September mourn: A year after 9-11, some Vegas entertainers still suffer

Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002 | 8:16 a.m.

One week after Sept. 11, entertainer Heather Kefalas lost a job at The Mirage she had held for 11 years.

"Most of the casinos started to freak out a bit about the situation," said Kefalas, who has only had a handful of gigs since the 9-11 attacks. "They were thinking people wouldn't be doing any traveling, and so the fewer employees they had working the better it was in the long run.

"They wouldn't have to deal with paying people who were standing around."

Kefalas, a singer-keyboardist-composer, was given notice that she had one week left at the Onada Lounge.

"It was very tough for me," she said. "At that point in time, there were no other jobs available because of the situation. Casinos were letting people go left and right. They were firing people in masses, or laying them off. I think it was an excuse just to let people go." (MGM Mirage spokesman Scott Ghertner said the company declined comment for this story.)

Although Kefalas quickly found a gig in a lounge at Turnberry Place, it didn't last long. There were a few other small jobs here and there, but, she says, "I have been struggling."

Along with a loss of work, Kefalas was one of millions of Americans who lost money on the stock market.

Eventually, Kefalas quit looking for work in the entertainment field and entered into a partnership with Roger Palas in his Wine Art Gallery on Industrial Road.

But, she said, there seem to be more entertainment opportunities a year later.

"I think it has opened up a little," she said. "I've started looking for gigs again."

More than 15,000 workers in Las Vegas were laid off following 9-11. The unemployment rate climbed from 4.9 percent to 6.7 percent in under two months.

There's no way to determine how many entertainers were included in the statistics, but vocalist Jessica Marciel was one of them.

"Most of my entertainment business is corporate," she said. 'We were affected tremendously by 9-11. Our business dropped 40 percent. My partner and I went heavily into debt. We went from two or three jobs a week to one every two weeks."

Corporations were afraid to spend money, Marciel said.

"Instead of hiring a seven-piece band, they would hire a trio," she said. "Instead of shrimp, they served chicken.

"Every entertainer has felt it. There is not one person that hasn't been affected."

"I've been here 45 years," said Pam Potter, who manages several local musicians. "I have never seen Las Vegas hit so hard not even by the energy crunch in the early '70s when all of the hotels on the Strip had to turn their lights off."

One of the groups she manages is the San Fernando Band, a dance band from Guam whose seven members arrived in Las Vegas before and after 9-11. One member, Sonny Santos, was to have flown out of Guam on Sept. 11. His brother, Perry, flew out on Sept. 10.

After the terrorist attacks, all flights were canceled, which delayed the departure of Sonny Santos and other band members.

Santos said it was too late to change plans for moving to Las Vegas. Most of the band members had sold most of their property. They were committed to making the trip.

But when they arrived, there was no work to be found immediately, other than an occasional one-night stand. They performed once or twice at Stratosphere and at Las Vegas Hilton and at a few gigs in Northern Nevada.

"Their promise of immediate jobs here never happened," Potter said. "Bookings for everyone were put on hold. Entertainment budgets were dropped."

Potter occasionally does work with Little Anthony and the Imperials ("Tears on My Pillow").

"They lost more than $150,000 almost immediately because the planes were canceled and they couldn't fly to their gigs," Potter said. "Dates were canceled all around the country, not just Las Vegas."

One of Potter's most popular groups is the dance band Perfect Choice.

"Normally, they are booked year-round," she said. "But after Sept. 11 they found it difficult to find any gigs at all. Everybody was put on hold.

"September and October is the prime time for booking engagements for the following year, but everyone was hesitant to make a commitment. Instead of booking for a year, venues were booking for three or four months to see what would happen."

Potter said things are beginning to turn around.

The San Fernando Band just signed a 24-week contract with Barbary Coast.

"Things like that just weren't happening six or eight months ago," Potter said. "Now there is standing room only in the clubs. That's the way Vegas should be."

Fear of flying

A lot of entertainers outside of Las Vegas developed a fear of flying after 9-11, including Brenton Wood.

Wood, who lives in Los Angeles, may be best known for his hits from the '60s, "The Oogum Boogum Song" and "Gimme Little Sign."

"I don't want to get on an airplane at all," Wood said. "I have flown since 9-11, I had to go to my son's graduation in Connecticut and so I had to fly then. But it makes me antsy.

"I drive to all of my gigs now. I limit my travel to the ground. I play mostly the West Coast -- Arizona, New Mexico and Arizona. Those are within easy driving distance."

Jewel Akins, on the other hand, has no such fear.

"I figure if that was the way I was suppose to go, I'm not going to worry about it," said Akins, best known for his 1965 hit "The Birds and the Bees."

Akins, also a resident of Los Angeles, will perform at the Saddle Club in Pahrump on Saturday. He said he didn't see a great drop in his number of gigs after 9-11.

"I got gigs once or twice every other month, which was usual for me," he said.

All Americans

Jay and the Americans, based in New York City, occasionally perform in Vegas at such venues as Texas Station and Sam's Town.

The group formed in 1959 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Its first hit, "She Cried" (1962), was sung by the band's original vocalist, Jay Traynor. Soon after, Traynor was replaced by Jay Black, who sang lead on all the group's future recordings. Jay and the Americans recorded such hits as "Come A Little Bit Closer," "Cara Mia" and "This Magic Moment."

During a telephone interview from his Long Island home, Black said he still has not fully recovered emotionally from 9-11.

"As the anniversary nears, I'm very gloomy," he said. "I was just talking to a friend of mine, a deputy inspector with NYPD. He was driving into One Police Plaza when it happened, a block from where it happened. He was talking to me about cordoning off the area, walking over body parts. I'm very gloomy about it."

Black's son worked two blocks from the site.

"When the planes hit the buildings I had this horrible feeling they were going to come down," Black said. "I didn't expect them to implode the way they did. I thought they would just fall over and kill thousands of people. My fear was that I couldn't reach my son."

Black said his tour dates dropped by 40 percent after 9-11.

"This has been our slowest year," he said. "And we're still not back to normal. Every time we have to get on a plane it becomes an ordeal."

Black said his first engagement after Sept. 11 was Oct. 6 at the "Westbury Music Fair" in New York.

"It was the most emotional, most dramatic event," he said. "I wrote an arrangement to 'America the Beautiful.' It was such an emotional moment."

Black said he still is bothered by the events of a year ago.

"You know how you wake up one day and your life changes, like from a heart attack or something?" Black said. "Well, 9-11 changed everybody's life -- it was one big heart attack for the entire country."

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