Erich Schneider

Erich bio pic

Erich Schneider as Tom Petty, transports you back to a real Tom Petty concert with his spot-on vocals and musicianship on guitar and harmonica.

Tom Petty first met Stevie Nicks in 1978 and they began to meet regularly and collaborate for four decades. In 1979 Stevie set to work on some rough sketches of new songs with Tom. Among them were “Starshine,” “Outside the Rain,” and an early version of “Gypsy,” written in Tom’s basement in 1980 and rehearsed with The Heartbreakers.  Originally written with Stevie in mind, “Insider” became their first duet. Stevie told him, “I can’t take this, because I can see how bad you want it. You just keep it, and write me another song, and we’re even.” Nicks visited the studio to cut her vocal with Petty, and the result is one of the most beautiful songs in either catalog.

Theirs was a relationship free of the toxic dramas; of in-fighting, free even, at heart, of star power associations. When they came together, they were not the two glittering giants of the rock world, the fabled Petty and Nicks; they were simply Tom and Stevie, singing their songs, harmonizing, finding the perfect note. As Petty told the Toronto Sun in 2014, “She’s a good friend. I’ve known her since 1978 and she’s insisted on being in my life. Some of my best musical memories of her are sitting on the couch and just playing the guitar while she sings.”

Erich Schneider received a BA in Music from UC Santa Barbara and soon after, began playing all over the world with several different bands.  Highlights from his travels include a music festival in Italy with the band “Flirt”, entertaining US troops in Germany, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo with “Crashdance”, and touring France with original hip hop artists, “Lexicon”.  In the summer of 2013, Erich started his Tom Petty tribute band, “Make it Last All Night”, but people had been telling him that he looked and sounded like the rock n roll icon since he was a child.  Since then the band has toured the states, played the House of blues, casinos, parties, legendary jazz club Yoshi’s, and countless other venues.

When Erich met Lisa McCormick in 2016, the two quickly realized that combining their tribute acts was a match made in heaven!