twi-ny talks

TWI-NY TALK: ANA BOLLOCKS

Ana Bollocks (r.) shows her stuff for the Queens of Pain, who open Gotham Girls Roller Derby season Saturday night against the Bronx Gridlock

Gotham Girls Roller Derby
City College of New York / Nat Holman Gymnasium
138th St. & Convent Ave.
Opening night: Saturday, March 26, $19.99 – $35, 6:30
888-830-2253
www.gothamgirlsrollerderby.com

Get ready for a slobber-knocker of a good time this Saturday night as the Gotham Girls Roller Derby season gets under way at CCNY’s Nat Holman Gymnasium, with two-time defending champion the Bronx Gridlock battling it out with 2010 runner-up the Queens of Pain. That will be followed on April 16 when the Brooklyn Bombshells take on the Manhattan Mayhem at LIU’s Schwartz Athletic Center. Since its inaugural 2004 season, the nonprofit, all-female GGRD has been doing it their own way, with such players as Bitch Cassidy, Evilicious, Miss American Thighs, Sexy Slaydie, Tip-Her Gore, Angela Slamsbury, and Anais Ninja skating around the track, blocking, pivoting, and jamming toward victory. The league also features the All-Stars, the Wall St. Traitors, and the all-rookie Meatpacking District, who skate against other teams in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. A member of the All-Stars and the Queens of Pain, blocker and pivoter Ana Bollocks recently discussed the fast-growing sport with twi-ny.

twi-ny: What would people coming to their first GGRD match be most surprised about regarding the makeup of the audience?

Ana Bollocks: I think people assume that we have either a hipster audience or a goon audience, and it’s not the case — it’s a good cross-section of regular folks of all ages, including a decent contingent of parents with kids. Our audience is loud — REALLY loud — and enthusiastic but generally positive and well-behaved. I grew up playing soccer and I heard more referee-baiting and shit-talking from roughly two dozen parents on the sidelines than I do from a thousand people at a derby game. It’s a pretty great atmosphere.

Ana Bollocks seeks the crown in upcoming GGRD season (photo by Matthew Pozorski)

twi-ny: How did you first get involved in roller derby? You’re regarded as one of the leading blockers on the circuit, paving the way for the jammer to score points. What are the different skills needed for each position?

Ana Bollocks: Well, I started in early 2005, when GGRD was just starting its first full season and we were one of about a dozen leagues in existence. So all I had to do was make my attendance numbers for three months and I was in. Nowadays there’s something like 700 leagues and 28,000 skaters worldwide, so it’s a lot more competitive. We had about a hundred people try out in November and we ultimately accepted eleven new skaters into Gotham, many of whom had skated in other leagues before moving here.

I don’t know that the different positions require different skills so much as jammers need those skills dialed up to eleven. Whatever position you play, you need stability, sprint speed, endurance, and speed control. For me, jamming is fun at practice, but I’m a better blocker than jammer so I’d rather be blocking when it counts.

twi-ny: You’ve been described as a “bad ass” with the “heart of a champion.” When you’re not racing around the track, you work in data management and developing accuracy systems and standards as a woman named Kristin Carney. Do you bring those qualities to your everyday life?

Ana Bollocks: Hmmm, “heart of a champion?” I don’t know if my bosses think of me as a one-legged puppy who can make it on her own, but I *do* have a review coming up. . . . I’ll let you know! Seriously, the one thing that I think applies to both work and derby is have a plan and keep it simple. If you make things too convoluted, everything goes to hell.

twi-ny: Films such as Kansas City Bomber and Whip It have depicted roller derby to be a vicious, no-holds-barred sport filled with extreme characters and aggressive violence. Is there any truth in any of that?

Ana Bollocks: Well, there’s controlled violence on the track, obviously. Body-checking is legal (and fun!). But you can’t, say, clothesline or punch opposing skaters or anything. Derby blocking is mostly parallel to hockey blocking in terms of what’s legal and illegal. You can hit an opposing skater hard, but you can’t grab her, hit her in the head, etc. But nobody watched Slap Shot for its meticulous depiction of clean hockey play, right? Over-the-top fouling is a superior dramatic device. But it an actual game it’ll just get you sent to the penalty box.

