Loretta Lynn
Twinsburg's Michael Lusk and his blue bass and trademark long blond hair have been backing Loretta Lynn since 1998. Lusk's family will be in the Hard Rock Rocksino audience when Lynn and her band return to Northeast Ohio for a show on Sunday, April 17.
(Rich Fury, AP file)
This is a publicity still from Michael Lusk's 2013 album, 'Nights Like This.'A
PREVIEW Loretta LynnWhen:
7:30 p.m. Sunday, April 17.
Where:
Hard Rock Rocksino, 10777 Northfield Road, Northfield.
Tickets:
$35 to $75, plus fees, at the box office, Ticketmaster outlets, online at
and
and by phone at 1-800-745-3000.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- So much for that whole foofaraw of Nashville being "a 10-year town,'' where success takes at least a decade.
Twinsburg native Michael Lusk, who will be on background vocals and bass for the great Loretta Lynn when the country music icon returns to the Hard Rock Rocksino on Sunday, made it in three days.
Days!
"When I graduated [from Chamberlin High School] in 1986, I came to see what Nashville was like,'' said Lusk in a call to his home in Antioch, Tennessee, just south of Music City. "My father's cousin is a bass player, and he was playing for Merle Haggard.
"I was going to stay with him for a week to see what Nashville was like,'' Lusk said. "I got here on a Monday. On Tuesday, he got a call from a guy who was looking for a bass player who sings.''
His kinsman wasn't interested, so he suggested his teenaged houseguest.
"So on Wednesday, I went to that audition, and on Thursday, I was on my way to Las Vegas,'' playing bass and singing harmony for a country singer named Donna Hopkins.
Hopkins' career flamed out, but Lusk's has not. Just last year, he added his voice to nearly 750 recordings in Nashville, and he's done some solo work as well. But his touring job is with Lynn.
The 48-year-old, who has also played with everyone from Martina McBride to Jason Aldean to the Billy Graham Crusades, ended up in a Christian rock group called Forerunner that, in 1998, was pretty much hired as a group to work for Lynn.
"My first performance with Loretta, I had been hired two days prior, and my first show was at the Grand Ole Opry,'' said Lusk, who remembered thinking, "Two days ago, I didn't have this job, and now I'm on this stage singing 'Coal Miner's Daughter.' ''
He began with Lynn as a backup singer and moved to bass seven years ago, when her longtime bassist retired.
Lusk is making a good living as a musician, and has no regrets, but like a lot of us as children, he had different dreams.
"As a kid, I thought I was going to be a baseball star,'' Lusk said, who primarily was a knuckleball pitcher like the Indians' Phil Niekro. "But when I was in middle school, at Dodge Middle School, our music teacher, Louise Weddington, made everybody in the class perform a commercial.
"Me and a couple of my athletic friends decided to do the Dr Pepper commercial,'' he said. "I was the brave one and decided I would take the lead, and when I started singing in the classroom, everybody was staring at me.
"Mrs. Weddington said, 'You can play baseball all you want, but you're joining choir today!' '' Lusk recalled with a laugh.
Now you might think it odd that a kid from the region that's called the birthplace of rock 'n' roll migrated to country. But Lusk is drawn to all kinds of music.
"I was a huge '80s rock fan kid -- Journey, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard,'' he said. "But with my dad [Jack] being more of a country guy, I grew up listening to Haggard and Conway [Twitty] and George Jones and Loretta, so I developed a love for that.''
Despite all the success, Lusk is still the kid who named his first band Summit -- in honor of Summit County -- all these years later.
"I still get star-struck,'' said Lusk, whose first concert was Lynn at Cleveland's Front Row Theater when he was just 11. "It still dumbfounds me that Loretta Lynn knows my name.''
The alliance has grown into a family thing as much as a business relationship, which is what Loretta Lynn fans might hope for and expect.
"Two years ago, we were doing a monthlong West Coast run, and for some reason, I was not having my best day,'' Lusk said. "Even onstage, it was almost impossible for me to smile.
"Loretta just turned around and looked at me and said, 'I love you, Mikey,' '' he said.
"I just melted.''
And it didn't even take three days.
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