South Shore band marks album debut with Plymouth show. Who's playing
South Shore band marks album debut with Plymouth show. Who's playing
Jay N. Miller, For The Patriot LedgerWed, May 6, 2026 at 8:31 AM UTC
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The latest album from Plymouth’s Delta Generators will be released Friday, May 22, 2026, and to mark the occasion, they’re headlining the Spire Center in Plymouth that night.
The Delta Generators wanted to go back to basics for their new album. Which is sort of like Willie Nelson announcing he’s going country. We expected nothing less.
Plymouth’s Delta Generators have always pursued that intersection where rhythm and blues morphed seamlessly into rock ‘n’ roll, and their new album, “On and On,” continues that direction with their usual aplomb. What was the first rock ‘n’ roll record? Was it from Bill Haley, Louis Jordan or perhaps Big Joe Turner? Whoever gets the honor, the Delta Generators take listeners back to that fertile era when R&B, jazz, country and this newfangled thing called rock all came together and made sparks, and they do it with contemporary perspective and plenty of urgent 2026 fire.
The Delta Generators' latest album will be released May 22, and to mark the occasion, they’re headlining the Spire Center in Plymouth that night, as close to a home base as this globe-trotting quartet has ever had. Heck, in 2017 they released a live album recorded at the Spire. (The Spire Center is located at 25½ Court St. in downtown Plymouth, and the show begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are priced between $35.65 and $39.15 and are available through spirecenter.org or at the door. Call 508-735-2525 for more information.)
Brothers began band in 2007
For music fans who haven’t yet discovered the Delta Generators, Plymouth brothers Rick and Charlie O’Neal began the band around 2007, determined to celebrate the rock and blues they’d grown up hearing. The duo, bassist Rick and guitarist Charlie, had been playing music together since their teen years, and notably had teamed up in the solo band of Cars singer Benjamin Orr. They hadn’t had the chance to play together much beyond that, so they threw themselves into this new concept. Worcester’s Craig Rawding came on board as vocalist, and eventually Kingston’s Jeff Armstrong took over the drummer’s chair.
By 2008, Delta Generators had won the Battle of the Boston Blues Bands and turned heads at the national blues band competition in Memphis. Their skill and bright new sound won them bookings all over the country, and especially in Europe. The quartet would go on to record four well received albums before Rawding left for a solo career – and to get married – in 2016.
The Delta Generators then added Woburn’s Brian Templeton, a talented blues singer well known to area fans for his long stint as a co-founder of the Radio Kings (with Salem guitar ace Mike DiNallo), whose rock-infused blues albums with Memphis International Records made them international stars. Since the Radio Kings had gone their separate ways, Templeton had sung with a variety of the genre’s best, including the all-star group known as The Proven Ones, which included Marshfield’s keyboard virtuoso Anthony Geraci. Just last weekend, Templeton was jetting across the Atlantic to join an old pal, guitar ace Kid Ramos, for an appearance at a blues festival in the Netherlands.
There is even a side project, O’Neal-Armstrong, which is simply the band without Templeton, which plays more of a classic rock, funk and instrumental setlist. (O’Neal-Armstrong headlined the Spire Center in January 2025.)
How latest album came together
We caught up with Charlie O’Neal recently as the band was finalizing plans for its record release, and a European tour this summer. The foursome took a new approach to this album, crafting it all at once, and all together.
The latest album from Plymouth’s Delta Generators will be released Friday, May 22, 2026, and to mark the occasion, they’re headlining the Spire Center in Plymouth that night.
“We kind of approached this one with a different writing process,” said O’Neal. “Typically, we might each come up with song ideas and send demos to Brian, who would then write lyrics. This time, we went into rehearsal together, and just started playing. So, for this writing process, we were all in the same room. Brian would still take the music and write lyrics that worked, and then we could discuss it all together. We did it pretty quickly, got good results, and went right into the studio.”
Although they’ve recorded at a variety of local studios over the years, this time the band took a different path. Actually, the task of fitting the sessions into their schedules dictated a change. The Delta Generators are more spread out these days, as Rick O’Neal lives in Connecticut, Charlie has moved to Salem, while Jeff Armstrong moved from Kingston to Plymouth.
“I think we were on tour in France in the later part of June last summer, when we all decided to open our calendars and select a date for recording,” O’Neal recalled. “We wanted to finish by early fall, so we chose some potential dates we could get three or four days to do it. Then the task was to find a studio, and we felt we needed on with a really nice ‘live room,’ because we wanted to all be playing together on this record. We found they were all kind of booked, but then the Power Station New England (Waterford, Connecticut) was open and seemed perfect. It is an identical design to the famous New York City Power Station studio, and actually a little bigger. It’s Jon Bon Jovi’s uncle who runs it, and it was just what we needed.”
