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Comical musical foursome

Four Bitchin’ Babes to play Birchmere next week

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Four Bitchin' Babes, gay news, Washington Blade

Bitchin’ Babes

The Birchmere

3701 Mount Vernon Ave.

Alexandria, VA 22305

birchmere.com

Four Bitchin' Babes, gay news, Washington Blade

The Four Bitchin’ Babes have been playing the Birchmere for nearly 25 years and return next weekend. (Photo by Terry Jordan; courtesy of FBB)

Describing a show by The Four Bitchin’ Babes comes down to a few words: witty, musical and bling. The jewelry they wear has become a staple for the women but the gal pals really shine with their wit and musical abilities.

When The Four Bitchin’ Babes play the Birchmere Dec. 14-15, it will be more than just another stop on their 50-city tour, it will mark a return to the place where the comical musical foursome became the force that they are today.

The story of the origins of the group begins in 1990, when singer Christine Lavin released a compilation album of winter folk songs and enlisted some musical friends to join her on a road show combining laughter and music.

The original foursome included Patty Larkin from Cambridge, Mass., Megon McDonough from Chicago and Sally Fingerett, from Columbus, Ohio, and the gals went to seven cities, ending at the Birchmere. It was there that they recorded their show and officially became The Bitchin’ Babes.

“We have been playing the Birchmere for 23 years and we always do two nights because it’s kind of our home away from home for us,” says Fingerett, the last remaining original member. “Our first and fourth records were recorded live there and the audiences have always been so welcoming to us there and we look forward to playing year after year.”

Over the years, The Bitchin’ Babes have grown and refined their show, developing the perfect combination of music, comedy and fun. The group’s lineup consists of Fingerett, long-time members Debi Smith and Deirdre Flint, and newcomer Marcy Marxer.

“We are four singer-songwriter-comedian-actress composers who stand in a row on stage together and take turns in the spotlight,” Fingerett says. “When one girl is at the microphone, she becomes the diamond broach and the other three play instruments, sing harmonies and support her as needed.”

Each of the women comes from a different city and all admit that they have different views, personalities and lifestyles, but when they meet up every year for their annual September to June tour, they’re like sorority girl BFFs who haven’t seen each other in ages.

“If we lived in the same city, we would be best friend whacky neighbors, but because we don’t, when we do see each other, it’s just about being best friends,” says Smith, who has been part of the Babes since 1994. “Some of us have other careers, children, spouses and other things going on in our lives, and we always have so much to share and look forward to this time together.”

Over the course of 22 years, some Babes have come and gone, and re-invention becomes the Babe mantra. When Nancy Moran said goodbye last year, it was time to find someone new.

“When we look to hire a new Babe, we know there’s a lot of beautiful, talented performers out there, but what’s important to us is that there’s a spiritual connection and a like-mindedness,” Fingerett says. “We need someone with no drama, someone who can wake up in the morning, shower, put clothes on and hit the road. Someone who can bring in different flavors and ideas.”

The group filled the spot with Grammy winner Marcy Marxer, a well-regarded folk singer from Maryland, who is out and recently married her partner of 31 years.

“I wanted to join them because of the bling factor,” Marxer jokes. “I really love them as people. They are wonderful friends and I think we ebb and flow around each member perfectly and they know how to run a band. They are very accommodating and flexible and that’s why they’ve been around so long.”

Marxer appreciates that the band is a hit with the LGBT community and thinks the girls’ humor and attitude is what attracts the crowd.

“We see people of all kinds and everyone is welcome,” Marxer says. “The thing we have in common is we all want to have a good time.”

Smith said that the fact that they are four women who love each other is a factor in their appeal.

“Love is so much bigger than gender and we present that.” Smith says. “Our show is beyond what goes on between men and women — we are very non-gender specific, loving, kind and supportive. We don’t have love songs about men, we sing about getting lost in the parking lot and things that don’t apply to gender at all.”

Fingerett also is well known for writing the hit song, “Home Is Where The Heart Is,” a tune about accepting people regardless of sexual orientation that Peter, Paul and Mary covered on their album “Lifelines.”

“It’s a song of tolerance and compassion,” Fingerett says. “It’s sung by LGBT groups all over the country. The songs is on our first CD and since then, we’ve had a wonderful and supportive gay and lesbian following.”

