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Horton joins new band with popular rockers

Former Southold Town Supervisor Josh Horton is the lead singer in a new rock and roll band. And it’s not Big Suga, the group that has performed locally in recent years, including at the NoFo music festival this past summer at Peconic Bay Vineyards in Cutchogue.
The name of the new group is Corky Laing & The Memory Thieves, and three of its four members — Mr. Horton, Mr. Laing and Malcolm Bruce — performed at the NoFo festival. The fourth member is Eric Schenkman, the songwriter and guitarist for the popular New Jersey rock band The Spin Doctors. He also “fronts a band called Open Heart Society that records and performs as a mechanism to raise awareness for Canadian Agricultural issues,” Mr. Horton wrote in an e-mail message this week.
The Memory Thieves will perform their first public show at the Miami (Florida) Music Festival on Friday, Nov. 12, at Charcoal Studios. They also are scheduled to perform Saturday, Nov. 27, at B.B. King’s Blues Club in New York City in a tribute to the late rock legend Jimi Hendrix, who was born on that date in 1942. They will play that show under the name Corky Laing Allstars.
Mr. Laing plays the drums and Mr. Bruce the bass guitar for Mountain and West, Bruce & Laing, both of which performed at the NoFo Fest. Mr. Bruce is the son of Jack Bruce, the British bass player who was a member of Cream and co-founded the original West, Bruce & Laing in 1972.
In his e-mail message, Mr. Horton wrote: “We have designed [The Memory Thieves] to be a core group of four, but given the busy lives of each member, touring schedules of some and a collective vision that we want to draw upon the experience and creativity of different musicians at any given time, we also intentionally leave room for a variety of musicians to come and go throughout our songwriting process and future performances.”
Two other artists who performed at the NoFo festival also are scheduled to perform at the Miami Music Festival. They are Pat Dinizio of The Smithereens, who will appear at Charcoal Studios on the same bill as The Memory Thieves, and Devon Allman and Honeytribe, who will appear at the Vagabond on Saturday, Nov. 13.
Asked if his career as a rock and roll performer will supplant his current position as senior managing director of Corcoran real estate’s North Fork office, Mr. Horton responded:  “I have a day job and a career that is very important to me and I am not looking to quit.”