Dave Kerzner Celebrates Genesis Classic the Lamb

New 50th anniversary tribute by Sonic Elements treats iconic album with profound love and respect.

Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection! It’s always nice when a previous guest discussion sets up a future one. That is the case for this issue, as I recently spoke with Dave Kerzner (Sound of Contact, In Continuum, Sonic Elements) about his new tribute album to the Genesis classic, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Dave and I discussed that Genesis classic back in August of 2021, and he told me at that time that he was working on his own Lamb tribute album. That finally came out recently, and Dave was kind enough to spend some time telling me about it (more below on that). The last time I spoke with Dave was in November of 2023, when we chatted about his excellent (and very personal) solo album, Heart Land Mines Vol. 1.

It was great catching up with him and to see his Lamb tribute come to fruition after working on it for so long. Let’s get to that story.

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Tribute albums are tricky things. Most of them are harmless fun and enjoyable, but sometimes they can go horribly awry. Some of them are done by a single recording artist, giving them a consistent feel, while others vary wildly, using disparate bands and solo artists, which makes them feel less cohesive.

But every now and then a tribute album is released that has the rare ability to stand on its own, both as a declarative artistic statement and as an homage to a classic band or album. Dave Kerzner and friends — under the band name Sonic Elements — have accomplished that with IT — A 50th Anniversary Celebration of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis.

This recent release on the RecPlay Inc. label was obviously a labor of love for a core group of musicians and a star-studded cast of guests paying tribute to the iconic Genesis conceptual double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

While the album was slated to come out as a celebration of The Lamb’s 50th anniversary, delays pushed the release date a bit past the exact day, which Kerzner was hoping to hit. In fact, the album had been in the works for many years, with Kerzner releasing teasers for it as far back as 2011. Kerzner said the looming anniversary served as the kick in the pants he needed to get the project back on track and over the finish line.

Aside from it being a milestone anniversary for the album, however, the obvious question is: Why take time out from writing and recording original music to do IT at all? This became an even more important question when Kerzner — who has previously released a Yes tribute and who said he has Pink Floyd and Rush tributes in the works — admitted that his first choice is always to work on his own studio albums first, putting them ahead of live or tribute albums.

“There has to be some kind of lure for me, so each (tribute) project is different,” he explained. “But for this one, the lure really was…I mean, it is one of my all-time favorite albums.”

Kerzner and friends find the delicate balance between merely copying the existing material that Genesis left behind and creating something so wildly different as to turn off longtime fans of the album. IT isn’t a note-for-note re-creation of The Lamb, but it stays mostly true to the original ideas, expanding on some of the themes and solo sections without jarring listeners with crazy left turns.

Much of the cast has a personal connection with Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, or both. Kerzner himself was a member of the live band Giraffe, which did an abridged version of The Lamb at ProgStock 1994 with the late Kevin Gilbert — who was supposed to audition for Genesis at one point — and drummer Nick D’Virgilio, who contributed drum parts for Genesis’ post-Phil Collins studio album, Calling All Stations. D’Virgilio himself also did a Lamb tribute album under the moniker Rewiring Genesis. That was a much different take on the album, using different styles and substituting orchestra for Tony Banks’ keyboard parts. D’Virgilio’s superb drumming drives most of the tracks on IT.

Other musicians on IT who were part of Giraffe’s hour-long truncated live version of The Lamb include Stan Cotey, who plays guitar on two songs on IT, and Dan Hancock, who contributes guitar parts to four songs on the new tribute.

Ian Benamou from Genesis tribute band The Musical Box plays the RMI keyboard parts in “The Colony of Slippermen.” Former The Musical Box drummer Martin Levac plays on three songs, and Roger King — keyboardist for former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett, who was part of The Lamb lineup — plays piano on “Anyway.”

Other key musicians in the cast include Yes bassist Billy Sherwood and guitarist Fernando Perdomo.

However, it’s vocalist Francis Dunnery — formerly of It Bites and a singer who once auditioned for Genesis — who makes this tribute album…well, sing. His vocals are close enough to those of Peter Gabriel that listeners can sometimes forget it’s someone else. It’s not an exact match, and Dunnery’s phrasing and cadence differ from Gabriel’s at times, but it approximates the former Genesis front man closely enough to do the job. Kerzner said Dunnery took his Gabriel role on the album quite seriously. His guidance also helped Sonic Elements maintain perspective on respecting the original material.

