By Dave Read, June 21, 2026 performance – Tanglewood’s beautiful and versatile Ozawa Hall proved a fair haven for devotees of Yacht Rock, an unabashed nostalgia for a time not long ago, but which now feels like an ancient age.
My pop music memory reaches all the way to a time when church and civic halls hosted weekend dances for high school kids, with local bands blasting out covers of the latest hits heard over and over on the radio and American Bandstand. With such quaint things as free radio and TV relics of the ancient age, the Yacht Rock revue carries delicious youthfulness to patrons long since gone from high school.
Whereas the bands at my teenage dances had scant time to hone their chops and learn the new hit songs, the musicians who comprise the nearly twenty year old Yacht Rock Revue have their sets down pat and transition with seamless ease through ABBA, Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Toto, Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac, and dozens more. And instead of sporting letter sweaters, the varsity in attendance today wore captain’s hats!