The Bitchin’ Babes have released nine successful albums, starting with “Buy Me, Bring Me, Take Me, Don’t Mess My Hair, Life According to Four Bitchin’ Babes Vol. I,” which captures the freshness and excitement of four women, four different songwriters, living four different lives, singing of their own individual experiences as female artists. Over the years, they have touched on topics from new shoes to bald headed men to hot flashes.

“Audiences have grown up with us and we see some of the same fans we saw in 1990,” Fingerett says. “We reinvent the wheel every record and they can still relate to what we are singing about.”

Their newest recording, “Mid Life Vices” explores women’s neurosis, passions and misdeeds, with songs about Facebook, relationships and cheese.

On the recording, the girls play everything from acoustic and electric guitars to mandolins to the piano to Irish Bodhran drums.

“We are celebrating the release of the CD at the Birchmere show and will put a holiday spin on it,” Smith says. “There will be some poignant songs for drama, comedy, but no politics and nothing blue. Audiences return year after year because there are always new songs and now we even have a new member.”

As part of the show, Fingerett delivers a comedic routine about how she is a Jewish girl born on Christmas Day (a true story), and there’s this great song about a Christmas sweater showdown.

“There is a pink cloud of generosity and spirit in all four of us,” Flint says. “This night will be an evening of entertainment and laughs where everything is left at the door.”

With so much to love, Fingerett says the thing she loves most about being in the Bitchin’ Babes is the camaraderie and fun they all have on stage. For Flint, her favorite thing about the estrogen-filled group is that every week she gets to go on a girlfriend’s getaway weekend.

“For me, it’s all about the great friendship and knowing the audiences leave feeling good,” Smith says. “Someone recently came up to me after a show and said it felt like a great therapy session. Knowing that we can help people as well as entertain is a great feeling.”

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Music & Concerts

Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule

Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1

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Writer Gregg Shapiro with Jill Sobule in 2000. (Photo courtesy Shapiro)

I’ve always prided myself on being the kind of music consumer who purchased music on impulse. When I stumbled across “Things Here Are Different,” Jill Sobule’s 1990 MCA Records debut album on vinyl in a favorite Chicago record store, I bought it without knowing anything about her. This was at a time when we didn’t have our phones in our pockets to search for information about the artist on the internet. The LP stayed in my collection until, as vinyl was falling out of fashion, I replaced it with a CD a few years later.

Early in my career as an entertainment journalist, I received a promo copy of Jill’s eponymous 1995 Atlantic Records album. That year, Atlantic Records was one of the labels at the forefront of signing and heavily promoting queer artists, including Melissa Ferrick and Extra Fancy, and its roster included the self-titled album by Jill. It was a smart move, as the single “I Kissed A Girl” became a hit on radio and its accompanying video (featuring Fabio!) was in heavy rotation on MTV (when they still played videos).

Unfortunately for Jill, she was a victim of record label missteps. When 1997’s wonderful “Happy Town” failed to repeat the success, Atlantic dumped her. That was Atlantic’s loss, because her next album, the superb “Pink Pearl” contained “Heroes” and “Mexican Wrestler,” two of her most beloved songs. Sadly, Beyond Music, the label that released that album ceased to exist after just a few years. To her credit, the savvy Jill had also started independently releasing music (2004’s “The Folk Years”). That was a smart move because her next major-label release, the brilliant “Underdog Victorious” on Artemis Records, met a similar fate when that label folded.

With her 2009 album “California Years,” Jill launched her own indie label, Pinko Records, on which she would release two more outstanding full-length discs, 2014’s “Dottie’s Charms” (on which she collaborated with some of her favorite writers, including David Hadju, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, and Jonathan Lethem), and 2018’s stunning “Nostalgia Kills.” Jill’s cover of the late Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” on “Nostalgia Kills” was particularly poignant as she had toured with him as an opening act.

Jill was a road warrior, constantly on tour, and her live shows were something to behold. My first interview with Jill took place at the Double Door in Chicago in early August of 1995, when she was the opening act for legendary punk band X. She had thrown her back out the previous day and was diagnosed with a herniated disc. To be comfortable, she was lying down on a fabulous-‘50s sofa. “I feel like I’m at my shrink’s,” she said to me, “Do you want me to talk about my mother?”

