Nieuw Statendam - Current Rock Room Band?

[Suncitycruiser1925]

We are sailing on the NS on January 21st.  This will be our 3rd sailing on this ship and it is our favorite of all the ships we have sailed on.  Our favorite entertainment venue on the ship is listening to the Rock Room Band.  Would appreciate any feedback on the current Rock band from those who have sailed recently on the NS.  How is the rock band?  How much longer will they be on the NS (if you know).  We have had an outstanding group of singers and musicians on the 2 sailings we have been on so far.  One outstanding singer and guitar player was Thomas from Atlanta.  He was in the band on both our prior sailings and he is excellent.  Thanks for any feedback from recent sailings.  We are looking forward to another great rock band.

[Ilovesailaway]

Look at the live review of NS by POA1

Ask there...

[Huskerchick]

We are just off the NS and spent some time in the Rolling Stone Rock Lounge. I'm terrible with names but the bass player was from Nebraska, yay fellow Husker, and was very good. The lead guitarist was also quite good as was Tommy the other guitar player. Where they were weak was on vocals . The poor female singer just couldn't quite cut it. They usually did 3 sets and it was generally pretty busy. Not sure how long their contracts were so you may have some different folks. Also shout out to John Lee who was one of the servers in that area. He hussled and once he recognized us always came over to take our drink order. 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Huskerchick

[tompeter]

Band is on til late March.

[tigger77732]

I just got off NS on 12/27. I agree with the above poster as to the band itself. The music was mostly good, but I was not impressed with the singers. I did think the female singer was decent. I thought the 2 male singers were poor. My dad is 73 and has been in a rock band since a teenager(so I have heard a lot of his bands- I may be biased 🙂 ) and one thing i look for is whether a singer can change their voice to sing similarly to the original vocalist. It was poor, to say the least.  Regarding the billboard lounge, I personally thought the dueling piano singers were absolutely horrible and couldn't sing in tune to save their lives. My ears truly hurt. BB King lounge band was the best in my opinion and also got the crowd very well involved, thanks to the host, Jeremiah! All JMO.

[Huskerchick]

2 hours ago, tigger77732 said:

I just got off NS on 12/27. I agree with the above poster as to the band itself. The music was mostly good, but I was not impressed with the singers. I did think the female singer was decent. I thought the 2 male singers were poor. My dad is 73 and has been in a rock band since a teenager(so I have heard a lot of his bands- I may be biased 🙂 ) and one thing i look for is whether a singer can change their voice to sing similarly to the original vocalist. It was poor, to say the least.  Regarding the billboard lounge, I personally thought the dueling piano singers were absolutely horrible and couldn't sing in tune to save their lives. My ears truly hurt. BB King lounge band was the best in my opinion and also got the crowd very well involved, thanks to the host, Jeremiah! All JMO.

Agree on BB King that's where we spent most of our time and they were very good and Jeremiah did a great job of getting people up and dancing. 

[Suncitycruiser1925]

On 12/28/2023 at 12:34 PM, Ilovesailaway said:

Look at the live review of NS by POA1

Ask there...

Thanks for the suggestion.  I will do so.

[Suncitycruiser1925]

On 12/28/2023 at 3:42 PM, Huskerchick said:

We are just off the NS and spent some time in the Rolling Stone Rock Lounge. I'm terrible with names but the bass player was from Nebraska, yay fellow Husker, and was very good. The lead guitarist was also quite good as was Tommy the other guitar player. Where they were weak was on vocals . The poor female singer just couldn't quite cut it. They usually did 3 sets and it was generally pretty busy. Not sure how long their contracts were so you may have some different folks. Also shout out to John Lee who was one of the servers in that area. He hussled and once he recognized us always came over to take our drink order. 

Thank you very much for sharing your recent experience listening to the Rock Room Band.  I hope the female vocalist improves or maybe there will be a new one in January.  On the NS in February 2023, the band, including the female vocalist and all the band members who sang were phenomenal.  Glad you had a great waiter from the bar.

[Suncitycruiser1925]

Thanks for the posts.  I guess we may be listening to the BB King group more on our upcoming January sailing.  On past sailings, the musicians and singers in the Rock Room Band were so wonderful, we watched and listened to 2 sets of the band's performances every night they performed.

[purplegrattan]

Hey Suncitycruiser - how was the music?  I'm sailing in a few weeks.  I believe we had Jeremiah on our Alaskan cruise in May. He was great. 

[Suncitycruiser1925]

On 1/31/2024 at 11:24 AM, purplegrattan said:

Hey Suncitycruiser - how was the music?  I'm sailing in a few weeks.  I believe we had Jeremiah on our Alaskan cruise in May. He was great. 

We thought all members of the Rock Room Band were great.  Rachel Ward is a lead singer and keyboard player. Tommy from Atlanta sings and plays guitar and is a very good entertainer.   We saw them both perform on NS in February of 2023 and we were happy to see them again as part of the Rock Room Band.  The drummer from Puerto Rico is very good, both as a drummer and singer. There is another young man who sings and plays guitar who is very good (I don't remember his name, but he may have said he was from Nashville).  Plus, the bass guitar player was good and also sings.  We listened to 2 sets of the band's performances almost every night and really enjoyed their performances.  They did not perform on our first day of the cruise which was Sunday.

We listened to the BB Kings Blues Band twice.  They are good, but we enjoyed listening to the Rock Room Band more than them.    That is just our personal preference on type of music.  Their lead male singer is very good.  Unfortunately, he did not sing that many songs.  One night we listened to the band perform for 30 minutes and then he finally came out and sang 2 songs. 

We did not care for the dueling pianos performances.  They blasted the dueling piano performances so loud in the Rock Room area (when the Rock Room took a break)  that we couldn't talk and had to find and request the sound engineer to turn the speakers off which he did.

Have a great cruise!

[purplegrattan]

Thanks for the update, I'm sure we'll move back and forth between BBs and the Rock Room.

[Haljo1935]

19 hours ago, purplegrattan said:

Thanks for the update, I'm sure we'll move back and forth between BBs and the Rock Room.

That worked for us Nov and Dec. We avoided Billboard. 

Safe travels- enjoy your cruise!