Stephen Hanks News

On the evening of June 22, I would be doing the third performance of my Don McLean Tribute show at the Metropolitan Room, but I had heard enough buzz about Los Angeles-based, former New Yorker Joanne Tatham that I wanted to catch the last staging of her show Soundtrack, New York: Music from Movies Made in Manhattan at the same venue that afternoon. Hey, a cabaret reviewer's work is never done. Besides, with my gig hours away, I felt my mental state would be best served catching someone else's show rather than climbing the walls thinking about my own. Overall, experiencing Ms. Tatham's performance turned out to be a very good use of my pre-show time.

Only two nights removed from the last of my three solo debut shows at the Metropolitan Room celebrating the Don McLean Songbook, I was already experiencing the post-performance depression I'd heard tell about from cabaret veterans. I needed someone to lift me up where I belonged, so my instincts took me to Birdland for another trip through memory lane with Nostalgic Natalie Douglas. The last time I had heard the dynamic Ms. Douglas was 14 months before when she powered her way through her historically and politically passionate Freedom Songs. This time, Natalie's nostalgic trip was a much more personal adventure she called Scrapbook 2.0, which traversed everything from the musical influences of her late parents to the tunes she loved while growing up in Southern California. By the time Douglas was finished flipping the pages of her musical scrapbook--and delivering some adorably homey stories along with them--my gloom had been transformed into gladness.

A few weeks before BroadwayWorld.com Cabaret Reviewer and Columnist Stephen Hanks was about to stage the opening night of his debut solo cabaret show on May 31, a number of cabaret performers asked him if he was going to write about the experience in some way, with some even encouraging him to keep a diary. 'It might be really interesting to read how your perspective about cabaret performers and performing might have changed and how it might impact your reviews now that you're doing it yourself,' commented one singer. 'It was a fascinating notion and one that I had already thought about,' Hanks admits, 'but between a full time job, attending shows, writing reviews, taking vocal lessons, rehearsing, etc., finding the time and the energy to keep even a weekly diary was not in the cards.' Hanks certainly didn't think he'd forget even the little things that have gone into making his journey what he calls 'an amazing, fantasy-fulfilling, almost surreal experience.' On the eve of his last performance of his three-show run (over three weeks) at the Metropolitan Room of Beyond American Pie: The Don McLean Songbook, BroadwayWorld.com sat down with our lead cabaret reviewer to get his insights and perspective on what's it been like to be on the performer end of things.

About a third of the way into Tony Award-winner Faith Prince's new show at 54 Below last Wednesday night (the second of a five-show run over six days), it hit me that I could be watching a potential future cabaret legend in action. You know, in the Barbara Cook, Marilyn Maye, Andrea Marcovicci, Ann Hampton Callaway category. I felt Prince's new effort--'Have a Little Faith'--was one of the few shows I've seen at 54 Below--especially from a Broadway star--that was a true 'cabaret show' in the way most people define cabaret.

As a big fan of cabaret shows that incorporate horn sections (as does Terese Genecco's monthly 'Little Big Band' efforts at Iridium or Carole J. Bufford's 2012 show, speakeasy., which featured Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks), I was more than a little jazzed to hear that compelling Streisand sound-alike Marieann Meringolo would be doing a package of her 'greatest cabaret hits' from past shows, but supported by a 7-piece band (including three horns--Richie Vitale on trumpet, Jonathan Kantor on tenor sax, and Danny Hall on trombone) for a gig spanning three weekend nights (May 31-June 2) that she and her director Eric Michael Gillett called 'Orchestrated.' In this case, 'orchestrated' unfortunately came across more like 'engineered' or 'manufactured.'

A long, long time ago, Stephen Hanks heard Don McLean's second studio album "American Pie" (which was released in late 1971 and hit number one on the Billboard album chart), and became a life-long fan. Now a cabaret show reviewer/columnist for BroadwayWorld.com and Cabaret Scenes Magazine, Stephen has decided to experience how the other half lives and will take the performing leap with his debut solo cabaret show, Beyond American Pie: The Don McLean Songbook. On May 31, Hanks brought his debut show to the Metropolitan Room and you can check out photo coverage below!

