New company offers up specialty singers

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A dream of bringing the great music of a bygone era to intimate audiences recently became a reality for Green Valley resident Mark Miller with the debut of his business, Crooners 2 Go.

Miller, who refers to himself as the Crooners 2 Go chairman of the board, has lived in the valley since 2001 and started Crooners 2 Go in April. He had worked as a disc jockey on the Strip for several years before starting the business, and said it had always been his dream to start a company like this one.

Miller said while he was working on the Strip and at weddings, he got a call from his agent asking if he would consider giving a performance in a suite for a couple in Napa Valley, Calif. The client wanted Miller to sing for him and his wife while they had dinner celebrating her 50^th birthday.

"I didn't know how it would work out. I'd never done anything that intimate before," Miller said. "But at the end of the gig, the client's wife was in tears, and I was so moved that I had made such a big impression. I thought, 'I'd love to be able to duplicate this.' "

He later received an e-mail from the client thanking him for the performance.

"He said that during their marriage he'd made his wife cry a time or two, but never from happiness like that," Miller said. "It was just the kind of performance I wanted to be able to do again and again."

Though each Crooners 2 Go performer has a versatile repertoire that includes many styles, Miller said he and the other singers in his group mainly perform music from the Rat Pack era.

"The Rat Pack music is just a perfect fit for this town, because they all helped make this town what it is," he said. "The area has shifted to a very nightclubish scene, and this kind of bucks that trend and takes you back to the days when Sinatra and those guys were whooping it up on the Strip."

A graphic designer by day, Miller grew up in New York where he sang with several bands. In 1992 he started working as a helper in a karaoke show, then made the transition from karaoke to working as a singing disc jockey in 1995. He said that experience, as well as working as a catering manager for a time, helped prepare him for Crooners 2 Go.

There are three other crooners right now: Allen Tramont, Bill Flynn and Eric Moore work with Miller in the company.

Tramont used to work as a band leader in New York City, and has appeared in several movies set in Las Vegas.

Flynn is a police officer in North Las Vegas, and sang at police functions for years before joining Crooners 2 Go. Miller described Moore as a Harry Connick Jr. sound-alike, though he also sings in an alternative rock band in the valley.

Miller said for Crooners 2 Go gigs, he and the other performers use small sound systems operated with laptop computers to produce backing tracks, although his company does have a pianist to accompany vocalists by client request. He said he also is considering hiring a big band for larger gigs. Performances are usually done in half-hour sets.

Miller said his crooners are available at all times, and that he's hoping to expand and bring his performances to new audiences throughout the valley.

"I want to play more venues that will really allow the crooners to mingle with the audience," he said. "Lots of bands now seem kind of stuck in Top 40 mode, but this music deserves more attention. We use modern technology to bring that era back to life, but we're not impersonators. We're about the music."

For more information, visit www.crooners2go.com.