Love of a Lifetime
Keith Schani and Sherry Mattice
Bob Mattice is a local legend in Redgranite, Wisconsin. He and his namesake rock band, Bob Mattice and the Phaetons, recorded with now-defunct Cuca Records, in the early 1960s.
“My dad was always singing around the house growing up,” says daughter Sherry Mattice. “Little ditties, like little silly songs, or singing Johnny Cash or Buddy Holly.”
Sherry sings with her dad and his band. Photo provided by Sherry Mattice.
You hear those influences in his tunes, a little country-western “out on a cattle drive” mixed with the quick sing-song beat of early pop rock. Today, at around 80 years old, Bob still showcases his pipes for a crowd with The Rainmakers in local shows.
Sometimes Sherry, 49, the second youngest of four siblings, joins him at the mic for a song or two. Live music is in her blood.
In fact, that’s how we met her.
Sherry and Keith, always VIPs, at a meet-and-greet with FireHouse. Photo provided by Sherry Mattice.
Meet the VIPs
It is Valentine’s Day, and Angie and I ditch our hubbies and drive through a blizzard to see FireHouse, a band whose self-titled first album hit it big in 1990 with quintessential power ballads, sky-high notes and lots of hair. (For pre-teen me, they were a love at first listen.)
“You don’t want to go up to them right away. You want to respect their privacy. We go to the back of the line, so you have more time with them.”
Sherry and her fiance Keith Schani sit quietly in the dining room of the venue, enjoying a pre-concert dinner of burgers and fries. Each dons a FireHouse concert tee and, as we discover, are seasoned VIPs with the laminates to prove it.
“You don’t want to go up to [the band members] right away,” Sherry says, describing their meet-and-greet strategy. “You want to respect their privacy. We go to the back of the line, so you have more time with them.”
“Yeah, that’s her trick. It works a lot. Go to the back. That way you’re not getting rushed through,” adds Keith.
It’s solid advice from these veteran concert-goers. Between the two of them, they’ve seen FireHouse nearly 30 times—20 or more together, they’ve lost count. After debating about ticket stubs (including a 1992 show featuring FireHouse, Poison and Damn Yankees), faded tees and flash memories of long-since-shuttered music venues, neither can agree the exact date of their first FireHouse concert.
“My love for FireHouse started back when they first came out,” said Sherry. “I had their cassette, which I still have.”
That cassette is the band’s debut double-platinum album, FireHouse, featuring “Shake & Tumble,” “Don't Treat Me Bad,” “All She Wrote” and (swoon) “Love of a Lifetime.” It propels the band to win the American Music Award for Best New Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Band of 1991.
With her blond, teased hair in the wind, Sherry remembers cruising with that cassette in the deck and impressing her passenger by matching lead singer C.J. Snare’s signature high notes.
The Drummer
Keith’s obsession came later.
The soft-spoken 51-year old grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, an only child who went all-in on music—listening and playing—at an early age.
“I’ve pretty much been into music almost my entire life,” he says. “Sixth grade is when I started, one year of piano lessons because that’s where you learn the basics to everything.”
Those ivory keys led to clarinet, to alto sax, perisax and tenor sax, and then in the high school band, to drums, which you could say was his gateway drug into the rock world.
“My first band was when I was 19 when I got out of high school,” Keith recalls, as we chat with him and Sherry in his childhood home where he currently lives. “To this day, I can still remember it. I was sitting right here. Two guys came over and said they’re starting a band. ‘Are you interested?’”
Keith in his true home: behind the drum set. Photo provided by Keith Schani.
He is. The three put an ad in the paper for a guitarist and formed Ground Zero. They play covers of Van Halen and White Lion (because the guitarist had Vito Bratta’s finger tap “down to a science”), plus R.E.M. and The Cure, popular with the college crowd. The band lasts a year and half.
Since then, he’s played with more than 10 bands with names like Mind Over Matter, Atomic Punk, Trixx, Rock Nation, Bent and Rockaholix, plus a few on the country side, like Renegade Country, Blazing Country and Cherokee Rose.
Today, when not at his rebate analyst day job, he drums for two bands (and a possible third). One is Sixx Gunns Loaded, bringing the “raw grit, flashing energy, and party atmosphere of the 80s” to bars and clubs in northeast Wisconsin.
Owner of two drum kits, Keith is an encyclopedia of rock band knowledge. In fact, at first, he’s that guy. You know, the type who throws out band members’ first names like he knows them? In his case, though, it’s because he does know them and they know him.