That sense of humor, which permeated and enriched her music, was one of many reasons to love Jill. I was privileged to interview her for seven of her albums. Everything you would want to know about her was right there in her honest lyrics, in which she balanced her distinctive brand of humor with serious subject matter. Drawing on her life experiences in songs such as “Bitter,” “Underachiever,” “One of These Days,” “Freshman,” “Jetpack,” “Nothing To Prove,” “Forbidden Thoughts of Youth,” “Island of Lost Things,” “Where Do I Begin,” “Almost Great,” and “Big Shoes,” made her songs as personal as they were universal, elicited genuine affection and concern from her devoted fans.

While she was a consummate songwriter, Jill also felt equally comfortable covering songs made famous by others, including “Just A Little Lovin’” (on the 2000 Dusty Springfield tribute album “Forever Dusty”) and “Stoned Soul Picnic” (from the 1997 Laura Nyro tribute album “Time and Love”). Jill also didn’t shy away from political subject matter in her music with “Resistance Song,” “Soldiers of Christ,” “Attic,” “Heroes,” “Under the Disco Ball,” and the incredible “America Back” as prime examples.

Here’s something else worth mentioning about Jill. She was known for collaboration skills. As a songwriter, she maintained a multi-year creative partnership with Robin Eaton (“I Kissed A Girl” and many others), as well as Richard Barone, the gay frontman of the renowned band The Bongos. Jill’s history with Barone includes performing together at a queer Octoberfest event in Chicago in 1996. Writer and comedian Julie Sweeney, of “SNL” and “Work in Progress” fame was another Chicago collaborator with Sobule (Sweeney lives in a Chicago suburb), where they frequently performed their delightful “The Jill and Julia Show.” John Doe, of the aforementioned band X, also collaborated with Jill in the studio (“Tomorrow Is Breaking” from “Nostalgia Kills”), as well as in live performances.

On a very personal note, in 2019, when I was in the process of arranging a reading at the fabulous NYC gay bookstore Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, I reached out to Jill and asked her if she would like to be on the bill with me. We alternated performing; I would read a couple of poems, and Jill would sing a couple of songs. She even set one of my poems to music, on the spot.

Jill had an abundance of talent, and when she turned her attention to musical theater, it paid off in a big way. Her stage musical “F*ck 7th Grade,” a theatrical piece that seemed like the next logical step in her career, had its premiere at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic. The unique staging (an outdoor drive-in stage at which audience members watched from their cars) was truly inspired. “F*ck 7th Grade” went on to become a New York Times Critic’s pick, as well as earning a Drama Desk nomination.

In honor of the 30th anniversary of Jill’s eponymous 1995 album, reissue label Rhino Records is re-releasing it on red vinyl. Jill and I had been emailing each other to arrange a time for an interview. We even had a date on the books for the third week of May.

When she died in a house fire in Minnesota on May 1 at age 66, Jill received mentions on network and cable news shows. She was showered with attention from major news outlets, including obits in the New York Times and Rolling Stone (but not Pitchfork, who couldn’t be bothered to review her music when she was alive). Is it wrong to think that if she’d gotten this much attention when she was alive she could have been as big as Taylor Swift? I don’t think so.

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Music & Concerts

Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’

Out singer/songwriter to perform at Red Bear Brewing Co.

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Singer Tom Goss is back. (Photo by Dusti Cunningham)

Singer Tom Goss will bring his “Bear Friends Furever Tour” to D.C. on Sunday, June 8 at 8 p.m. at Red Bear Brewing Co. 

Among the songs he will perform will be “Bear Soup,” the fourth installment in his beloved bear song anthology series. Following fan favorites like “Bears,” “Round in All the Right Places,” and “Nerdy Bear,” this high-energy, bass-thumping banger celebrates body positivity, joyful indulgence, and the vibrant spirit of the bear subculture.

For more details, visit Tom Goss’s website.

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Music & Concerts

Kylie brings ‘Tension’ tour to D.C.

Performance on Tuesday at Capital One Arena

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Kylie Minogue visits D.C. on Tuesday.

Aussie pop icon Kylie Minogue brings her acclaimed “Tension” world tour to D.C. next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Capital One Arena. Tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.

The show features songs spanning her long career, from 1987 debut single, “The Loco-Motion,” to “Padam, Padam” from her album, “Tension.”

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