The Backstreet Girl

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Dec 22, 2099 Source: St. Petersburg Times Submitted By: Thanks to Backstreet Millennium for this post. By DAVE SCHEIBER © St. Petersburg Times, published December 1, 1999 NEW ORLEANS -- Weekend revelers are spilling into the bustling French Quarter, but on this sunny Saturday afternoon, Bourbon has dropped a notch as the hottest street in the city. Backstreet has it beat. Still, the Boys are not the ones who have just been spotted here in the land of jazz and jambalaya. They are safe in their suites blocks away at the plush Windsor Court, relaxing before their sold-out evening show, while young girls scour the lobby for the five pop idols who make up the mega-star Backstreet Boys. It is a different member of their musical entourage who has been seen on the sidewalk. Someone in a red pickup truck at a traffic light has picked her out of the crowd and shouts a greeting. She is tall and attractive, with wavy blond hair, white retro-rim glasses and an air of friendly confidence. She is right at home in a town defined by music because that's what has defined her life, too. She is the Backstreet Girl. Her name is Mindi Abair, a saxophonist extraordinaire trained at Boston's elite Berklee College of Music; the lone female member of the Backstreet Boys' ace, six-player road band; a St. Petersburg native whose father was a standout touring sax player in his own right; and a versatile musician with her sights set high as a singer-songwriter. Instantly, Abair recognizes the person in the pickup: He is T.L., the Boys' sound man, who will soon be at a massive mixing board, pumping the soothing Backstreet harmonies above ear-piercing, girlish screams at the New Orleans Sports Arena. They share a few laughs until the light changes. Then Abair moves on, happily taking in the sights of one more record-shattering stop on the Backstreet Boys' Millennium tour, which sold out its initial wave of 770,000 tickets nationwide in one day this summer and is set to roll into Tampa's Ice Palace on Thursday and Friday. "You're playing to 20,000 people a night, and the screaming doesn't stop," she says with a laugh. "I actually have in-ear monitors, which are crucial. The first couple of nights I didn't have them, because they were still molding them. My ears would be ringing the whole next day -- not from the music, but from the screaming. The music is just loud because it has to get through the screams. It's hysterical." In addition to the gale-force shrieks, there are blasts of pyrotechnics, spaceships and cool, cable-suspended surfboards on which the Boys fly in. Then there are the delirious fans who toss onstage an endless array of items they have heard that the Boys like or simply might like: golf balls, boxes of macaroni and cheese, teddy bears, stuffed bunny rabbits, pillows embroidered with cell-phone numbers, cell phones themselves, big hats, jewelry, alien dolls, Quarter Pounders, not to mention all the adoring notes and snapshots of themselves. "The guys in the band were saying, "We can't wait to see you in your first show,' " says Abair, who describes her age as "Generation X." "I said, "Come on, I've played before 30,000 people before, it can't be that bad.' They said, "No, you're going to freak out.' "So the first show arrives, and the pyro goes off, and they start pulling girls out of the audience, because they're crying and collapsing. And I just stood there, frozen. I couldn't believe it! The whole night long I was dodging teddy bears and stuffed bunnies. I looked over to the keyboard player, and he goes, "Heh, heh. Told you so.' It's surreal." * * * Being part of the high-tech, heartthrob spectacle was the furthest thing from Abair's mind in May. She had made a stellar name for herself as the featured saxophonist on major tours with jazz guitarist/vocalist Jonathan Butler, actor/singer Adam Sandler, jazz keyboardist Bobby Lyle and composer John Tesh. Now she was home in L.A., set to push her debut CD, Mindi Abair, as a singer-songwriter. That's when the call came. It was evening, and the Boys' vocal coach at the time, Doc Holiday, was on the line. He had gotten her name from the band's new musical director/drummer, William "Bubba" Bryant, who had heard of Abair from a drummer who knew her. Holiday raced to her house before catching a flight to Europe and watched bits of Abair's tour videos with Sandler and Butler. He hired her on the spot. Three days later, Abair was on a plane to Belgium and the ride of a lifetime. Abair quickly became an integral part