For 25 years, Lorie Line has been a part of this annual production: writing Christmas arrangements, pulling together countless costumes, contracting and rehearsing with musicians, acquiring sound and lighting engineers and pulling together show that will travel from community to community in the back of a full semi-truck, putting together a show that’s as much a holiday tradition as baking cookies.
“Who would have thought I’d be doing this after all these years,” Line said. “Obviously, I love it.”
Lorie Line takes the stage tonight, Dec. 12 at the St. Michael-Albertville High School Performing Arts Center. The show starts at 7;30 p.m.
She plans to bring her Fab 5 and feature the “best of the best from the past 25 years of making and sharing music with all of you.”
Line works closely with her husband, Tim, her business partner and better known as “Santa” each year in the show to the Lines’ hundreds of fans throughout the area.
“We’re a great team,” Tim said. “She is responsible for all of the music and creative work, and I’m the administratior. We work together so well and compliment each other in many ways.”
After 25 years, the Lines know that, when they do step away, it will be the end of an era. After all, no one on the road is replicating the productions Lorie and Tim create year after year for their holiday shows.
“No one will really be able to replicate this,” Lorie said. “What we’ve done is magical, and I don’t think it is possible for anyone to ever do it again. Fans see th fabulous, two-hour piano extravaganza, but never see the enormous work that goes into making this all happen.”
The show takes a year to plan, and the tour’s production begins each January, literally a couple of weeks after the last show ends. But, Lorie said, it’s become easier each time to put the show together, and decided what works best for which audience.
“Doing this 25 years in a row, you learn merely from the experience of it,” she added. “There are plenty of situations were you can see you’ve been there and done that before. So you stick with what works.”
The show travels from as far east as Toledo, Ohio to Denver, Colorado. The bulk of line’s fans are right here in Minnesota (her home) and the Dakotas.
“I’ve been doing this so long that the kids who used to see me are now parents, and they’re brining their children and starting the tradition over,” Lorie said.