Bucks County native and longtime New Hope resident Bob Egan spends a lot of time away from his bucolic home, which also serves as his office and rehearsal space. Most nights of the week, the pianist and entertainer is performing at restaurants, clubs, parties, lounges and events all over the region: Bucks County, Atlantic City and New York City.
“I love when I get back here,” he said about having recently returned to New Hope from a performance in Atlantic City. “The dogs are here. Actually some of my days are not in the office. Had today been nice, I would have probably been on the tractor cutting the lawn. I love working. I do most of my yard work. I cut my lawn and do all my weeding. When I’m here, it’s not all business.”
Egan said that while he has seen many changes in New Hope since he first moved there, it’s still a great place to live.
“It’s still wonderful,” he said. “Everything changes but it’s still beautiful. It’s still a magnet for amazing people. Everybody here is really busy. Nobody here is just laying around loafing. Everybody here is very driven.”
Egan grew up in Bucks County neighbor Warminster and then moved to Doylestown before heading to New Hope.
In addition to entertaining at various venues in the region, Egan runs his own entertainment agency, with his trusty assistant Sandy, matching up bands, musicians, DJs and other performers with special events, parties and fundraisers. It’s familiar territory for Egan, who was entertainment director, founder and producer of the Cabaret at Odette’s, which ran for 19 years.
“I started that cabaret in 1985,” he said. “That was a magic year for me because that’s when I started a piano bar in the Poconos and then I started a cabaret there a year later. At the same time, I started Bob Egan Entertainment. I always felt like I was three people: I was a music performer, an entertainment coordinator and a music producer. But they all kind of worked together.”
Odette’s closed in 2006, but Egan continues to stay busy performing as well as hosting showcases and open mic nights all over the area, gigs that require him to keep his iPad loaded and updated with songbooks.
“Sometimes, it’s as much as seven nights a week but usually it’s five or six,” Egan said of his schedule these days. “What I was doing mostly since Odette’s closed is showcase nights where I would take 10 performers and present them. I would get them stage time so they could be seen and heard by a lot of people and they would get that experience of getting up there to become a better performer. That was a lot of fun. I did that up until a year ago. That’s the part that went away and then I become more involved with the entertainment office and worrying about my own performances and my own schedule.”
Egan said that performing with different singers on a nightly basis keeps him on his toes as a pianist.
“I love doing the open mics,” he said. “I want people to get up and sing. It’s their outlet. It’s their 15 minutes. I’m all prepared. It’s fun for me. It challenges me every night. Last night somebody asked me for a Jethro Tull song. I love that stuff but I’ve never been asked to play it. Everything I do is about challenging myself so that it’s always fresh and it never feels like work. I could never be one of those performers that works at the same hotel five nights a week. That would be like work. That’s why I specifically set out to have a night here, a night in Atlantic City, a night in Philadelphia and a night in Asbury Park. The downside of that is a lot of driving.”
Even though he’s been in business for more than 30 years, Egan never gets to a point where he feels he can coast or rest on his laurels, which also helps keep things fresh.
“I can never understand when people say they are bored,” he said. “During the day, there are so many things I have to do. Sometimes it’s just scheduling because I like to plan ahead. It takes a lot of time. On top of that, there’s the whole social-media thing. I never want to assume that everyone is going to show up. And when I go somewhere and they do show up, I’m thrilled. You have to constantly promote every day. You have to make sure your website is good; that’s tricky to stay on top of it with the video and the audio. One of the things I’m conscious about and have been focusing on for the last few years is changing the stigma of what my piano bar or my open-mic nights are. I’ve had people say, ‘Oh, we don’t do those because it’s Broadway.’ In some people’s minds, a piano bar is people singing Broadway songs. When I play, I play it all. I want young singers coming in saying, ‘I want to sing Adele or Bruno Mars.’ I want older people. I’ll play Cole Porter and other things from the 1920s. I’ll play country. There’s no pigeonholing it. We’re just celebrating good music.”
Bob Egan appears at the piano weekly at Bowman’s Tavern in New Hope, Moonstruck in Asbury Park and The Claridge in Atlantic City.
For more information, visit www.bobeganentertainment.com.