Northeast Ohio rocker comes to town to promote ‘Man Up Mahoning Valley’ Michael unplugged

June 11, 2015 at 12:05a.m.

For the better part of five decades, Michael Stanley has been performing his special brand of Midwest rock ’n’ roll.

The former Michael Stanley Band (MSB) singer-visionary and current WNCX-FM afternoon disc jockey still is going strong, with a new album due out later this year. While he’s still active playing a dozen or shows annually, the question is how long does this Ohio Buckeye Card holder – Stanley is 67 – think he’ll keep the show on the road?

“It all comes down to The [Rolling] Stones,” Stanley said. “As long as they’re still doing it, none of us have any excuse. It’s like they’re older than us, and they’re still doing it.”

What Stanley and his backing band The Resonators are doing this weekend is an all-acoustic show to benefit Man Up Mahoning Valley, which aims to increase prostate-cancer awareness. The show, Stanley’s first unplugged performance in Youngstown in 25 years, will take place Sunday in the Ford Family Recital Hall.

“It’s important because we’re guys, and we don’t take care of business on the medical front very often,” Stanley said. “It’s like, ‘I don’t want to know’ or ‘Things will get better’ or ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you.’ And if you’ve learned anything over the years, that’s certainly not true.”

Supported by Mercy Health Foundation Mahoning Valley, Man Up promotes prostate-cancer awareness and seeks to eliminate barriers to care by providing free prostate-cancer screenings, PSA blood tests and education.

Stanley stressed that the idea simply is to make men aware the prostate exam isn’t a big deal to have done. He speaks from experience.

“It’s something I’ve been doing for a long time,” Stanley said. “Anything you can do to make people aware of the fact you need to take a little bit of responsibility and be proactive in this will save some lives.”

As for the set list, Stanley promises to reinterpret a number of popular songs from his catalog, as well as dig out a few gems from the early MSB albums. There also will be post-MSB songs, which recently were highlighted in a three-CD retrospective release, “The Solo Years – 1995 to 2014.”

Stanley cherry-picked through two decades of music, which was divided into the energetic tunes on “The Rousers,” the ballads on “The Weepies” and the fan favorites on “Crispy’s Critters.”

So with those descriptions in mind, will the upcoming Youngstown show feature more rousers, weepies or crispy’s critters?

“I think very few crispy’s critters,” Stanley said. “Those are significantly electric and are production-based things as opposed to doing them live. It’ll be definitely be a mellower show than the big-band, but at the same time, we realize there has to be some tempo involved. For us, it’s an interesting challenge. I think everyone that participates has a good time doing it.”

Perhaps an apropos cover song for Stanley on this evening will be “Moon River,” which Chevy Chase famously started singing in “Fletch” when his character was getting a prostate exam.

“That’s a good one,” laughed Stanley. “That would be an inside joke, no pun intended there.”