TWI-NY TALK: JENNIFER EGAN

National Book Critics Circle Award winner Jennifer Egan will be celebrating the release of the paperback edition of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD with a series of very different events in New York City in the coming weeks (photo by Pieter M. Van Hattem/Vistalux)

It’s almost impossible to overstate just how accomplished a writer Jennifer Egan is. Born in Chicago, raised in San Francisco, and based in Brooklyn, Egan has penned the short story collection Emerald City (1993) and the novels The Invisible Circus (1995), Look at Me (2001), The Keep (2006), and A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) in addition to numerous articles and cover stories for the New York Times Magazine and other publications. Her fiction writing and journalism have garnered a host of honors, the latest being the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award, which she won March 10 for A Visit from the Goon Squad, out in paperback today (Anchor, $14.95). Goon Squad is a swirling delight of a novel, jumping through time and space from chapter to chapter, each narrated by a different character and built around two engaging protagonists, kleptomaniac Sasha and record producer Bennie Salazar. Organized like an interconnected collection of short stories that can stand on their own, Goon Squad is a literary tour de force, a thrilling symphony that leaves readers breathless with anticipation at the conclusion of each chapter. Just before winning the NBCC Award, Egan talked to twi-ny about obsession, affection, obscurity, and chemistry.

twi-ny: Considering the daring experimental structure of Goon Squad and the tendency for works in progress to periodically threaten to fall completely to pieces, what helped you stay with this project through the years, especially during times when you may have been doubting it?

Jennifer Egan: The primary thing that held me steady as I worked on Goon Squad was an ongoing curiosity about—you might even say obsession with—the characters. They were in my head pretty much all the time. Also, since one of my goals was to make every chapter completely self-sufficient, I had a sort of built-in Plan B: If the whole construction didn’t combust in the way I was hoping it would, at least I’d have a solid story collection to fall back on. That was my hope, and although my goal was definitely higher than that, it was consoling to think that I would end up with some kind of book either way.


twi-ny: The novel is told from multiple POVs, with multiple narrators. Which one did you find most challenging to write from, and which was easiest? Which was your favorite, or did you have one?

Jennifer Egan: The character that came to me most easily was probably Bennie. I’m not sure why that is, but I had a special affection for him, and I also kind of identified with him—though I’m happy to say that we’re not alike! The most difficult character was probably Lou, because he has a lot of bad qualities, and there was a danger of his seeming like a monster, rather than a human. Personally, I feel a lot of sympathy for Lou—I see him as a tragic figure—but not all readers share that view, so it may be that I didn’t completely succeed at humanizing him.

twi-ny: You’re nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in the Fiction category with Jonathan Franzen, David Grossman, Hans Keilson, and Paul Murray, none of whom were finalists for the National Book Award. (You were previously a National Book Award finalist for Look at Me.) How do you feel about book awards in general, and how they relate to your career specifically?

Jennifer Egan: Being a finalist for the National Book Award saved Look at Me from complete obscurity (it came out the week of 9/11, when most fiction disappeared without a trace), so I know how helpful those little medallions can be! I’ve also been a judge of the National Book Awards (2009), and I think that probably cured me of any sense that awards are personal. It’s all chemistry; how a particular group of people’s tastes interact, individually and together, with a gigantic body of work published in one year. Judges are judged themselves on their choices, and I think they generally agonize in their effort to do a responsible job. When I think about last year’s National Book Awards, my first thought is not that I wasn’t a finalist but that they did us all a huge service by honoring someone of enormous talent—Jaimy Gordon [Lord of Misrule]—who was not widely known. I envied them for having pulled that off.

Jennifer Egan will be at BookCourt on Monday, March 28, at 7:00 (free), for a discussion and signing; at Symphony Space on Wednesday, March 30, at 7:30 ($15-$25) for a Thalia Book Club event with Siri Hustvedt and Margot Livesey revisiting Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; at BAM on Thursday, March 31, at 6:30 ($50) for an Eat, Drink & Be Literary dinner moderated by Deborah Treisman; at the April 14 Westchester Libraries Author Luncheon at Abigail Kirsch’s Tappan Hill at 12 noon ($75-$1,250) with David Shenk and Diane Mott Davidson; and at the New York Public Library also on April 14 at 7:00 ($25) for the Live from the NYPL program “Jennifer Egan in Conversation with Laura Miller.”

