Fri 6/30 @ 8:30PM
Quirky singer/actor/comedian Nellie McKay has become a big favorite at Nighttown, returning there often to play for enthralled audiences. She just did a two-night stand there in February.
After a 2004 debut double-disc album Get Away From Me on Columbia that didn’t do much commercially but did attract the attention of people who like music that’s hard to categorize, she’s put out a series of intriguing releases on her own label. The latest was 2015’s My Weekly Reader, featuring covers of ’60s songs, both familiar and obscure.
Now she’s on to still another unusual project titled “A Girl Named Bill: The Life and Times of Billy Tipton.” In it McKay and her band — guitarist Cary Park, bassist Alexi David and drummer Kenneth Salters — tell the story of obscure jazz pianist and bandleader Billy Tipton. The gender-fluid Tipton was a woman at birth and began dressing as a man to break into a music industry that was even more sexist then (1930s) than now. Eventually he began living as a man in all aspects of his life, keeping his secret from even the women in his life. With her mix of cabaret, pop, jazz, rock and hip hop, and her acting skills that allow the delicately feminine performer to gender-hop on tage, McKay’s presentation of Tipton’s story is such to be engrossing.
Tickets are $30.
Cleveland Heights, OH 44106