When I happened upon the Boomer magazine in the entryway of Akron General Hospital in May, I had no idea what I stumbled upon. The magazine is geared to the Boomers in North East Ohio. (Boomers, in case you don’t know, is a defined age group of people born between 1947 and 1962 — or so.) I am not a boomer, but my husband is! I found the magazine interesting and informative. It also led me to discover a place called The Music Box Supper Club in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Music Box offers a vast array of musical acts in all kinds of styles. I went on their website to find out when a Billy Joel Tribute Band would be playing, but about jumped for joy when I saw that a Frank Sinatra Tribute Band was going to be there on the Friday of my birthday week. (I celebrate for a week.) After making sure Bobby was interested in going, I invited my parents, Bud and Dolores, to come with us. It is because of my dad that I like big band music and the singing of Frank Sinatra.
Tickets for the show are pretty reasonable. It was $10 a ticket, plus a service fee for online booking. It is a supper club, so we had to make reservations, too. Since we were celebrating, we also splurged for valet parking. Totally worth the $8!
The food was at a different level than what I am accustomed to, but pretty good. We splurged there, too. Again, I am worth it! (I will share more about our meals at a later time.) But the whole reason we went was to see Michael Sonata portray Frank Sinatra. And, boy, did he do a great job.
We were given the choice of where to sit, so we selected a table in the front row. That gave us an up-close-and-personal view of the Michael and his band. His band consisted of a keyboard/pianist (Ralph Turek), an upright bass player (Bryan Thomas) and drummer (Rich Moore). They were all amazing.
I’ve heard enough of Frank Sinatra songs to know how they go. Michael made me believe that I was watching watching Ol’ Blue Eyes himself.
Michael’s command of the stage was evident from his introduction through his last song. He belted out tunes like “Fly Me To The Moon,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “My Way” and of course, “New York, New York.” The entire show I was spellbound and swept away. His first set lasted an hour and then after a twenty minute break, he sang for another forty minutes.
He even sang happy birthday to me. OK, not just to me, but it was still cool.
Then, because he knew my name, he spoke directly to me in his song, “I Get a Kick.” I might be a little biased because of that, but I thought he did a great job engaging his audience, too. He shared some background on the songs he sang and a little about Frank Sinatra. This included a toast at the end of his show that Sinatra used to say. “May you live to be 100 and may the last voice you hear be mine.”
This was such a great experience. I am not sure how the rest of my celebration will go, but it is off to an amazing start. Thanks, Frank…I mean Michael.
