Larry G. Jones steps onstage and for 70 minutes wows audiences with impressions of Tom Jones that he has perfected over the past 15 years.
The tiny, bare-bones showroom at the Royal Resort in Las Vegas is almost full, 50 fans in a room that holds about 60. It's perhaps the smallest showroom in Las Vegas.
Down the street, the real Tom Jones performs in the 750-seat Hollywood Theatre at the MGM Grand. It, too, is near capacity.
Tom Jones has little difficulty filling a room. But in this economy, Larry G. Jones is a struggling entertainer who spends more time promoting his act to ticket sellers than performing onstage for the dozens of tourists who find their way to his showroom.
This is a lousy time to be in show business in Vegas.
By the time he gets on stage, the hard part of Larry G. Jones' day -- hustling to sell tickets to his own show -- is over.
"It's real tough. I'm a guy people haven't heard of, (performing) in a place they haven't heard of," said the 42-year-old native of Opelika, Ala.
And it's a source of anxiety for Jones because, despite the chasm that exists between him and Tom Jones, they do have something in common. Neither was hired by the hotel where he's appearing. Rather, each rents his showroom. It's called four-walling.
In its purest form, four-walling involves the producer of a show -- who could be the performer himself -- assuming all the costs and risks of the production. It's a practice that was unheard of in Vegas 30 years ago but that is prevalent today.
And it's never been harder for the lesser-known performers, because of the recession, to fill their showrooms, even as their costs remain the same.
"It used to be that December would be a slow month. Well, it's been slow since September. We've had a slow month for the past four or five months," Jones said.
To sell tickets, he's doing something that makes him uncomfortable: schmoozing with ticket brokers and concierges in hotels and shopping malls up and down the Strip. Maybe they'll promote him a little bit harder if they can put his face to the name, he hopes.
"You've got to personally meet them, talk to them, get them to know you and invite them to your show," he said. "These people have seen every huge, grand extravaganza in town, so when it comes to seeing a small show like mine, they say, 'Yeah, we'll try to come by.' But most don't.
"I hate hustling. I'm not comfortable trying to sell myself, but I have no choice. I don't have a day job or any other skills. So these days I'm really having to hustle."
It's an uphill struggle.
Terry Jenkins, corporate director of entertainment for Boyd Gaming, names the big pitfall of four-walling: You've got to spend money like there's no recession.
"You've got to have marquee value or it's just not going to work for you. You can't be undercapitalized. It will cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to educate people from the Midwest as to who you are. They come to town on a three- or four-day vacation and they know Celine Dion and Bette Midler and Wayne Newton. They know Donny and Marie. But they don't know 'Point Break' and they don't know 'Ice.'
"You've got to have a good half a million in the bank just to get your name out there. A billboard with a good location can cost from $11,000 to $15,000 a month."
And Frank Lieberman, a veteran Vegas publicist, warns that because tourists have grown stingy in this economy, most are carefully planning their trips weeks or months in advance -- and making reservations for shows that they've heard of back home.
They probably haven't heard of the likes of Larry G. Jones. It's a dilemma he and other less-recognizable entertainers face as they try to succeed in Las Vegas, one of the most competitive entertainment markets in the world. "And the lowering of ticket prices of the big shows is going to impact the smaller shows," Lieberman said.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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