Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Lon Bronson trumpets reunion with Drew Carey; Penn Jillette has one word for The Donald

Drew Carey-Surrender

Erik Kabik / ErikKabik.com

Drew Carey and friends at Surrender in Encore Las Vegas.

Penn Jillette on 'All-Star Celebrity Apprentice'

Gary Busey, Dee Snider and Penn Jillette on Launch slideshow »

‘Veronic Voices’ Premiere at Bally’s

Remon Boulerice, Veronic Dicaire, Rene Angelil and Celine Dion arrive at the Launch slideshow »

Grand Opening of SLS Las Vegas

Philippe Starck, Sam Nazarian, Lenny Kravitz and Jose Andres at the grand opening of SLS Las Vegas on Friday, Aug. 22, 2014, on the Strip. Launch slideshow »

The Kats Report Bureau at this writing is somewhere in the air between Boise, Idaho, and Seattle. A visit with the family (my own, as it turns out) is the reason for this trip. All I can say is spending time with a 2-year-old nephew and 94-year-old grandmother at the same party is time well spent.

I remember once not long ago showing Grandma Margaret my MacBook Air, flipping open the screen and powering up. “Ooh! It glows!” she said. She’s now playing card games on an iPad.

But she’s not planning to open a social media account any time soon, relying on the old-fashioned method of keeping up with her grandson. So we make phone calls and visit, and on Sunday we relished in Brother Bill’s Boise Backyard Barbecue.

Let’s flip some burgers now, eh?

• Lon Bronson’s All-Star Band played its latest sold-out show at Cabaret Jazz in the Smith Center on Saturday night. During the performance, “The Price Is Right” host Drew Carey, a longtime friend of Bronson’s, strode onstage and sang background on Bronson’s torrid cover of Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4.”

Carey and Bronson met as Bronson started his run at the Riviera in the mid-’90s, when Carey was still a touring comic and before the launch of “The Drew Carey Show.” Over the years, Carey has joined Bronson onstage, at the Riv and later at Ovation at Green Valley Ranch.

Carey is something of a trumpet player — the Lon Bronson of the game-show-host set, as it were — which is initially what drew him to Bronson’s band. If you look closely at the set of Carey’s TV show, his old trumpet from high school is displayed on a stand behind his couch.

Another celeb who has hit the stage with Bronson, including a memorable cover of “Come Together,” also at Ovation, has been Penn Jillette. Bronson plays drums in Jillette’s No God Band, a side project that has headlined the Amazing Party at South Point as recently as 2014. And on the topic of Jillette …

• Known for his linguistic efficiency, Jillette posted a swift comment on a story about Donald Trump that I shared on Facebook. The piece detailed Trump’s recent criticism of John McCain’s military service, claiming that because Trump was captured and held captive in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War, McCain should not be considered a war hero.

Trump is still running for the Republican nomination for the presidency. Jillette’s one-word dismissal of The Donald: “Bye.”

• Veronic has ended her run at Bally’s, and it might be the final run for her in Jubilee Theater. Veronic closed June 13 and has since performed at the opening ceremonies of the Pan Am Games in Toronto on July 10 and is currently headlining through Aug. 15 in Saint-Sauveur, Quebec, near Montreal.

She has no dates set for a return to the Strip, but there are tremors that she is interested in the Venetian and, curiously, Encore. More will be revealed, as Veronic loves playing Las Vegas and seems to have made the city an effective launching point for road dates, especially those for her legions of French-Canadian fans.

• Reps of Mo5aic have now made at least two trips to Sin City Theater to scout that room, evidently as a possible home for the well-liked a cappella group. Pete Housley from Sin City Theater confirms that Mo5aic this last week looked at the recently renovated venue as a “tire-kicking mission.”

Once more, the Sin City Theater lineup in the new Norbert Aleman regime is Aleman’s “Crazy Girls” adult revue, Murray Sawchuck’s daily afternoon comedy-magic show and the Sin City Comedy showcase.

• My recent interview with SLS Las Vegas President and COO Scott Kreeger revealed that the new Bonkers comedy lineup at the Sayers Club is just the beginning of the hotel’s investigation of live entertainment.

And not just at the Sayers Club.

Kreeger talked of bands and comedy being booked at Life nightclub, which has all but ditched its star-DJ strategy and moved much of the EDM focus to Foxtail Pool and nightclub. Life was built into the original theater space at the Sahara, and Kreeger says he envisions, eventually, a regular rotation of live performances by bands and comics in that space.

“We’re already talking about a comedy series in there, in Life,” Kreeger said during the interview in his SLS office a couple of weeks ago. “… It’s a great venue, not programmed all the time, so why not early on before we put a live band in there at night, early in the evening, put a comedy act in there?

“The nice thing about the property is we have some great components.”

Bonkerz runs Thursdays through Saturdays, just $10 a pop for shows that start at 8 p.m. (doors at 7 p.m.). The Sayers Club already offers live music on Friday and Saturdays at 10 p.m.

One quibble about SLS since its opening — and we’re coming up on a year, in August, to mark the anniversary — is its absence of live entertainment to animate the property. Another quibble as the hotel moves forward is I cannot find the Bonkers lineup on the SLS Las Vegas website.

I’m drilling. No can find. Let’s promote this series, eh?

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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