By Craig Horleman

Chances are good that if you are listening to a song by Middle 8, you’ve heard it before. It just might take you a minute to figure out what it is.

The Camden-based quartet will play two area events next week — the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village Concert Series in Dover on Wednesday night and the annual Dover Comic Con Aug. 14.

Armed with a healthy dose of original music, Middle 8 also performs a host of cover tunes in its own unique way. The band consists of Josh Zimmerman on rhythm guitar, keyboards and vocals, Joel Hazzard on bass guitar, Jim Nye on drums and Elyse Nehrbas on flute. That’s right, flute.

“We do a cover of ‘Mad World’ by Tears for Fears. We take that and we combine elements of the original ’80s kind of synth dance pop sort of thing and then we take that and also kind of jazz it up a little bit and we take the flute and make it much more kind of flowy and sort of pouring some molasses into it a little bit to sweeten it up and to slow it down,” Mr. Zimmerman said.

“Another example would be, and we’re not doing this one currently, but we do a really nice version of ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac. The objective is always to kind of do the cover song and we want people to recognize it, but we don’t want them to recognize it right away.

“We do kind of a Motown version of Norah Jones’ ‘Don’t Know Why.’ We like to cross contaminate genres, and if it works, it works. If it sounds good. it sounds good.”

Mr. Zimmerman, Mr. Hazzard and Mr. Nye started playing together in the mid-2000s in the local band Xylem, which was a more guitar-driven outfit.

“The core of us have been playing for close to 15 years together and when we started this new band about four years ago, we brought in a flutist. I wanted to do some alternative stuff and we thought a flute would be kind of cool,” Mr. Zimmerman said.

“And so we sort of shaped our sound around some of that. So it became a fusion rock, jazz thing. But adding in the flute and keyboards, it’s kind of given us a little bit of a unique sound compared to other stuff we’re hearing around.”

The name Middle 8 is a musical term meaning a section in a song that tends to happen towards the middle and tends to be eight bars in length. The purpose of the section is to break up the simple repetition of a verse and chorus by introducing new elements into the song.

“I guess we’re very Beatles inspired so they would always refer to ‘the bridge’. ... For us, the middle eight of a song is in itself an alternative to the song. It’s kind of a diversion from the norm and it’s very catchy in its own right,” Mr. Zimmerman said.

Middle 8’s Facebook page says band members “provide time- and genre-crossing grooves through deconstructivized covers and original works.”

“We’re not happy with a cover song until we’ve literally taken it apart piece by piece, and we put it back together with pieces of it that we really find unique,” Mr. Zimmerman said.

“Even when we do a cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean,’ there’s some some production in there that Quincy Jones did at the time — little kind of flute samples and some other stuff — that maybe is a little subtle, that we emphasize. We do deconstruct things and I like to think of it as like a Lego game. You take the songs and you tear apart the songs and some of the pieces of one song will really fit well into other things.

“So that’s the thing. We put Black Sabbath in the middle of that Norah Jones song. So we like to pull on people’s ears and put them back in place when we’re done.”

During a Middle 8 show, the offbeat cover tunes are skillfully mixed with their original songs.

“I think I’ve just become a better songwriter. If I listened back to my stuff I was doing (in the Xylem days), not that it was bad. Some of it was good but I’ve improved as a songwriter,” Mr. Zimmerman said.

“But I think the other thing that we’ve done to kind of make these things work for the audience, instead of just saying, ‘Here’s a cover. Here’s an original. Here’s a cover’. We’ve seamlessly kind of woven them together where if you’re an audience member, you just hear it as like, ‘Well those were some good songs. They were catchy. Maybe they were covers. Maybe they weren’t.’ You don’t really know but you know you enjoyed them.”

Mr. Zimmerman said the band’s eclectic sound comes from members’ varied tastes.

“Our drummer is from heavy metal land and our flutist is top 40. I like jazz and R&B and then our bass player is kind of classic rock. So we realized that with all of our influences, some of them played really nicely together and we didn’t really see the purpose of keeping them separate.”

Mr. Zimmerman said the band has been popular with local music fans from the start.

“When we first came together, we were really hesitant, even about getting out there. Because we really wanted to make sure that we were refining what we were doing before we presented it,” Mr. Zimmerman said.

“We knew that for some of the use of the flute, we wanted to really nail it down so that when we presented our product, we had it ready to roll. I would say out the gate, we’ve been really well received.”

