Hollywood actor Tyler Bowe returns to his hometown of Fall River for a music show

FALL RIVER – Tyler Bowe won’t be acting out when he shares the stage next month with cultural center owner Marc Dennis.

“He’s one of my best friends,” said Bowe, who for nearly four decades has made a living as a West Coast actor in TV shows, commercials and music videos.

“It will be an honor to play. I can’t wait to be there, ”he added, in a recent interview with The Club at the Cultural Center at 205 S. Main St., where he will headlining a show. musical on Saturday August 7th.

Some of the more recognizable TV series in which Bowe has played minor but regular roles include Murphy Brown, China Beach, and West Wing.

He played a Portuguese cook in this last series.

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Tyler Bowe’s Fall River Roots

Born Tyler V. Botelho on the Azores island of Sao Miguel, Bowe, 62, said he knew as a young boy he was destined to lead a life that would incorporate a certain level of creativity and entertainment.

Her late mother held two jobs while she went to college, earning a master’s degree from Brown University to become a teacher, while her late father worked as a chief mechanic at former garment maker Anderson-Little.

Like her mother, Bowe’s sister, now retired, has become a teacher.

“I was the black sheep of the family,” he laughs. “I wanted to go to Hollywood.”

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Bowe said that at the age of 12 and working as a delivery boy for the old Rego Market on Bedford Street, he saved his weekly salary of $ 3 to buy a camera, projector and screen 8 mm.

“I’ve done at least 20 movies with neighborhood kids,” he said, including one he said featured a heart-wrenching death scene on the roof of the Anderson-Little building.

Bowe notes that as a child he had five uncles who were all professional photographers.

“I grew up with it. Even in the Azores, I had my own darkroom, ”he said.

After arriving in Fall River in 1968, Bowe says he spent a total of three months learning English at Espirito Santo School, a private Catholic school.

But it wasn’t long before he wrote song lyrics in class, an obsessive habit that got him in trouble during his sophomore year at Bishop Connolly High School.

One day, after being repeatedly warned by teachers and principal to be careful in class, Bowe said he asked his biology teacher about a galactic reference in a Deep Purple song called “Space Truckin ‘” .

“Brother Leo told me to get out and go to the office,” he said.

Bowe says his parents heard the bad news that he was being kicked out, which caused him to attend Durfee High School for the rest of the year.

But Bowe said he didn’t like the atmosphere in Durfee and gave up at the end of the semester.

“I hated it. It was too hard,” he said. “It wasn’t for me.”

Bowe said his mother urged him to get a GED equivalency degree from Bristol Community College, which he did. He then took a liberal arts class in college while playing rock music in clubs five nights a week.

“We were making a lot of money,” he says.

Bowe said that with music becoming a full-time job, he and his fellow band members first rented a house on Highland Avenue and then a house in Westport.

Direction Hollywood

Bowe was 24 in 1983 when he loaded his car and for the next five days and nights he drove across the country to Hollywood, California, where he hoped to establish an acting career.

His previous performance experience had been as a frontman and guitarist for the “new wave” rock band The Moderns – which opened shows for bands like The B-52s, The Romantics and The Ramones – and the rock band more traditional classical Sayne, both of whom played concerts all over New England.

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After arriving in Los Angeles, Bowe, who immigrated to Fall River at age 9 with his parents and sister, enrolled in acting classes at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

In order to make ends meet, and in addition to knocking on doors for auditions, Bowe began working for an old friend of the Rhode Island Teamsters Union setting up booths for events and trade shows.

He eventually formed a production company called Bowe Productions and started booking rock bands, such as the Guns N ‘Roses, in California and Arizona.

One of the investors in his booking business was his friend from the Teamsters Union, who Bowe said had previously served as the general manager of Providence Civic Center (now known as Dunkin ‘Donuts Center) and worked with the promoter of heavyweight concerts Frank J. Russo.

First big acting break

Bowe’s big break in terms of a stable acting mission came in 1988, when he said a casting director friend suggested he audition for the role of an office worker known only as by Dave in a new TV show called Murphy Brown.

Bowe says he passed the audition and was included in the show’s first episode, though it would take a while before he actually spoke.

“I was hired as a day player to work three to four days a week,” he said. “It was like an actor’s dream come true.”

Dave’s recurring role, he said, lasted a total of eight years.

When the pandemic struck in March 2020, Bowe, who lives in the same Hollywood Hills condo he bought more than 35 years ago, said the phone had stopped ringing.

“There was no work for a year and two months,” he said.

Lucky for him, he had just finished working on an indie action thread called “Unchained” about a group of kidnapped women forced to fight in an underground mixed martial arts ring.

The film, which features a cameo appearance by Eric Roberts, is available through Amazon Prime Video and opens July 2.

Hollywood crowd

Living in Hollywood Hills, he says, means you never know who you’ll meet on the street or in a restaurant or store.

Some of the celebrity names he drops include Mark Wahlberg, Mike Tyson, Gene Simmons, Ringo Starr, and Mickey Rourke.

Bowe says he also stays in touch with Fall River native sound engineer and producer and Grammy Award-winning David Reitzas, who also lives in Los Angeles.

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“He’s been one of my best friends since I went to Connolly, and he produced my song ‘I’m Sorry’ at Record Plant (LA recording studio),” Bowe said.

He says he shortened and anglicized his name to Bowe after realizing that no one calling his name at West Coast auditions would ever understand Botelho’s correct Portuguese pronunciation.

“It was a nightmare,” Bowe said. “They went all the way to ‘Bo’ but couldn’t say the rest, so I thought it was enough to do Bowe.”

The Fall River Show will be the Club’s inauguration

Bowe, who is divorced and has no children, has returned to Fall River and has been staying with his sister since February.

And although he has managed to make a financial living in the world of television and video, including providing double photos for well-known actors and even models, Bowe has never stopped making music. .

He said he had a professional recording studio in the Hollywood Hills apartment he shared with a roommate who is a musician.

Half of the songs Bowe said he will play at the Cultural Center Club will be originals.

The Khourys, a duo of Fall River sisters, are expected to appear in the first part.

Bowe’s former Fall River pal Marc Dennis will join him on stage for at least one song towards the end of the concert, which will mark the Club’s inauguration at the Cultural Center.

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Bowe said he was also proud of the fact that he and his longtime friend and music producer Mir Wave – who will be performing with him at Fall River – won an award in 2016 at the International Portuguese Music Awards, which will take place are held at the Zeiterion Performing Arts Center in New Bedford, for a song called “Soul”.

Dennis – who spent 30 years as a bilingual teacher at Fall River Public School, tried his hand at real estate and had a career as a professional Portuguese-speaking pop singer – signed a purchase agreement and sale for the commercial building of the cultural center in March 2021 with the former liberal owner Silva.

In addition to the basement The Club at Cultural Center – which has a maximum capacity of 200 people – the two-story structure includes a main banquet hall for up to 300 people and a restaurant on the ground floor at 201 South Main St. which serves dinner Thursday through Saturday.

Dennis says that after the August 7 concert he will feature live music or a DJ with a room to dance every Friday and Saturday in the basement room at no cover charge.

He also says that due to an increasing demand for parties and private functions, he might end up closing the restaurant in order to use all available space for this purpose.

Dennis says all the $ 45 VIP seats with free appetizers are sold out, but there are still plenty of $ 30 general admission tickets available.

Charles Winokoor can be contacted at cwinokoor@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism and subscribe to The Herald News today.