The Golden Nugget keeps its Friday habit through November, and the three nights it has booked are about as far apart as three rock bands can be. One is a glam-metal band with a new singer. One is billed with a guitarist who has not been a member since the nineties. One is a soft-rock group playing the night after Thanksgiving, and it's the smartest booking of the three. Same room on East Fremont, same ninety minutes, same twenty-one and over door. Entirely different evenings.
November 6: FireHouse
FireHouse still have the two songs that made them, and "Love of a Lifetime" is the one people forget they know every word to until the first line arrives. Bill Leverty on guitar and Michael Foster on drums have been there since the start, with Allen McKenzie on bass. The voice is new, and here's why: C.J. Snare died in April 2024, and Nate Peck took over that May after already touring with the band. Peck came up through a televised singing competition and got the job the hard way, which is a different proposition from a tribute act.
When: Friday November 6. On stage: Nate Peck on vocals with founding members Bill Leverty and Michael Foster. Sound: melodic hard rock and big ballads. Ages: twenty-one and over.
November 13: Dokken with George Lynch
This one is billed with two names on purpose, and the billing is the reason to go. Don Dokken has fronted the band continuously; Jon Levin has played lead guitar since 2003. George Lynch wrote the guitar parts everybody associates with the band, left in the nineties after a fight that went as far as a lawsuit, and has turned up as a touring guest since 2020 rather than rejoining. He also runs a separate project playing this same catalog with other singers, starting New Year's Eve. So this is the version with Don Dokken singing and Lynch on the bill, which is the combination that does not happen often.
When: Friday November 13. On stage: Don Dokken and his band, billed with original guitarist George Lynch. Sound: eighties metal built around lead guitar. Ages: twenty-one and over.
November 27: Ambrosia
Ambrosia land on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and on a night when the entire city is loud and full, a room full of close harmony downtown is the smartest booking on the calendar. Joe Puerta and Burleigh Drummond founded the band in Los Angeles in 1970 and both still play it. "How Much I Feel" and "Biggest Part of Me" both reached number three, and the band picked up Grammy nominations along the way, which isn't the usual resume for a group filed under soft rock. These are hard songs to sing and they sing them live, in a small room, with nothing hidden.
When: Friday November 27. On stage: founding members Joe Puerta and Burleigh Drummond. Sound: harmony-led seventies soft rock. Ages: twenty-one and over.
Which Friday to take
Want the singalong and the power ballad: FireHouse. Want to watch a guitarist work: the Dokken night, which is the only one of the three where the guitar chair is the whole story. Want a beautiful hour on the busiest weekend of the year, and you'd be right to want one: Ambrosia, and take it seriously as a Thanksgiving-weekend plan rather than an afterthought, because everything else downtown that night is a queue. The room doesn't change between them, so the only real variable is which of these catalogs you would rather hear from twenty feet away. October's run at the same address is five more Fridays of the same idea.
