From January 24, 2006 -Denver entertainer Lannie Garrett in her new Clocktower Cabaret, which opens on Friday. The club, co-owned and designed by flamboyant Denver artist Lonnie Hanzon, will feature Garrett’s own shows and touring acts.
Denver icon and entertainer Lannie Garrett, whose downtown club Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret has served as the old-school, variety-show heart of the city for the past decade, has stepped down as manager of her namesake business.
Garrett declined to comment on her departure, but according to a club employee she wanted to move on to other pursuits, including her volunteer work, and will still perform around town “now and again.”
“Lannie has decided to leave the cabaret as an owner/manager,” the club said in a statement provided to The Denver Post by publicist Becky Toma. “We look forward to a continued relationship and are happy she is not retiring from performing. We have been very fortunate to have had her talent and skills over these first ten years of building the cabaret to be the successful and beloved venue that it is today.”
Garrett’s club at 1601 Arapahoe St., in the 106-year-old Daniels & Fischer clocktower, has already been renamed The Clocktower Cabaret.
“Even with a new name, we will continue to present the same variety of entertainment that we have been known for since our inception in 2006,” the statement said.
In a March 2016 profile of Garrett for The Post, William Porter wrote: “Garrett has reached an age when many people retire. While she is considering slowing down a bit — there is a lot of traveling she would like to do with her husband of four years, 5280 magazine founder Dan Brogan — the stage still exerts a powerful tug.”
“I’ve been a working girl a long, long time,” Garrett told The Post. “I’m thinking about pulling back a bit. But I don’t want to give up singing. I love entertaining. … I picture myself as an old singer with rouge and too much lipstick, singing bawdy songs by a piano like Alberta Hunter or Sophie Tucker.”
Garrett left the day-to-day running of the club after her final show of “Great Women of Song” on Sept. 10, Toma said. Her co-partners/owners have remained at the club, including Jefferson Arca continuing as the club’s general manager.
As a member of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame, Garrett’s four-decade-plus career in the Mile High City exerts a strong influence on performers of all stripes, especially what could be loosely categorized as variety acts — burlesque performers, magicians, neo-vaudeville entertainers — who have long used her club as a safe haven for experimentation in front of friendly audiences.
Garrett is perhaps best known for her long-running country music spoof “The Patsy DeCline Show,” but in recent years has also focused on mentoring at-risk children through Denver Kids Inc.
“I love to make people laugh, which is not something I set out to do,” Garrett told The Post in March. “Just to have helped people have fun — that when they were with me, we had fun.”
By John Wenzel | jwenzel@denverpost.com
John Wenzel has covered everything from comedy, music, film, books and video games to breaking news, business and technology for The Denver Post. He’s the author of the Speck/Fulcrum nonfiction book “Mock Stars” and an occasional contributor to Rolling Stone, Esquire and others. As a Dayton, Ohio native, his love of Guided by Voices is about equal to his other obsessions, including Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth, “Mr. Show” quotes and Onitsuka Tigers. Follow John Wenzel @johnwenzel
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/09/23/lannie-garrett-steps-down-lannies-clocktower-cabaret/
[Thank you to Alex Teitz, http://www.femmusic.com, for contributing this article.]