and motion picture with “Rock of Ages.”

“We’ve seen it happening with bands for a while, and it’s become that corporate America is embracing the ’80s a little more,” Dolyniuk says. “Our time has come for this generation to have its say. … I’ve been looking forward to this show more than anything I’ve done in quite a while.”

Dolyniuk is peppering his orchestra with players he’s met recently in the Los Angeles area, along with musicians he’s worked with over the years in Las Vegas. Spinning Dolyniuk’s ideas into actual charts are longtime friends and collaborators Lon Bronson and Nina DiGregorio.

Dolyniuk has more work than he can handle now but continues to expand his artistic repertoire.

“I’m a workaholic, and I like being involved in performance and production,” he says. “I don’t know how much longer I can or want to do what I do onstage. I like making an idea come to fruition, recruiting players to pull something like this off.”

Dolyniuk mulls what might come next after his foray to the ’80s is staged.

“I like the idea of applying this formula with a symphonic treatment, and not just rock and pop,” Dolyniuk says. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll even do a 1990s thing someday.”

Sounds good. But we’ll need another car …

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.