The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Homecoming at The Kate
Beehive Queen ushers in Valentine’s Day with reunion today
OLD SAYBROOK >> It was the Sunday Gospel Brunch at the American Music Festival in Nashville last September. Soaring voices were raising the rafters. One belonged to Sarah Potenza, the rising star who gained national attention on “The Voice.” Another: the teased-to-the-sky platinum blonde beehive that is Christine Ohlman.
In the middle of it all was Patti Rahl. “I jumped right in,” the former Branford resident said. Along with Sin Sisters Kathy Kessler and Janice Ingarra, she’ll be backing up the Beehive Queen in her Valentine’s Extravaganza at The Kate today. “And I hung with them.”
No surprise. She’d been one part of the singular three-part harmonies that distinguished the Sin Sisters since 1988 in every corner of Connecticut and the Northeast, and in every kind of venue, from Toad’s Place and the Comcast Theatre main stage, to weddings on Block Island to, in one instance, a cow crossing. This was different. Ten months before, she and her husband Don, a talented musician in his own right, were tooling down Route 64 with their golden retriever Conan, their pickup truck hauling a trailer containing all of their worldly possessions.
The two had raised their three children in Branford. “Soccer games and dance lessons were the priority,” said Patti, who worked as an IT analyst at Yale New Haven Health Services. “We were weekend warrior musicians. Music took a back seat.” Then their kids, one by one, went off to college and into the world. The winters seemed colder
FROM PAGE 1 and longer, particularly to Don. His construction business was thriving. But the sub-zero temperatures and punishing winds were exacting an increasing physical toll on his body.
They considered Florida, but one thought kept gnawing at them. Over the years, Don had been dashing off songs but never had the time to give them his full energy. Patti had dreams of her own.
“Both of us were itching to make our own music and be around people who were creative and original,” she said.
Then came an exploratory trip to Nashville in the spring of 2015. “We were pleasantly surprised,” Patti said. That fall, they put their house on the market, and waited. Five days after it sold, in December, they caught a flight to Nashville, and put a down payment on a house.
“It was a total unknown, a leap of faith,” Kessler said. “And they took it.”
Three weeks later, with Kessler and Ingarra waving goodbye, they embarked on the 18-hour road trip.
The first weeks in Nashville were strange. “I kept thinking when I was going up a hill that there would be water on the other side,” Patti said. It wasn’t just the landscape. “You don’t know a soul. It’s a pretty scary feeling. It took a while to get our bearings.”
That’s where Conan, their golden retriever, came in. “People would come up to us when we were at the local garden center or a farmers market and they’d want to meet the dog,” Patti said.
In April, a text came from Ohlman. She was playing in Music City Roots, the acclaimed Americana variety show. “It was nice to see the familiar Beehive,” Patti said. “The stage didn’t seem so far away.”
Two months later, she heard Ohlman speak on a panel of The Sessions, an informational program that pairs well-known artists and industry insiders with aspiring musicians.
In the all-star jam session that concluded the event, Ohlman called her to the stage to sing backup vocals on “Eye of the Tiger” with its songwriter, Survivor’s Jim Peterik, and Billy Joel drummer Liberty DeVitto.
“Patti Rahl is just one of those singers who you know will do her homework and bring it home,” Ohlman said. “I had a sense that she’d fall right in and throw down, which she did.”
From there, said the longtime lead vocalist of the SNL band, “it was an easy jump to include her in the Sunday Gospel Brunch.” By then, she and Don had joined a local community songwriter organization and were pitching their songs to publishers and taking part in open-mike and songwriters’ nights at local venues throughout Nashville.
Still, as important as it was to get their material into the world and make connections with other musicians, there was nothing like singing live on a stage with accomplished artists at the top of their game.
“That was like a dream,” Patti said. “And it was all Christine. She didn’t have to, but she did.”
It was all Christine, too, who engineered the Sin Sisters reunion at The Kate this weekend. “It was a natural selection,” she said.
“If I hadn’t sung with my Sisters all those years, I would never have been able to jump on that stage,” Patti said. “Singing with them, it’s like putting on your old comfy jeans. It’s like coming home.”