Come see the Riviera’s night of shapeshifting musicians in downtown Three Rivers

This Friday, at the Riviera Theatre and Bar watch as one band will turn to another throughout the night. 

At 7 p.m., Rivereye will open up the show and play music from their newly released self-titled album. After their show, much of the same band will change roles and begin the second part of their show as The Insiders, the group’s Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers tribute band. 

“If you are a fan of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and you haven’t seen The Insiders yet, you’re going to love it,” frontman Max Lockwood told Watershed Voice. “We’ve been playing these songs for coming up on nine years now, and this band rocks — every member is a lifelong veteran of the rich Michigan music scene, and has dug so deep to recreate this amazing music as authentically as possible, while also doing what we can to bring it to life in a new way that is true to us as our own unique band.”

The Insiders have played at the Riviera many times and this time, Lockwood says, they were asked to do something a little different. 

“The Riviera is really excited to have Rivereye open for The Insiders,” Riviera Executive Director Danielle Moreland told Watershed Voice. “All of our guests who have had the opportunity to enjoy this Tom Petty tribute show over the years will now get a chance to hear the band perform the music that they personally wrote and recorded.”

Lockwood says The Insiders have been playing together for nearly a decade, weaving Tom Petty history throughout their shows, Rivereye ended up as a natural evolution of most of the group’s music careers. 

This will be the first time the bands will play back-to-back. 

“The band ‘Rivereye’ is the new home for my own songs, and as a sort of natural evolution, has come to include several members of The Insiders,” Lockwood says, sharing that he has released three albums under his own name. “The first ‘Rivereye’ album is a self-titled collection of rock and roll songs all recorded live with the band in a single room together in a cabin in the deep woods of the Manistee forest.”

Tickets are available online through today for $20 and will increase to $25 tomorrow, November 6.

Maxwell Knauer is a staff writer for Watershed Voice.