JACKSONVILLE, Fla \u2014 Rainere Martin is taking her Donna Summer tribute show to Jacksonville. \u201cForever Donna: The Ultimate Donna Summer Tribute\u201d will be at Florida Theatre on March 27. I got the chance to chat with Martin ahead of her upcoming show to talk about performing a tribute show for an iconic singer, the origins of the show, and her favorite Donna Summer songs.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll my life I\u2019ve wanted to sing. When I got into my 20s, I tried really, really hard to get a record deal,\u201d said Martin. \u201cAt that time, tribute acts weren\u2019t a thing, so they didn\u2019t really exist at that point. So after trying years, and years, and years to get a record deal, it just didn\u2019t happen for me, so I said, \u2018You know what, maybe it\u2019s not in God\u2019s plan for me to sing.\u2019 So I gave up. I gave up for 20 whole years, and during that time, I got married, settled down, I had two girls who are now 20 and 27. 20 years passed, and I was in my 40s, and I said, \u2018You know, I really, really miss singing.\u2019 So one summer, we were vacationing at Bally\u2019s in Atlantic City, and I saw signs all across the casino that said \u2018Legends in Concert.\u2019 So I went down there, and I took my big ole laptop, and I ended up bumping into one of the production managers, I knew her from the past, and I showed her a performance of me, because every time I would go to karaoke or wherever I would go and I would sing \u2018On the Radio,\u2019 people would double-take and say, \u2018Is that her or is that the record?\u2019 So I showed her a video of me singing \u2018On the Radio,\u2019 and she said, \u2018You sound amazing, but when you get home from vacation, I want you to grab a wig, and grab something 70-ish and put it on tape.\u2019 She was with \u2018Legends in Concert,\u2019 which was based out of Vegas at the time, and they were at the top of the game for tribute acts. So I did that, and that\u2019s pretty much how I got my start. And probably a week or two after that, as God would have it, I was performing on a major stage after not singing for 20 years.”<\/p>\n
You can hear Rainere Martin\u2019s story and how she takes on performing a tribute act in the full interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tickets for Forever Donna: The Ultimate Donna Summer Tribute<\/a> are on sale now.<\/p>\n You can hear more of Chase Chats<\/a> in the \u201cOn Demand\u201d section of WOKV.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u25b6 Listen to Jacksonville\u2019s Morning News Interviews<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download our free news, weather and traffic app. And click here<\/a> to subscribe to our daily 3 Big Things newsletter.<\/p>\n \u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla \u2014 Rainere Martin is taking her Donna Summer tribute show to Jacksonville. \u201cForever Donna: The Ultimate…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":682907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[18000,5229,207891,17998,3188,723,203103,35469,286899,7310,17999,7325,286898,286900,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-682906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-18000","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-donna-summer","11":"tag-duval","12":"tag-fl","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-florida-theater","15":"tag-florida-theatre","16":"tag-forever-donna","17":"tag-jacksonville","18":"tag-ne-florida","19":"tag-northeast-florida","20":"tag-on-the-radio","21":"tag-rainere-martin","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}