Dolyniuk’s Yellow Brick Road leads to Queen tribute

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, Aug. 16, 2009 | 10:22 p.m.

A slight breeze whispered into the phone as Brody Dolyniuk described the rural trappings enveloping him on an Indiana prairie.

“I’m sitting in a big pasture, looking at a big tractor,” Dolyniuk said, employing a bit of poetic pacing.

The frontman and founder of popular Las Vegas classic rock band Yellow Brick Road, Dolyniuk was taking a postcard-setting break just outside the Marsh Symphony on the Prairie amphitheater on Conner Prairie in Fishers, Ind., about 20 miles northeast of Indianapolis.

“It's an old, colonial, Old West kind of town,” Dolyniuk said during Friday’s chat. “It’s a long way from home, put it that way.”

It was in this location where Dolyniuk played Queen for a day, or actually two, as the vocalist for Windborne’s Music of Queen. The project is exactly what the name implies: A tribute to the music of legendary rock band Queen. And it is certainly a long way from YBR’s usual club gigs at Boulder Station’s Railhead, Aliante Station’s Access Showroom and Ovation at Green Valley Ranch. For its two-night engagement in Connor Prairie, the band was backed by the 50-piece Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and drew 12,000 fans to the countryside venue.

A Vegas vocalist performing in such a setting? How’d this all happen?

“They liked how I looked in a number of pairs of tight yellow shorts,” said Dolyniuk, a smartass to the core who once joked he’d like to start his own theater troupe and call it “Jerk du Soleil.”

In fact, it was a fairly simple process for Dolyniuk to hook up with Windborne Productions, which started orchestral-styled tribute rock shows in 1995 with the Music of Led Zeppelin. Over the years, it has added touring productions of Pink Floyd, The Eagles, The Doors and, in the spring of this year, Queen.

As anyone who has seen YBR perform over the past 10 years in Las Vegas, Dolyniuk has a remarkably rangy voice and sings pitch-perfect versions of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the David Bowie-Mercury duet “Under Pressure” (he also has performed a full-on, costumed impersonation of Mercury in his “Rock Show” production at Las Vegas Hilton). As Windborne began to scour the country in search of someone who could fill this distinctive role onstage, Dolyniuk was referred to the company by a colleague and invited to rehearsals in Windborne’s Virginia Beach, Va., headquarters. He beat out a field of five finalists in a fairly casual session in which he simply sang a few Queen songs, and to date has performed four weekend engagements with the Windborne lineup. At each stop, the five-piece band is supported by a full orchestra.

“We started in Fort Wayne, in a theater in front of about 2,000 people,” Dolyniuk said. “Then it was 4,000 in Baltimore, 4,500 in Buffalo. We’re playing two sets, a little less than an hour, with an intermission. People just love it. You get a little jaded in Las Vegas, where you get all these great shows all the time. Where we’ve played, we’re kind of a big deal for whatever weekend we’re playing.”

There have been allowances made by the members of YBR (bassist David St. John, guitarist Brooke St. James, multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Gilcrest and drummer James Sloan) and by Station Casinos. YBR has enjoyed a 10-year affiliation with Station, dating to its earliest days at the Railhead, and would like that relationship to remain unmarred. “We either have to bring in a sub vocalist or bring in another band for the night,” Dolyniuk said, conceding that hiring a second vocalist for YBR (or a replacement for any of the full-time members) would be a difficult match. “It’s a concern, and they have a right to be concerned, but so far it’s worked out alright.

“Basically, I found this opportunity a little too great to turn down.”

For real. As someone far wiser than us once said, the show must go on.

Bite!

I’d not seen “Bite!,” the adult production (what we used to call a topless show) at the Stratosphere, until Friday night’s fifth anniversary performance. The show hung on long enough for the vampire craze, which always seems to work in cycles, finally resurfaced with the “Twilight” best-sellers written by Stephenie Meyer and the film based on such, and the HBO series “True Blood.” Monsters come and go. Inspired by the success of “Bite!,” we might see appropriately themed adult productions paying tribute to the Wolfman, Frankenstein’s monster and the Mummy.

Before the performance, Tim Molyneaux, the show’s producer, fairly danced atop same graves during a self-congratulatory champagne toast. As he took center stage, joined by Stratosphere President Arthur Keith, Molyneaux proudly told the audience, “Since ‘Bite!’ opened five years ago, 13 adult shows have closed in Las Vegas!”

Splendid! I’m sure “Bite!,” like the bloodthirsty vampires depicted onstage, shall live in reanimation for all eternity.

What struck me during this show (and thankfully it wasn’t one of the menacing, leather-and-fishnet clad, fanged women) was the energy and resources put into the production. This is not a set-up-a-pole-in-the-middle-of-the-audience strip show. Costumed characters soar above the audience while fastened to chains and leather straps and even bound out of a prop grand piano, like so many clowns spilling from a VW Beetle. Mark Giovi, as the vocalist, is terrific -- the former Las Vegas Tenors about blows out the monitors while unleashing Led Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven.” (Current Las Vegas tenor Bobby Black swaps the guest vocalist role with Giovi and also can belt it out.)

But I found one prop in “Bite!” particularly unnerving: The bare-breasted gargoyles on either side of the stage. Each had two faces: One where you’d normally find a face, and another positioned as if to be a cackling chastity belt. Very strange. I wonder if that face is actually a visage of a particular person.

Misko inferno

“Jerry F'n Misko” came off without any apparent bloodshed at Jennifer Harrington's gallery Henri & Odette in downtown Las Vegas on Friday night. In his first gallery show in two years, Misko showed off three new large-scale, characteristically (and effectively) fuzzy paintings of Vegas neon as dozens of friends -- most of them downtown frequenters -- streamed into the cozy exhibit space. But the event was as much an excuse for this crew to hang out together, at the gallery and later at Downtown Cocktail Room, and it was a refreshing change of scenery from all the Strip raking I’ve been doing lately.

Misko reports that he even sold one of his big pieces (the “stars” piece in the accompanying photo) and “quite a few lithos.” One of the city’s most aggressive for-profit artists, Misko wrote in an e-mail yesterday, “I love me some little red dots on the wall next to paintings!” Finally collapsing under the weight of his own self-promotion, Misko is taking a few days off.

Dancing with the Notes

I really do expect Donny Osmond to take on “Dancing With the Stars.” Marie Osmond all but announced it on Wednesday night during a D&M performance at the Flamingo, as the duo strode into the show’s “dance-off” segment. Donny might not be the best dancer on “DWTS,” but he will likely be the sweatiest. I’ve seen his costumes at Tiffany Cleaners, and they look like they’ve been through hell. Or, in Osmondspeak, “heck.” … You know who really loves “Bite!”? Charo! She was in the audience Friday. She’s kooky, that Charo. Talk about bite. … Congratulations to M&M (Michelle Mosbarger) and Jack Shenk, two friends who were married Saturday in the great city of Placerville, Calif. Michelle is a PR rep for Harrah’s; Jack is a quite personable personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness. They are one of the nicest, and tallest, couples you will meet in VegasVille. … Speaking of which: 24 Hour Fitness? I don’t have that kind of time.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.