Live on Stage

This book was written as a guide for the “live” entertainer. The tools within these pages are provided to help improve, develop and market your talent as a public artist. While many “How To” books exist, it is the authors’ goal to share their personal experiences and skills to perfect the individual act. In show business, you must have the same hunger and burn you did when you started. If you don’t, there are a lot of people who still do, and are waiting in line with you to get through that same door. Keeping yourself marketable, as a commodity is the key to success and longevity in this business. Hopefully, your talent will sustain the test of time and you will continually reinvent yourself.

Performing in front of an audience is the most gratifying and frightening profession on the planet. Not many jobs give such acceptance so fast and in so many different ways. However, not many jobs are as insecure. It is a feast or famine business and not everyone who is in it has the stomach to continue. It takes a certain constitution for someone to be all right with hearing “No.” Don’t allow rejection to get in the way of your goals. “Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” Babe Ruth So, hats off to the people who stay with it and double acknowledgement to those who don’t have to sling a hamburger, bartender, or wait tables to survive.

Rick Michel Makes an Impression Rick Michel came to San Diego to live and started working out of the Comedy Store in La Jolla for open mic night and driving to the West Hollywood Comedy Store on occasion. It wasn’t until 1980 that things started to break in San Diego. Rick landed the role of one of the gang members of “Grease” at the Lyric Dinner Theater on El Cajon Blvd. near La Mesa. Then Michel opened a Night Club at the old Mississippi Room called the “Cabaret Supper Club” where we put on mini musicals, dancing, dinner and drinks. Basically a one stop shop for a night out on the town. Rick was acting Entertainment Director/Principal of the show and Master of Ceremonies. In 1981, Rick did 17 days/5 shows a day of his act as singer/impressionist at the Del Mar Fair in the Trotter’s Circle with a pianist named David Heikila. In the winter of 1981 did his first Production Show at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas called “Hollywood Goes Broadway”. Starting in 1982 Rick performed a “One Man Show” for 2 years at the Winner’s Circle (across from Del Mar Racetrack) until 1984 when he landed a role in a Production Show in Lake Tahoe. Stayed there for a year doing 3 months at Del Webb’s High Sierra and then on to Caesar’s Tahoe for 9 months. In 1986, Michel went to Atlantic City at the Atlantis Casino to do 9 months and then came back to La Costa Country Club, California to do 3 months of the same show then back to the Atlantis for another 9 months until November of 88’. He took almost a year off from working for so long and took time off to see the 1988 Super Bowl in San Diego and then on to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans/Jazz Festival in June but the Show Business bug pulled him back to Florida for another Production Show. In the fall of 1989 Michel came back to Las Vegas to perform at the Sands Hotel for the Krofft Brothers doing 9 months of voices to their puppets with a show called “Comedy Kings” starring John Byner/Mickey Rooney and Sherman Hemsley. Michel was doing 2 shows at the same time in 1990. One day show at the Sands called “Via Las Vegas” and night time at the Maxim doing “Comedy Cabaret”. Meeting Master Impressionist Rich Little at the latter show, Rich decided to put Rick in his shows and they toured for over 2 years together. www.RickMichel.com Rick had been traveling around the United States from Valley Forge, PA, Lake Tahoe to Biloxi, MS for about 5 years. Rick was playing all of the hotels on the Strip in Las Vegas and only to be discovered in 1999 by David Cassidy of the Partridge Family. Cassidy saw Rick perform his Frank Sinatra for the Governors Ball. David was putting together a Rat Pack show at the Desert Inn Casino (then owned by Steve Wynn) and wanted Rick to understudy for Bobby Caldwell as Frank Sinatra. Then he filled in for the Dean Martin part and finally the Joey Bishop. Moving the show to the Sahara in 2000, Michel played the part of Dean Martin for 2 years and 2 months. After David’s show closed, Rick thought that there was a “better way” to do this kind of show like no other. It is the best show in the industry. He answers the question “How would Frank-Sammy and Dean re-invent cool today if they were alive today”? www.SinatraDavisMartin.com Focusing on Frank Sinatra with his 100th Birthday in 2015, Rick has created a Symphony/Pops show called “Frank A Musical Journey” Celebrating 100 Years of Mr. Sinatra’s life. This show can be performed from 21 to 120 Piece Orchestra, singing from Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, The War Years, his 4 marriages, Movie and Television career. The show has a haunting narrative sharing key moments in Frank Sinatra’s Life. You can visit a clip at: www.FrankAMusicalJourney.com From entertaining the troops overseas in South Korea in, to performing in San Jose, Costa Rica with the Philharmonic Orchestra www.SinatraForever.com to touring Chile with his 12 – piece big band Rick Michel doesn’t look like he will be stopping anytime soon.