Adele Mundell wants to keep the music alive.
The owner of Rock-A-Billy Entertainment, Mundell is a promoter/agent who has been bringing tribute artists to faithful audiences throughout the Foothills for almost a decade.
“My goal when I started Rock-A-Billy in 2014 was, because I love the music, was to keep the music alive, that’s my motto,” says Mundell, whose company’s name is a nod to those early days of rock and roll. “I'm country and old rock and roll, I'm old school, that’s who I am.”
Many others in these parts share her taste in music as Mundell was staging as many as 20 shows a year before the pandemic brought live music to a screeching halt, but she’s hard at work rebuilding the business one Buddy Holly and Johnny Cash at a time.
Her shows have become staples at the Black Diamond Bar and Hotel in Diamond Valley and the Heritage Inn Hotel & Convention Centre in High River, and Mundell is working with the Elks to bring performers to their hall on Elizabeth Street in Olde Towne Okotoks.
She has worked with a long list of tribute artists, performers who portray everyone from Elvis and Roy Orbison to The Beatles, Eagles and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The lengthy list also includes country legends Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn as well as timeless performers the likes of Cher and Elton John.
Audiences can range from 30- and 40-somethings to octogenarians depending on the era of the artist, but the common bond is that the music transports them back to a different time.
“The audience, they grew up with that music,” says Mundell. “Some artists resemble that person, they sound like that person, the mannerisms, so some people (in the audience) close their eyes and they just imagine it’s the real person up there.
“A lot of my followers are age from 30, 40, up to 80, so this is the music they remember.”
Mundell does it all at Rock-A-Billy, from booking the artist and venue, to designing the posters and advertising, selling the tickets and getting active on social media. She’s grateful to a loyal fan base that routinely sells out shows.
She works with a lot of tribute artists from throughout Alberta as well as ones from B.C., Saskatchewan and beyond, including the United States, saying they must meet a certain standard in order to give the audience its money’s worth.
“I bring in good shows,” she says. “When they’re leaving, they’re saying good show, great show, when’s the next one and that’s what you want to hear. When they’re up dancing on the dance floor, that makes me happy.”
Mundell says the industry is healthy, although, like many others, it’s still recovering from the pandemic, which really took a toll on live entertainment, forcing some who made a full-time living as tribute artists to abandon the craft.
She started offering shows again last fall and says it really picked up this past spring. Having found that summer shows don’t draw as well, she’ll be back at it with a full fall lineup starting in September, including her third annual Elvis Christmas show.
“People are getting out, they want to enjoy themselves because we were tied down there for a couple of years,” says Mundell. “They want to get out and socialize with friends, go out for dinner, drinks. When they’re smiling and happy, it makes me happy.”
She says the entertainers were also itching to get back on stage as they just love to perform in front of an audience. Saying she’s become good friends with many of her regular artists, Mundell is always on the lookout for new acts to bring to town.
“Some of them call me Momma Bear because I’m looking after them. They know they're going to get paid well, looked after well.”
Mundell says she’s happy to play her part in keeping the music of another era alive.
“The legends and the icons and the divas, their music will never die. I enjoy what I do and I love the music, but sometimes I wish I was 40 when I started this.”
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Brenda Lee Cottrell has teamed up with Mundell for a number of years to bring her one-woman show to local venues.
Cottrell got her start as a tribute artist more than two decades ago at a Canadian Cancer Society fundraiser in Regina where she performed a 45-minute set of Patsy Cline songs. What started as a hobby has turned into a career and has seen Cottrell gradually add more ‘Legendary Ladies’ to a repertoire that now numbers at least two dozen.
She delivers a show that spans eras, from Cline, Loretta Lynn and Brenda Lee to Celine Dion and Whitney Houston. Her stable of tributes also includes everyone from Petula Clark and Connie Francis to Olivia Newton John and Linda Ronstadt to her two newest ladies, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, both introduced to the show this year.
“We feel that we have such an eclectic group of music, it brings our audience space to a wider platform,” she says. “So, I definitely have added some ladies that are more current than just the ladies of say the ’50s and the ’60s. It's been good to us to do that.”
Cottrell says she chooses her ladies wisely, ensuring she can do justice to each artist.
“There are some ladies that I won't even attempt, like I won't do Janis Joplin, I won't do Tina Turner, because you have to have a certain growl in your voice, and if you don't have it naturally, you can actually hurt your vocal cords by trying to go there.”
Being able to replicate the voice is paramount, but she says she won’t add a lady to her show unless she has the full package, stage presence included.
“So, every lady that I've chosen, I can bring some of them to the stage just by the nuances that I had from them. I have to listen to them, I have to watch them, so it's a bit of a study on my part. Sometimes when I'm learning a new lady, I just close my eyes and I visualize the lady as she's singing that song and something happens to just tap into something and bring some of their sound out.”
Cottrell says adding to her list of ‘Legendary Ladies’ keeps the show fresh for both her and her audiences.
“If I keep singing the same songs from the same artist, then you know it gets, I don't want to say boring, but I don't like being typecast, and I certainly need variety and I need to do new things all the time as well.”
With husband Brian acting as director and technical producer, as well as playing the role of Sonny to her Cher, Cottrell was doing two to three shows a month before the pandemic hit, and says they’re hoping to get back to pre-COVID levels but given they’re at a sweet spot in their lives, they’d be happy to do just one show a month.
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At just 21, Jaedyn Pilon has become a fixture on the tribute artist circuit, performing as Elvis, Buddy Holly and Johnny Cash for audiences across the country.
Originally a fan of The Beatles, Pilon took advice from his dad, who opined that it would be easier to perform as an individual artist than trying to find three other guys to fill out a band.
“I kind of took that advice to heart and obviously, you know, Elvis, Buddy Holly, they were big influences on The Beatles and it kind of all just snowballed from there.”
Barely into his teens, Pilon managed to get on stage at the Blue Suede Music Festival in Westlock, Alberta, where his love for Elvis, and performing in front of a crowd, took off.
“I went up, did a couple songs and from that moment on I was hooked, I’d caught the Elvis bug,” he says.
A year later, he made history as the youngest competitor at the annual Penticton Elvis Festival.
Although he’s younger than almost everyone in his audiences, often by several decades, Pilon says he’s the same age as Elvis was in 1956 when his career started to take off, and that Holly was only 22 when he died in a plane crash in 1959.
He wrote a show called Elvis: The Early Years that he’s taken on the road for the past year or so, backed up by the six-piece Flashback Band at larger venues. Pilon is a stickler for details to ensure the show accurately replicates an Elvis performance.
“That's one of my favourite aspects of it, just the details and everything. You know what ring Elvis wore on what finger and all that sort of stuff. I really try to be as accurate as possible and give an accurate representation of what it would have actually been like to see Elvis.
"Lately I've been having my band dressed up accurately as well. You know, if we're doing some ’50s, they’re wearing some suits and bowties like Elvis’ band. If we're doing the ’70s Elvis, we’ve got some new jackets that are replicas of what Elvis’ band wore. So, it’s just trying to make it a fully immersive experience.”
Pilon is currently working on a new venture that recreates the Johnny Cash TV show, complete with special guests such as Waylon Jennings, Carl Perkins and Glen Campbell, and already has about 15 performances booked for the fall.
He’ll also be reprising a residency in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico this winter where he’ll perform three or four shows a week.
He says there’s just something about the songs from that era that speak to him, and it’s basically the only music he listens to.
“I can't stand most of the music they put out today, it's all computers, basically,” Pilon says. "All the music today is so digitally enhanced and everything back in the day, you know, there were just four guys in the room and what they were able to play at the time was what was put on the record.”
