Retired Green Bay teacher's Cheap Trick backstage moment was 30 years in the making

ASHWAUBENON - She was a little late – 30 years, to be exact – but Roxann Nys finally got her backstage moment with Cheap Trick on Saturday night.

“Hi Rick. I’m Rox,” the retired Green Bay Southwest High School teacher said to guitarist Rick Nielsen before the band’s set at the Resch Center.

How better to say “Hello There” to a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer who would later break out his custom five-neck guitar for “Goodnight” for a show with Bad Company.

It’s not unlike what she might have said to him backstage at Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena on Dec. 16, 1988.

Nys was supposed to be there that night. She had the free tickets, the backstage passes and everything.

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That’s back when she was teaching mass media and language arts at Southwest, where she had also started the student radio station to help turn kids onto music. They named it WROX in her honor. From the late ‘80s to the mid-‘90s, through a lot of hard work, fundraising and donations, the station played vinyl and later CDs, hosted all-day battle of the bands and did school and community announcements.

It was a labor of love for Nys, who has always loved live music – and Cheap Trick, too.

She would go see the Rockford, Illinois, band back in the ‘70s when it was still just a regional act playing at the popular Green Bay bar the Pack and the Hounds.

“It was a really hopping joint. Most of the time the place was packed, like you had to walk sideways through the aisles to get through,” she said. “(Cheap Trick) wasn’t from Green Bay. They were from Illinois, so nobody knew who they were at that time. They weren’t anybody really. They were just another band.”

But Nys stuck with them. When WROX received tickets and passes to the ’88 arena concert from a local radio station, she had every intention of going. Until something came up and she couldn't make it. She gave the tickets instead to a couple of her students.

One of them was Brett Christensen, who had signed up for WROX as a freshman and spent four years with the station.

“It changed my life,” he said.

So did that Cheap Trick concert. They were the first rock stars he had ever met.

Leap ahead 30 years, and Cheap Trick is still touring, Nys still avidly follows the local music scene and Christensen has his own Wisconsin Music DJ company. He also works as the publication relations manager for Red Rock Productions, the promoter behind the Cheap Trick/Bad Company concert at the Resch.

The latter allowed him the opportunity to repay his teacher the favor from 30 years ago. He hooked her up with VIP backstage passes and second-row seats to the concert.

The last time she saw Cheap Trick? In 1974 at the Pack and the Hounds.

“The band is still one of my favorites,” she said. “They went on to be big, big stars and so it was like, 'Wow, I knew them way back when, before they were stars, before they made it.'”

Nys celebrated her 67th birthday on Friday. On Saturday, she and her best friend since first grade, Pam Bass, put on their Cheap Trick T-shirts, sweatshirts and checkered socks – newly gifted Nielsen guitar pick in hand – and rocked out with what looked to be a crowd of about 4,000 to an hour-long set that included “Ain’t That a Shame,” “Surrender,” “Dream Police” and “I Want You to Want Me.”

For Christensen, it was a full-circle moment to give his teacher the backstage experience at age 67 that she gave him at 17.

“She changed my life. She really did,” he said. “I just feel this is total karma.”