Friday, May 2, 2003 | 9:36 a.m.
Jerry Fink's lounge column appears on Fridays. Reach him at [email protected] at (702) 259-4058.
When the two lead singers come onstage wearing stilts, top hats and silk coats and pants, you know this isn't going to be your typical lounge act.
There's nothing typical about "Soul Desire."
The creative team of Tony Perry and Tezz Yancey have taken a Broadway-style production, reduced its size and scope so that it will fit on a lounge stage and are creating a sensation at New York-New York's Big Apple Bar.
The moment Perry and Yancey begin performing, the lounge fills with fans. Gamblers within earshot and eyeshot of the show pause to watch as the two entertainers blend soul, pop, Latin, disco, rock 'n' roll, funk and R&B music into a show that appeals to almost everyone.
They aren't content to merely sing and do a few dance steps. Perry and Yancey throw themselves into their production, confident that this is a rung up the ladder of success.
Today a lounge, tomorrow a showroom.
But the lounge where they perform four shows nightly through the week, and five on weekends, isn't too shabby.
The Big Apple Bar is a mini-showroom, with a 60-foot ceiling, comfortable sofas and easy chairs and a stage six feet off the floor behind the horseshoe-shaped bar.
If you have to be stuck somewhere while waiting for your showroom break to happen, the Big Apple is the place to be.
"Soul Desire" began a two-week stint at the venue last summer, and it soon turned into a long-term contract.
Fans couldn't be happier. The room is full almost every performance.
"We love to do showy stuff, which makes our shows unique," Perry said. "We just don't get up there and sing, do a few dance steps and keep watching the clock. We're there to perform, and that's what we do."
The two men have been training most of their lives.
Perry was born and raised in Miami, where he sang in church choirs as a child and enrolled in music classes in high school.
A teacher encouraged Perry to pursue music as a career, and so he studied at the Miami Conservatory of Ballet.
Perry starred in "Carousel" in his senior year of high school.
"That's when I knew for sure I wanted a career as a dancer," Perry said.
After graduation he spent the summer in New York studying with the Dance Theater of Harlem, then returned to Miami and worked in a bank for five years, all the while studying and auditioning.
Eventually he landed a seven-month gig at Disney World in Tokyo with the production, "Swing & Sing."
After Perry returned to Miami, he learned about an open audition for "Enter the Night" at the Stardust. He joined the cast on June 3, 1991, as a dancer, and when he left the show two years later he was principal dancer and singer.
His next role was the lead (Electra) in "Starlight Express." It was there he met Yancey, who joined the cast a short time later.
Yancey became interested in singing and dance while still in elementary school in his native Boston. He choreographed his first musical, which included a cast of 20 students, while in the seventh grade.
"That was my beginning," Yancey said. "I knew right then I was never going to be satisfied unless I was performing."
After high school he enrolled in the Boston Conservatory of Musical Theater. Two years later in 1992 he joined a musical revue on a 13-week tour of Japan and China.
When the tour ended he returned to Boston and New York to continue his training until 1994, when he joined the cast of "Starlight Express."
Perry and Yancey learned they shared a lot of common interests and, while still with "Starlight" at the Las Vegas Hilton, they began putting together their own production in their spare time.
They left "Starlight" before it closed in '98 and struck out on their own. One of their first gigs was a showcase at the Stratosphere, where they confused the management.
"We were very flamboyant," Yancey said. "They didn't understand what we were doing, and they told us to never come back."
Undeterred, the two men kept knocking on doors. One of them led to a spot in a musical revue in the Fujita Beach Resort on the island of Guam in 1997.
"It was a Vegas-type show and we had a 33-minute spot, which really gave us the confidence to keep going with our style of a show," Perry said.
They returned to Vegas in '98, knocked on more doors and eventually joined the "Extreme Scene" production at Union Plaza, where an agent spotted them and got them a gig at the Nightclub at the Las Vegas Hilton.
They played a number of other venues, including Paris Las Vegas, before landing at the Big Apple Bar, where they have been joined by female vocalists Reva Rice and Avis Nixon and a band that includes musical director/guitarist Nate Wingfield, keyboardist Atticus Finch, bassist Jimmy Allen and percussionist Robert Shipley.
The high energy level of the production is kept at its peak through all four or five shows.
While other entertainers may not give 100 percent to lounge patrons, Soul Desire never lets up.
Today's lounge customer may be sitting in the showroom tomorrow.
"Besides, we love what we're doing," Perry said.
Lounging around
Join Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman in celebrating Mother's Day with the Walter Boenig Big Band and vocalist Jo Belle at the Reed Whipple Cultural Center, 821 Las Vegas Blvd. North. The popular annual concert, which begins at 2 p.m. May 11, is presented by the Cultural Affairs Division of the Las Vegas Department of Leisure Services. Admission is free, but tickets are required and are available for pick up in person or by mail. Ticket holders must be seated at least 15 minutes before the performance or their tickets will be released on a first-come, first-served basis.
Guitar virtuoso Alex de Grassi will perform at the Winchester Community Center, 3130 S. McLeod Drive, at 7 p.m. today. Acoustic Guitar magazine calls de Grassi "one of the world's finest fingerstyle steel string guitar players and composers." His latest CD, scheduled for release in June, is "Now and Then."
A series of free lunchtime concerts Fridays during the month of May will be held in City Park, Fourth Street and Stewart Avenue (across from City Hall). Entertainment is from 11:30 a.m to 1:30 p.m. Call 229-4614 for information.
The Marty Warburton Band kicks off the series May 9 with bluegrass music. Mestivo USA performs May 16 with its blend of Latin and continental music, including mariachi, bolero, ranchero, salsa and cumbia. May 23 the Las Vegas Legacy Band will perform big band swing music from the 1930s and '40s. The Dynamic Trombone Quartet with Walt Boenig concludes the series May 30.
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