‘The Healing’: Legendary Las Vegas band still crushing it at 25

Holmes had just signed a contract to headline the showroom at Harrah’s. He was on a recon mission for Vegas musicians to back him in that gig.

About halfway through the set, Holmes’ manager turned to the showman and said, “Well, that’s your band.”

“There’s like 15 guys up there,” Holmes said. “I can’t afford that band.”

“You can’t afford not to have that band,” the manager said.

That night set in motion Holmes’ partnership with Santa Fe and The Fat City Horns. The band would back home for his nearly seven-year run at Harrah’s.

Monday night, Holmes reunited with “The Guys,” as he calls them, for “The Healing,” as Jerry Lopez refers to their shows, at The Copa at Bootlegger Bistro. It was the 25th anniversary of the original Santa Fe band, when Lopez added the renowned horn section.

Holmes was packing a proclamation from Mayor Carolyn Goodman proclaiming September 16, 2024, as “Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns Day.” Lorraine Fidler, the Vegas concierge who runs the Santa Fe Superstore (the merch table at the club entrance), surprised Lopez with the proclamation.

Fidler brought up Las Vegas artist Neal Portnoy, who presented Lopez with a caricature commissioned by the musicians. Lopez is the latest of a cavalcade of Vegas entertainment figures to be “Portnoyed” (yours truly made the cut a few years back).

Deep into the set, sax great Mindi Abair joined the band for the first time and tore the place apart. It was her father Lance’s 80th birthday, and he was in the room, too. Lance Abair himself is a veteran sax virtuoso with a long history of performing in VegasVille.

Santa Fe actually dates to the mid-1970s. The rhythm section started with a gig backing topless dancers at the old Thunderbird hotel-casino. They booked their first “proper” gig at the Mint in ’75.

Since, Santa Fe’s platforms have included Nero’s Nook at Caesars Palace, the Lounge at the Palms, the lounge (and later showroom) at Tropicana, Club Madrid at Sunset Station, South Point Showroom, Cabaret Jazz at the Smith Center (today’s Myron’s), Vamp’d on West Sahara (oh, yes), and finally The Copa at Bootlegger.

Lenny Lopez, along with his brother Jerry is a band co-founder, told Holmes after the show there was more to the story of Holmes selecting the band. A bunch of the players were out of town the weekend before the show — Lenny was fishing in Utah — but reconvened immediately when they heard Holmes was going to be at the performance.

“I hadn’t heard that before,” Holmes said with a laugh after Monday’s show. “It was like a set up!”

Jerry Lopez bestowed “The Healing” as the band’s unofficial title in the early days at Palace Station.

“I had a horrible day and got on stage and said, ‘You know what? Let the healing begin,’ “ Lopez once told me. “The band started playing, and all the pain was gone. It’s a healing, it really is, and I always feel better at the end than I did at the beginning.”

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.