TWI-NY TALK: RICHARD THOMPSON

Richard Thompson will reach into his bottomless bowl of tricks tonight at Zankel Hall (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

WFUV LIVE AT ZANKEL HALL
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall
Fifty-seventh St. at Seventh Ave.
Saturday, March 19, $42-$48, 10:00
Series concludes April 8
www.carnegiehall.org
www.wfuv.org/event/zankel
www.richardthompson-music.com

Over the last decade, masterful British musician Richard Thompson has played all over New York City, from the cozy confines of Joe’s Pub and City Winery to the pouring rain of Prospect Park, from the Town Hall and Irving Plaza to the shores of the Hudson and East Rivers. Tonight, one of folk rock’s greatest singer-songwriters and guitarists heads uptown to play a solo set as part of the annual WFUV Live at Zankel Hall series. “I’ve never been to Carnegie Hall, and certainly not played it, but it does have an international reputation, and I’m thinking some of that cachet should rub off on the lesser Zankel,” Thompson told twi-ny. “It seems an exciting prospect, and I really look forward to it.” The series, curated by longtime radio host and WFUV music director Rita Houston, began with the Indigo Girls on October 23, followed by Martin Sexton’s Solo Holiday Show on December 11; it concludes April 8 with Edie Brickell and her new band, the Gaddabouts. Thompson, a founding member of Fairport Convention and half of the seminal Richard & Linda Thompson duo, is touring behind his latest album, Dream Attic (August 2010, Shout Factory), primarily playing in the Richard Thompson Electric Trio, with bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Michael Jerome. But he’ll be going it alone tonight. “I’ve played very little solo in the last six months, so I don’t have a ‘plan’ at this point, but I hope the set will be a reflection of the last forty-five years — selections from the decades, and a few newer things,” he explained. Thompson has quite an old kit bag of songs to choose from; he’s released more than fifty albums, including 1000 Years of Popular Music, which takes listeners on a stirring journey through the centuries, not just the decades. The first two hundred ticket holders to show up tonight will get a free drink as part of Late Nights at Zankel Hall, with doors opening at 9:00.

TWI-NY TALK: YVONNE RAINER

Yvonne Rainer’s ASSISTED LIVING will get its New York premiere March 16-19 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center

Baryshnikov Arts Center
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
March 16-19, $25, 8:00
212-366-5700
www.performa-arts.org

Legendary choreographer and experimental filmmaker Yvonne Rainer looks back while moving ahead at the Baryshnikov Arts Center next week, reprising 2009’s Spiraling Down and presenting the New York premiere of Assisted Living: Good Sports 2. Drawing on principles developed in her seminal work, Trio A, and other pieces from the 1960s, Rainer’s most recent dances incorporate sports, primarily soccer, as well as old and new pop-culture references. For Assisted Living, Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, Emmanuelle Phuon, Keith Sabado, and Sally Silvers were each given photos from the New York Times sports section to inspire their movement; lighting designer Les Dickert, set designer Joel Reynolds, and Rainer herself also appear onstage, involved in set changes and various cues. The work is sponsored by Performa; since 2007, Rainer has been working with the nonprofit arts organization, which “is dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century.” Rainer, who will turn seventy-seven in November, has been choreographing dances for more than fifty years, having trained with such giants as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Anna Halprin, in addition to making such influential films as The Man Who Envied Women and Privilege, earning the right to choreograph the questions in our latest, albeit brief, twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: Both works you are presenting at BAC deal with sports and sports photography, among other things. Are you a big sports fan, and what was it from those images that inspired you?

Yvonne Rainer: I am a tennis fan, but do not play myself. As a kid I loved street games, and in high school played softball. But as a choreographer it is not competitive sports that interest me so much as all the incidental movements that do not contribute directly to the rules and organization of play. For example, the languid movements of soccer players when they are waiting to be engaged and the stillness of photos that record the interactions of individual bodies.

twi-ny: How is it different performing at Judson Church back in the 1960s versus performing today in New York City?

Yvonne Rainer: At Judson Church we were a community with shared interests and enthusiasms and objectives. Today in NYC the choreographer is on her own, an autonomous molecule struggling to find a place.

twi-ny: What has it been like collaborating with Performa over the years?

Yvonne Rainer: Performa has been my life saver, a buffer in the cultural maelstrom. Their support has been essential to the continuity of my work.

