Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Joe’s Pub at The Public, June 9, 2018 – 9:30 PM

The slightly restless sonic soundscape of ‘Ecotopia’ signals that this won’t be the usual night of standards by a typical Broadway chanteuse, but Betty Buckley has always been much more than that. Never content to tread the same old boards, she tries death-defying vocal aerobics and challenging interpretations of songs she loves, story songs in which she believes. If you’re brave enough to come along for the ride, the rewards are rich and ample. She’s also got a backing band that does justice to her wide-ranging selections, as evidenced in that opening piece of evocative, contemplative and deliciously moody music. The only way to find hope is to go through some dark places, and dark places have always inspired some of the best songs.

She kicks things off with the ambivalent ‘Any Major Dude Will Tell You’ in which she struts the stage in her high-heeled black boots and enough swagger to knock out any Scoundrel-in-Chief; clearly, Ms. Buckley came to slay, and we came to swoon. More than just telling a story with music, Buckley absolutely inhabits her songs, evidenced by moments when she was clearly moved – and we are moved in return.She has mastered the art of connecting to an audience on an emotional level and at such times, as in the transcendent and exquisite ‘Chanson’, she manages to turn Joe’s Pub into a church, stilling the bustle and holding the room absolutely rapt at this wonder of an artistic vessel. (A simple ‘Mmm-hmm’ near the beginning of Lisa Loeb’s gorgeous ‘Falling in Love’, a throwaway sigh that might be barely noticeable if sung by anyone else, is given a world of emotion in Buckley’s heartbreaking reading.) Complemented by a band that seems to have an innate understanding of Ms. Buckley’s wide-ranging musical skills and styling, the evening is anchored by the brilliant Christian Jacob, whose intuitive arrangements and piano work prove a marvelous extension of Buckley’s own musical instincts.

The hymn-like ‘Hope’ by Jason Robert Brown is the centerpiece and elegiac heart of the show, an antidote to our ever-dimming world, even as it struggles with its primal ambition: how does one find hope in such a world?

‘I come to sing a song about hope

I’m not inspired much right now

But even so

I came out here to sing a song

So here I go

I guess I think that if I tinker long enough

One might appear

And look it’s here

One verse is done, the work’s begun’

In a year in which so many have been left hopeless, the mere act of trying, of getting up and getting dressed is its own act of rebellion and resistance, its own form of fighting back. When one looks back upon Buckley’s astounding career, and the many curves and unlikely roads it has taken, it is clear she knows of what she sings. When she pauses, and Mr. Jacob’s piano work carries Mr. Brown’s sweet sounds and melancholy lyrics across the night, it is a moment of delicate bittersweet joy. This is the Artist, come to grieve, and come to heal. She didn’t even need to explain; every person in that room understood.

Now more than ever, Buckley’s message that no one is better, or, more importantly, less than anyone else informs her shows in ways that belie the multiple standing ovations she gets throughout the evening. That may be the essence of the ‘Hope album: honoring the experience of everybody. It’s there in the characters she brings to life, and the way her own life experience in turn informs her performance. It is, in essence, the very purpose of art. To resonate. To reveal. To connect.

That kind of connection begins with the close-knit group of musicans she has assembled. They are tightly in tune with her rollicking journey here, and each gets a little spotlight at some point in the evening. The most glorious moments, however, may be when everyone is working together in rockers like ‘Don’t Take Me Alive’, when all cylinders are firing away with locomotive-like might. It as at such times that the driving drums of Dan Rieser, the slinky fluid bass of Tony Marino, and the rapturous rock-star licks of guitarist Oz Noy coalesce with Jacob’s piano genius, finally getting their chance to let go as in the rousing ‘I Feel Lucky’. A difficult but wondrously-executed take on Paul Simon’s ‘Quiet’ demonstrates the trust within this group of musicians, with Buckley’s voice soaring over the meditative lyrics.

A touching memory of Gilda Radner sets up a moving version of ‘Prisoner in Disguise’ and she brings the audience through the heartbreak and loss with a brittle bit of beauty and a delicate balm of soothing vocals. Maybe that’s where we will find the hope that sometimes feels so elusive these days: in the way we share with each other, in the same way Buckley has shared her voice and her talent over the years.

