Salute to a legend
Posted By John Towns
Posted 2 months ago
By day, Laurie Sutherland is a mild-mannered Safeway cashier and school bus driver. But by night, the St Andrews resident dons a cowgirl outfit and transforms herself into country music icon Patsy Cline, to the delight of audiences all over Manitoba.
On Nov. 20th, Sutherland and company will be bringing their show "The Life of Patsy Cline" to the Marlborough Hotel in Winnipeg for a dinner-theatre experience put on by Winnipeg's Silvertone Associates called Dinner with a Legend.
The show is just the latest in what has been a very busy few months for Sutherland, who has been performing her tribute to Cline for almost a year.
"We've been pretty busy ever since we started – we had a really busy summer this past summer," said Sutherland. "We've been heading somewhere almost every weekend, from Brandon out to Gimli and all over really. We're actually repeating some of the places that we've already performed in."
Sutherland says the show has struck a chord in particular with an older crowd, many of whom remember Patsy Cline from before her untimely death in a 1963 plane crash. Cline had a number of hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including I Fall to Pieces and She's Got You, both of which were No. 1 singles on the U.S. country chart.
Sutherland, who has been singing in and around the Selkirk and St Andrews areas for almost 20 years, says she has always been a fan of Cline's work, and so she jumped at the idea of starting her own tribute show in memory of the legend.
"I definitely feel a strong connection to her music," she said. "So when the idea to do this came up, I really wanted to try it, and it's just sort of taken off from there. It's been great – I'm having so much fun with it."
Sutherland's show runs for a little over an hour, and includes a narrator who tells about Cline's life in between Sutherland's renditions of 21 of Cline's most well received songs.
"I also do a costume change," said Sutherland. "I come out first as a cowgirl, and then change into the more 'glamour' outfit, to reflect the changes in Patsy's style over her career."
Tickets to the Nov. 20th show go for $55, and include a three-course meal as well as Sutherland's performance. They are available through John Cartwright, of Silvertone Associates at 947-0731.
