Bret Michaels talks about the magic of playing Green Bay, his 'unique energy' and Poison's next tour

It’s fitting that to his mom’s surprise — and all of Wisconsin’s — Bret Michaels dropped in out of the blue on Crivitz over the Labor Day weekend.

His return to Green Bay for a Friday concert at Capital Credit Union Park in Ashwaubenon has been on the summer concert calendar for months, but leave it to Michaels to take advantage of a rare breather in his touring schedule to make a surprise visit to Wisconsin's Northwoods to see his mother.

It's just the kind of thing you'd expect from one of music’s most likable and hardest-working rock stars who runs on a seemingly bottomless tank of high-octane positive energy and infectious excitement, with an Instagram account filled with sold-out crowd shots, rock on hand gestures and messages of gratitude to prove it.

Of course, he’s going to share a photo on the deck with his mom, Marjorie, and stepdad, “Wisconsin Bob,” and tell his hundreds of thousands of followers what an incredible town Crivitz is and how the wheels in his head are already turning to pull off a concert there next year.

It’s classic Bret Michaels.

“Since birth, in my blood, in my DNA, I’m an adventurer, right? I have a little extra unique energy. My parents are like — I have two sisters — they’re like, ‘Bret just has a little extra gear or unique energy in there somewhere.’ Calling it unique was a good way of not saying what it could possibly be,” the Poison frontman said by phone in August, breaking into laughter.

“I love playing music. It’s good for my soul.”

While out on the road last summer having the time of his life on The Stadium Tour with Poison, Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, he was also hard at work dreaming up this year’s Parti-Gras Tour.

It’s a solo Michaels outing in which he hooked up with Night Ranger, Jefferson Starship, Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath, former Journey lead singer Steve Augeri and you never knew who else from his long list of friends for a string of summer dates.

Edwin McCain popped by one night to sing “I’ll Be,” and his buddies from Hoobastank and Saving Abel did one of their songs with Michaels’ band. Emerging artists like country music’s Frank Ray joined in, too.

Friday’s stop at the Green Bay Rockers ballpark is what Michaels is calling the kickoff to “Fall Ball Parti-Gras,” a night that includes Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, original Foreigner lead singer Lou Gramm and Augeri. Count on it being a big ol’ party, for everybody onstage passing the mic around and everybody in the crowd looking for a blast of '80s nostalgia.

“I hope the tone I set is a lot of fun and a lot of gratitude. Especially since the pandemic, the height of it, people really realized how grateful we are to be able to go to a sporting event or a concert, for real. For me, I’m never ever forgetting that,” Michaels said.

“So when I come to town, I truly want people to have nothing but a good vibe, from the minute they get in the parking lot. I want them to leave going, ‘You know what? That was a fun night in my life. I needed that. I got to sing music. I got to rock. I got to party.’”

There's 'a magic' to his decades-long connection to Green Bay

For Michaels, it means he gets to cross another venue off his already impressive list of Green Bay-area places he’s played since Poison first hunkered down in the city for several days in 1988 to rehearse for and launch its first headlining tour from Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena.

The hair metal band shot the video for its No. 1 hit “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” there and came back twice in the early ’90s to rehearse and kick off two more world tours. Before the arena met the wrecking ball in 2019, Michaels returned to play the final show in the 60-year-old building, a bittersweet night billed as “Nothin’ But a Good Time For the Last Time.”

That connection has endeared him to local fans whenever he returns to Green Bay, which has been with regularity over the years. Either with Poison or solo, he’s played the Resch Center, Oneida Casino, Green Bay Distillery and EPIC Event Center, usually to sold-out audiences and never without mentioning from the stage what Green Bay means to him.

He's just getting started.

“I’ve got a bucket list of every venue in Green Bay. We’re covering them all. I’m talking biggest to smallest, smallest to largest and everything east or west,” he said. “My bucket list is to play every venue in the wonderful, awesome city of Green Bay and see the fans as often as possible.”

Still not checked off the list: Lambeau Field. It's not for lack of trying. Michaels said he pressed for The Stadium Tour to play there, but it ultimately landed at Milwaukee’s American Family Field.

“We were down in Milwaukee and I was like, ‘Green Bay, I’m tellin’ ya ...’”

