Human Nature changes up Motown tribute for new home at Venetian

It's the same old song, but a new synchronized dance routine Human Nature is mastering today to the tune of "Dancing in the Streets," working out the steps in front of scrutinous choreographers in a Henderson dance studio.

The Australian vocal quartet says during a rehearsal break that the goal is to "refresh" their Motown tribute for its new home at The Venetian. After all, nothing was really wrong with the showcase that entrenched them as a year-round presence on the Strip.

"There were so many unknowns when we started here in Vegas, I guess there's just a creative confidence now to take things a little bit further and take a few more risks," says Andrew Tierney, who formed the group with his brother Mike and schoolmates Phil Burton and Toby Allen when they were still teens in Sydney.

The four became one of Australia's top-selling pop acts in the 1990s. But their "boy band" years already had given way to the Motown angle by the time Las Vegas producer Adam Steck imported them in 2009.

With Smokey Robinson lending his endorsement as "presenter," the Imperial Palace showcase landed in a sweet spot between big-ticket concert names and the nonsinging acts that work the Strip year-round.

A PBS special with Robinson and a guest shot on "Dancing with the Stars" helped spread the growing good will. "I think we learned the power of word-of-mouth in this town," Mike Tierney says.

On Saturday, the group jumps to the slightly larger (740 seats) theater at a hotel targeting a higher-end demographic. A year-round berth in a theater shared with comedy headliners such as Tim Allen gives the group a chance to relaunch itself yet again.

The Venetian show is new by roughly a third, with even the parts that haven't changed taking on new energy on a flashy new set by Las Vegas-based designer Andy Walmsley, creator of the TV stages for "American Idol" and "America's Got Talent."

"We'd been doing essentially the same show at the Imperial Palace for 3½ years. For us to grow as an act we'd want to change it anyway," says Burton, the group member who keeps track of shows, and who came up with a publicist's dream statistic: Saturday's Venetian kickoff will be No. 777 in Las Vegas.

For a fresh set of eyes and an outside perspective, the four turned to a fellow Aussie, Wayne Harrison, the writer-director of "Absinthe" at Caesars Palace.

"They are a fairly effective collective, I would have to say," Harrison says of the four guys who have been singing together since 1989, and who managed to make most creative decisions without outside input.

"There was just this kismet thing where two brothers and two friends just had the right vocal components," Harrison says. "It's not like they shopped around, they were just all in orbit of each other. It's just a freaky thing that sometimes happens, like this vocal marriage was right."

The real challenge, Harrison says, came from a revue consisting of nothing but high points - Motown favorites, one after the other - unfolding in predictable fashion. "You really don't want the audience being ahead of you. The greatest element we have in the theater is surprise," the director says. "Part of our job is to keep one step ahead of them."

Harrison helped the group to delve deeper into the history of Motown. The set now includes "Come to Me," the 1959 Marv Johnson single that was key to Berry Gordy's launch of the Detroit music factory.

"When we first heard the Motown music we didn't know it was from a town that was known as Motown," Andrew Tierney says.

"We thought it was just a genre of music, like soul or jazz," Burton adds.

Now they're the official representatives of what they call "Motown reimagined," with the endorsement of Robinson and some of the label's original songwriters helping squelch any skepticism about four white guys from Sydney inheriting the mantle.

The slicker technology of the new set includes a video duet with a younger version of Robinson on "Tracks of My Tears." The group already was up for such a technical syncing challenge after procuring the rights to sing along with Michael Jackson for an upcoming Christmas album.

A second goal was to pull back the curtain on the group itself. The Imperial Palace essentially hit the reset button on the quartet's past, with only their Australian fans knowing they had a previous life.

Harrison's outside perspective again helped with the awkward task of "bringing in more about ourselves and a history of ourselves within the context of the show," Andrew Tierney says.

"It's probably one of the harder things we found to do, is talk about us and our success," Allen adds. As the years rolled on in Australia, "that story sort of goes on the back burner, because it's all about what we're doing right now."

Now the group has the confidence to reach back to its boy-band era for one of its Australian hits, "Every Time You Cry." "It'll be in the first night anyway," Burton jokes.

"On Facebook there's almost a war between people that are following us here in America now and our Australian fans," Tierney says of the two continents bridged.

But when the group returned to Australia for Christmas and concerts there last month, Allen reveals that "Towards the end of the trip I was like, I'm really looking forward to getting back now. We've got houses here. Our lives are here."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@
reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.