Work went even better, and faster, than the band had anticipated. The new music they’d worked up in rehearsals came together quickly in the studio.
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New album was done in two days
“We managed to get our album done in just two days at the Power Station,” said O’Neal. “It was all done live, with all four of us in the same room, playing together. I think we ended up using just two overdubs, so basically this album is like a live performance.”
Some videos of the new album are already hitting sites like YouTube. The first single, “I Got You,” finds Templeton in Big Joe Turner mode, an expansive blues shouter where his energy and drive nearly hit Screamin’ Jay Hawkins levels of passion. And “Mr. Vain” is a more traditional, old-style Chicago blues, with significant harmonica shadings from Templeton, and a lyric that could be interpreted as referring to more than just the chastened singer detailing his ego-driven flaws.
“If Brian Templeton hadn’t joined the band, I don’t know if we’d have gone on after Craig left,” said O’Neal. “Brian was the perfect fit, and he is such a great live performer. He’s taken us to the next level. Brian is very creative, and a different kind of songwriter and voice than Craig. There is some overlap, and there is a definite, but not drastic, difference between their singing styles. Brian has said he was attracted to this band because we tend to touch on all the varied styles of rock and roots and r&b, and I think the Radio Kings also reflected that kind of diversity in their sound.”
Rick O’Neal is also quoted in press materials praising Templeton, and what he brings to the quartet. “Besides his top-notch vocals, Brian brought a powerful stage presence, and killer harmonica playing to the mix, and his lyric writing is in a class by itself.”
Stroke didn't stop Rick O’Neal
Fans know Rick O’Neal is an inspiring story all by himself. Suffering a stroke in 2014, he lost some mobility on his right side, but recovered well, and taught himself to play bass one-handed. These days Rick has a cool day job, teaching music at Eastern Connecticut State University.
The pandemic cut into the number of clubs and venues for touring bands, and straddling genres like they do makes radio play challenging for the Delta Generators. Scheduling tours is a little more complex, with Rick’s teaching schedule, but the love of the music keeps them engaged.
The latest album from Plymouth’s Delta Generators will be released Friday, May 22, 2026, and to mark the occasion, they’re headlining the Spire Center in Plymouth that night.
“Genre classifications end up with people putting you in a box,” said Charlie O’Neal. “I think we have a defined sound but know we don’t ever want to get boring. We are able to get our music on SiriusXM radio, and also on college radio around the country. There’s a question about how relevant radio is today. We have a new European agent in the Netherlands, and we get a lot of bookings from word-of-mouth, and people seeing us at festivals. We will typically use festival dates as anchors, and then try to build little tours around them.”
“We are not as interested in full-on touring as we may have been when we were all younger,” O’Neal added. “But we still go out for a week or two at a time. We do a lot more in the summer, and we have a tour coming up in August, that takes us to Germany and Belgium, and then we’re back to The Netherlands in November. We work as much as we want, and of course playing the Spire Center is always a special event for us.”
Judy Collins' farewell tour has two area stops
Folk icon Judy Collins celebrated her 87th birthday on May 1, and she is about ready to start her farewell tour, entitled Sweet Judy Blue Eyes. That’s a takeoff on the epic Crosby, Stills & Nash tune “Suite for Judy Blue Eyes,” which was inspired by her romance with Stephen Stills. Collins’ tour swings through the area twice this summer, July 15 at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis, and the next night, July 16 at the South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset. Both of those local dates also including opening act Richard Thompson, the legendary English folk-rocker.
Free Americana festival set for June 6 in Medfield
The Bellforge Arts Center in Medfield has just announced it will be hosting a multi-band Americana festival on June 6, with music running from 1-8 p.m. Topping the list of outstanding regional acts is Norwell native Kier Byrnes and his Kettle Burners, along with the fast-rising Nate Perry & Ragged Company, Dirt Road Souls and Medfield homegirl Jennifer Tefft (long an underrated area treasure). Did we mention the whole festival is free?
Documentary about WBCN to be screened at Narrows Center in Fall River
“The Airwaves Belonged to the People: WBCN and the American Revolution” was the compelling story of Boston’s unforgettable counter-culture radio station from the 1960s-‘90s, which was shown on PBS when it first came out. Now the Narrows Center in Fall River is hosting a screening of the movie on May 30 for all those of us who missed it the first time.
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Delta Generators to have home-field advantage for album release show
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