of the show. Not only does she help power the music with her alto and soprano sax work, including a soulful sax-piano duet with one of the Boys, but she also handles percussion and keyboard. Now young female fans are starting to connect with her. Signs pop up at shows like, "Go Mindi" and "Girl Power!" She receives e-mails on her Web site (http://www.mindiabair.com) from mothers seeking advice about saxophones for their daughters, and from daughters inspired by her to play the instrument. Fans ask for her autograph and bring her gifts. "Some of the fans give us cookies or cake, or they'll give us little necklaces they've made," she says. "I've gotten a bunch of bracelets with my name on them. It's very sweet. But we all know it's not really about us. This is all about the Boys." Abair has developed a comfortable rapport with the group, A.J. McLean, Brian Littrell, Howie Dorough, Kevin Richardson and Nick Carter. She and her bandmates, and a troupe of 10 dancers, have gone bowling with the Boys. There have been raging watergun fights. On the Fourth of July, everyone spent the day at a sprawling Italian villa. They swam, waterskied and were treated to private fireworks. And paparazzi caught it all for a German tabloid. A caravan of five buses transports the Boys, the band and the dancers. Often, the Boys get a craving for their fast food of choice, McDonald's. So all the buses pull into the parking lot and everyone piles into the restaurant. "We'll walk in, and the girl behind the counter will start screaming, "Oh my God! Oh my God!' I'm like, "Can I just get some fries, here?' " The bond fans feel for the Boys never ceases to amaze Abair: "I've seen girls who have followed us from the first date in Europe to the last one, and now are showing up in America! I wouldn't be here today if I'd have followed a band around Europe for three months. My parents would have killed me." * * * Just for the record, Mindi Abair did follow a band around -- for several years. Of course, she was only a baby, and the group included her father. Lance Abair was an acclaimed sax man and keyboardist in the 1970s with a Tampa Bay-based show band, the Entertainers. The outfit played for long stretches at resorts from Las Vegas to Miami Beach. It would have been too hard to leave his wife, Linda, and new baby, Mindi, back home in St. Petersburg, so the family hit the road together. Mindi spent much of the first three years of her life on tour with her parents. "She was too young to remember a lot of it, but I'm sure it had an effect on her," says her father, now a senior trainer for Bose professional products. "She was always with her parents, going to all the cool places we'd go, constantly meeting people and being around music." The music did not stop after the touring ended. Her father set up an elaborate recording studio in their St. Petersburg home. It was right next to Mindi's bedroom, and her closet sometimes doubled as the studio's vocal booth. Until she was 15, the sounds from her dad's studio, filled with one local band after the next, were all part of growing up. Abair started playing sax in fourth grade and excelled right off the bat. The pivotal moment came in her senior year at Northside Christian. She had decided to shoot for the all-state jazz band, but one night before tryouts, she gave up. "I was thinking, "Who am I kidding? I can't do this.' So my dad came into my room and says, "All right, you can quit. Let it go. Maybe another year. But you'll never know what would have happened. If you don't go for something, you'll never get it.' Then he walked out." His words worked. She tried out and earned first-chair alto sax, the only female member of the unit. "It was a great lesson for me," she says. The all-state honor led to a scholarship at the University of North Florida. A year later, she landed a scholarship at prestigious Berklee. Abair spent two years being humbled by some of the best young jazz players in the country. As a senior, however, she had her own band, more than held her own in top-flight jam sessions and earned Berklee's coveted Performance Achievement Award. She graduated magna cum laude and at the commencement ceremony, Abair's was the first name called. She bounded onstage to accept her diploma from Grammy winner Phil Collins, who had received an honorary doctorate. She shook his hand, then asked, "Do you need a sax player?" Collins laughed. He wasn't in the market. But Abair knew where the market was: Los Angeles. She loaded up her Honda CRX and headed west in 1991. She got jobs waitressing and as a receptionist