Rather than keep it dangling there, however, she offers a coda of release and relief, and a wink at what happiness might just yet come. ‘Young At Heart’ was the requisite encore, and a neat nod to where she is heading. As she prepares to embark on a much-anticipated U.S. tour of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Ms. Buckley ends on a positive and nostalgic note, a blissful ending to an evening of musical enchantment.When it dawns on her that she won’t be playing Joe’s Pub for a while, she pauses wistfully in the realization, and some of us felt the slightest twinge of sadness that there won’t be a fall show this year. But sometimes it is best to share such wonderful talent with others, to spread the message of hope that she so expertly managed to capture, if just for a night, with the sheer happy exuberance of doing what she loves and doing it so well. It is only fair for her to take that joy on the road, across a nation that needs it like never before.

Besides, a meadowlark sings best when she is free.

 SHE HEARD THAT INTO EVERY LIFE A LITTLE OF IT MUST FALL,

SO SHE SPENDS HER EVENINGS PRAYING

FOR A LITTLE OF THAT SOUTHERN RAIN.

~ COWBOY JUNKIES, ‘OUTHERN RAIN’

The planning was just as important as the operation itself, and if we were going to pull it all off we’d need precision. Such things required tact and foresight, reservations and schedules ~ the very things I found most appealing to a proper Virgo. In the late spring of 1992, we made our way to Boston to implement the planning stage of a European visit that would find us attending a two-part New York/Finland wedding of a family friend, while bringing Suzie back from Denmark after her year abroad had come to an end. We had survived, friendship-wise, through a steady stream of letters sent back and forth over the Atlantic ocean. Not that I had ever doubted our friendship or placemark in each other’s life ~ we were family and never to be torn apart ~ but a year, and half a world away, can change things no matter how much you hope it won’t, especially when you’re only sixteen years old. But before we made it to that reunion we needed to plan…

We arrived, in a bit of rain as I recall, at the home of Suzie’s relative Susan who would be joining us for the expedition. She was hosting the dinner in which we would begin to hatch the plan for our trip. There was another event that coincided with and gave additional impetus for the trip: a wedding in Finland for one of the first Ko exchange students. Now, part of our contingent for the trip was assembling: my Mom, Suzie’s Mom (in Boston while she was taking a course to become a Montessori school teacher), and Susan.

We sat at the table eating a delicious and simple tortellini plate while a Cowboy Junkies album played in the background. Plans were made, dates were plotted, and cities were designated. It was my kind of meal: good food and future planning. Surrounded by adults, part of me still wished Suzie was there, hanging onto our childhoods because what boy or girl can do such a thing alone, but part of me was giddy at being at the adult table. That part of me had never been able to wait to grow up. Now that I was entering adulthood, I was simultaneously enchanted and scared. Even so, I couldn’t wait. I wanted culture and worldly experience. I wanted to see what was beyond the small confines of Amsterdam, New York and the Mohawk Valley. Mostly, I wanted to see my friend again, see how we had changed, see where we might still go.

It had not been an easy year away for Suzie. I feared her sorrow and pain perhaps more than I feared my own. My hurts were petty and insignificant when placed beside hers, and what she had gone through terrified me. Losing her Dad so early and unexpectedly, then going to Denmark and being without her own family a few months afterward ~ I couldn’t get my head around how she could do that, but I remember talking to her about it, and how she said it might be the best thing after everything that had happened. She couldn’t know her new host father would die so soon after her arrival, and it must have seemed like she couldn’t escape death or shadow for that whole year.

In my usual knack for timing, my own brushes with suicide didn’t help matters, and in retrospect they feel foolish and selfish. I couldn’t see that then, and when Suzie called me around Christmas that year, when I was in a truly despondent state and had written as much to her, I pretended everything was ok when it really wasn’t. She jolted me into saving myself, at least for the moment.

A RIVER TO THE SOUTH

TO WASH AWAY ALL SINS.

A COLLEGE TO THE EAST OF US

TO LEARN WHERE SIN BEGINS.

A GRAVEYARD TO THE WEST OF IT ALL

WHICH I MAY BE SOON BE LYING IN.

