Nellie McKay

[steelyman]

I've scattered a few YouTubes of this artist since I've been here but I am posting to her own thread with a nod to those in or near NYC, as she is on tour (currently somewhere in the Caribbean with A Prairie Home Companion).

This tour, which is a kickoff for a new CD about-to-be-released, will come to Barnes & Noble - Tribeca at 97 Warren St, New York on Tuesday, March 24 2015. What's notable is that it will include a CD signing. She's very nice in person. You know... just in case you're looking for something a little different to do.

I'll be catching her show on the way through the midwest next month. I haven't seen her since a show with Turtle Island Quartet at DePauw University in Indiana (I think late 2013).

What you don't get on a CD is her patter in between tunes (she made a go at being a standup comedian in the past) which is very entertaining. Her first CD, released around the time that Norah Jones' Come Away With Me was zooming up the charts, was called Get Away From Me.

Her mom appeared in the movie The Shining, and acted as her manager at least for a while (don't know if that's still the case).

She has a website at the expected place: Nellie McKay

I won't post another video here, but one I recall is here (hope this works!)

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/2012-mayan-prediction-part-2-a-64148.html

 

[steelyman]

Nellie's take: "Work Song".

http://youtu.be/_PQQsOVbe3I

 

[Marita40]

Love her. I'm a Prairie Home Companion fan. Garrison lives down the street from me.

 

[steelyman]

Love her. I'm a Prairie Home Companion fan. Garrison lives down the street from me.

That is outstanding! He makes a lot of people very happy (and a little wiser in the process).

 

[Marita40]

He has done well by St. Paul.

I was once sitting in the chair at the hair salon and he was in the next chair having his eyebrows trimmed. He's an odd looking man.

 

[steelyman]

He has done well by St. Paul.

I was once sitting in the chair at the hair salon and he was in the next chair having his eyebrows trimmed. He's an odd looking man.

My mom once said (about Humphrey Bogart): "When the movie starts, I think 'that is one ugly man', but by the end I think 'you know, he's really handsome'".

 

[Marita40]

Nice saying. I think that's how people felt about Abraham Lincoln.

Have you seen a live show?

 

[steelyman]

Have you seen a live show?

I've not, unfortunately. But I'd love to see one. I was very excited to see the movie!

 

[steelyman]

Two fun things today (so far):

I filled the propane tank for my grill. It's warm enough. I don't know if I can deplete it over the next month but I'll give it a good try!

I received the alert to expect my CD of the new release My Weekly Reader on Monday. Just in time to study up before Nellie hits the Midwest!

 

[steelyman]

Got it this morning! It is so cool to hold a hot-off-the-press new release physical CD.

Oh, to be in "the city so nice, they named it twice" today!

 

[cantlogin]

I saw her live at the Deer Head Inn.
She played my request for "The Dog Song".

 

[steelyman]

I saw her live at the Deer Head Inn.
She played my request for "The Dog Song".

That's a good one to request. Here it is, I already posted a while ago. But not in her very own thread!

http://youtu.be/oIbpxHBmvYY

 

[steelyman]

From the "Is there any way you could possibly be MORE biased?" Department:

Nellie's new CD is a winner. It's a total salute to the 60s (e.g., the first track is a tune written by Ray Davies). It was co-produced with Geoff Emerick, who made his bones engineering some classic Beatles recordings (the only Beatles track is a faithful cover of "If I Fell"). Wikipedia has a good page on him and his career to date.

A player I recognized is Bob Glaub on electric bass. Also Dweezil Zappa.

Also credited is steel guitar. I don't recall her using one before.

Nellie's not for everyone, but I'll come to hear her anytime.

 

[steelyman]

Nellie appeared on A Prairie Home Companion this week (4/18/2015). It's archived at the show's website.

 

[lemming]

I don't get it. I Hated the work song, hated the be nice to me-killer chick song and can see the talent in her jazz riffs but no enjoyment.
I see how it can be a mix of PHC and NY NY. I think I'm too dull.

 

[steelyman]

I don't get it. I Hated the work song, hated the be nice to me-killer chick song and can see the talent in her jazz riffs but no enjoyment.
I see how it can be a mix of PHC and NY NY. I think I'm too dull.

I bet you're not dull at all. It's just not your preferred type of music. There are styles/musicians I don't like, too.

 

[steelyman]

Last week, I went to Indy to see Nellie on the (ongoing) tour. The show was held in the Cabaret at Columbia Club downtown. Pretty swanky place, complete with dress code. I complied because, after all, as Sinatra liked to say, "If you wanna look dead, dress dead."

She did the show solo, alternating between piano and uke. Lots of jokes thrown in for good measure.

Great show, lots of tunes from the new CD but older ones as well and a few surprises. I won't say much in the way of specifics in case you get a wild hair (as the saying goes) and check it out for yourself.

I will mention the first surprise, though. The show opened at the piano with something I didn't recognize, and I guessed she was just riffing. She went into a tune I hadn't heard in a long time. It's "Compared To What", as done in a classic recording by Les McCann and Eddie Harris. Someone posted this video a while ago (thank you, whoever that was). I can't find the thread, but it's OK here, too. It's on their LP Swiss Movement. Nellie did it solo (piano and vocal) and didn't miss a thing. I'd love to go somewhere that had two grands, facing each other: McCann and McKay.

Warning before clicking: this is flat-out jazz:

Of course, there are no YouTubes of the current tour, so I thought I'd post a studio track from Nellie's first CD. That's her on the keys, and she wrote the tune.

