28Jan 2013

DEtroit Citay! 2013

28Jan 2013

DEtroit Citay! 2013

Just got back from a quickie 2-1/2 day trip to the Motor City to go to the pre-release book signing party for Heart Soul Detroit, Jenny Risher’s fantastic photo essay book coming out in March that I’m in featuring 50 iconic Detroiters. Thrill of thrills sitting next to Martha Reeves of Martha and The Vandellas, one of my all-time favorite Motown groups, as we signed our pages.

This wasn’t my first encounter with Ms. Reeves. In 2008, along with Congresswoman Joanne Watson, she awarded me my first Commendation from the Detroit City Council.

I was also in Detroit this trip to lay the groundwork for “The D”, the massive unofficial official Detroit theme song I’m going back in September to record with potentially hundreds of thousands of Detroiters.

As such, I met with Tyree Guyton, who created one of Detroit’s most precious jewels, The Heidelberg Project.

I seriously hope to collaborate with Tyree. I spent almost every Saturday of my youth climbing on piles of crushed cars and assorted junk, artifacts that influence my art style to this day and upon which Heidelberg is built. My father’s scrapyard was just down the street from Heidelberg so I treasure that area of the city.

I also did an unexpected Q&A with some seriously talented kids at Mosaic Youth Theatre.

They have the good taste to be doing some of my music at a program they’re doing at the Detroit Institute of Arts in March.

I may end up coming back for that because these kids were seriously great and evolved. And, of course, I’ll use any excuse to come back for this…

… Chef Greg and his insanely incredible tasting Boogaloo Wonderland!…

…which I LOVE so much I fly him to LA to serve them at my live shows.

Chef Greg’s D’Emilis Cafe is on Curtis and Wyoming, the corner I used to get off the bus on to go to high school back in the day.  I invited some family and friends there on Saturday before I had to get on the plane to come back to LA.

Chef Greg made me a peach cobbler for the plane.

Which was good because a bottle of water spilled in my backpack and drenched all my money which was still soaked when the food cart came down the aisle selling the crappy plane food.

So here’s to dry money and plenty of it, Boogaloo Wonderlands, and a bright future for the once and future city of the future, Detroit!  See you in September for some serious Dancin’ in the Streets!

14Jan 2013

Get Yo Hands Offa My Psyche… My First Stand-Up EVER Comin’ Right Up!

14Jan 2013

Get Yo Hands Offa My Psyche… My First Stand-Up EVER Comin’ Right Up!

After almost four decades the torturous vice grip on my psyche has been chiseled open so that my little stage personality, the one that once cowered in a dark corner  but whose pleas to give it a chance never stopped rattling through my brain, has finally put on some clothes and come out to play!  FINALLY all the noise can stop!!

Of course, like I do most things, I remain scared of them for a hundred years, then I finnallly get my toe wet and then proceed to become obsessed and jump into things in such a big way it’s all I wanna do and costs me every dime I have pursuing it as I’m a self-funded artist and I live for my art. As such, in the space of seven shows over the last year I went from a piano and a clusterfuck  of technical mistakes to an if-I-do-say-so-myself-and-if-the-standing-room-only-sell-out-crowds-are-any-indication magnificent one-woman-extravaganza-with-25 musicians-dancers-masseuses-chefs-and-me-in-it show, well oiled to the point of being a rig, hit-filled, and more fun than 27 barrels of monkeys.

But my Ringling Brothers scale troupe is too expensive for mommy to mount monthly, which is what she’d/ I’d be doing if left to her/my own devices. So to keep my performer chops simmering lest they run back into the cave they’ve been atrophying in all these years, I’m getting up and doing my very first stand up ever this coming Sunday night, January 20, at UnCabaret.  My lovely and gracious friend, the ever-talented Beth Lapedis, whose creation this legendary comedy series is, asked me to alight the stage joining my other good friends Tim Bagley and Michael McDonald (he of Mad TV fame and not the singer who I’m also friends with and would be happy to take the stage with anytime!). Karen Kilgariff and Faith Tucker are also on the bill.

Here are me, Tim, Michael, and our good friend Jimmy McGill at my place a couple of years ago.

 

You can see that I was comfortable enough with these guys that I didn’t worry about putting on makeup or serving them  on paper plates (though please notice the exceptional plastic fish paper plate holders the spaghetti-smeared dinnerware sit in).  I hope that comfortable feeling carries over to joining them on stage. That comfortable feeling certainly worked for Tim, who bagged the free foot massage after  winning “The First Three People to Win Five Chunks of Soul Get a Free Foot Massage During The Next Song” game at my BaDeYa, Baby! live show this last November.

That show being what gave me the guts to get up and try this standup thing to begin with. So it’s all come full circle and I hope Tim remembers my generous gift of a foot massage and musters up a laugh for my routine even if some of it flops around like a landlocked fish. Which I pray it doesn’t.  Why don’t you buy some tickets and find out for yourself?