Larry Moss tells a story about the first time he saw Clint Holmes perform in Vegas. It was about three years ago, during Holmes’ stage show at Harrah’s. After three songs Moss dropped his head and began to cry. Such overtly emotional moments are not rare for Moss, who seems ready to break into song or sobs at any moment. But he was truly moved by Holmes.
“He should be on Broadway,” Moss would later say, and he is certainly an authority. A gifted director, writer and acting coach who turned a usually unremarkable Helen Hunt into an Academy Award-winner (for her turn in As Good as It Gets), Moss has been working with the similarly high-energy Holmes and Holmes’ longtime friend and music director, Bill Fayne, on the play Just Another Man (aka JAM).
The musical production is simply Holmes’ story, put to music. Holmes, whose father, Eddie, was a black jazz musician, and whose mother (Audrey, 91) was a classically trained opera singer, has summoned such respected Vegas performers as Tina Walsh (the former lead in Mamma Mia!) and Earl Turner (formerly of the Rio and Palace Station, whose show has often been compared to Holmes’) to help spin his tale.
Although the production at UNLV’s Judy Bayley Theater is scheduled to run through June 24, Holmes has no desire to see it quit there. He plans to take the show to London before eventually landing on Broadway.
Hardly just another man.