On the deck at The Docks, with a breeze floating over the water and canned music in the background, a group at a table enjoys refreshments. The conversation is peppered with laughter and memories. They finish each other's sentences - when a sentence gets finished. Often, it just leads to another thought, another laugh.

This scene, perhaps, is as good an answer as any for the question of why the Villagers have lasted so long.

They like each other.

The Villagers - Patty and Joe Moran, Mike Robarge, Steve Scharren, and Larry Hays - have been entertaining audiences in Detroit, Toledo, and hither and yon for 32 years. Well, not Hays, the drummer; he has been with the group only since 1980.

“You know how you get a drummer to play slower? Put music in front of him,” Scharren says, and the whole group, Hays included, chortles. They've heard it before and start tossing more musician jokes into the mix.

The group is perhaps best known for its performances in the Morans' two clubs, Friar Tuck's in Maumee, which they ran from 1973 to 1988, and Friar Tuck's Bijou. The Morans opened the latter club downtown in 1988, but what was supposed to be the burgeoning entertainment district never quite took off, and the club closed in 1990.

Although some people believe the Bijou's closing meant the demise of the Villagers, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, tomorrow they play Las Vegas.

It's not the first time, Joe Moran says. The group sang in Caesar's Palace back in 1978.

“Nobody paid us, we just walked through the lobby and sang,” Robarge explains.

When the laughter dies down, Joe Moran says the Villagers will be entertaining at a convention.

“It's a division of the Shrine, the Recorders, the ones that manage the buildings. We're doing their international convention, and our audience will be from Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Panama,” Joe Moran says.

The Vegas gig is part of a flurry of recent activity for the group, including an appearance on The Mitch Albom show on WJR radio in Detroit, and a public show, one of two or three they present a year, in the Stranahan Great Hall in late June.

“Down at the Stranahan, after our show, one of the staff said, `You guys did pretty good tonight. Where you playing next?'” Hays says. “I was able to calmly look at her and say, `Las Vegas.' I was never able to say that before. It really felt great.”

Another reason they've stayed together for so long is that they've always understood that it's a business.

“We've been good friends for a long, long time, and we love performing,” Joe Moran says. “But at the same time, we are in the business of show business. Lots of people in show business don't have the business part together to keep the energy going, connecting the jobs, getting the right kind of jobs where you're not burning out. Even with our formula we've had some clinkers over the years.”

That's another thing about The Villagers, Scharren says. “Usually entertainers have one foot on the ground and one up in the air. They don't show up for gigs, they don't show up for practices, there's always a problem going on in their lives. It takes a normal person who has decided to be an entertainer rather than the other way around, because the other way around is hard to achieve. Plus, we all brought something of expertise to the table, like Patty's stage experience, my musical arrangements, Joe's promotion, Mike's comedy. I mean you couldn't order that.”

But what about Larry?

“I was just glad to get off the road with my trained dog act,” he says, deadpan, and the group cracks up again.

“We've got a drummer that makes most drummers in the city look stupid,” Scharren insists.

Still, the perception persists, Patty Moran says, that the Villagers are no longer around. “There are a lot of people who, when the Bijou closed, think that we were no longer ... what? Think we died or something,” she says.

Forget that, it has just given them more opportunities.

When they owned the clubs, Joe Moran says, people would try to hire them to play in Florida or Las Vegas or at other venues out of town, but they couldn't close the clubs to go because that would hurt their base market.

Getting out of the club business just opened the door to different opportunities.

“Now we do a lot of corporate shows, private parties,” Joe Moran says. “Once, maybe twice a year, we will present public shows like we did in the Stranahan. For four or five years in a row now, we've done a holiday show at LaRoe's in Grand Rapids.”

“We like a contained audience,” Patty Moran says. We don't like to do cocktail parties, just dinner parties.”

They start ticking off other do's and don'ts: We don't do grazing; we just don't sit and perform, we try to involve; we don't do background music, and, most of all, no dancing. “We are an act for people who don't know how to dance,” Joe Moran says.

But other than that, not much has changed.

“We are booooooring,” Patty Moran says. “Same old, same old.”

“We're always looking for new material, but it's material that's either a ballad we like or a harmony part or a cappella or a comedy thing,” Robarge says. The songs have changed, but the formula, the mix of comedy, ballads, audience participation, the format has remained the same.

“There's a Catch-22 about our show,” Joe Moran says. “We've tried over the years to change a piece of material or replace it with something and you get the audience bugging the bejiminies out of you.”

Along with favorite comedy routines, songs, and medleys from the seven shows that Patty Moran wrote, the group adds new material when it can, including some modern stuff.

“We do Barenaked Ladies,” Robarge announces, and it isn't quite apparent whether he likes the music or the name of the group.

“There's a lot of good material out by the new artists of today; it's a matter of selecting a piece that will work in the context of the show,” Joe Moran says.

A good part of their act includes comedy, much of which can be traced back to the days when Friar Tuck's in Maumee hosted professional comedians, including Pete Barbuti, Professor Irwin Corey, Louis Nye, and Morey Amsterdam.

The influence of those comedians, Joe Moran says, remains with the group today. “We're up on stage doing our act, and something will pop out of Mike's mouth that puts the audience in stitches, and we're in the back going, `That's Corey ... Nye ... or whoever,” Joe Moran says.

Soupy Sales also had a major influence on the group, Joe Moran says, and not just with his routines.

“The first time we brought Soupy in was January of 1977,” Joe Moran recalls. “He said, `I'll tell you something, man. If you want to keep goin' in this business, you just have to keep DOIN' it. Community theater, I don't care what it is, you just have to keep doin' it.'”

LaRoe's, the Stranahan, Florida, Las Vegas, corporate shows, public shows: The Villagers have taken Soupy's words to heart.

They just keep doin' it, and it doesn't look as if they have any plans to stop.

First Published July 8, 2001, 11:20 a.m.