Mr. Zimmerman said an unexpected offshoot of the success of the band has produced a duo with just himself on keyboards and Ms. Nehrbas on flute.

“It’s nice because the stuff with the flute and piano is a whole other aspect of what we do. We’ll do versions of these songs we do with the band but in a completely different way. Like we’ll kind of jazz up ‘Raspberry Beret’ by Prince. We don’t do that in the band, but we’ll do it with the flute and piano duo,” he said.

The band hopes to have its first album or EP out soon.

“We’ve started really recording and locking down some of the songs. We are hoping to have maybe like a seven-song EP — seven to 10 songs — out by hopefully next spring and get those all nailed down. I think we have three or four that are really solid but I want to keep refining. It’s never good enough, that’s the problem,” Mr. Zimmerman said.

Wednesday night’s show at the Ag Museum wraps up a three-concert summer series for the facility.

“The summer concert series is a first for the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village and has proved a triumph,” said Carolyn Claypool, executive director of the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village.

“A record number of tickets were sold for the first two fabulous concerts: June 16 featuring the Homestead Bluegrass Band and July 14 featuring Joey Fulkerson and we are anticipating a sellout for the August 11 concert featuring Middle 8.”

Food and beverage vendors for the concerts include Fordham and Dominion Brewery, Harvest Ridge Winery, Smashmouth Burgers and Gastro Graffiti. Guests are asked to bring a chair or blanket. In case of rain, the show will be held inside the museum.

For information and tickets to the 6 p.m. show, visit here.

For Dover Comic Con, Middle 8 will be performing a free show on The Green at 4 p.m. Mr. Zimmerman says to expect some special Comic Con-inspired numbers.

The day starts at 10 a.m. with authors, artists, vendors, costume contests, food vendors and much more.

For more information on Comic Con, visit here.

Simply Diamond

Saturday night, Smyrna Opera House will host the Neil Diamond tribute, Simply Diamond.

Several years ago, Paul Shaffer, the bandleader from “The Late Show with David Letterman,” heard Brian La Blanc sing a Neil Diamond song. He was amazed at how much he sounded like Neil Diamond.

He suggested that Mr. La Blanc start a Neil Diamond tribute band. Mr. La Blanc’s wife Rosanne quickly came up with the name “Simply Diamond” and the journey had officially begun. Since that time, Simply Diamond has toured across the United States and has also visited other countries.

Tickets are $25. Tickets purchased for the canceled Aug. 1, 2020 performance will be honored for this date.

For more information, visit here, call 653-4236 or visit the box office at 7 W. South St.

Indian Dance Troupe

Freeman Arts Pavilion is set to present the Nanticoke Indian Dance Troupe on Saturday as part of its 2021 season.

This performance, which will take place at the open-air venue in Selbyville, is free and open to the public. The Nanticoke Indian Dance Troupe is made up of Native American dancers of all ages who demonstrate their individual dance styles for both women and men. Patrons can learn more about the Nanticoke culture through dance, flute music and story-telling.

All performances at Freeman Arts Pavilion this season will utilize pod seating and are Bring Your Own Chair events. Patrons can register for this event at freemanarts.org.

Robbins steps down at UD

After 32 years of working as the producing artistic director of the Resident Ensemble Players, founder and director of the Professional Theatre Training Program, and theatre department chairman at the University of Delaware, Sanford “Sandy” Robbins has announced that he will complete his leadership of the REP and Theatre Department on Aug. 31, 2022.

Steve Tague, a founding member of the REP acting company, frequent REP director, and Theatre Department faculty member, has agreed to serve as the interim producing artistic director of the REP and chairman of the theatre department for one year as the University of Delaware administration, in consultation with the theatre department faculty, conducts a search for a successor.

Under Mr. Robbins’ leadership the REP has offered 13 seasons of theatre, including seven new adaptations of classic plays, five world premieres of plays written expressly for the REP.

Mr. Robbins is also the founder of the Professional Theatre Training Program. The PTTP began at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where it operated for 12 years before being aggressively recruited by the University of Delaware administration.

“Throughout my time in Delaware, I have been privileged to collaborate with extraordinarily talented, committed, and big-hearted people in our organization and in our guests.” Mr. Robbins said. “I will always deeply appreciate the gift it has been to participate with you. In the meantime, I am very much here until this time next year and very much looking forward to the upcoming theatre season and academic year.”

Now showing

New this weekend in theaters is “The Suicide Squad.”