Al Powers for Spiegelworld
Colin Cahill in “Atomic Saloon Show” at the Grand Canal Shoppes at Venetian.
Wednesday, March 17, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Actor and singer Colin Cahill first arrived in Las Vegas with his wife, Oklahoma-born actress, singer and dancer MaKenzie Fly, when she landed a prestigious role in the iconic “Jubilee!” in the show’s twilight years. When she scored the gig, the couple was working in cruise ship entertainment.
“There was a Frankie Valli tribute group called Oh What A Night [on the ship] that we had become friends with, and they were based in Las Vegas, so I immediately went to talk to them and asked, ‘Is there any way you guys are looking for a tall, blonde guy to play Frankie Valli,’” Cahill says on this week’s episode of the Sun on the Strip podcast. “They just happened to be looking.”
While his wife sang in “Jubilee!,” Cahill, a native of St. Louis who grew up in Alabama, performed in several Vegas shows thanks to his varied skill set, including the action-packed “Tournament of Kings,” the comedic “Sex Tips” and the sizzling male revue “Men of the Strip.” Then he landed his most solid role to date on the Strip in Spiegelworld’s hit “Atomic Saloon Show” at the Grand Canal Shoppes at Venetian.
“It was definitely my first major role that I got to originate and create it alongside all the other amazing [people] in this show,” he says. “It was a very collaborative process and I think it lead to a very natural building of the scenes and that’s why the characters feel so natural in those spaces.”
“Atomic” is expected to reopen soon for the first time in more than a year as live entertainment restrictions continue to loosen up on the Strip. During the many months of downtime, Cahill maintained his creativity with several side projects, including a comedic songwriting duo with his wife.
“It was like therapy for us to write silly songs about what was going on around us, like ‘Can you spare a roll?’ which was about the [toilet paper] crisis,” he says.
On a slightly more serious note, he connected with some musician friends from the Strip show “Tenors of Rock” to create the classic rock cover band Original Chaos, which has been playing weekend sets at Harrah’s Carnaval Court bar and will perform a livestream show Saturday at the Space.
“My dad was playing classic rock when I was growing up and he’d test me. Any time a song would come on, he’d ask, ‘Do you know this?’ and I’d guess and get it wrong,” Cahill says. “But by the end of this testing period, I had a very good catalog of classic rock in my brain. And now it’s overwhelming to learn all this music that I listened to for so long and didn’t realize the complexity of.”
Find this week’s Vegas entertainment news, interviews and more every Wednesday with the Sun on the Strip podcast.