“Francis, you know, he's very picky, so I wanted him to be happy,” Kerzner said. “He's a hardcore Genesis fan, and I had to change a lot of things for him that he was like, ‘No, no, that can't be a barber shop quartet. Don't mess with it, you know, it's sacrilege. It was good, because I thought, well, if I can get Francis to like every track and go through it with me, then I think probably most — not all, because you can never please everybody, but most — of the hardcore Genesis fans will accept it. I don't know if we could have pulled it off to the level that it is without him. He just gives it like a unique authenticity. It's like so close to the original.”

Most Gabriel-era Genesis fans will likely accept IT. This effort should appeal to fans of the source material who are not averse to tribute albums — especially albums that are mostly faithful recreations but with just enough differences not to create cognitive dissonance for the listener. The musicians involved clearly have a deep respect for The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.That shines through on every listen, making IT a tribute by Genesis fans for Genesis fans. It’s an outstanding companion album to the original, and a great deal of care and precision was put into its making. You can practically hear the care that went into making the album. Songs that grew in length did so in a way that made logical sense, almost as if they were simply alternate versions of the originals.

“It's not about me as much as it's about knowing the cast that I had,” Kerzner said of undertaking this mammoth task and knowing how much he could embellish the tracks. “When you've got Nick D’Virgilio, Martin, Levac, Francis Dunnery — even those three alone — you can do an authentic-sounding Genesis album. Those guys could be in Genesis. That's how good they are. They almost were — two of them.”

Listening through IT, one is struck by the quality. There are faithful recreations of many sounds from the original album, and some of that is attributable to Kerzner using some of the same instruments used by Tony Banks when Genesis recorded The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. By that, I don’t mean the same make and model of keyboards. I mean the very same actual keyboards! Kerzner bought some of Banks’ equipment when Genesis shuttered The Farm Studio in Chiddingfold, Surrey, England. Among that equipment was Banks’ Mellotron and RMI keyboard used on The Lamb and the subsequent tour. Kerzner played those when recording IT, bringing the lives of those keyboards full circle.

Aside from Sonic Elements remarkably using some of the original equipment to re-create some of the original sounds, it’s a well-produced album with great clarity of sound. Orchestra augments the traditional rock instruments, and Kerzner went bigger when he thought it appropriate. This perhaps works best when listening to the choir part of “Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats,” in which an actual choir of voices supports the Mellotron choir sound, making for a bigger and more vibrant effect.

“You're hearing a real choir blended in. It's like, wow,” Kerzner said. “Imagine seeing Genesis with an orchestra and a choir! That was the effect.”

But how do you know when and where to deviate from a classic?

“Here's what I bring to the table: I can give it the right changes in a respectful area and leave everything that's in my sensibility of Genesis, what I think is in line with most hardcore Genesis fans,” Kerzner said. “Like, don't change that part. You can't change that part. Who do you think you are? Yeah, don't turn that into, like, a Toto solo. What are you doing? (Laughs.)”

The differences between the original and the tribute manifest themselves quickly and so do the similarities. Dunnery’s lead vocal and the backing vocals as the album opens with the titular “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” are eerily similar to those on the original Genesis album. However, the Sonic Elements crew extends some parts out, so the opening track runs three full minutes longer than the 1974 song. “Fly on a Windshield” is also extended, but by less than 90 seconds. Meanwhile, the third part of the opening trilogy, “Broadway Melody of 1974” is slightly shorter on IT than on The Lamb.

Other songs that feature notable extensions include “The Chamber of 32 Doors,” “The Waiting Room,” “The Light Dies Down on Broadway” (including a reprise inserted between “Riding the Scree” and “In the Rapids” — possibly the biggest real change to the proceedings), and “It.”

One of the more interesting deviations is “The Chamber of 32 Doors,” which has a new ending on IT. Whereas Genesis ended the song with a simple, delicate piano flourish after the final line, “Take me away,” Kerzner added an instrumental section, allowing the music to literally take the listener away.

“My favorite extension bit was we added a new ending to (“32 Doors”) that goes on for like two minutes instrumentally. And we feel like it adds something,” he said. “The original ending of that song, ironically, is the least exciting. I mean, the irony is one of my favorite things that they do is they take you away with those outros, whether it's ‘Entangled,’ or, you know, ‘The Lady Lies,’ (and) all these go off into this instrumental, emotional ending — ‘Supper’s Ready’ even. I loved (this) ‘32 Doors’ edition so much that I didn't have any doubts. I thought, ‘People are gonna like this.”