Unless the host is particularly warm, funny, and charismatic (think Dana Lorge and her new monthly vehicle at the Metropolitan Room) or the show is a way to champion a good cause (like Joseph Macchia's Cabaret Cares events), for the most part cabaret variety shows are clunky affairs which can be too long, too rambling, give too much time to average talent or not enough of a showcase to outstanding talent. I ran into one of the rare exceptions last month (April 23) in the form of the The Concerts for City Greens' First Annual Gala & 2012 Songwriting Contest Finale, a variety show at the Laurie Beechman Theatre that served as a fund raiser for the launch of a new non-profit called Music and Art for Green which will incorporate Concerts for City Greens within its umbrella.

Four songs into Lauren Robert's show at Iridium this past Tuesday night (her third appearance at the jazz club since last August), she was already producing her usual pulsating, percussive, and passionate presentation of hard-driving blues and soulful pop when the show took a transformative turn and reached a higher ground. The mature, sultry, blue-eyed blonde, whose sound goes beyond blue-eyed soul, put on her Louisiana accent cultivated from years playing down south with her old band, Mojo Hand, and told her audience that the set's fifth song was 'inspired by the swamps and sexy action of N'awlins.' Then Robert and her new band, which included three members of the old gang, really got their mojo going, jumped into a musical swamp boat and navigated through a Robert original called 'Two Alligators' (from Mojo Hand's 1992 album Zulu Parasol), an intense and rhythmic mix of blues, hard rock n' roll, and Zydeco, and that featured a cool background vocal arrangement and Robert playing a washboard-better known as a fotoi (fo-twa)-draped down her chest. Like an alligator, the song stalked and then snapped, and with Noe Matos supplying some frenetic percussion, it was a draw-dropping number that wouldn't let you stop bouncing in your seat.

Halfway through her opening night at 54 Below on Monday, Laura Benanti unveiled the evening's showstopper, a multi pop-song mix titled 'Inappropriate Medley.' No, Benanti didn't faux strip her way through the songs as if she was replaying her past role as Gypsy Rose Lee, but she frantically ripped through eight songs, including Beyonce's 'All the Single Ladies,' 'Old Man River,' Sonny & Cher's 'I Got You Babe,' Aretha Franklin's 'Respect,' and culminated the riff by boogying like Tina Turner on 'Proud Mary,' and playing a tambourine tossed over by her Musical Director/pianist Todd Almond. As the audience commenced with raucous cheering, an almost out-of-breath Benanti quipped, 'I can't wait to read the review tomorrow that says Laura Benanti is an idiot.' Well, Laura Benanti may be a lot of things, but idiot is not one of them.

It's taken me two weeks to write this review of Ann Hampton Callaway's recent 8-shows-in-four-days run at Dizzy's Jazz Club at Lincoln Center, where she paid musical tribute to the late, great Sarah Vaughan, and I hope you buy the reason for such procrastination. Since late September last year, I've now seen four different Callaway cabaret shows at three different venues and reviewed two of them and, well, writing about how terrific Ann is on a cabaret/nightclub stage is getting a bit difficult as well as boring. I mean, I'm running out of words in my personal thesaurus to describe Callaway's consistent excellence, not to mention how she seems to provide a periodic master class in cabaret performance. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt I needed to prove I was up to this reviewing challenge, and a show as wonderful as From Sassy to Divine: A Celebration of Sarah Vaughan deserved more kudos on what Rachel Maddow calls, 'The Internet Machine.'

You probably don't have to feel sorry for a mature, experienced female singer who decides to tackle the gritty music of Tom Waits and calls her show 1978 NYC Underground, but it was still tough not to feel for Billie Roe as she performed this week at the Metropolitan Room. Roe, who in 2011 offered the highly-praised Dangerous Women: Life In Film Noir, admittedly has yearned to present a Waits songbook for 35 years, but just a couple of months before her four-show run which ends tonight at 9:30 pm (her prize for winning the 2012 MetroStar Challenge Competition at the Met Room), rising cabaret star Marissa Mulder staged a Tom Waits-themed show that was close to perfect in every way and earned rave reviews from the New York Times and BroadwayWorld.com.

