By Craig Moorhead
Special to the Argus
One wall of Lorraine and Lori Thillen’s basement is a veritable country western music hall of fame. Over 150 photos, taken at “meet and greet” events, often before or after concerts, grace the paneling. When it comes to meeting the stars, the Thillens of Caledonia know how it’s done.
“We went every weekend for a while,” Lorraine says. She and daughter Lori bought season tickets to a venue in the Wisconsin Dells called the Country Music Legends Theater. Year after year, they went to see their favorite performers. They became adept at getting autographs and photos with the stars.
“If we got to meet and greet, I’d buy a t-shirt or a sweatshirt from them,” Lorraine explains. “I’d buy an eight by ten picture and I’d have ‘em autograph it, and we’d have a picture taken. I’d figure if they were willing to meet and greet, I was going to buy a picture,” she laughs, “and if they wouldn’t meet and greet, I wouldn’t buy their stuff.”
Lori looks across the wall, ticking off names. “There are a lot of doubles,” she explains, “because mom took one and I took one.“ Even so there are a lot of entertainers. “Here’s Bobby Bare, Johnny Paycheck, Box Car Willie, Alan Jackson without a mustache, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Porter Wagoner. Here’s Jerry Reed, he was such a sweetheart; we really enjoyed him. Over here is Hank Williams III. Over there are the last two members of Hank Williams’ original band; they’re gone now. A lot of these folks are gone now.”
“Here’s a picture of the owners (of the Dells theater),” Lorraine says. “Jeff and Sherry Wray. They were the opening act.”
Since Lorraine and Lori were such good customers, they got to be friends with the Wrays.
“Some of them didn’t do a meet and greet,” Lorraine says. “Sherry would say to us, ‘after the show you come up by me’. She took us out to the stage, out the back door, and right on to the bus.”
Not all of the pictures come from the Dells. Some were taken in Branson Missouri, others at state and county fairs.
Lori points towards a photo, “Here’s Don Ho…” Lorraine: “Did you ever hear of Don Ho in Hawaii? We went to Hawaii and I said ‘I want to meet Don Ho’… Lori said, ‘You’ll never get to meet him.’” Lorraine looked at Lori, grinned, and continued, “The night we went (to Hawaii) they had this horrible snowstorm on the east coast. All the planes were grounded.” Lori: “There were supposed to be about 50 people in our group, but we ended up with about 12.” Lorraine: “They were going to have a cocktail meet and greet, but because they cancelled that, they said, ‘We’re going to take you tomorrow night to go meet Don Ho’. I said, YES! The lady asked, ‘Do you like Don Ho?’ I said, oh yes, I wanted to meet him and I didn’t think I would.”
The entertainer, a Hawaiian icon, asked Lorraine if she knew the tune ‘Tiny Bubbles’. “It was the song I used to sing to my kids,” she said, “when I’d be walking the floor with them. It was one of my favorite songs. I told him that I knew it and he said, ‘Sing it with me.’” Up on to the stage she went, to sing the song with Don Ho. “I had so much fun, it was the highlight of my trip to Hawaii.”
Eventually the Dells theater closed down. Lori and Lorraine don’t get to as many concerts these days, but they still attend a few. The larger venues don’t have meet and greet events, Lori says, because it’s just not practical. “In the bigger theaters you can’t do that,” she says. “They hold thousands of people. The little theater in the Dells might have held 1000 at most.”
“The older stars are the ones who seem to care about the people who come and see them,” Lorraine says. “I like the old country people.”
Does the younger generation of entertainers take time to meet and greet their fans?
“Not really, no.” Lori says, but there are exceptions to the rule. “If you go to the smaller theaters, they’re more apt to let you do it.”
Lorraine tells a story from an earlier time. “They used to say that Marty Robbins… would have the last act on the Grand Ole Opry. When he got done with his show, he would sit down at the end of the stage, and he would stay until everyone who wanted an autograph got one, even if it took hours. He would not leave until everybody got an autograph.”
Waving a hand towards the photos, Lorraine says, “For the most part, these people here, I can’t say any one of them were in a hurry to get us out of there.”
So you ladies had a lot of fun?
“Oh, we did,” Lorraine concludes. “I couldn’t wait from one week until the next to go.”
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