'Chic chanteuse' enjoys unexpected career

   Since she was a 7-year-old Brownie Scout, Kate Brennan has loved singing.
    From school choirs to the musical theater stage, Brennan spent years making music. In 1992, she finally started pursuing a professional career, after being off the stage for more than 20 years, thanks to a friend who surprised her with an invitation to a pretty classy gig.
    Brennan had just made a connection between Dr. Harvey Reid and The Whitney, where she thought his musical combo would play. But when they asked him who would be playing, she heard him say, "And Kate will do my vocals."
    "I thought, 'I'll just do this one time'," Brennan recalled, "because it was just too much, the stress."
    They had six weeks to learn 24 songs, which had to be arranged to fit Brennan's vocal range and style. She was so nervous before the performance, Reid even offered to hypnotize her.
    "Once I did it, once I got up there, maybe after the first two or three tunes, I started to relax a bit and really started to have fun and enjoy it," Brennan said. "It's a really great place to play. It's one of the few 'listening places' in Detroit."
    Buoyed by her success and inspired by the career of another native Michigander who is now in Nashville pursuing a career, Brennan found herself longing to produce her own cabaret show, from beginning to end.
    "(Cabaret is) sort of a nice marriage between my theater background and music," It's not just like getting up there and singing, it's a matter of stringing a whole theme together and sharing it with people.
    "So I set this goal that by my 50th birthday, I'm gonna do my first cabaret show," Brennan said. "And I did."
    She booked a venue in Auburn Hills, put together a show that was very successful and launched a career that is now managed by Marsha Droz, who works with a wide variety of artists, including a master percussionist who specializes in playing spoons.
    "When I first heard Kate, I was kind of blown away by her style," Droz said. "I call her the Chic Chanteuse, because that's what I feel when she's up there on stage."
    After the performance, Droz made an off-handed comment about getting Brennan more gigs, and the women decided on a low-key management agreement that would allow Brennan to focus her full-time attention on her marketing company.
    "If I find a place that's right and she's available, we work it out," Droz explained.
    Not long after, Droz fell into a management contract with Detroit Women, a 9-woman rhythm and blues ensemble, and has been contacted by a duo from Seattle who want to play the Detroit area.
    "I have a passion for producing, that's what I have a background in," Droz said. "I had gotten away from that, but that was always secretly beating in my heart."
    Both women say the music business in tough, but pretty much an equal opportunity experience. "It's not really gender based, it's just the nature of the biz, it's competitive," Brennan said. "Sometimes performers really get the short end of the stick."
   While each has had personal mentors, Brennan and Droz also mentor each other, a practice they both say should be far more common than it is.
    "Women don't support each other enough, no matter how much we talk about it," Droz said.