Rhonda
Marie caught on with Johnny Green and The Greenmen a year and a half ago, and now she's
catching on with music audiences across the Upper Midwest.
You can catch The Greenmen and their
singing sensation nightly at Breezy Point Resort's Marina Restaurant and Lounge.
At 30 -- after a two-term enlistment in
the Navy, motherhood, and a life-threatening battle with cancer -- she's about to release
her first CD as a member of The Greenmen.
Produced by Dick Wagner, the yet-unnamed
country album will be in the market later this year under the American Classics Records
label. Wagner has worked with the Pointer Sisters, Air Supply and other major groups.
Larry Kozian, lead guitarist in Johnny
Green's long-running show, is the songwriter. Other members of the group include Randy
Daniels Beidelschies on keyboard and harmonica, Eddie Coleman on drums, and, of course,
Green on bass.
Green has been in the national music scene
since the late 1950s, touring the club, festival and Las Vegas circuit since rock-n-roll
began. The Greenmen also have a "variety" album in the works with American
Classics.
Spend a little time with the group and you
get the idea that musically speaking something big is about to happen.
"If we make it big, I'm going to
enjoy the ride," Rhonda Marie says. "But whatever happens, I'm going to have fun
pursuing my dream."
It's a dream that began at a very early
age when she and the rest of the Lackowski family started the youngest performing polka
band in eastern Michigan.
Managed by her mother, Betty, Rhonda and
her brother and sister oompahed through hundreds of one-night appearances at local
festivals, Legions and VFWs, weddings, and fairs. They even released a record.
It was then, at the age of 15, that her
path first crossed that of Johnny Green and The Greenmen.
"He was playing a big festival at
Saginaw, Michigan, and we ended up joining the band for a couple of songs," she says.
"That's when I knew what I wanted to do with my life."
After four years with the family band,
Rhonda Marie enlisted in the Navy as her coming-of-age experience. A hydraulic mechanic on
aircraft carriers, she stayed all of one and most of the second two-year enlistment,
leaving to give birth to son Alfonso and restart her musical career.
She approached Johnny Green for the
lead-singer role when The Greenmen passed through Saginaw, close to the small town where
she lives with her parents and her infant son.
"Johnny was ready to make a change in
lead singer, but he wasn't convinced at first that I was the one he needed," she
says. "Over the next six months I convinced him by learning the songs, improving my
voice, and trimming 25 pounds from my figure. Now The Greenmen and I work and play like
one big happy family."
Their happy trail came to an abrupt halt
about four months ago when Rhonda Marie's doctors discovered she had a stomach tumor.
"I thought I was gaining weight at
first because my stomach began to protrude," she recalls, "but there was
something unnatural about it, too."
Surgery and radiation -- along with a
strong faith in the power of prayer -- have given Rhonda Marie a new lease on life, she
says.
"After all of that, how can we
miss," she says. |