First Dates, First Laminates
It is with Keith when Sherry first meets the members of FireHouse at one of the couple’s first concerts together after meeting online in 2005.
“When Keith and I met and he said he was a drummer. I’m like, ‘Oh, no, a musician? Is this good or bad?’”
“I was a nervous wreck,” says Sherry. “They announced they would be signing autographs after the show. I had been following them for 20 years, and now I’m going to meet them? What am I going to say? What am I going to have them sign?”
In a mix of panic and elation, she runs back to her car for a little safely stored cash to buy some merch to get signed. This is the first of many moments that bond Sherry and Keith around a shared passion.
“When Keith and I met and he said he was a drummer. I’m like, ‘Oh, no, a musician? Is this good or bad?’” says the woman who grew up with a father who knew all too well about drummers. “It clicked right away and especially when we knew we had a lot of the same musical tastes.”
Live music becomes their thing, along with becoming part of its VIP community. Over the next 15 years, they make concerts—front row and backstage—their main pastime, accumulating ticket stubs at least once a month and indulging in each’s eclectic tastes from Night Ranger and Tesla to Pam Tillis and Queen.
But the brief small talk, autographs and selfies of meet-and-greets just don’t compare to the ultimate chance for band intimacy. That is a music cruise—and Sherry and Keith always have their sea bags packed.
Back of the Line
Keith’s living room is an homage of cruise and other concert memorabilia, the feature being the commemorative cruise drum heads covered in scribbled autographs, framed and hung neatly on the wall.
Music cruises are where fans vacation with their favorite artists and bands. There is no tour bus to whisk musicians away from the venue; they’re on the ship, swimming, dining, sleeping and performing. Keith and Sherry have been to seven Monsters of Rock cruises and one with Def Leppard.
Keith with famous rock drummer Vinny Appice. Photo provided by Keith Schani.
The couple’s stories sound like bizarre family reunions. An awkward Def Leppard cocktail party where rushing fans spook guitarist Vivian Campbell back to his quarters. Tesla’s Jeff Keith playing in the pool with fans’ kids. Chad Stewart and Taime Downe of Faster Pussycat as the “social butterflies.” And our Sherry literally taking the shirt off her back for a Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen autograph. (Calm down, she had a spare.)
“Being a musician, these cruises for me … I’m like a kid in a candy store. These are guys I look up to,” says Keith, recalling a cool moment on a flight to the port when Tesla drummer Troy Luccketta sat across the aisle and shared his iPhone earbuds for a listen to two tracks off the band’s new, unreleased album.
These cruises also are where the couple personally connect with FireHouse—and Keith goes from fan to superfan.
“Firehouse has always been one of my favorites,” he explains. “Especially since I’ve gotten to know them. I’ve talked to Michael [Foster] about drumming, and he’s always been cool about that. I’ve always told him, ‘Yeah, you’re my mentor.’”
On their very first cruise, Keith and Sherry look up to see Michael and Bill Leverty walking past the casino. Keith starts to approach them. Sherry pauses.
“Do we just go up to them and just start talking to them?” she asks nervously.
The answer is of course; that’s what you do on music cruises. It’s a subtle balance of “here’s your chance” and “maybe we should leave them alone.”
Photo courtesy of Sherry Mattice. Copyright Royal Caribbean.
For these two, the very thought of holding back, of not rushing toward every rock star they see, having that douse of respect for privacy—Sherry’s trick of going to the back of the line—is what, in the end, wins over these celebrity musicians.
Later on that first cruise, after bumping into the FireHouse members every day, Keith and Sherry take their seats in the theater a little early, when C.J. Snare recognizes them and shouts, “Hey, our Wisconsin connections are here.” Now they’re the ones being approached.
You Are My Religion
Keith and Sherry are engaged. They’ve been engaged for about 15 years. “It’s complicated. It’ll happen,” says Keith, as Sherry eyes him a knowing yet flustered look.
Whatever the reason, it seems to us an album of ticket stubs, representing moments of shared passion for music, for bands and the connection that happens within the live music scene, is just as meaningful as any old marriage certificate.
Keith and Sherry get their FireHouse shot autographed, of course. Photo provided by Sherry Mattice.
Or maybe it’s because the right moment hasn’t arrived. Perhaps when the pandemic lifts and rock venues open their doors and the music cruise ships depart that Keith and Sherry will make it official.
After all, as Keith informs us, Firehouse’s sound engineer Tony Avitar is an ordained minister.
