Dr. Hook shares the night at New Hope Winery

Dr. Hook featuring Ray Sawyer will be playing live in concert at the New Hope Winery in New Hope for one night and one night only — April 10, 2014 at 8 p.m.

Dr. Hook was formed in the late 1960s and was known as Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. They were signed to Columbia Records by Clive Davis and later moved to Capital Records, with a name change to just ‘Dr. Hook.’ Some of their best known hits are Sylvia’s Mother, Cover Of The Rolling Stone, When You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman and Sharing The Night Together.

The founding core of the band consisted of three Southerners who had worked together in a band called The Chocolate Papers, George Cummings, Ray Sawyer and Billy Francis. They had played the South, up and down the East Coast, and into the Midwest, before breaking up. Cummings, who moved to New Jersey with the plan of forming a new band, brought back Sawyer to rejoin him. They then took on future primary vocalist, Jersey native Dennis Locorriere, at first as a bass player. Francis, who had returned South after the Chocolate Papers broke up, returned to be the new band’s keyboardist.

When told by a club owner that they needed a name to put on a poster in the window of his establishment, Cummings made a sign: “Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show: Tonic for the Soul.” The “Hook” name was inspired by Sawyer’s nickname Captain Hook from the Peter Pan fairy tale, though, humorously, because Captain Hook was neither a doctor nor wore an eye patch. The “medicine show” and “doctor” (referring to the traveling medicine shows common in the 19th century) were intended as tongue-in-cheek support for drug use. Ray Sawyer lost an eye in a near-fatal car crash in Oregon in 1967, and has worn an eye patch ever since. To this day, Sawyer is mistakenly considered Dr. Hook because of the eye patch he wears.

VIP reserved seating is $80 and regular reserved is $65.