98 Degrees’ Timmons feels right at home with Chippendales

How did they not do this already?

The idea is right there, in the first minutes of the Chippendales show at the Rio. It starts out with a row of guys in long-rider coats, silhouetted against a wash of red light.

Then they start lip-syncing stuff like, "We're here for you, to make it hot for you ..."

By the time the real boy-bander -- Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees -- turns up in his sneakers to add a live vocal to recorded harmonies and rhythm tracks, you would think this is the way it has always been. Timmons must have been part of the show for years, not a weekend.

The only thing the pop teen acts of the '90s did not do was drop trou and flex butt cheek for the amusement of the crowd. Well, maybe Bobby Brown did.

But Timmons sticks to showing his upper torso, and the first booty shot from the professional Chipsters doesn't happen until a third of the way in. Even before Timmons' name went on the marquee for a test headliner run, the Chips focused more on choreography and the handsome production values made possible by their cool little custom theater.

Here, the construction workers have real scaffolding and sparks fly out of their (power) tools. Dudes who pump way more iron than Michael Jackson ever did dance out "Smooth Criminal" on a nightclub set in zoot suits. And the sleeveless vampires have real coffins in their lair.

This is how Chippendales generally stayed ahead of the G-string competition, and the real answer to why it hasn't paid for a marquee name before one was genuinely needed.

Whether Timmons or boy-band alumni become permanent policy will depend on whether he continues to sell out weekends (as he did for his debut). Cocktail tables have been replaced by rows of chairs for his Thursday-Sunday shows through June 5.

For the audience, it seemed kind of a toss-up. Sure, they got on their feet when Timmons told them to pretend it was a concert and sway along to 98 Degrees' "Because of You" while he sang along.

And they kept on giving it up for his new song, "Emotional High," perhaps because he ventured off the stage to work the crowd face to face. "It's a little bit different than the 98 Degrees stuff," he explained. We'll take his word for it.

But right after that, the Chippendales stock company came down into the house in their "Risky Business" dress shirts and sunglasses, and that's when the crowd went really wild.

But Timmons has a good "aw, shucks" attitude about all this. "I'm not gonna look like those guys when I take it off," he claims before tossing a T-shirt to the crowd. And he does, of course.

Timmons' stage time already has been expanded to let him sing Mariah Carey's "Hero" during the patriotic, uniform-to-American-flag boxers salute to our military. And hopefully, the very boy-band tradition of the recorded harmonies overwhelming the live singing has been ironed out as well.

Timmons would seem to have a home at the Chippendales any time he wants to visit. But if the gals really just paid to see the more anonymous dude, um, really love his motorcycle? And express his thrusting affections to the handlebars?

Timmons is certainly not going to stand in the way of that.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.