CLEVELAND, Ohio -- As the adage goes, if at first you don’t succeed, try again -- even if it takes half a decade to realize, if you are the Mike Farley Band.
The venerable Cleveland-based rock band will reunite for a show Sept. 6 celebrating the 25th anniversary of its most popular release, 2000’s “halfaworldaway.”
But the get-together itself is almost as noteworthy for its fits and starts over the past five years.
“I remember when we hit that last note, I said, ‘We’re gonna take a short break, we’ll be back in 10 years,’” Farley said of the group’s most recent appearance on stage in 2010.
“Everyone laughed, including us. Then we had a reunion show booked in 2020, which was 10 years.”
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on those plans, with the band instead opting to cobble together an album of some previously unreleased songs and demos entitled “B-Sides and Rarities” in 2020.
Five years later, the original lineup of the Mike Farley Band -- Farley; guitarist and Lyndhurst resident Jeff Nagel; bassist Jeff Beam, of Lakewood; and drummer and Lakewood resident Joe Rohan, along with keyboardist Scott Martin -- will take the stage for a 7 p.m. show Sept. 6 at Brothers Lounge, 11609 Detroit Ave.
Tickets are $10, with all proceeds benefiting the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.
“We are all extremely excited to perform together again after 15 years,” Farley said.
“But more than that, we can’t wait to share our music with friends, family and fans again.
“I always like to say, ‘you can always go back’ about many things in life, but reuniting with MFB is a big one for me, and the guys.”
Show openers will include long-time Farley compatriots Rohan, Tony Lang and Frank Camp from The Simpletons, and Farley’s duo with his wife, Jen, dubbed The Farleys.
As planned in 2020, the show will feature plenty of material from the band’s signature album, “halfaworldaway,” including opening track “Can’t Be Your Man,” which Farley said remains its most popular song.
“To this day, I still hear from fans of the band that they heard the song on WSTB in Streetsboro,” he said.
“And it blows my mind that the station has been playing it for that long.”
Also on the reunion show set list is the song “Far Away,” which gained regular rotation status at area radio stations, including 91.3 The Summit in Akron.
The Mike Farley Band’s most recent album of new music, “Where We Stand,” came out in 2016, although the band’s namesake calls that project “more or less pieced together.”
Farley said he and Nagel shared ideas via e-mail and text and co-wrote the songs using Skype, with recording taking place at various studios around the country, since the band members had scatted to new homes in Cleveland, Seattle, Portland and Madison, Wis.
“We have never played any of those nine songs together as a band,” Farley said. “So we are (also) looking forward to performing 9-year-old ‘new’ material.”
Nagel added that the reunion show offers fans some other rare, less tangible opportunities.
“(They can) see if we can play better together now that we have matching corrective eyewear and gray beards,” he said.
“We should be super tight based on the similarity of appearance alone.”
For more information, visit the Mike Farley Band Facebook page at Facebook/mikefarleyband.
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