An Evening Celebrating The Classics of Elton John & Billy Joel - Featuring Marc Dion
Born in Toronto and raised in smalltown northern Ontario, Marc always dreamed of being a singer. It was at a very young age that Marc discovered both Elton John and Billy Joel.
"I remember my older sister leaving Elton John's Greatest Hits behind when she left home" recalls Marc. "I would sit and listen to it over and over again, reading and re-reading the album's sleeve. I remember being moved by the first haunting notes of Border Song, and and rockin to Saturday Night's Alright for Fightin"

“I remember doing the same for Billy Joel’s Stranger album in the summer of ’77. I was too young to understand the lyrical content of most of the material, but something grabbed me, and I was always moved by the slower stuff like ‘Vienna’ especially”. “Then I was just a closet singer but I knew I could do most of the songs justice”.

Marc joined his first band at age 16 in small town Kapuskasing, Ontario with local friends but it was when he went away to study at the University of Guelph that he made a jump to a ‘bigger’ league. “I answered an ad in The Toronto Star for an AC/DC tribute band (yep that’s right) and that quickly turned into a band called Riff Raff which had great success touring the U.S. and Canada for about a decade.

 

Through it all Marc remained an avid Elton John and Billy Joel fan secretly hoping to someday form that type of band. In the spring of ’99 Marc took the leap. He explains, “This project is my passion, a true labor of love and I’ve worked hard to make it an enjoyable one for the audience. My years on the road have proved to be and invaluable learning experience for my work with Elton Joel… I could easily just sit there and sing but I try and make it fun too”. “Having said that I don’t go over the top with silliness and stage get-ups; I stay true to the material because it deserves it”. Sometimes I’ll be sitting on stage singing and it dawns on me that people are coming to see me perform the songs I used to sing along to in my basement…it’s an awesome feeling”

Marc sums it up this way, “ I don’t take my job lightly, and I don’t think I’m Elton John or Billy Joel either. I’m just a guy who loves to sing and the biggest compliment I receive is when people tell me I looked like I was enjoying myself…because I do”

Riff Raff
Columbus Ohio
Circa 1991
 
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