TWI-NY TALK: JANET BIGGS

BRIGHTNESS ALL AROUND is one of three stunning videos by Janet Biggs set in the Arctic (photo courtesy Janet Biggs)

JANET BIGGS: THE ARCTIC TRILOGY
Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through March 12
212-643-3152
www.winkleman.com
www.jbiggs.com

New York–based video artist Janet Biggs has traveled around the world capturing remarkable images she pairs with eclectic music, melding physical, often ritualistic movement with investigations into gender identity and the natural environment. Vanishing Point features motorcycle speed-record holder Leslie Porterfield on the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah and the Harlem Addicts Rehabilitation Center Gospel Choir, Enemy of the Good explores Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, with concert pianist José Luis Hernández-Estrada, and Duet combines a NASCAR pit crew in Charlotte and an aria from the Léo Delibes opera Lakmé. For her current solo show, continuing at Chelsea’s Winkleman Gallery through Saturday, the former equestrian, who has an undergraduate degree in painting and sculpture and a master’s in glassblowing, has installed “The Arctic Trilogy,” three gorgeous short films that were shot in the vast, isolated Svalbard archipelago: Fade to White cuts between a kayaker and a mournful, operatic song by performance artist John Kelly, Brightness All Around follows the exploits of woman coal miner Linda Norberg along with an original, propulsive dance-floor incantation by Bill Coleman about actual near-death experiences, and In the Cold Edge traces the path of a spelunker emerging from an ice cave. After writing a grant for her next secretive project, Biggs generously answered a series of questions about her creative process for twi-ny.

twi-ny: At Winkleman, Brightness All Around and Fade to White are shown in succession, one after the other, at opposite sides of the main space, creating a sharp contrast between them and a fascinating dialogue that involves performers Bill Coleman and John Kelly as well as a male kayaker and a female engineer. How did that installation choice come about?

Janet Biggs: Brightness All Around and Fade to White are polar opposites in their representations of the Arctic landscape, gender, race, awe and terror, loss and change. I wanted the audience to experience the two videos as counterpoints in their extremes. My decision to project them back-to-back on opposite walls allowed me to place the audience in one immersive, physical space while still emphasizing contrasts. The audience had to physically turn around to view the successive videos, creating both a physical and psychological shift.

In each of these two pieces, I alternate footage of individuals struggling in extreme environments to define their identity with shots of singers performing the music that is heard in the soundtrack. By incorporating performance artist John Kelly and music guru Bill Coleman as both visual and audio elements into my videos, I explore the way these performers’ physical intensity can be interwoven into a narrative to create new meaning.

In Brightness All Around, singer/dancer Bill Coleman, dressed in black leather against a black backdrop, presents a fetishized, macho image as he delivers a demonic chant of near-death experiences. In Fade to White, I integrated the Arctic imagery with countertenor John Kelly, clad in all white, whose age, androgyny, and mournful voice parallel the vanishing Arctic landscape and signal the erasure of male dominance.

I intend to invert the traditional gendered dynamics of heroic exploration by portraying a male explorer as a passive, vulnerable figure, in the white-on-white landscape, while a female Arctic miner aggressively drills, violates, and transforms the black depths of the earth below. The musical performances in the two pieces as well as the juxtaposition of a pristine landscape and the dark, gritty mine interior complicate the power dynamics.

By presenting the two videos back to back I hope to expand the narrative, prompting questions about power hierarchies, social structures, and individual relationships to desire within existential themes.

twi-ny: In many of your videos, including the three in the current exhibition as well as Vanishing Point, Sollipsism Syndrome, and Enemy of the Good, you seem drawn to big, wide-open spaces, usually very bright, with solitary figures primarily in natural environments. Would you consider that a motif of your work, or is it just a coincidence? Like Werner Herzog, would you consider yourself an adventurer as well as a filmmaker?

JB: I tend to revisit elemental and extreme landscapes, from the icy fjord in Glacier Approach, to the broiling hot salt flats of Bonneville in Vanishing Point, to my most recent videos that were filmed in the High Arctic. I am interested in using the landscape as a surrogate character or equal subject to the individuals who struggle to maintain a sense of self within it.

Janet Biggs makes her first on-screen appearance in IN THE COLD EDGE (photo courtesy Janet Biggs)

I am drawn to the ends of the earth. Locations that represent empty lands and blank spaces are ripe for interpretation. Even though these once unknown places have been mapped and surveyed, increased knowledge has not replaced my endless fantasies of discovery in these regions. I am interested in individuals who dedicate themselves to a search for perfection often through athletic pursuits. In their willingness to take risks and endure isolation, they strive to attain an extreme state of being. By filming solitary figures within vast natural environments I am able to focus on both their vulnerable fragility as well as their manifest strength.

