The New Year looms with what seems to me a dire need to restore a sense of community. What could be better than a nice, buzzed belting out of “Auld Lang Syne” with fellow revelers?
If you like a big throng to celebrate with, the King Center in Melbourne offers a Classic Albums cover band party, this time featuring the hits of Credence Clearwater Revival and the Rolling Stones. These musicians are known for their note-for-note replication, and the King Center opens up the orchestra pit for dance floor space.
With luck it’ll take you back to peace and love, if not drugs, sex and rock and roll. Either way, this is a party worth getting a room for if you’re headed there from out of town. And once again, producers offer a picnic for designated drivers. You will be sober, but you will be fed.
The party on the King Center patio starts at 8 p.m. Saturday, with the concert at 10 p.m. And, of course, they’ll be pausing for the ball drop at midnight. Hmm. Wonder what the lead-in song might be.
Tickets range from $30 to $102.
Vero’s barrier island hotels offer a more elegant scene on New Year’s Eve, with the Vero Beach Hotel and Spa and the SoBe-sophisticated Costa d’Este, both directly on the ocean; and Caribbean Court, the Mediterranean style, lushly landscaped home to the Havana Nights piano bar upstairs. Also consider a couple of new beach bars with music: Grind and Grape, the cozy (but noisy) Bungalow on Flamevine, and Orchid Island Brewery next door.
On the mainland in Vero, don’t forget the recently opened Walking Tree brewery off Aviation Boulevard. There’s plenty of space to spread out in the former WW II Air Force maintenance hangar, and the games area might help you monitor your balancing skills, just so the ABV in that IPA doesn’t get you a DUI.
Downtown, my top picks are still Kilted Mermaid, Blue Star and Osceola Bistro, which has a lovely outdoor garden. Blue Agave, a tequila bar, is bound to be jammed and, with luck, you can grab a fish taco if it’s not too crazy. For the indie set, there’s also the tiny Stamp bar across from the post office, which tends to have a great stream of alternative music on the sound system.
And the newest addition to the 14th Avenue restaurant scene is Southern Social, which prides itself on having creative cocktails. It will likely draw some patrons from the owners’ better known – if less refined – bar, Nasty’s Fine Cocktails.
Then there are those who will go the distance on New Year’s Eve. That would likely include fans of Sevendust, the alternative metal band from Atlanta that’s playing House of Blues in Orlando. Sevendust may not be familiar to the easy-listening crowd, but the group has sold millions of albums worldwide, including three consecutive gold albums.
Formed in 1994, the band tried a couple of names before settling on one inspired by the pesticide sevin; fair warning that their music could be lethal for the Sinatra set. I would love to hear their version of “Auld Lang Syne.”
Also at House of Blues this week … the Roots, but you have to act fast: It’s Thursday night. If you can’t get that together in time, it’s a longer haul to Miami where they’ll play the Adrienne Arsht Center on New Year’s Eve.
If you can’t make either of those dates, drummer Questlove and his fellow geniuses will be coming back to Florida to play the second annual Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival March 2-5.
For those of you who want to celebrate the New Year with children, there’s a Noon Year’s Eve party at the Brevard Zoo with a complimentary juice toast at noon of New Year’s Eve. And that night, you can drop the kids off for their own party while you go off and drink your own juice. The zoo stages an overnight all New Year’s Eve for kids ages 7 to 12. Drop off is 5 p.m.; pick up is 9 a.m. The cost is $35 per child for members; $45 for non-members.
If you complain, like I do, that in Vero Beach the sidewalks roll up hours before the ball drops, check out the snoozers at Summer Crush Winery in the pasturelands north of Fort Pierce. Owner and vintner Gary Roberts can’t stand the midnight hoopla, so he figured out he can host an all-British New Year and call it a night at 7 p.m. when they’re celebrating in England, five hours before us. The Big Ben Beatles Bash includes a British buffet. It starts at 4:30 p.m. with the Beatles Guys cover band.
Not that the snoozers are losers. Summer Crush is at it again bright and early on New Year’s Day with Uproot Hootenanny playing from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The group includes local fiddler Brian Trew, raised in Fort Pierce and educated at Florida Atlantic University, where he got a full scholarship to study viola. He now plays a fiddle made by his uncle, Billy Smith.