Michael Bluestein is a familiar name to many in the Bay Area jazz community, where the keyboardist spent years working clubs and collaborating with such top talented local artists as Anton Schwartz, Matt Chamberlain and Will Bernard.
The Massachusetts native landed in San Francisco, not long after receiving B.A. from Berklee College of Music, and just fell in love with the thriving jazz scene that was truly happening here in the ’90s
“It was an amazing time,” Bluestein reflects during a recent Zoom interview from his hotel room in Las Vegas.
That time, for Bluestein, came to an end when he moved to Los Angeles in 2003. Oh, but another — much higher-profile — chapter was just beginning as Bluestein became immersed in the SoCal music industry and eventually landed a coveted gig as the keyboardist for classic-rock juggernaut Foreigner.
That’s why he’s making the Zoom call from Vegas, where Foreigner has been performing an ongoing residency at the lovely Venetian Theatre at the hotel of the same name for years. Mere hours after our chat, Bluestein and his fellow musicians would be up onstage and rocking yet another jam-packed Venetian audience with such Foreigner favorites as “Cold as Ice,” “Urgent,” “Juke Box Hero” and, best of all, “Blue Morning, Blue Day.”
Foreigner, famously, has no original members left in the touring band and boasts a lineup that has gone through more changes than the Las Vegas Raiders’ quarterback depth chart. (If you ever want to use up a good hour or three, just take a gander at the “List of Foreigner band members” Wikipedia page.)
Yet, none of that seems to matter much as concert-goers keep right on turning out to see the band, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024 for such achievements as scoring 10 multi-platinum albums and 16 Top 30 hits.
And that should be the case once again when Bluestein makes a return trip to his old Bay Area stamping grounds to perform with Foreigner at the San Jose Civic on March 22. Showtime is 8 p.m. and tickets start at $97, ticketmaster.com.
It’s part of Foreigner’s The Greatest Hits Orchestral tour, which finds the band performing with a symphony at each stop. The trek also includes a date on March 21 at the Uptown Theatre in Napa, uptowntheatrenapa.com.
Here’s my chat with Bluestein, who has also toured/recorded with Boz Scaggs, Jacqui Naylor, Kenny Washington, Mary Stallings, Linda Perry, Shelby Lynne, Enrique Iglesias and others.
Q: Hey, Michael. Thanks for taking the time to Zoom with me today. Before we chat classic rock, let’s talk about your time on the Bay Area jazz scene.
A: Yeah, well, it was definitely a completely different chapter, that’s for sure — very different from the Foreigner chapter.
It was ’94 that I moved to San Francisco. Right before that, I was doing cruise ship gigs — on like Princess Cruises — and sort of in a limbo stage after college and figuring out what I was going to do. But it was a solid gig for a little while, playing in show bands — like doing musical theater stuff — on the cruise ships.
One of the ships docked in San Francisco and it was one of those idyllic San Francisco days — just like perfect temperature. It was just like amazing. I had a couple high school friends that had moved there and I was hanging out with them and it sort of hit, like, “I want to move here. This is just too amazing.”
I went back to Boston, cleaned up my affairs a little bit, and I picked up and moved to San Francisco.
Q: In San Francisco, you’d end up releasing a number of CDs — as we called them back in the day — under your own name. But you’d also play keys alongside a bunch of other notable Bay Area artists.
A: I stayed there for 10 years. The ’90s, as you know, was a really fertile time in the Bay Area for a lot of jazz and creative music — a lot of original music.
I was playing in Will Bernard’s band for years and, you know, playing all those spots in the Mission like Bruno’s. There was also a gig at Gordon Biersch in San Jose. I played the Monterey Jazz Festival with my own trio.
It was an amazing time. I feel like it’s a time that probably will never be repeated again, you know, as far as everything that was going on. It was before cell phones. It was before social media. It was a simpler time. (Laughs)
Q: Given your Bay Area roots, do you get a little extra charge — a little added excitement — when you come back to play a gig here?
A: For sure. I mean, I have so many memories. And it was such an important time for me, just developing as a musician and all the different gigs I was doing and really getting my jazz playing more together and playing in different contexts.
It’s just like I step back into a lot of those memories and a lot of that time in my life. And, as you know, it’s very different now. There aren’t as many places to play. It feels like a different place. The guys that used to live in San Francisco just like can’t live there anymore. It got too expensive and, you know the story, everybody moved to Oakland or even further out.
When I talked to fellow musicians that were there at that time, there’s this sense of, “Wow, we were there in this kind of golden era, you know?”
Q: My earliest memory of listening to Foreigner comes from spinning “Cold as Ice” on an old K-Tel record compilation that my awesome parents gave me. Do you have a first Foreigner memory?
A: I do. I have a pretty vivid memory. I grew up in the Boston area and there’s this pizza chain there called Papa Gino’s. We would go there occasionally with my brother and my mom and they had those sort of old diner-style jukeboxes where you turn the knob and, you know, the little names of the songs flip by.
I remember putting on “Hot Blooded” and just rocking to that. It was the late ’70s and all those songs — “Cold as Ice,” “Double Vision,” “Head Games,” “Blue Morning, Blue Day,” “Long, Long Way from Home” — were in heavy rotation on the radio.
And Boston’s a big rock town and was playing classic rock all the time. Well, in the late ’70s, it wasn’t classic rock — it was contemporary. But then going on into the ’80s and ’90s, you know, those songs have just stayed in heavy rotation.
Q: Do you ever trip out about how old the classic rock catalog is now? I mean, I remember listening to Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel” as a kid and thinking it was ancient. But, really, it had just come out like 20 years earlier. Now, my daughter is blasting ELO — because she has great taste in music — and I’m like, “That song came out a half-century ago!”
A: Yeah, Foreigner’s coming up on its 50th anniversary. “Feels Like the First Time” was released in ’77. Here we are in 2026 — so, next year, that’ll be 50 years. It is a trip and I’ve had that same thought of, like, “Oh, wow, so all that Beatles stuff from the ’60s was barely 10 years old when (some of that ’70s rock music) was happening.”
Q: Fifty years of rocking is quite an achievement. Why do you think Foreigner has managed to have such staying power?
A: I think it’s a combination of great songs, memorable guitar hooks and Lou Gramm’s voice — which was just kind of undeniable.
I just think at his peak, singing all these songs, he had this ferocious, amazing, high tenor voice that just got to you and that was incredibly memorable.
It was just one of the best ever.
Q: Of course, there are no original members left in the touring band — and there has been a ton of changeover in terms of the lineup over the decades. So, tell me about this current troupe and how it’s doing in carrying the Foreigner legacy forward.
A: So, it’s 18 years for me now (in the band). Jeff Pilson, the bass player, is like over 20 years. Guitarist Bruce Watson has 14-15 years. Chris Frazier, the drummer, has like 13 years. John Roth (who joined in 2025), on rhythm guitar, is the latest addition.
Luis Maldonado joined the band five years ago, coming on as a rhythm guitarist and background vocalist. But it turned out he had the most other-worldly, world-class tenor rock voice and is now fronting the band because Kelly Hansen retired just a few months ago. So, we have a new lead singer who’s crushing it — Luis Maldonado — who will be doing all these shows coming up.
Q: Hansen was on lead vocals last time I saw Foreigner. So, I’ll be curious to hear Maldonado on the mic in San Jose.
A: Kelly sang lead vocals for us for 20 years and decided to step back. He wanted to be with his family more — kind of get off the road — which was understandable. He stepped back and Luis came in and we have sort of a new lease on life.
A new chapter of the band has started — so that’s where we’re at now.