I use grand stories and heroic efforts as my point of departure, then slide sideways into small gestures or esoteric tasks as seen from deeply personal perspectives. I am interested in how repetitive or ritualized movements, the incidental, small movements, are as wondrous as the stupefying wild and beautiful landscapes where many of these actions occur.

twi-ny: Seeing humans deep underground in a cave or a mine, the viewer is always aware of your presence as cinematographer, and you get to experience much of what your subjects are experiencing, but in In the Cold Edge, you make a critical appearance at the end. What made you decide to come out from behind the camera at that point?

JB: I’ve hung off the back of trucks in specially made chairs that ride inches above the ground at more than one hundred miles per hour. I’ve paddled kayaks in Arctic weather where water temperatures are so cold you would die of hypothermia in fifteen minutes if you capsized. I have paddled under huge glacial walls, hoping that they wouldn’t calve, and in waters with polar bears swimming nearby. I have squeezed through glacial ice caves so tight that I couldn’t get my head up to see with my headlamp, and I have descended into Arctic coal mines where methane fires ignite with terrifying regularity.

There is clearly a performative side to my work that has to do with me physically and psychologically pushing myself or assuming some kind of risk in order to capture the images and action needed for a piece. I didn’t realize I was such a thrill seeker until I set out to make this kind of work. This part of my process is compelling enough that I often find myself looking for new challenges, although my exploration of the addictive nature of risky behavior is primarily as a witness to someone else’s action and off-camera.

By taking risks and challenging myself in the production of my work, I strive to understand my subjects’ choices and motivations, and also experience some of the thrills that are part of what they do. I hope that this process will translate to the viewer, allowing them a vicarious experience that will become an element in the final reception of the work.

I made my first on-camera appearance at the end of In the Cold Edge. I am seen shooting a flare into an archetypal image of the frozen north. This personal appearance was necessitated by practical considerations (I was the only one of my crew who was certified to shoot a firearm) but also by a personal need to represent my relationship to this haunting location. On my first trip to the Arctic, the landscape kept me in a state of romantic awe. By the second trip, my relationship to the region had changed to include a degree of terror as well as awe. I had a profound sense of displacement in a region that neither needed nor desired human presence. The act of shooting a flare was both an aggressive assertion of self and also a cry for help in a landscape where assumptions about self and reality are radically altered.

TWI-NY TALK: EIKO & KOMA

Eiko & Koma will be in New York City this month presenting three very different projects

Tuesday, March 8, Art Work: An Evening with Eiko Otake, the New School, Wollman Hall, 65 West 11th St., free, 6:00
Tuesday, March 15, and Wednesday, March 16, Delicious Movement Workshop, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th St., $65 with preregistration, 7:00
March 29 – April 9, Baryshnikov Arts Center, free with advance RSVP, Tuesday – Friday 6:00 – 10:00 pm, Saturday 3:00 – 9:00 pm
www.eikoandkoma.org

Shortly after meeting as students in Japan in 1971 at the Tatsumi Hijikata dance studio, Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake formed a partnership that is now in its fifth decade. Based in New York City since 1976, Eiko & Koma have presented experimental modern dance and installation indoors and outdoors all over the world, including such highly praised works as White Dance (1976), Grain (1983), Memory (1989), River (1995), The Caravan Project (1999), and Hunger (2008). Having studied with such innovative choreographers as Kazuo Ohno, Lucas Hoving, and Anna Halprin, their own pieces, for which they generally design all elements, including sets, sound scores, and costumes, have earned them NEA, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, two Bessies, and other prestigious awards.

On March 8, Eiko & Koma will give a free illustrated lecture at the New School on their Retrospective Project (2009-12), in which they are looking back over the course of their storied career. On March 15-16, they’ll be holding two Delicious Movement Workshops at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, inviting participants to “move/dance to actively forget the clutter of our lives so to fully ‘taste’ body and mind.” And from March 29 through April 9 they will present the two-week performance piece Naked at BAC, a movement/visual art installation that explores time, desire, and nakedness that was created during a three-month residency at the Park Avenue Armory and first presented at the Walker Art Center last year. Part of Carnegie Hall’s JapanNYC Festival, Naked is free with advance tickets that allow the audience to come and go as they please during specific time periods, watching Eiko & Koma in an organic environment that will be accompanied by a video retrospective. As they prepare for their New York blitz, Eiko discussed the audience-performer dynamic, nakedness, and more in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: You will be giving an Art Work talk at the New School on March 8, focusing on the Retrospective Project. What has the experience been like looking back at your long career while you’re still creating fascinating works for the future?

