Singing the Kozmic Blues

Michelle Rohl is a real estate agent by day and a rock singer by night. Sometimes the two worlds collide. One night in 2019, she was backstage on the road, counting down to showtime while glued to her phone trying to close an escrow. “You need to shut the phone off,” said her Emmy-nominated producer, Lon Bronson, “and concentrate.” It was a one-woman show, so it wasn’t as if Rohl could have the keyboard player cover for her.

At last, she hung up the phone and rocked.

“You killed it dead!” Bronson said as she left the stage.

Rohl once hoped to become a household name. And maybe she has — if the name is Janis Joplin. At 62, Rohl is still rocking and wailing and embodying a legend. On August 25, she’ll take the stage at Myron’s at the The Smith Center for her tribute show, The Kozmic Blues — The Spirit & Music of Janis Joplin. She’s arrived here after a four-decade odyssey through the Las Vegas rock world, at times tantalizingly close to fame, at others skirting the edge of despair, even losing her voice — literally — and reclaiming it with newfound passion.

Rohl came onto the Las Vegas rock ’n’ roll scene in the late ’70s. After graduating from Clark High School in 1978, she and her guitarist-boyfriend formed Sailon, which became one of the most well-known local bands in town and was eventually inducted into the Las Vegas Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

While in Sailon, at age 19, Rohl worked in the mailroom at the Dunes. Photographer Robert Scott Hooper, who shot centerfolds for Playboy, happened to be there testing potential playmates. Rohl was initially unsure, but she was already modeling by the Dunes pool for the hotel, so she went for it. Marilyn Grabowski, the iconic Playboy photo editor, was impressed with Rohl and flew her to Chicago to work with another photographer. Overall, Rohl did two centerfold shoots in Las Vegas and an additional shoot in Chicago, but the photos never ran; it had been a three-year process, and Rohl was heartbroken. “I’ve never had anybody so distraught over not making it,” Grabowski told her.

Meanwhile, Sailon dissolved in 1984, and so did Rohl’s relationship. She then dated Chuck Wright of Quiet Riot and sang on two of their albums. She played in a band called Ecstasy in 1985 and ’86 at the trendy club Sasch in Studio City, California. Rohl says Roy Orbison, Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks sat in with the group.

Around the same time, Rohl starred as a featured singer on Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” and Playboy’s Girls of Rock & Roll music video. She also appeared with Ben E. King and Bob Geldof on Solid Gold. In 1986, she performed in Playboy’s Girls of Rock & Roll live show at the Maxim Hotel & Casino (now the Westin), sang in Crazy Girls and had a cameo in the 1990 film Ski Patrol.

Rohl says her career at that time was equivalent to “fun, partying, college times,” but she eventually had to balance the goals of making it big and making a life. When she turned 30, she felt it might be her last chance to become famous. After the Playboy show ended in 1991, she recorded an album, The Immigrants, which had a progressive rock vibe. The album, she says, went gold in the European market. In 1996, Rohl left the recording business and spent a year as a production singer on Carnival Cruise Line. She returned to Las Vegas in 1997 and appeared in American Superstars, The Clint Holmes Show and Legends in Concert.

But in 2005, she hit a breaking point. Her marriage had failed, and the difficulties of being a single mom, she says, put psychosomatic stress on her vocal cords. While working for Legends one night, she couldn’t sing and breathe and discovered she was allergic to smoke and certain perfumes.

She didn’t know if she would ever sing again.

In 2006, Rohl took a job working the front desk at her daughter’s school. After being laid off in 2008, she worked for MGM Resorts until 2015. She started from the bottom, but her work inspired her to sing again. When MGM Resorts bought a song she co-wrote called “Inspire Our World” for a musical production about workplace diversity, Rohl was reminded that, in her soul, she was still a singer and a songwriter.

Everyone, Rohl says, gets the “kozmic blues” — those moments when life has beaten us down or taken a piece of our hearts away. The Songfacts attributes the turn of phrase to Joplin: “ ‘Kozmic Blues’ just means that no matter what you do, man, you get shot down anyway.” Rohl was seeing the theme repeat itself in her life.

“After a while in the corporate world … you raise your hand … and then they just shoot you down and shoot you down,” Rohl says. “You’re dead inside.”

Sensing her pain, Rohl’s oldest brother, a real estate agent from Arizona, bought a real estate class on Groupon for them to take together. Two weeks after getting her real estate license, Rohl resigned from her day job and landed six consecutive deals. As she healed from the divorce, so did her voice. In 2017, she called Legends about doing a Janis Joplin number. The call came right after the producers had gotten out of a meeting in which they discussed bringing on a Joplin act. The coincidence was, you might say, kozmic, and Rohl got the gig.

That same year, Bronson, who has known Rohl since the ’80s, approached her about doing a full Janis Joplin show. “You wouldn’t believe me,” Rohl said, “but that’s my superpower.” Bronson knew he could produce a 90-minute show but hadn’t found the right person to pull it off. “Nobody else sounds like her,” he says, “so raw.”

Then he heard Rohl sing.

Doing a Joplin tribute helps Rohl stay connected to her rock roots. She says she’s at her strongest when she’s singing hard rock for hours — and now she does so without damaging her voice. She says she doesn’t impersonate Janis but channels her vibe, adding her own artistic style and flare. Meanwhile, she’s working on getting an album out, a cross between Janis Joplin and Tina Turner. And she’s still rocking real estate. It’s hard balancing the two, Rohl says, but she likes to be there for clients even when they call at 10 p.m.

Earlier this year, Rohl celebrated what would have been Joplin’s 80th birthday with a sold-out show at Myron’s. Rohl wasn’t on the phone with clients this time: Backstage, she ironed the band’s costumes, applied makeup, put extensions in her hair and readied her mind and body to pay tribute to Janis. Rock, like life, has its costs: Rohl has had two hips replaced, she’s had her voice depart her and gloriously return, she’s wrestled with her share of pain.

But when showtime arrived, once again, she killed it dead. ◆