The Midtown Men’s Christian Hoff
Tony in tow
Not many Broadway shows and starshave groupies…
Jersey Boys does, it’s even got its own Facebook page.
So who knows? Things could get interesting Thursday night at The Lied Center of Kansas in Lawrence when The Midtown Men take the stage.
That’s because the four-person, 30 and 40-something “boy band” sprang from the early ranks of the Broadway musical chronicling the rise to fame of 1960s hit makers, The Four Seasons.
And now The Midtown Men, after five years of touring with more than 100 dates a year and putting on a critically acclaimed two-hour show of 1960s hits, have attracted a groupie following all their own.
“Hundreds of them, many have seen the show 20, 50, 100 times: confirms publicist Sandy Hicks. “One lady over 500 times! Many have naturally become Midtown Men fans and have seen our show 20 or 30 times and will travel great distances to catch shows.”
Fact is though, they’re just regular guys.
For example when I caught up to Tony winner Christian Hoff Tuesday morning he was in line to renew his car registration at the DMV in San Diego.
“Maybe if I wore my Tony award around my neck like Flavor Flav they’d let me go to the front of the line,” Hoff jokes. “But I doubt anybody here would know what a Tony is.”
In the wide world of entertainment, Hoff has been there, done that, quite literally.
His career as an entertainer took off at the age of 8 when his parents enrolled him in the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, where Hoff says notables like Raquel Welch got her start.
Up until then, Hoff had baseball on the brain, “I was a good pitcher and shortstop and I could hit pretty good,” he says. “But by the time I started making a living at age 11 I didn’t have time for it anymore.”
Seriously, a living at age 11?
“Yeah, I paid for a car before I could even drive it,” Hoff says. “I was 14. I think it was a cherry red Nissan Sentra and I gave the keys to my brother to drive until I got older.”
In addition to mastering hit pop tunes from the 60s, Hoff is a guitar player, artist, he builds furniture and “grows grapes in my backyard,” he says.
Five years ago the four Jersey Boys cast members struck out on their own after dabbling at doing the band thing. The rest is history.
“We’re like a rolling fraternity now,” Hoff says of The Midtown Men. “We really feel like we’re ambassadors of this great decade of music and we love telling stories about the songs, our connection to the songs and the people we’ve met along the way – some of them the artists.”
Hoff’s resume includes a role in the movie Star Trek IV.
“That was pretty sweet,” he says. “I remember the day they called and I went on the set for the audition and met Leonard Nimoy who was directing the movie. And I got on the set and there was Leonard Nimoy in his robe and William Shatner and I walked over to Leonard and he said, ‘Well, I guess they want us to read the script from a scene.’ And long story short, I said my couple of lines and that was it. And he said, ‘See you next week.’
“I’m in 15 or 20 minutes of the movie. It was an amazing thing, like that was really cool. I was a tourist with a big camera and one of my favorite lines was, ‘Do whales really attack people, like in Moby Dick?’ Just between you and me, anytime you can say ‘Moby Dick’ on screen, it’s epic.
“I was also the voice of Richie Rich when I was a kid for the original cartoon for Hanna-Barbara in the early 1980s.”
The Midtown Men’s endless touring schedule has afforded them the opportunity to meet a number of the original artists who performed the songs they sing back in the day.
Tommy James of Tommy James and the Shondells, for example.
“He’s an amazing friend of ours,” Hoff says. “We’re recording with him this fall on an album he has coming out. It’s sort of a collaboration on a medley of three tunes.
“And we’ve worked with Little Steven (Steven Van Zandt),” Hoff says. “I think basically he is a modern rock and roll guru. He produced a single for us, a darling love song called, ‘All Alone on Christmas.’ You can get it on iTunes. And we were backed on it by members of the E Street Band. If he wasn’t so busy, we’d do more stuff with him”
Who knows, maybe Hoff will get to again utter the words, “Moby Dick” Thursday from the Lied Center Stage. One can only hope.
