Brian’s Song: Tireless crooner takes another crack at Las Vegas

Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2002 | 8:19 a.m.

Brian Evans is looking to the past for his future.

The 32-year-old crooner says his style of music built Las Vegas, and he wants to bring it back to the forefront.

To Evans' thinking, vanishing lions and tigers and strange circuses are OK. But they are not part of the Vegas heritage that traces its roots to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett.

"I've always had a passion for this kind of music," Evans said recently as he waited for his night at Bally's Indigo Lounge to begin, when he would take his post and stand behind a 1940s-style microphone and smoothly croon the standards.

A Las Vegas lounge staple for several years (most notably at the old Desert Inn) before taking his act on the road, Evans says when he returned to Vegas a few weeks ago he wasn't sure if anyone would appreciate what he does.

And what he does is simple.

Evans does not imitate any particular performer, but rather a style of performing that elicits images of sitting next to an old radio and listening to the great singers of the past.

"I've been playing here for more than a week and the crowds are coming in," Evans said. "We've had great crowds every single day of the week, and we have done zero advertising. "This music really belongs in Vegas."

And, according to Evans, so does he.

"I knew I was going to do this before I knew how old I was," Evans said. "I have always known I was going to do this kind of music. Everything else in my life has been up in the air, but this is the one thing I've been able to count on for stability."

Evans was born and raised around Boston, one of the few male members of a family who did not choose police work as a career.

"Dad was a police officer," Evans said. "He had 10 brothers and two sisters, and all of the brothers were cops."

But pounding a beat was not in the cards for Evans, who recalls at the age of 3 using his mother's hairbrush as a microphone to sing the songs his grandmother taught him songs by Sinatra and other legendary crooners.

"My grandmother used to play this kind of music for me all the time, and I liked it," Evans said.

He was influenced by Sinatra, Bobby Vinton, Neil Sedaka, Wayne Newton and other similar performers.

"I wouldn't go to kindergarten class unless my mother sewed little plastic stars on my shirt so I could look like Bobby Vinton. How pathetic is that?" Evans joked.

While he was crooning, Evans' peers were listening to such hard rock bands as Kiss.

"I would bring Bobby Vinton records to listen to at school," Evans said. "I was beaten up several times. A couple of times the albums got broken, and they weren't even mine. They belonged to my grandmother. I wasn't suppose to take them to school."

It never crossed Evans' mind to be a police officer.

"I knew I was going to leave (Boston) as soon as I was able to," he said. "I knew I was going to L.A. first."

Evans made the move at age 16, when he and his mother, Helen, moved to Los Angeles and he began getting acting work in commercials and on television's "Beverly Hills, 90210," "Full House," and in the movie "Book of Love." He played the recurring character Keanu on "90210." Evans says acting was fun, but it wasn't his first love. Crooning was his passion.

"I was playing at places like the Roxy and the Whiskey," Evans said. "Places where you never expect a crooner to show up. At the Roxy they would team me up with Bat Vomit and groups like that."

In 1996 Evans' stepfather died of a brain aneurism.

"When it happened I had been doing the acting gig, commercials, playing on Sunset Strip, doing corporate events," Evans said. "I decided to visit some friends in Vancouver (British Columbia)."

Evans ended up spending two years there and making his first big-band album.

"I figured when I was in Canada, I figured I didn't have anything to lose so I decided to release a big-band album," Evans said.

His big band was actually a number of sound tracks he got in a karaoke recording studio. He taped 10 songs, using the tracks as backup, and made the album "Quite Frankly."

"I took the record to a manufacturing company and made a bunch of CDs," Evans said. "Then I took the CDs to a distribution company. It became the No. 1-selling independent record in the country.

"But what was funny, all the reviewers were saying how great the band was."

Since then he has made 15 albums, most of them for release in Asia, where, Evans notes, his name is big.

"My albums are popular in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea," Evans said, adding that singers such as himself are able to gain widespread release in the Orient because of censorship.

"They don't let Britney Spears, hanging out all over the place, in China," Evans said. "It's all state controlled. That gives me and others like me an advantage over there."

Lott of luck

While performing at a club in Vancouver, the wife of Elliott Lott (an agent based in San Diego) heard Evans and recommended him to her husband.

"Elliott Lott handles the Beach Boys, Smashing Pumpkins and all these different bands," Evans said. "One day he called me and asked me if I would like to play Vegas."

Evans had been opening for Lou Rawls, Dionne Warwick and other popular U.S. entertainers when they performed in Canada. But he sought more work.

"I wasn't really doing a lot in Canada, and so I went to Vegas," Evans said.

That was in 1998. His first gig was in the Starlight Lounge at the Desert Inn, where he performed for about 18 months.

"It was a mind-blowing experience," Evans said. "It wasn't a typical lounge, but more of a mini-showroom. It's overwhelming for anyone who has never done it before. All of a sudden they're putting you on billboards and marquees and on the cover of magazines."

While there Evans recorded "Live at the Desert Inn."

"I did about 400 shows at the DI and then David Cassidy did something there (the original "Rat Pack is Back") for a while," Evans said.

Evans sometimes picks up and moves on a whim. Once while living in L.A. he moved to Omaha, Neb., for three months.

"I needed a break from L.A., because L.A. doesn't shut off," he said. "A case in point -- when my stepfather died a friend called me to tell me he was sorry to hear about that, and then he says 'So, are you auditioning for anything?' I'm like, 'Did you not hear what I just said?' But that's the mentality of L.A. They're just on another planet.

"Sometimes I would pick up and go live somewhere just for the heck of it, like Omaha. I just wanted to see something different. I think that a lot of the things I've done was to make up for things I wasn't able to do as a kid. We never really went anywhere, wo I've done a lot of traveling -- France, Holland, England, some really cool places."

After leaving the Desert Inn, Evans opened for a number of entertainers, then in 2001 moved to Key West, Fla.

"I got bored and started doing shows once a month at a theater," Evans said.

He said celebrities started dropping by to sing a song or two during his performances, including Wayne Newton and, oddly enough, William Shatner.

"It was Shatner who convinced me I needed to return to Vegas," Evans said. "He said Key West was a great place for a vacation, but I shouldn't be there."

Evans returned more than two months ago, after Lott got him the gig at the Indigo Lounge.

"I'm trying to carry on a tradition of music performed by Sinatra and Martin and Tony Bennett," Evans said. "I'm not trying to be them.

"I want to be one of the guys carrying on their style of music. So, here I am, doing the standards every night."

Evans says he isn't seeking a fortune, just a showroom. What's important is the music, not the money.

As Evans says, "I never saw a hearse with a U-Haul behind it."

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