but sat in at any club she could at night. Soon, she put together a new band and started landed some big gigs. One of her favorite stints was with Sandler, who featured her throughout his tour, highlighted by her scorching break on the Springsteen hit Out in the Street, which closed Sandler's 1996 HBO special. Amid other tours, Abair pursued her new passion as a singer-songwriter, drawing comparisons to Lisa Loeb and Suzanne Vega. She had begun to market her CD on her Web site when Backstreet beckoned. "When it comes from the heart, that's what is important to me," says Backstreet Band musical director and drummer Bubba Bryant, who has toured with artists from Roberta Flack to Sheena Easton. "Mindi plays from the heart. Every note she plays, I feel it. She's a great person and an excellent player. We couldn't do any better." * * * It is almost 4 p.m. and time to leave the Inter-Continental Hotel for sound check. Abair adds a layer of lipstick in her hotel room, even though she knows she will be made over again before the show. "When I go to a show, it's like glitter-mania," she says. "The guys don't care, but it's a girl's dream." She strides through the spacious lobby, free of fans because most are still camped out at the Windsor Court. In moments, Abair steps onto the jet-black bus that transports the Backstreet Band. The players are all on board. Other than Bryant, a Los Angeles resident, they are Floridians. Dennis Gallo (guitar/keyboard), Guy Walker (guitar), and Louie Vigilante (bass) are from Orlando, where most of the Backstreet Boys live as well. Tom Smith (keyboard) comes from Fort Myers. Smith also doubles as Webmaster for a lively behind-the-scenes site of the Backstreet Band (http://www.bsbband.com). It includes many of his tour photos, updates and a link to the band's official mascot, a stuffed toy goose found in Canada named Guido, who rides the bus and even has a spot onstage during shows. The group has become a close-knit family, and Abair is an outgoing, popular member of it. "The only thing we can agree on is that we all like her; other than that, we hate each other," Smith says with mock disdain. The bus arrives and pulls into a special area fenced off from the public. Band members file into a private entrance of the arena and follow the signs to their dressing room. Their white stage outfits hang on a rack in the corner. There are vegetable and fruit plates, bowls of M&Ms (all colors) and chocolate kisses, Snapple and soda. Someone has brought Abair a big Rugrats Angelica doll, whose glasses and pulled-up pigtails match a Mindi stage look. At Abair's makeup table, tour assistants have assembled her growing collection of stuffed bunny rabbits from fans. A bottle of Tejava sugarless ice tea awaits by her chair in a bucket of ice. By 5 p.m., the band moves into the cavernous arena for sound check. The stage is in the round, and each player stands on a circular platform, with plenty of room for the Backstreet Boys and the dancers to cavort around them. The sound check is only for the band; the Boys will arrive shortly and head straight for their well-guarded dressing rooms. The stage literally shakes as the band blasts through Larger Than Life, while yellow-jacketed security guards huddle in a corner, awaiting the flood of young girls, many with moms in tow. In less than 30 minutes, the doors will open in advance of warm-up acts Mandy Moore and E.Y.C. The Boys take the stage at 8 p.m., and from that point on, the night is a scream-a-thon. For two hours, they knock the crowd dead with every move and smooth vocal turn. The band rocks the place, with Abair wailing in the spotlight on countless sax breaks. As the airtight unit pounds out the final musical interlude from I Want It That Way, the Boys are dashing -- each followed by a personal security guard -- through a concrete corridor beneath the stands to their awaiting getaway bus. Twenty minutes later, the Backstreet Band heads for its bus. Several hundred young fans are cordoned off nearby. They see Abair and scream. She smiles and approaches them. Young hands reach out to touch her, shake her hand, hug her. A little boy throws his arms around her neck and kisses her. Fans hand her stuffed animals and T-shirts. "Are the Backstreet Boys nice?" a preteen girl, with her mom, asks earnestly. "Verrrrry nice," Abair responds gently. Then she turns for the bus, ready for another ride in the rising career of the Backstreet Girl. [Pics available at Backstreet Millennium] Comment on this item. Next Item: LTL Video Tidbits Prev Item: They're like gods to us