'The Lettermen' back in Manila for concert at Big Dome

By REYMA BUAN-DEVEZA
abs-cbnNEWS.com

America's famous pop music vocal group The Lettermen is back in Manila for another wonderful concert.

In an exclusive interview with abs-cbnNEWS.com, members of the Lettermen Tony Butala, Donovan Tea and Mark Preston talked about their concert that will be held at Araneta Coliseum, July  3, Thursday at 8 p.m.

"Our concert tomorrow at the Araneta Coliseum will be a little different than last year and little bit different from year before. We are trying to change our show by maybe 20% each year to keep some new songs in but also we have to make sure [we include]  the old songs, too," Butala, the founder of the popular group said.

Butala said that they consider their show as a delicate one. He said that they need to balance their program since it's relatively long--running for almost two hours.

In the concert,  The Lettermen members will do solo performances. They will condense the hit records into medleys.

"It's a new thing we always include songs in Tagalog, we invite the people up on stage to  take pictures with us... we encourage people to come up take pictures with us," Tea added.

For this year, The Lettermen's concert will be more special since they will be performing with Pat Upton from the Spiral Staircase.

The trio shared that Philippines is one of their favorite countries--they love visiting and performing here.

"We love the weather, this is the first time that we'd been here this particular time of year. It's wonderful to come over here when it's freezing back in the United States. We love the people because they are all so friendly, you just feel like they are family and we love the food," Tea said.

 Aside from their upcoming concert in the country the group is also busy promoting their latest albums.

The Lettermen just finished recording their latest album "The Lettermen Live in The Philippines" from their last year's concert. The album is now available nationwide.

"We just released the 76th album "Lettermen Best of Broadway" and another is the "Lettermen Favorites." So really in the last eight or nine months we released three news album," Mark Preston said.

Batula said they are trying to finding ways on how to release their "Lettermen Best of Broadway" CD here in the Philippines. Tea, however, said that all of their albums are now available either thru the Lettermen web site www.thelettermen.com or you can find it on iTunes.

The Lettermen are the trio who popularized the hit "The Way You Look Tonight" in 1961. Then followed by another chart topper hit "When I Fall In Love."

The group loves to sing Tagalog songs, and have already their versions of "Dahil Sa Iyo, "Ikaw", "Hindi Kita Malimot" at "Sapagkat Kami ay Tao Lamang"; they are looking for new songs by a new generation of  Filipino songwriters.

"We wanna do some Tagalog songs, that's one thing we are starting to work on," Batula replied when asked of what's the Lettermen's dream project.

"We would like to have [another hit record]  I mean anything in the top 200, just one more. I don't know if that would happen but you know lightning does strike every once in a while and we are still recording, thinking and trying not to rest," Tea added.

"We'd like to have something that is our combination. I would like for this combination to have a shot with some kind of airplay on the charts... something on the top 200 or 100 whatever," Preston ended.