~ COWBOY JUNKIES, ‘OREGON HILL’

Her name was in the Cowboy Junkies song still playing as dinner finished. It was an early-spring night. Winter had only just departed, but warmth was in the Boston breeze that accompanied some of the rain. We talked of castles and lakes, of a two-part wedding in New York and Finland that would unite two people, two countries and two cultures, and all the logistics of how it would work. For a quick moment, I felt a slight trepidation in going. Two moody teenagers don’t necessarily make for an easy way of getting along, even if we’d always felt like brother and sister, even if we were standing within the glow of a gorgeous wedding on a lake in Finland.

Outside, the rain slowed. At the table a round of coffee filled the space with the closing scent of a grown-up dinner party, of which I was now, ready or not, a part. I asked for the name of the CD that was playing and made a mental note of it for later. Memories were made from scents and music, as much as from love. A trip is only as good as its planning stages, and as we finalized our European plan, including a few stops in Russia, and a cast of characters whom I would quickly come to adore, I knew it was going to be good. Better than good; this would be life-changing.

LORD, YOU PLAY A HARD GAME, YOU KNOW WE FOLLOW EVERY RULE.

THEN YOU TAKE THE ONE THING WE THOUGHT WE’D NEVER LOSE.

ALL I ASK IS IF SHE’S WITH YOU, PLEASE KEEP HER WARM AND SAFE

AND IF IT’S IN YOUR POWER PLEASE PURGE THE MEMORY OF THIS PLACE.

THIS LIFE HOLDS IT SECRETS LIKE A SEASHELL HOLDS THE SEA,

SOFT AND DISTANT, CALLING LIKE A FADING MEMORY.

THIS LIFE HAS ITS VICTORIES BUT ITS DEFEATS TEAR SO VICIOUSLY.

THIS LIFE HOLDS ITS SECRETS LIKE THE SEA.

~ COWBOY JUNKIES ‘THIS STREET, THAT MAN, THIS LIFE’

After that dinner, when we’d gotten back to upstate New York, I found the Cowboy Junkies album ‘Black-Eyed Man’ and set it spinning on repeat as spring ripened into summer and the wait until our trip left me in a happy state of anticipation. I went to bed with the ethereal voice of Margo Timmins sounding over my prayers, and she woke me as the sun streamed into my childhood bedroom. The promise of summer tapped like the hawthorne branch against the window. There was other music that would come to personify that summer ~ ‘This Used To Be My Playground‘ for wonderful instance ~ but the Cowboy Junkies album would be the one that resonated the most. A collection of story songs that touched on the forlorn and the forgotten, it came with a lining of love ~ ambivalent love, but love nonetheless. It was a musical map of emotions, perfect for two haunted teenagers about to abandon their youth.

There had been many times when I wished Suzie had been with me during the year she was in Denmark. On New Year’s Day, faced with a house of extended family, I laid in bed dreading the walk downstairs and the social interactions that would be required. I didn’t have a name or explanation for such social anxiety at the time, and in the past all those holiday stresses were eased because Suzie was there. As soon as dinner was done I retreated upstairs and wrote her a letter. It was a habit I’d continued religiously because it was my only outlet during the maelstrom of a sixteen-year-old’s junior year of high school. As we finished the first part of the wedding in New York, and our plane flew us into Finland, I wondered whether I had revealed too much. It’s easy to pour your heart out to someone when they’re a world away. In a rare moment of unguarded non-planning, I hadn’t thought out how I might feel that someone knew everything I shared with the quiet non-response and non-judgment of paper and stamps, and that someone was returning to the States armed with all my secrets.

There was one quick moment of awkwardness that passed the instant we hugged, and it was the last time I’d ever feel awkward with her. A year apart, when we’d both had so much growing up to do, would change us more than we’d ever change between visits, and neither of us knew whether the other had turned into an unbearable asshole.

She had cut off her trademark ponytail while she was away. I would see it later that summer in a box, saved for a doll that her cousin would make. It was like a carcass, a body that had long ago let go of its soul. In that headless braid was our childhood, intertwined and neatly tied at each end, as if a colorful ribbon could make it pretty enough to distract from all the heartache it held.