Stephen Hanks, BroadwayWorld.com Cabaret columnist and reviewer, has produced and will host Stephen's Angels, a cabaret variety show presented by ScoBar Entertainment and slated for the Iridium Jazz Club tonight, May 14 at 10pm. Stephen's Angels will introduce audiences to six 'smart, sassy, sexy young women, whose singing is sublime.' Five of the six ladies are currently preparing summer or fall cabaret shows for the Metropolitan Room, and one will be launching a CD release show at the Laurie Beechman Theater in June.

Nominated by BroadwayWorld.com as 'Best Female Debut' for her 2012 Metropolitan Room cabaret show, Fade to Blues, Billie Williams will be bringing an exciting new show to the Iridium Jazz Club tonight, May 14 at 8PM. In The Sound of Blue, this powerful vocalist will celebrate more than six decades of classic Blues from Robert Johnson to Robert Cray.

Two years ago, in my generally favorable review of Pamela Lewis' quirky, if flawed, cabaret show Dog Walking Diva, I went a little bit out on the limb with . . . “She has the potential to be a major cabaret star.” Well, as Lewis (who given her bubbly and bold personality performs under the totally appropriate moniker of “Champagne Pam”) remarked often in her newest show, during which she assessed whether she had yet achieved a list of life goals, that particular observation would have to get a “check.” Because with Daddy's Little Girl, Champagne Pam--who proudly admitted to having reached the Big 4-0--is all grown up as a cabaret performer and should be a member of that rarified group who even a reviewer on a press comp should pay to see and hear.

I thought about many happy childhood musical theater memories last night while I attended the Dutch Treat Club's Annual Gold Medal Tribute Dinner and Show at the Harvard Club in honor of the legendary 'Fiddler of the Roof' lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who received the Club's Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Stephen Hanks, BroadwayWorld.com Cabaret Columnist has produced and will host Stephen's Angels, a cabaret variety show presented by ScoBar Entertainment and slated for the Iridium Jazz Club on May 14 at 10pm. Stephen's Angels will introduce audiences to six 'smart, sassy, sexy young women, whose singing is sublime.' Five of the six ladies are currently preparing summer or fall cabaret shows for the Metropolitan Room, and one will be launching a CD release show at the Laurie Beechman Theater in June.

Nominated by BroadwayWorld.com as 'Best Female Debut' for her 2012 Metropolitan Room cabaret show, Fade to Blues, Billie Williams will be bringing an exciting new show to the Iridium Jazz Club on May 14 at 8PM. In The Sound of Blue, this powerful vocalist will celebrate more than six decades of classic Blues from Robert Johnson to Robert Cray.

When you're a cabaret reviewer on the evening show prowl between Monday night and Saturday evening (although not every night, thank goodness), you'd like to think that the God of Cabaret would make Sunday a day of rest. No such luck, since the weekend allows clubs to book shows as early as brunch time. I learned this again early this month when I felt compelled to attend three shows starring charming female singers-Corinna Sowers-Adler at Stage 72 (the Triad), Eva Kantor at the Laurie Beechman, and Lianne Marie Dobbs at the Metropolitan Room. I didn't break my personal Sunday record of four shows in one day set in late January (yes, I should be committed), but there was a two-hour break in this mix so it still turned out to be an 8-hour cabaret extravaganza. (Thank you, oh God of Cabaret, for press comps!) While it would have been sweet for the musical marathon to have been a clean sweep of excellent shows, as Meat Loaf might croon, 'Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad.'

Texas born and bred singer William Blake--who came to New York six years ago at age 24--has lately taken the town by storm with his terrific tribute show to the legendary Etta James. In the process, Blake has also managed to transform some of the town's most prestigious nightclub/cabaret venues into his own personal concert halls. First it was at Birdland, where in the summer of 2012 and with the support of 'Cast Party' impresario Jim Caruso, Blake launched his Echoes of Etta raucous, standing-room only crowds. Then last February, Blake, his five piece band and three girl backup singers, overpowered Joe's Pub. But the last two nights might have been Blake's most impressive performances to date, as he totally captured the crowd at the elegant and sedate Cafe Carlyle (for the room's new 10:45 'Second Act' sets). It was almost as if you were experiencing an R & B concert at Carnegie Hall.

BroadwayWorld Award winner Robyn Spangler brings her show 'Why I Love Linda Ronstadt' to the Rancho Mirage Library on Tuesday, May 7 at 7:00 pm.