  STAR OF THE SHOW: Dennis Quaid rocks Club Regent this weekend with his band of Sharks. |
No point asking where actor Dennis Quaid plans to be on Oscar night.
The Texas-born thesp -- who's in town shooting the crime thriller The Horseman -- is probably going to have to skip watching the Academy Awards ceremony live this year, given that he's gone and booked himself a gig at Winnipeg's own Club Regent Casino.
So while the rest of the world sits glued to the boob tube -- watching Hollywood's elite give themselves another longwinded pat on the back -- Quaid and his band The Sharks will be cutting loose in a far less formal setting.
"We play rock 'n' roll and rhythm & blues; half of it's original, half of it's stuff we love, stuff we grew up with," says the oft-grinning 53-year-old, who's never been nominated for an Oscar, despite worthy turns in The Right Stuff, The Big Easy and Far From Heaven. "The other half is just off the wall. I really think you have to see it to believe it."
The Sharks have been together for the last six years and met after Quaid was hauled onstage by fellow actor-musician Harry Dean Stanton (who also appeared at a few local venues while shooting The Good Life in Winnipeg last spring).
All of his bandmates are fixtures on the L.A. music scene (though guitarist Jimmy James hails from Toronto), and Quaid says they get together for gigs once every week, in addition to tour stops in Las Vegas and Florida.
Quaid is, of course, no stranger to music. He's been playing guitar since he was a kid and was given piano lessons by none other than rock icon Jerry Lee Lewis, whom Quaid famously portrayed in the 1989 biopic Great Balls of Fire.
And though he's part of a growing pool of Hollywood actors who've indulged their inner rock stars (Russell Crowe, Juliette Lewis, Jared Leto and Jamie Foxx are among the more recent examples), he swears he harbours no fantasies of one day quitting his day job and hitting the road.
"I'm not going for a record deal with any of this," says Quaid, who reportedly aims to create a living room vibe by performing in his bare feet. "I'm just doing it because I love it, not because I want to make a second career out of it.
"It really does take the place of live theatre for me, because you have that rapport with the audience."
Finding time to rehearse the band before the weekend might be little bit tricky, given that Quaid is in pretty much every scene of The Horseman.
The $20-million studio flick -- about a recently widowed cop caught up in a serial murder mystery -- hasn't left Quaid with any time to check out Winnipeg's nightlife, either.
Then there's the recent cold snap, which didn't make for a very warm welcome for the superstar.
"I've got a place in Montana but I've never quite experienced this before," he says with a laugh, after noting Winnipeg has thrown open its arms for the production.
"But you do get adjusted to it. And I've had a blast going ice-skating on the river. I've never done that before, either."
The Horsemen is slated to shoot until mid-March, though audiences should get one more chance to see Quaid in musician mode after that. He's playing "King of Western Swing"-turned-killer Spade Cooley in the upcoming biopic Shame on You.
Tickets to Quaid's show at Club Regent on Saturday are sold out, but seats for his Sunday set are still available for $35 through Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.ca or 780-3333).
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