Connect with us

Music & Concerts

Pink Martini braintrust Thomas Lauderdale teams up with Meow Meow for new album, mini-tour

Duo brings show to Washington March 25

Published

on

thomas lauderdale interview, Pink Martini, gay news, Washington Blade
Thomas Lauderdale says his collaboration with Meow Meow has resulted in some of the greatest musical collaborations he’s ever done. (Photo by Preston Thalindroma; courtesy Sacks and Co.)

Meow Meow and Thomas Lauderdale
Monday, March 25
Lincoln Theatre
1215 U St., N.W.
8 p.m.
$35

Thomas Lauderdale (the Pink Martini bandleader) and musical gal pal Meow Meow go way back. Their new joint album “Hotel Amour” took about 10 years to make. 

Out today (March 22) on Heinz Records, “Hotel” features originals and international standards in French, German and more, on a mood journey through bittersweet tragedy, humor, politics and more.

They opened a 10-city mini-tour this week in California and play Washington on Monday, March 25. Lauderdale, in his first interview with the Blade since 2013, spoke by phone Monday from his Portland home. His comments have been edited for length.

WASHINGTON BLADE: I understand you and Meow have been recording off and on for several years. How did it work out that now was the time for the record?

THOMAS LAUDERDALE: At the time we started recording this, people were still selling albums, selling CDs and records and of course, as the years have passed, that landscape has changed so we decided we were going to go ahead and release it before that goes any further, before the possibility of selling a single record is lost. Also the timing seemed right in terms of all the collaborations we hoped for. They kind of came together magically in the last year. 

BLADE: Will there be a vinyl?

LAUDERDALE: There will be and hopefully we’ll have the vinyl in hand by the time we hit D.C. It should be here any day now. 

BLADE: Vinyl is pretty hot now. You really think the album form will eventually die?

LAUDERDALE: Yeah, I do. I think physical objects in our culture are becoming scarcer and scarcer and as the population shifts, the new generation is not used to touching things so there will be more virtual of everything. I feel like a dinosaur. All the things I like are disappearing.

BLADE: How many LPs do you own?

LAUDERDALE: I don’t know. Thousands probably. I also have 78s. I’ll take a photo and send it to you. … I much prefer records to CDs any day. This (album) sounds better on record. It was largely recorded on analog so it’s gonna sound better on vinyl than any other medium.

BLADE: How would you characterize your musical chemistry with Meow Meow?

LAUDERDALE: I’m not a songwriter … but writing with Meow Meow is the easiest of all the collaborations I’ve ever had. We just sort of sit down and start writing. I come up with a melody and she comes up with lyrics and there’s never any problem. It’s just effortless and I totally trust her taste and her aesthetic. We have different tastes but somehow it comes together in a really great way and we save each other from our worst instincts.

BLADE: What do (Pink Martini lead singers) Storm (Large) and China (Forbes) think of this? Are they jealous?

LAUDERDALE: I don’t know, I haven’t asked. … Whenever we all perform together, it never feels like a competition. We all support each other and recognize each other’s genius.

BLADE: Are you gonna perform the whole record?

LAUDERDALE: We’ll mix in other stuff. There’s a melancholy aspect to it, some are quiet and introspective, which is not really how Meow is in performance. A Meow performance is maybe the wildest and funniest show I’ve ever seen. People laugh so hard … but the album is more contemplative. If the album was like a Meow show, I think it would be like a disco record. It would have a certain shelf life.

BLADE: Is that a common concern? There are certainly raucous classic albums but what’s streaming through your house on Pandora while you’re cooking dinner isn’t necessarily the cacophony you’re down for at a live show.

LAUDERDALE: Yeah, it’s a constant sort of quandary. Over the years, I feel like I’ve always been able to sort of slow things down in recording ‘cause live, there’s a tendency to play faster and louder. On a record, that can make the listener feel anxious. It’s something I’m aware of. We need more beauty, not more noise to compete with.

BLADE: How did you and Rufus (Wainwright, who sings on the record) get so chummy? 

LAUDERDALE: I met him in 1995 when he was doing his first show in Portland … and it’s been amazing to watch him progress and become more himself as the decades passed. Whenever he comes to town, if I’m in town, we have a dinner party or a cocktail party or take him berry picking on the nude beach. He’s such a genius.

BLADE: Are you still with Philip (Iosca)?

LAUDERDALE: No. Phil and I were together almost a decade. He would say I did too many drugs and I would say he was too mean to my friends so we were kind of incompatible. We tore out all the walls in my 1859 building in downtown Portland and built a new inside. This was a three-year process. At the end, he moved back in and that lasted just a few months and then he left. He won’t speak to me.

BLADE: Are you with anyone now?

LAUDERDALE: Yeah, I have a new partner named Hunter Noack and he’s a pianist as well. He’s got an incredible project where he takes 9-foot Steinways out into the wild and people listen through wireless headphones and wander the landscape. It’s really astonishing.

BLADE: Did you eve get a TV? 

LAUDERDALE: No. Life is so interesting. If I turn on the TV in a hotel room, it sucks you in and there’s nothing worthwhile except maybe an animal show.

BLADE: Don’t you feel out of the loop culturally if everybody’s talking about a hot show you’ve never seen? 

LAUDERDALE: No. I don’t think my friends watch TV either. There’s so much to do, to read, who has time for TV? 

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

Music & Concerts

Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule

Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Music & Concerts

Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’

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

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Music & Concerts

Kylie brings ‘Tension’ tour to D.C.

Performance on Tuesday at Capital One Arena

Published

on

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.”

Continue Reading

Popular