Uptown ‘Downtown’

Friday, June 11, 2004 | 8:47 a.m.

Comedians like to hear the laughter.

Gordie Brown likes to see the tears.

"I want people crying because they're laughing so hard," said the comic impressionist. "That's why I love to be up there onstage."

The stage is at the Golden Nugget's 400-seat Theatre Ballroom.

"This is exactly where I need to be," Brown said during an interview this week. "I'm a showman. I need to be onstage to make people laugh."

Brown will be making fans laugh at the Nugget with his long roster of impressions for at least the next year. He recently signed a contract with the venue's new owners, Tim Poster and Tom Breitling, guaranteeing him 44 weeks at the downtown location.

"It's exciting working with the new owners, and performing in a great room with a brand-new band," Brown said. "I think it's kind of meant to be. It feels great."

By the end of his first year's run Brown may have gone through his entire list of impressions, but don't count on it. He has no idea how many celebrities he can imitate, and new ones routinely slip into his vocabulary almost subconsciously.

"It kind of comes naturally to me," Brown said. "It's a gift."

He hears a voice and before he knows it, he's reproducing it.

"Something in my brain is a little whacked," Brown said.

Much of his act consists of song parodies, reproducing the sounds but not the words of songs.

"Most people know the words to the songs," Brown said. "I don't. What I hear are the tones and inflections, so in recalling the song, I have no idea what the words are, so I put in my own words Q that's how I started."

Dubbed "Downtown" Gordie Brown by his manager, Bernie Yuman (who also manages Siegfried & Roy), the native of Montreal is not a stranger to performing in Las Vegas.

He has opened for Jay Leno, Louie Anderson, Barry Manilow, Paul Anka, Jerry Seinfeld, Randy Travis and others.

Many of his former employers creep into his act, such as country singer Travis.

Brown opened for the tight-lipped, lock-jawed entertainer for two weeks, and now he is one of Brown's best imitations.

"Randy doesn't move his lips when he sings," Brown noted. "He hardly moves his jaw.

"Some people don't talk and sing the same way, but Randy has the same voice when he talks. Can you imagine Joe Cocker sounding the same all the time?"

Before becoming an impressionist, Brown was a political cartoonist for the Ottawa Sunday Herald from 1983 until 1987, when he won a talent contest and became infatuated with entertaining.

He discovered he had a natural ear for impressions, not to mention an innate sense of humor that made him a successful cartoonist.

Brown says he misses his former profession.

"Anytime I see a newspaper I get nostalgic," he said. "It really was great."

To keep his drawing pen sharp, he does a caricature each month and posts it on his Web site, www.gordiebrown.com.

Brown has been making an impression on the entertainment world for almost a dozen years.

Early in his career Brown bought a home in Vegas, intending to stay, but then he was distracted, doing work on television and performing at corporate events around the nation.

He spent a lot of time on the road until he was offered the headliner's spot at Harrah's Reno.

"I wanted to be back onstage," he said.

His initial contract with Harrah's was for six months in the Sammy Davis Jr. Showroom. He performed there for two years, until he was replaced by a stage version of "The Price is Right."

"That gave me a good opportunity to pursue coming to Vegas, where I have always wanted to be," Brown said. "My instincts told me that if I'm ever going to do anything anywhere, it's going to be in Vegas. This is where I need to be.

"And then this gig came up."

The gig at the Nugget came up because the venue was bought from the MGM MIRAGE and the new owners decided to revitalize the property, using entertainment as one means of accomplishing that goal.

Brown said Yuman pitched him to the new owners.

"Bernie went in and said, 'You have to put him in the showroom. He's what you're looking for -- something that is both new and nostalgic.' "

Sight unseen, Poster and Breitling decided Yuman was right and hired Brown.

"That was pretty remarkable," Brown said. "I'm working on some other things that may take years to put together, but this deal happened in just a couple of weeks."

It appears that the Nugget made a good deal.

Brown is a talented, hard-working performer who throws every ounce of his energy into the show, which is in a constant state of change.

"It changes nightly, depending on the energy I'm getting from the crowd," Brown said. "It may depend on a full moon, what kind of a day I'm having or who knows what else."

He recently did an encore at a performance, something he says he did only once before. The first time was in response to a din of chanting and screaming following a performance. This time, a fan wouldn't release his hand as Brown walked along the edge of the stage shaking hands as the show ended.

Brown said Elvis didn't do encores.

"That's the way Elvis did it, and he was my mentor," Brown said. "But the encore was fun. I might change the way I do things, but up in Reno I was trained to get offstage in a hurry to get ready for the next show."

Elvis is only one of Brown's idols. Others are Anka and Rich Little.

"Paul Anka is an all-around showman," Brown said. "And Rich Little -- I used to sit in the front row of his shows and watch him do all those impressions -- I did one, Elvis.

"I took Little's show, studied it inside out, learned from the act and slowly replaced everything with my own material."

Even though he writes his own material, he says he doesn't always know what to expect in his shows. Much of his act is ad-libbed.

"It keeps me on my feet," Brown said.

With so much talent to share with the world, would he like to move up to the Strip, the center of the tourist population?

"Anybody would love to be on the Strip," Brown said. "You would be a fool not to want to be on the Strip.

"But this is an absolute blessing for me. With the two new owners, I feel as if I'm at the vanguard of a new beginning.

"I never thought of performing downtown before, but now I am proud to be part of something new.""

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