The music of disco, pop and style icon, Donna Summer, continues to live on around the world on concert stages thanks to singer and performer, Rainere Martin. Martin has spent the last decade plus touring cruise ships, festivals, casinos and corporate events around the globe performing her Forever Donna tribute show.
Sadly, Donna Summer went to that great discotheque in the sky in 2012, but ever since then Martin has been keeping her music and legacy alive, performing Summer’s disco-era classics as well as her pop and dance hits from the ’80s and ’90s.
“We’ve come a long, long way,” Martin said about how her concerts have evolved since she started out. “I have all-new backup singers and a new backing band of professional musicians. I also like to change up my music. I’m growing and learning. I’m taking on some more challenging Donna songs. It always keeps me on my toes. I also do two costumes changes during the show and that allows my amazing backup singers to take the spotlight. Each of them have solos throughout the show. It’s amazing.”
Martin is certainly happy to be back on the road. When COVID shut the world down in 2020, it certainly felt like the “Last Dance” for a long time.
“It was horrible,” she said. “It was probably one of the worse experiences of my life. The year we shut down for COVID was the busiest year I’ve had in my 11-year career. I was booked solid. It was very depressing seeing the shows go away one by one. It was a very, very depressing time. Throughout COVID, I did a bunch of virtual shows but it’s nothing like doing a live show. With a virtual show, it’s just you and a camera and I feed off of my audience.”
That audience isn’t just aging queer and straight audiences reliving their debauched disco glory days. Martin said Donna Summer’s music continues to reach younger music fans who weren’t even alive when “Bad Girls” or “She Works Hard for The Money” ruled the clubs and the airwaves.
“They may not know who Donna is, but they are familiar with her music,” she said of the young fans she sees in her audience. “They may have heard her song on a Burger King commercial. The young people today, which is very surprising, they come to the shows and just have a ball because the music is loved, and they hear something familiar. They don’t know the icon singing the song, but they know the songs from the commercials. Then of course I have my die-hard Donna fans so the age range form my shows can be from 7 to 70, and that’s amazing.”
Martin said that now that her schedule has rebounded and filled up with tour dates, she will never take it for granted again.
“Being an artist and you’re traveling all the time, I remember I was tired, and I was complaining: ‘I want to go home and sleep in my own bed,’” she said. “I’ll tell you this. I made a pact with myself that I will never ever complain again about being tired. Once the world opens up again and God blesses me with the opportunity to start singing and traveling, I said I will never complain about being tired because sometimes you don’t realize how good you have it until it’s taken away.”
Speaking of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone, the skyrocketing prices of concert tickets means that tribute concerts like Martin’s are suddenly looking like the more fiscally responsible concert option compared to the $500 to $3,000 you’d spend to see Taylor Swift, Madonna or Beyoncé.
“The tribute shows are a lot more reasonable,” she said. “It’s astronomical — the prices of tickets these days. It absolutely makes sense for people to come to tribute shows. I can never be Donna. There will never be another Donna. But I can be the next best thing. I’m portraying her sound and her look. It makes it feasible for people to come to our shows.”
Rainere Martin will perform as part of “An Evening with the Legends” at 3 p.m. on Sept. 22 at 2300 Arena, 2300 S. Swanson St. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 267-273-0945 or visit 2300arena.com.