Another bold choice was an extended version of “The Waiting Room,” on which four minutes of instrumental music has been added. Kerzner indulged his fans by sneaking some goodies into that section to reward attentive listeners.

“Maybe in certain parts of ‘The Waiting Room’ you can hear (former project with Phil Collins’ son, Simon) Sound of Contact or my solo album styles creeping in,” he said. “Some of the things they did, they had to work within the restraints of vinyl, 20 to 22 minutes a side. I wasn’t thinking of those limitations. At one point, it was 20 minutes and it was way too long. So, I ended up doing like, I don't know, like 20 versions of it until it became the final version that it is now.”

Some of the bits added to “The Waiting Room” include parts Kerzner contributed for “Raider II” on Steven Wilson’s Grace for Drowning album that didn’t get used in the final cut. There were also some things that didn’t get used on Sound of Contact’s outstanding 2013 Dimensionaut album.

IT is two hours of lovingly crafted music done in the style of that snapshot in time of Genesis’ career. Deviations from the original don’t feel out of place, forced, or superfluous. And they don’t come off as self-indulgent to my ears, either. All of these characteristics are rare for a tribute album.

I will admit that I’m not usually that big on tribute albums. I tend to buy them and then rarely give them much thought after the first listen. With the original source material available, I tend to drift back to that rather than spend more time with the tribute. But IT is an exception. There is just enough variation without completely reinventing the classic songs that I find it sustains my interest. Dunnery’s vocals, while not Gabriel’s, are close enough that I can avoid the cognitive dissonance that invariably creeps in during Genesis tributes. Even accomplished Gabriel-esque vocalists such as Nad Sylvan of Steve Hackett’s band is simply not close enough to one of the most distinctive voices in rock history — and Sylvan is renowned for his similarity to Gabriel. Dunnery seems much closer to the real thing on this album to my ears.

As far as Genesis tribute albums go, IT has my highest recommendation. As Genesis is my favorite band, this recommendation comes with all of the appropriate consideration and worry about messing with an original, but Sonic Elements pulled it off.

IT is available from Kerzner’s Sonic Elements Bandcamp site as a deluxe, signed, three-CD set that includes bonus tracks and a high-resolution download, the deluxe edition three-CD set on its own, and a standard 2-CD edition. Additionally, both the deluxe and standard versions are available there digitally.

The full album is not available on the streaming services (Spotify, Tidal, et al) for the public to listen to for free. Kerzner released a 14-track “highlights” version of the album to give audiences the flavor in hopes that they’ll buy the album.

“People need to buy it to support doing this,” he said.

That seems to be happening, as Kerzner already has placed an order for a second run with stock from his first pressing of the CD starting to dwindle ahead of his participation in Cruise to the Edge late last week.

Tracklist:

Disc 1:

1. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (8:03)

2. Fly on a Windshield (4:10)

3. Broadway Melody of 1974 (2:21)

4. Cuckoo Cocoon (2:14)

5. In the Cage (8:27)

6. Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging (2:53)

7. Back in New York City (5:39)

8. Hairless Heart (2:02)

9. Counting Out Time (4:14)

10. Carpet Crawlers (6:17)

11. The Chamber of 32 Doors (7:20)

Disc 2:

1. Lilywhite Lilith (2:40)

2. The Waiting Room (9:14)

3. Anyway (3:08)

4. Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist (2:32)

5. The Lamia (7:05)

6. Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats (3:16)

7. The Colony of Slippermen (7:15)

8. Ravine (2:13)

9. The Light Dies Down on Broadway (4:32)

10. Riding the Scree (4:21)

11. The Light Dies Down Reprise (2:14)

12. In the Rapids (2:34)

13. It (6:50)

14. End Credits (In the Cage Reprise) (1:41)

For more information on Dave Kerzner’s work, visit his official website, davekerznermusic.com, and his Bandcamp site at sonicelements.bandcamp.com.

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For my full interview with Dave Kerzner about his Herculean effort of celebrating The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, check out the video below or download / stream Episode 148 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. Dave discussed the difficulties of making the album, why he made some of his choices, some of the bonus material that is available on the special edition of the album, and much more.

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