Nigel St. Hubbins is one of the original creators and the current captain at the helm of Wunderlust—A Tribute to One-Hit Wonders. I recently met up with Nigel to find out about the band, his own background, and to listen to them perform at the Peavine Taphouse.
St. Hubbins grew up in Lancaster, just outside of Buffalo, New York, and started playing guitar when he was 13. He is also a military veteran, having served in the Air Force. He spent many years honing his craft while playing in a number of bands in the Buffalo/Lancaster area.
Since music wasn’t paying the bills, he returned to college and got a degree in respiratory therapy, then started working in a hospital while still playing music. Due to a struggling economy in New York, he and his family moved to Reno in 1995 where he and his wife quickly found work in the healthcare industry.
Being a dedicated musician, he made new musical friends and started playing in bands around town. St. Hubbins eventually formed his own band called HARDRIVE.
Wunderlust started up in 2005 as an offshoot of HARDRIVE. St. Hubbins had formed various tribute bands along the way—to Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick and others—but he found that it was a challenging and unpleasant requirement to try and look like the musicians in those bands. About his tribute bands, he used to say, “If you close your eyes, we look just like them.”
“Wunderlust is great,” he said. “We pay tribute to lots of one-hit wonder bands, plus we do a lot of other classic rock songs, and we don’t have to look like anybody.”
“Who wants to look like A Flock of Seagulls?”
– Nigel St. Hubbins
The band has gone through many incarnations since its inception in 2005. COVID-19’s shutdown in 2020 damaged the band to the point where they recently had to start over.
Last week’s show at Peavine was Wunderlust’s second performance in its current incarnation, but you wouldn’t know it by their performance. It was also one year to the day from their last performance at Peavine Taphouse. There was no shortage of energy and talent on stage and the crowd was very much into it.
Besides being good musicians, they put on a good show with life-sized movie star cutouts on stage with them, and Scott Szpila (on bass) donned a different goofy hat for every song. There were several birthday parties going on, so the room was much fuller than I have seen it in a long time. It felt like old times.
Wunderlust consists of Nigel St. Hubbins on lead and rhythm guitar and vocals; JC Tnez on rhythm guitar, keyboards and vocals; Scott Szpila (Nigel’s son) on bass guitar and vocals; and Mark Anthony on drums, percussion and vocals. All members sing both lead and backup vocals.
For more on the band visit Wunderlust on Facebook or email Nigel St. Huggins at [email protected].
