SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL: In Fort Lauderdale, Yacht Rock Revue wants to kiss you all over

Yacht Rock Revue began a dozen years ago as a joke, a one-off show by an Atlanta indie-pop band called YOU, a Time-Life “Sounds of the 70s” CD package come to life, in mustaches and chest-hair-baring button-downs. But the bar quickly became packed with young people, as was an encore the next week.

The band’s raucous, sing-along evenings of Ambrosia’s “How Much I Feel,” Player’s “Baby Come Back,” and Seals and Crofts’ “Diamond Girl" soon evolved from curiosity into a thing, which has endured: When YRR performed last year at Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale, the yachting capital of the world, it was a sellout.

Why? Lead singer and YRR co-founder Nick Niespodziani says the band’s show — both a sincere homage and an irreverent, boozy takedown of the light-rock genre and its poly-yesterday fashion — has a unique power to inspire memories and an intoxicating euphoria. Even in people who weren’t born when America’s “Sister Golden Hair” came out, like Niespodziani, 41.

In advance of the Feb. 21 release of an album of eerily retro originals, “Hot Dads in Tight Jeans,” YRR is on a tour stopping in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 7, when the band’s fans, the so-called Nation of Smooth, in their captain’s hats, will meet again at Revolution Live. Speaking by phone, Niespodziani explained the intent of Yacht Rock Revue simply: “We make people happy for a living.”

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Written By: BEN CRANDELL