Until a few weeks ago, JoAnn McDonough-Torreano was just Memaw, but she has quickly turned into “the little local celebrity” in Menominee, Michigan — and getting bigger by the day.
It all started on June 7 when her granddaughter, Hannah LaMarre of De Pere, asked her this: “Hey Grandma, can you sing that Packers song you used to sing when I was little?”
From the comfort of her easy chair and without missing a beat, 82-year-old McDonough-Torreano launched into “A Brat, Beer and a Burp” while LaMarre recorded it on her phone.
I want to be a Packer fan dressed in green and gold/I hear they are the best there is, at least that’s what I’m told/I want to be a Cheesehead sitting in the crowd/Eating brats, drinking beer and burping really loud.
At 82, JoAnn McDonough-Torreano of Menominee, Michigan, is fast becoming a social media star for a Green Bay Packers song she wrote more than 20 years ago. Her “A Brat, Beer and a Burp” even has its own line of merch.
If you’re wondering how it is you’ve never heard that Packers song before, because let’s be honest, a sweet little ditty with “burp” in the title is pretty unforgettable, it’s a JoAnn McDonough-Torreano original that until now had been unreleased.
She wrote it 20-some years ago in 15 minutes on the way back home from a polka music fest in Manistique, Michigan, with her accordion-playing husband. It started out as a poem, but she polka-fied it over the years to sing it to LaMarre and her sisters when they were kids.
LaMarre was visiting her grandmother after she had a health scare in May when McDonough-Torreano told her she planned to donate the song to a local Michigan band in hopes they could write sheet music so it could live on after she was gone someday.
“I went to bed that night just thinking that I would love for my grandma to get the song out there, but I wanted her to get it out there,” LaMarre said. “I wanted it to be heard with her singing.”
The next morning, she asked her to sing it in her living room for Packers fans on TikTok just to see what happens.
“She got really giddy. … I don’t think either of us really understood what we were getting into,” LaMarre said.
Social media blitz aims to get the attention of the Packers
When LaMarre posted the video on TikTok, it racked up 7,000 views in an hour. Those kind of social media numbers mostly didn’t mean beans to McDonough-Torreano, but her granddaughter knew they were onto something. So on their way up to Marinette that day, LaMarre asked her to sing it at other locations.
“I kind of blindsided her as we were stopping places. I don’t think she really knew how many times were were going to do it,” LaMarre said. “As I was pumping gas, I was like, ‘Hey Grandma, can you sing that song?’ and you’ve got the Kwik Trip gas pumps in the background. … That was kind of the one that really took off.”
“Green Bay Packers Memaw,” as she’s known on TikTok, has already amassed 2,800 followers and 45,000 likes in seven weeks. One of her videos on LaMarre’s Instagram is at 1.1 million views and counting.
It wasn’t the intent when it started, but all the love for McDonough-Torreano and her happy, bouncy polka, right down to the clever, high-flying finale, has turned it into a full-fledged social media blitz. The mission: catch the ear of the Packers and maybe even score her an invitation to sing it at Family Night or a game.
LaMarre has committed to posting something daily until the Packers take notice. She’s more than 40 days in.
Hannah LaMarre of De Pere and her grandma, JoAnn McDonough-Torreano, have been having all kinds of fun together with a social media campaign to get the Packers to take note of McDonough-Torreano’s “Brat, Beer and a Burp,” a song she used to sing to LaMarre when she was little.
Memaw is a lifelong Packers fan and Michigan resident
Her grandmother’s only musical background is singing in the church choir every Sunday, but it turns out she’s a natural when it comes to being a social media sensation. When LaMarre suggested spur of the moment the day they drove to Marquette that they drive down to Green Bay so she could sing it outside Lambeau Field, she was in.
“We recorded video of her singing in the (Packers) Pro Shop. There were people walking all around her, and she just did her thing,” LaMarre said. “I just love how fearless she was about it.”
Maybe all that moxie comes from living in Michigan her whole life and being a steadfast Packers fan married to a man who was a Detroit Lions fan. It was her idea to stop by a local print shop in Menominee and see if they could design T-shirts for a “A Brat, Beer and a Burp.” That’s right, she has her own merch for sale through a link on LaMarre’s Instagram.
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There are plans for McDonough-Torreano to officially record the song with sheet music, LaMarre said, but for now, she’s sure having fun with all the comments from everyone who has discovered it, even from rival Lions, Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings fans who have said they love it, too, or wish their teams had fans like her.
“One thing my grandma really wants people to know is that this song she wrote, she wrote it for the Packers fans,” LaMarre said. “She wants the fans to know this song is all about them.”
Whether or not it ever makes the leap to Lambeau, the granddaughter-grandmother project has already been a gift of extra time spent together. They call or message each other multiple times a week. One of LaMarre’s favorite things to do is drive up to Menominee on a Tuesday night and have dinner with Memaw. They usually hit the legion afterward for grasshopper ice cream drinks and a game of cribbage.
She’s embracing her local celebrity.
“She’s always telling people about her song on TikTok. Everywhere we go, she sees someone that she knows or she’ll just stop a stranger and she’ll sing it for them. I love that,” LaMarre said. “I’m happy that this kind of played out the way that it did, because we’re just getting that time together and that to me is the most priceless.”
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Packers song by 82-year-old grandma is making her a social media hit