photo by Caroline Knopf
Nellie McKay
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On February 18, Lincoln Center's American Songbook series featured Nellie McKay in her "Normal as Blueberry Pie" tribute to America's Sweetheart Doris Day. The Allen Room was filled to capacity and the snow still whitened the ground of the southeast corner of Central Park. This twinkling cityscape was the backdrop for the long stage that's as deep as a whisper, yet still managed to accommodate a long, thin topless Steinway, with a heroically proportioned Lonnie Plaxico on upright bass, an agile Benjamin Bynum on drums and percussion, with Belinda Whitney on violin with Glenn Drewes on Trumpet and horns and Howard Fishman on guitar. That's quite a crew and still there was a small table and mic set up closer still to the crowd. All was set for the force majeure about to ascend the stage.

Nellie McKay has been a singer songwriter most of her life, and is separated in age by 60 years and 10 days from the amazing Doris Day. They both are ardent Animal Rights activists and McKay herself is a bit of a firebrand. Both have had parents involved in the arts. Both have a gift for comedy and tremendous stage presence, musicianship and dedication to their work. McKay is inspired by Day's work and presented a comprehensive program with soupçons of her own work for a dash of spice.

The band was dressed in variations on Concert Black. McKay stepped onto the floor in a magenta dress with black scrollwork, floor-length, with a peasant-style ruffled neckline, worn off the shoulder, the sweep of the dress on her slim figure graceful on its own. Sparkly gold ballet flats played peek-a-boo as McKay swept across the stage to the piano, clutching a small ukulele. From that point on, one knew the evening would be very different!

A number of the arrangements were flavored with jazz age stylings, including the homey playing style used by violin and guitar. Evocative of balmy summer evenings, the feel of the concert was adult slumber party-cum-musicale, if your friends are very stylish and very musically talented. Comfortable in the venue and the music, McKay makes us feel welcome, as friends and guests.

"Sentimental Journey" was treated with a flair that combined the Big Band era with more modern harmonies and dissonance. This had the effect of underlining the conflict one might feel when returning home after an absence, not sure whether the heart will be fonder. Followed quickly by "Do Do Do" from the movie "Tea for Two," the homespun and corny, extremely sexy delivery underlined the arch quality of McKay's speech and singing. There was always another meaning lurking, and sometimes more than two. I felt myself spinning backward in time, but the rosy view is far from simple. The wartime favorite "I'll Never Smile Again" featured Belinda Whitney on violin, as she and the piano sang a bittersweet duet.

We like to believe that our grandparents and parents were never sexy, that the fill-in-the-blank current generation invented seduction. When McKay began "Close Your Eyes," the hot sexy Big Band arrangement featuring Glenn Drewes trumpet, the singer's blonde hair, ivory skin and bare shoulders took on a new significance. McKay's segue directly into her own "Caribbean Time" made for a real change of pace, as well as political climate. This also perked up fans, who are less familiar with her Doris Day tribute, and more familiar with the velvet-covered, steel-trap mind McKay exhibits in her original work-more on that in a bit.

The familiar "Meditation," by Antônio Carlos Jobim, brought us back to that lazy afternoon, as McKay, solo in front of the microphone, plays and sings in clear diction and perfect intimacy as if she is singing to me as an individual. As she moved the energy up again with "Dig It," we returned to Big Band mode and, with the twinkling lights of a Columbus Circle night, it was easy to recall a time when people's main entertainment was the bands they would hear live, not whom they would dial in to vote for on television. The uke was back in "Send Me No Flowers," the bittersweet title song that began what Ms. McKay terms Ms. Day's "gay period." This drew a knowing susurration of amusement from pockets of the audience. Dueting then with Howard Fishman on "Two Sleepy People" made it easy to remember that our parents and grandparents were once our age, once in love, once so obsessed with one another's comeliness, that dawn's early light came all too soon. We moved forward from lazy pre-dawn to a 60s style arrangement of "A Wonderful Guy" that was a love child of Vince Guaraldi and Burt Bacharach, followed by McKay's home-made percussion on "The Dog Song." She and Day, recall, are both fervent animal activists, and McKay is a great storyteller, not just with her music, but also in her patter, when she anthropomorphized both of her pets, making them "speak" for themselves.

The next wave began with "If I Ever Had a Dream," McKay's evocative original song, so much in the style of Day. McKay moved into the swinging version of "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" that highlighted the smoky timbred clarity of her lower register. Always the trickster however, her "Prisoner of Love" self-parodied, as the "serious" voice, à la Jeanette MacDonald, came out for a romp, followed by McKay's own "Mother of Pearl," her arch feminist encomium to the faulty syllogisms of conservative thought, punctuated with the finale, "I'm Sarah Palin and I approved this message." Deadpan delivery and dead-on satire meant that the punch line was met with a collective intake of breath-is she done?-then laughter and applause. Her "Absolute Elsewhere," another brand-new original work not yet released, followed. But then we returned to "The Very Thought of You," in an arrangement dominated by the light music-box quality of Ben Bynum's xylophone, with light flourishes from the piano that then became a brief theme-and-variation riff, before launching into "Crazy Rhythm," after which came a very spare arrangement of "The Black Hills of Dakota," featuring Ben Bynum on percussion and Glenn Drewes on a native flute. Combined with perfect bell-tone diction, and prefaced by a wry comment about manifest destiny, the last song particularly held the room spellbound. The Black Hills were never this close to Manhattan before.

The final song of the regular set was a Dixieland treatment of "I Want To Be Happy," so appropriate for this time two days after Mardi Gras. The applause thundered as McKay left the stage, but we knew she'd be back. Life is that good.

The first encore featured the Ms. McKay with her ukulele in a very simple arrangement of Herman's Hermits' "World Without Love" that felt as much like a lullaby as a love song. Next was another simple uke-and-voice duet on "If I Had You," as Day might have sung it at home. Returning to the piano, McKay encouraged the band to jump in where and as they might on "There'll Be Some Changes Made," but only Lonnie Plaxico and Ben Bynum somewhat took the bait.

All great things must end at some point, and this evening's finale was Ms. McKay's "I Wanna Get Married" and as she sang of "packing...lunches for my Brady Bunches," she took us on a final whirlwind pop culture tour that had people whistling and smiling on their way out. Jaded city folk smiling from the heart and whistling on the way out of Time Warner? Truly wonders never cease.

The American Songbook series continues on February 20 with Leslie Uggams and will conclude March 6 with Chita Rivera. Support the arts and get what tickets remain now at www.LincolnCenter.org.