John Corbett

Jerry Fink, Las Vegas Sun

Thursday, March 15, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

What: John Corbett

When: 7 p.m. Friday

Where: Sunset Station's Club Madrid

Tickets: $25; 547-5300

Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Steven Segal, Keanu Reeves, Russell Crowe, Dan Aykroyd.

Add John Corbett to the list of actors who like to front a band.

Corbett, known for his TV roles in "Northern Exposure" and "Sex and the City" and his film role in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," will perform at Sunset Station this weekend with his group, the John Corbett Band, which will perform cuts from its 2006 debut album "John Corbett."

Corbett, a native of Wheeling, W.Va., recently talked to the Sun by phone from his home in Southern California, where he had just finished tending to a flat tire on his new riding lawnmower.

Q: Clear up some trivia I found on the Internet. Were you a licensed hair stylist?

I was. In 1986. It lasts about four years and then you've got to renew it. It was the first thing I did. Me and my girlfriend were going to open a salon. We didn't, but I worked in one for a while.

You're a vegetarian?

I don't know where that came from. No, I'm not a vegetarian.

You're good friends with Daryl Hannah?

Well, we're friends. I wouldn't say good friends. Where did they get that?

You live with your girlfriend Bo Derek in Seattle?

That's not true. That's not true. I don't know where they get this stuff.

You reside in Seattle?

Yeah. I still live there. I have a house in Seattle, one in California and one in West Virginia.

You were part owner of a nightclub, Fenix Underground, in Seattle?

For 10 years. I lost it in the big earthquake in 2001. It was gone in 30 seconds. It was a 100-year-old brick building. Luckily it happened at 11 o'clock in the morning and nobody was inside. If it had happened at 11 o'clock at night on a Friday or Saturday - the place held about 1,700 people. Seattle hadn't had an earthquake like that in 40 years.

What kind of club was it?

It was a live venue. We had four bands a night, two upstairs and two down. Seven bars inside of it. We started out as a little corner bar and it quickly moved into one of the biggest nightclubs in Seattle.

Did you ever perform there?

Never performed there in a decade. Never got it to be the kind of Bruce Willis deal.

Is music a recent interest of yours?

I've been playing guitar since I was 7 or 8 years old. I had my share of high school bands in West Virginia. We played rock 'n' roll: Kiss, Queen, Styx, Kansas, Rush.

Did you have ambitions to be a professional musician, or was it just fun?

It was just for fun. We just had garage bands. Then when I moved to Hollywood in '86 to pursue acting - I actually moved to California in 1980 - I met my guitar player, Tara Novick. He produced the record we released last year. He was about 16 years old when we met. I was 25. We played guitar every Friday and Saturday night on the stoop of the apartment building we lived in. Then I guess about two years ago we went to Nashville, just to check it out. We'd never been. Met some people and before you knew it we said, "Let's come back here and cut a record."

I used some of my savings from working in the movie industry and we went back and made a great record and we said let's get a band together and go out and play this music.

I didn't have anything on the horizon, acting-wise, so it was a good time to clear my schedule. I let my agents and managers know that I was going to go out and play music and we went out and played over 200 shows last year all over the United States and Canada.

What kinds of venues?

Mostly 500-seaters, House of Blues type venues. As a matter of fact we'll be playing at the House of Blues in Anaheim the night before we play Vegas.

Are you going to concentrate on your music now or movies or both?

I managed to squeeze in three projects in the last two years - a couple of films and a TV pilot. I think I'll just keep doing it like this. I'll keep going out and playing music and when work in film or television presents itself if I can do the job I'll do it ... I kind of like this pace. It's better than just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring as an actor and it keeps you really busy and you go out and have a lot of fun. I don't see any reason to stop doing it. We're selling out just about everywhere we go.

What kind of music do you play?

It has sort of a Southern rock flair, but it's definitely not straight-up country. It's just the four of us onstage. No synthesizers. No fiddle players. No backup singers. Just the four of us. Old school rock 'n' roll, Beatles-style.

Are there more albums on the horizon?

Oh yeah. That's the most fun. We've got a bunch of songs left over from the last record. We'll probably go in and put five or six more songs down and put another record out for sure. We're definitely going to do it this year.

Your 2003 TV series, "Lucky," which was set in downtown Las Vegas, wasn't so lucky. It ended after only 11 episodes. What happened?

People out there in America let us down. They didn't watch it. We gave them some great product. It was nominated for an Emmy a week after we were canceled.

But "Northern Exposure" (1990-95) fared much better. Did it have a rough beginning?

Not at all. It was lucky. It was a midseason summer replacement for "Falcon Crest" on CBS. It got a lot of hype because it was quirky and unusual. Right out of the box it was a hit.

How did you get hooked up with the show, which had great actors and writers?

It really is mostly luck. I can't describe success in the movie and television business, other than old-fashioned luck. You're lucky enough to be somewhere and someone suggests you for a part. I couldn't redo all the success I had: "(My) Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Northern Exposure," "Sex and the City." I couldn't redo that. I don't know how it happened, really. It's all luck.

In light of your success, are you now in a position to be more selective about your projects?

I was always selective. That's why I was on "Northern Exposure." When I was starting out I said, "I'm not doing sitcoms and I'm not doing soap operas, so don't even bring them to me." So before I did one thing I was pretty cocky and selective.

How did you get your start in the business?

I was a boilermaker in Southern California. I got hurt in the mid-'80s. I went to junior college and started studying acting.

Before you were injured, were you going to make a career of being a boilermaker or did you have acting aspirations?

Yeah. I was going to stay in the trades forever. I was a lifelong member of the union. That's what my dad did. He retired as a welder. So when I went to junior college, I didn't go with acting in mind, I just went to further my education. And while I was there the first year I met some actors and they talked me into checking out their class. And so I went and I liked it and I felt like it was going to be a fun additive to some of the other classes I was taking. That's where I really discovered, you know, that this is an interesting thing to do and I wondered if you can make a living at it. So I jumped in and gave it a shot.

What was your first gig?

Commercials. A lot of commercials. I did them for about four years. I did plays and commercials. My first speaking role was on a TV show called "Wonder Years." That was in '88. I haven't stopped working since then.

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