She grew up in NYC with a single mom, not much money. I guess this is about that experience. It's called "Manhattan Avenue". She was probably around 19-20 at the time. I wrote some stuff when I was about that age that I still remember but they were things only a parent would be proud of. This, on the other hand, in my opinion, is near-prodigy-eligible.

"Music, in even the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear but always remain a source of pleasure."

-- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

 

[steelyman]

After Nellie played Indy, the tour headed up to Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music. I could have gone to either, but I thought (actually, know) it is easier to navigate Indy than Chicago, so I chose to head off in the direction where you can say, "Howzit hangin', Hoosier?"

Below is an event announcement I came across for the Old Town show that's nice and has a little information about her recent activities. There's also a video tab that has a few, saving some clutter here at e-r.org. The copy is mostly stuff from other sources, but there's nothing wrong with that.

I like the 60s-inspired quote, "Freedom's just another word for turning off your phone"

https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2015/04-25-2015-nellie-mckay-7pm/

 

[steelyman]

I notice that Nellie's working her way along the West Coast. I only know this because there's a calendar of shows that magically show up on my iPod calendar.

She'll be done by Memorial Day. But I smiled when I saw that (as of now) the last date is May 23 at some place called Dosey Doe - The Big Barn in somewhere called The Woodlands. I never heard of that place before being at e-r.org.

 

[steelyman]

The night before I went to Indy to see Nellie's show, I was thinking "hmmm, how can I get in the right frame of mind to hear her?". I'd been loading up my DVR with movies recorded off TCM in preparation for cutting the cable TV cord and remembered I had a Doris Day movie I'd never seen called Julie. It's not like most of those I recall, the light comedies with Rock Hudson and so on. It's actually a bit of an airplane disaster thing too, and it's good.

I knew that Nellie had released an album of Doris Day covers called Normal As Blueberry Pie that I really like, so the movie choice came from that. A few weeks ago, I was searching to learn who composed one of the tunes on that release, and I ended up at a Barnes and Noble website with the CD (w/bonus track) for sale. They also had a video link that's a promo from its release, and here it is. Doris, tunes from the 40s/50s and earlier, and Nellie - I like all three of them.

And for good measure, it's followed by a Doris-Johnny interview I'd never seen before.

 

[steelyman]

During the later part of this summer before I became, ahem, "mobility challenged" for a while and was roaming, I discovered that Ms. McKay was doing a show in a town within driving distance. Of course, I was there with a few interested people.

It was quite a bit of a different setting than the show in Indy I posted about earlier but still good. Not a huge attendance (less than 300, I'd guess) but she fits well in the more intimate places (no arena rock for this style!). The setlist was similar to the one in Indy, heavy on the new release of 60's tunes. She added a synthesizer on top of the grand to get that psychedelic thing going on a few tunes.

She stayed after for a while, chatting with attendees, and had some CDs and stuff laid out for purchase. Also some small paintings of her own (animals) that are fun. I took one of those and gave it to her to sign. Since her first album was called "Get Away From Me", I said "how about signing this 'Stay Away From Me!!!'?". She glanced at me like I was nuts, then smiled and said, "OK, but let me add...". She added, "Love, Nellie"

I posted this video a while ago in another thread (long ago and far away), and someone replied that they liked the melody but didn't understand a word she sang. That was understandable, given the video. So I will prepend the original film version of the tune that appeared in South Pacific, sung by Mitzi Gaynor. She has perfect diction. And she can dance and sing. Plus she's pretty darn cute, in my opinion. Just like Nellie.

Wonderful Guy (film)

Wonderful Guy (live)

 

[steelyman]

I know I've posted one of these before in a different thread, but that was before I realized that copy-and-paste on my iTouch resulted in a URL with "youtu.be" (something like that), which doesn't seem to result in an easy clickable thing on e-r.org. Besides it's just right for the season so it's back.

And followed by a new one that might be enjoyed by a few members, based on their posts (or might be appreciated, anyway). Kind of a Christmas weed rap.

 

[steelyman]

I saw her again last night (actually, last week but I can't pass up the opportunity to use the title of a classic 60s song with one of the best-known and preserved miscues in popular music). This was on the day that Harper Lee died.

Nellie visited Motorco | with Parts&Labor and delivered a great performance, solo on piano and uke. She was, as they say, ON that night. Well worth the trip to see and hear.

One of the tunes I enjoyed immensely is one that helped rocket Marlene Dietrich to fame and is perfect for that type of setting, which is pretty much a beer hall that's great fun. I'd not heard Nellie's version, but found a video that gives a good idea:

By the way, Miss Dietrich had a very interesting relationship to her native Germany at the time she appeared (in the 30s, and you know what was going on around that time and after).

Nellie was funny as always, and most of her comments were directed towards the current, ahem, "interesting" season, meaning political in nature, so I won't go there. After all, there's that Mod Squad constantly patrolling the e-r.org waters like U-boats armed with torpedoes for violators from the aforementioned adversary of the Allies...

She was able to stay around and talk with attendees afterward for a while, and that's a bonus. I mentioned it was my 5th time going to her shows (I guess I am approaching "Dead Head" territory now!). The first time I recall distinctly, it was in beautiful Eugene, OR at the time Nellie released her third album, Obligatory Villagers, an excellent one (but too short). That album opens with the following tune that I've posted before but which is amazingly still relevant/funny today (the album came out in 2007):

After the show, I told Nellie about Harper Lee (she hadn't heard, but was very sad to learn of it) and asked her to sign a card as if it were from Scout Finch to Boo Radley. She liked that idea and wrote: "Hey Boo, shimmy under the porch n see m'sometime. Love, Scout (Nellie)".

Now, that's a keeper!