Celeb Sit-In Blog Series: Mike Reno of Loverboy

In 2017, my cover band Maggie Speaks started a new program called Celebrity Sit-In. Celebrity singers from world-famous bands join Maggie Speaks on stage to perform their top four to six hits. I have been fortunate enough to do this over 30 times in the past few years, and each time I seem to learn something different from each of our guests. A little nugget that I can take back with me to continually refine Maggie Speaks live performance.

I started getting into music in the eighties and Loverboy certainly had some big anthems in the MTV music video era. “Turn Me Loose” and “Workin’ For the Weekend” could be heard in any arena as well as tuning into any radio station or video channel.  Loverboy hailed from Vancouver, Canada, they were originally rejected from all of the major US Labels before signing with Columbia/CBS Records Canada.

Their debut record sold a million copied in Canada and finally made it to the US, selling two million here. Their second album sold over 4 million copies, Mike Reno had one of the most distinguished rock voices of the era and found his way onto the soundtracks of two of the most popular movies of the decade, with his duet with Heart’s Anne Wilson, “Almost Paradise” from the movie Footloose and Loverboy’s “Heaven in Your Eyes” from Top Gun.

In 2019, Maggie Speaks had the chance to perform with Mike Reno, the frontman of the group Loverboy at the House of Blues in Chicago. Mike really was a lifesaver: we were performing for a corporate event and the late great Eddie Money was supposed to sit-in with Maggie Speaks. Forty-eight hours before the event, his agent called and said that he had fallen ill and would not be able to travel.

However, the show must go on.  We already had the rapper Tone Loc on the bill, and Eddie’s agent offered our friend Mickey Thomas of Starship as a replacement, which we also accepted.  In a moment of fast thinking, I remembered that my guitarist friend Mike Aquino mentioned that he was performing a show the following day with Jim Peterick of the Ides of March and formerly of Survivor, one of the guest vocalists was Mike Reno. Mike Aquino got me in contact with Reno and he was able to move his flight from Vancouver to earlier in the day so he could make our show.

Mike taught me the value of proper preparation as a bandleader and a performer.  Knowing that we had never played together and would likely only get a brief soundcheck to run through his hits, we talked on the phone about how we could best prepare to back him successfully.  We decided on three tunes, “Turn Me Loose”, “Almost Paradise” which he sang with Nicole Garza, the female lead of Maggie Speaks, and the anthem “Workin’ For the Weekend”.

He said the easiest thing to do was to be prepared to play these exactly like the album. If we put in the time and knew our stuff cold, then there should be no problem as he had written these songs and sung them thousands of times. It was a nail biter as Mike’s flight was delayed out of Canada, but he made it to the House of Blues about 45 minutes before taking the stage, which meant we had no opportunity to do a soundcheck.

The first time we said hello was when we introduced him to the crowd of 1,500 people.  He walked out on stage and said, “Boys if you play these just like I wrote them, then we will be just fine.”  And that is exactly what happened.  Mike seemed so pleased and even pleasantly surprised that Maggie Speaks was so prepared for him. He ended the show by exclaiming, “OMG, what a great band.”

That night we truly learned the lesson that the show must go on and nothing trumps proper preparation. We can’t wait to perform with Mike again!