After nearly 40 years of touring, Michaels has friends and family in every city that make each stop special. Growing up in Pennsylvania, his shows back home always sell out. He’s not sure if the right word is “kumbaya” or “simpatico,” but he knows one thing.

“There’s something about Green Bay,” he said. “There’s a magic. I can’t explain it. It’s good luck.”

That’s part of the reason why the diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan was all in when ESPN called last year and asked if he would film an opening segment for the Green Bay Packers-Los Angeles Rams game on “Monday Night Football.”

Michaels is friends with former Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and “The Office” actor Brian Baumgartner, who both appeared in the spot. Rams head coach Sean McVay is a buddy, too. He had a ball during the shoot in Los Angeles.

“It had such energy, and I’m dancing around in Brian’s chili. My family was in it. It was great,” he said.

Poison plans to tour in 2025; he's in talks to host 'Rock of Love Boat'

Fans can expect the same energy from a solo Michaels at Capital Credit Union Park as he gave at Boston’s Fenway Park with Poison on The Stadium Tour.

“I’ve got one gear. It’s straight to top gear. Boom,” Michaels said.

It’s not lost on him how lucky he is to be able to do shows with Poison bandmates C.C. DeVille, Rikki Rockett and Bobby Dall and also go out on the road with his own band.

“I have to be able to do both and love both. I will never leave both. Over and over I tell people, I have no intention of ever leaving Poison. This is not I have to do one or the other," he said. “Last year was amazing. Poison will return in 2025. It’s called Reunited and Undivided, all original Poison, the good Lord willing, all four of us.”

Parti-Gras, which is already booked out into 2024, allows him to flex his creative muscle of building a multi-act tour from scratch. Michaels, who turned 60 this year, does it by roughly sketching out his vision for the production on paper — something his grown daughters, Jorja and Raine, enjoy giving him a hard time about.

“My daughters call it my hillbilly hard drive, if you could please quote them on that,” Michaels said. “It’s these pictures of the way the stage will look drawn out with old-school pen and paper, and then I have horrible stick figures that stand for who the bands are. That’s how it starts, and then I turn that into something. That’s where my strength is, seeing it through.”

He’s learned long ago it really does take a village to deliver hits like "Talk Dirty to Me" and "Unskinny Bop" to the masses out on the road night after night, and it’s inevitable to hit some obstacles.

When half the stage lights went down five minutes before he was set to walk onstage to a sold-out amphitheater crowd outside Detroit on the first night of the tour this summer, he got it handled. As a type 1 diabetic since childhood, sometimes the rigors of touring during summer heat means he has to be given IVs for hydration.

“But I don’t bitch about it. There’s a lot of moving parts and a ton of hard work, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. “Adapt and adjust, that’s my life story. Stay true to who you are, but learn to adapt and adjust to things that are happening. Try not to lose your mind or your cool.”

And a sense of humor doesn’t hurt, either.

When asked if he could ever have imagined how “Rock of Love with Bret Michaels,” the reality TV dating show that ran on VH1 for three seasons from 2007 to 2009, would cement him a place in pop culture history, he gets right to it.

“So let’s have a good laugh,” he said. “We’ve been in talks, and I would not be doing the dating as I don’t want to scare anybody, but I may be the host of a ‘Rock of Love Boat.’ I’m telling you it may take it all up a notch. ... We’re going to set sail and just see what happens.”

Going to the show at Capital Credit Union Park? A few things to know

• Bret Michaels' Parti-Gras begins at 6:30 p.m. Friday at Capital Credit Union Park, 2231 Holmgren Way, Ashwaubenon. Gates open at 5 p.m.

• Tickets are $45 general admission field, $69 grandstand (only single seats remain) and $95 field pit at etix.com.

• No bags bigger than 8½ by 11 inches. No carry-ins. The ballpark is cashless. Parking is available in the EPIC Event Center lot.

SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM: Our subscribers make this coverage possible. Click to see the Green Bay Press Gazette's special offers at greenbaypressgazette.com/subscribe and download our app on the App Store or Google Play.

Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert. 

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Bret Michaels talks Green Bay, his 'unique energy,' Poison's next tour