- photos by Mark Pirri (Nellie McKay concert photo gallery)
Nellie McKay slipped through the standing-room only crowd in a gold sequined top and a puffy black tulle skirt that stopped at her knees. She took her place at the piano, smiled under her canopy of blonde ringlets, and launched into her song, “Won’t U Please B Nice”. The song is reminiscent of the old standard “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” at first, but when McKay sings “If we part, I’ll eat your heart…” you realize this isn’t your typical songwriter.
McKay is part sweetheart, with her genuine smile and golden voice, humbly covering for forgetting the notes to a song with a joke and a smile, “I haven’t seen this many white people since Boulder.” But she’s a bigger part incendiary, with her raw truths and shocking statements that kept the audience laughing. Her appeal lies in the balance of these two extremes, giving us unpredictable swings from all-American darling to profane 21st century libertine.
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Touring to promote her latest album, Normal as Blueberry Pie – A Tribute to Doris Day, she enchanted the audience at Cleveland’s Nighttown jazz club and restaurant with Day songs such as “Mean to Me” and “Sentimental Journey”. When she stood up and sang along to her own ukulele playing, she admitted, “This part is supposed to be a French horn solo,” so she used her voice to mimic the deep tones of the French horn, to the roar of audience laughter.
By request she sang “Sari”, with lyrics she raps with amazing ease, and which mention Monty Python, Phen-phen, Freud and, to everyone’s surprise, the f-bomb. But whether she’s rapping her own songs or purring a Doris Day hit, Nellie McKay is entertaining, original, and unforgettable.
