Superior Woman--Summer 2020--Final Edition

SINGING
the blues
BY DALE HEMMILA
Editor’s Note: Earlier last year we wrote about Lorrie Hayes and her singing
career, including her inclusion in the Flat Broke Blues Band. Since then the
COVID-19 pandemic created some setbacks for the band as they weren’t able
to perform for nearly six months. The band, and Lorrie, are back on stage these
days, though the venues are outdoors and involve proper social distancing. As
she noted, recently lost gigs have happened to all musicians these past few months,
but she said: “We will prevail.” We think Lorrie’s story is worth republishing
now as she truly embodies the spirit and will that make her a Superior Woman.
When Lorrie Hayes is singing the Blues, she is in a happy place.
That is understandable because Hayes is the lead singer of the Marquette, Michigan-based Flat Broke
Blues Band, one of the more prolific, and longest lasting, live entertainment bands in Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula.
And while she hasn’t been singing the Blues all the time, Hayes has been performing most of her life.
“Music has driven my life,” she said recently from her office at the screen printing shop she owns in
Marquette. “My first solo was at age five. At about seven, I made a deal with God: ‘If I can be a singer,
I will let people know about you.’”
As a youngster, she would sing with her mother, who regularly performed at weddings and funerals.
“I sang with her every day,” she said. “That helped me develop a vibrato, and it made my voice
somewhat more sophisticated.”
In addition to helping her mother rehearse, there was also some fantasy time.
“I sang with a hair brush (as a mic),” she said with a laugh. “And I had a lip-sync group at about (age)
10 called ‘The Paulettes.’ We had dance moves and were inspired by TV shows. And I watched music
from Elvis and the Stones. Whether (or not) I believed I would have a music career, it was my love—I
just did it.”
Though music was her passion, she took a more practical route and studied art in college, eventually
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