On the night of the wedding, we held birch branches aloft in a make-do arch right after the happy couple had come ashore from being rowed across an impossibly-beautiful lake. It was the stuff of fairy tales, and felt far from our reach. We had not yet fallen in love with anyone, and neither of us was in any rush for it. We stepped out of the boisterous revelry for a moment and walked by the lake. What we were saying or talking about wasn’t important, at least not important enough to remember, and most likely we were just being silly and laughing, not quite ready to step into adulthood despite our ill-fitting grown-up outfits. (The picture here was taken before or after that quick walk.)

The green and silver tokens of the birch trees fluttered in the breeze. The lake, mostly still, barely lapped at its shore, asleep for the night. Far from home, in a land I’d never known, surrounded by happy strangers, I felt safe. Because of Suzie.

From that summer day she shared her grape taffy beneath a grape arbor, to the time she shut my fingers in the car window en route to ‘Mary Poppins’, from the late-night talks we had in high school, college, and beyond, through the moves and homes, the marriages and divorces, and all the births and the deaths, Suzie has been home for me. No matter what happens, no matter where we go, she is that space of safety and security, the one sure thing in a world of ever-receding certainty.

WE ALL GOT HOLES TO FILL AND THEM HOLES ARE ALL THAT’S REAL

SOME FALL ON YOU LIKE A STORM, SOMETIMES YOU DIG YOUR OWN

BUT CHOICE IS YOURS TO MAKE, TIME IS YOURS TO TAKE

SOME DIVE INTO THE SEA, SOME TOLL UPON THE STONE.

TO LIVE IS TO FLY LOW AND HIGH

SO SHAKE THE DUST OFF OF YOUR WINGS

THE SLEEP OUT OF YOUR EYES.

~ COWBOY JUNKIES, ‘TO LIVE IS TO FLY’

Tomorrow night a dream comes true as I finally get to hear Betty Buckley sing live again – a first since the mid-1990’s for me, as I always seemed unable to coordinate enough to get to one of her shows. This time Andy is joining me in New York for her Saturday night performance at Joe’s Pub, and we are super-excited. Having been a fan since her triumphant reign as Norma Desmond in ‘Sunset Boulevard’, I’ve enjoyed every album she’s made, as well as her turns on the big and little screens. Yet I’ve always felt her greatest way of reaching people has been through live performance.

She’ll get to wow audiences across the nation when she takes the helm of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ later this year and I’m already plotting out how many cities we might visit to catch her in the title role. Though some of her work is decidedly (and deliciously) macabre (check out ‘Carrie’ and the upcoming ‘Preacher’), I have a sneaking suspicion she’ll make a grand comedienne – and she certainly has the vocal prowess to stun the largest theater into gleeful submission.

As for her performance at Joe’s Pub, I’ve already reserved a special spot on this blog for a write-up before we take our summer hiatus, so stay tuned for that. When you have the chance to hear an angel sigh, you must listen. For so many reasons Ms. Buckley has been that vocal angel for me, and tomorrow we’ll get to hear her take flight.

Here’s the blurb from Joe’s Pub:

Betty Buckley — the Tony Award winning Broadway legend — will return to Joe’s Pub at the Public to celebrate  Palmetto Records release of her inspirational new album Hope, recorded live at Joe’s last Fall. This exclusive four-concert engagement coincides with her debut as Madame L’Angelle in the  AMC hit television show “Preacher”.  The third season begins June 25.  The four concerts at Joe’s also preface her rehearsals this summer as she begins work for her starring role in the first National Tour of the smash Tony-winning revival of Hello, Dolly! 

Highlights at Joe’s Pub will include the album’s inspiring title song by Jason Robert Brown, selections from the seminal jazz rock fusion group, Steely Dan; Buckley’s favorite singer/songwriters Paul Simon, T Bone Burnett, Joni Mitchell and Mary Chapin Carpenter and classic pop standards. Hope, Buckley’s eighteenth album, features her quartet of musicians including the renowned multi-Grammy-nominated Christian Jacob, Buckley’s long-term Pianist, Arranger and Music Director, and guitarist Oz Noy on guitar, Tony Marino on bass and Dan Rieser on drums.

Hope will first be available for sale at Buckley’s concerts. The in-store and online release date is June 8. Pre order for the album is available here.