Eiko: We can remember what we were thinking of, about and how. We are sometimes surprised to find so much of what we do now has started long ago. We did not become wiser or better with age. That is a sort of myth. Instead we see more continuity in what we have done and what we are doing now.

twi-ny: That will be followed March 15-16 with your Delicious Movement Workshop at BAC, targeted not at professional dancers but everyone and anyone. What would you tell someone who knows very little, if anything, about dance about the program? Essentially, why should a dance novice not be scared of taking part in the workshop?

Eiko: Of course they should not be scared, because we have developed a way to make the workshop very inclusive and tasty. It is not so much about dance. it is more about moving in a way that is not too difficult and find a pleasure in it.

Eiko & Koma will perform NAKED at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (photo by Anna Lee Campbell)

twi-ny: Your living installation, Naked, will be presented March 29 – April 9 at BAC, where audiences will come and go as they please. You previously performed the piece at the Walker Art Center. How did the unusual staging affect the performer-audience dynamic?

Eiko: We were very close to people, which created the sense of intimacy. There was no beginning or end but purely entries and exits of people, which audience decided themselves. So there was more of an individual act of seeing and feeling on their own accord.

twi-ny: How did the audience react to the piece, which was not staged like a regular dance performance?

Eiko: Unlike a theater event, people in the museum did not know who we are or what we do. So there was a lot of surprise in seeing human naked bodies moving in a gallery. Some people, of course, did not get into it but surprisingly many people stayed longer than we or they expected. Many people also came back to see it again or bring friends. Some people cried. Some people said it was hard for them to leave us since we did not end anything but we just went on.

twi-ny: What was it like performing to an ever-changing, moving audience, with you and Koma on view as maybe more of a spectacle?

Eiko: I did not feel it was a spectacle. We really enjoyed performing for just a few people since we feel their emotions. It was a special experience for both sides. But when there was no one in the room, it was hard to continue with the same intensity. At the same time we could not stop or rest since at any time people might come in.

twi-ny: You’ve appeared naked in previous productions, but this one you even title Naked. What is it that draws you to the nakedness you reveal in your work?

Eiko: Nakedness is a bottom line . . . nothing to lose, nothing to protect us, where we become both more human and more like any other creatures.

TWI-NY TALK: KENNY WHITE

Kenny White will be playing a Saturday-night residency at the Café Carlyle

Café Carlyle
35 East 76th St. at Madison Ave.
Saturdays, February 19 – March 12, general seating $40, bar $30, 10:45
212-744-1600
www.myspace.com/kennywhitemusic
www.thecarlyle.com

In the liner notes to his fourth full-length solo album, 2010’s COMFORT IN THE STATIC, Kenny White explains, “There are days when you play the lead character in your life, but as an observer.” Although he was referring specifically to “Out of My Element,” the first song written but last recorded for the disc, he could have been talking about his professional career. He started writing songs when he was eight and has spent much of his life as a writer and producer of pop tunes and commercials for other artists, ranging from Gladys Knight, Linda Ronstadt, and Dwight Yoakam to Shawn Colvin, Marc Cohn, and Peter Wolf. He released his first solo album, UNINVITED GUEST, in 2001, and followed that up with 2005’s SYMPHONY IN 16 BARS and 2006’s NEVER LIKE THIS. On February 19, he’ll begin a four-week Saturday-night residency at the Café Carlyle, where he’ll play his ironic, cynical, highly engaging songs at a venue where performers such as Barbara Cook, Barbara Carroll, the late Bobby Short, and Woody Allen & the Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band usually rely on familiar standards. But White will be in good company on those nights, following Judy Collins, who will be at the Carlyle February 15 – March 12, playing Tuesdays through Saturdays with musical director Russell Walden; Collins is the founder of Wildfllower Records, White’s label since 2005. White discussed Collins, the Carlyle, playing out of his element, and Palookaville in our latest twi-ny talk.

twi-ny: Last summer you played one of Levon Helm’s Midnight Rambles. What was that experience like?

Kenny White: Any time you can get to share a stage with one of the architects of rock & roll, it’s a memorable occasion. The event itself shows that the magnetic pull of intimate, organic soul music is still plenty powerful, despite obituaries to the contrary. And to be a part of that experience . . . that’s just icing on the cake. Right down to singing the first verse of “The Weight” directly in front of the man who gave the song its heart. Then the added bonus of having Donald Fagen on the other side of the stage. A deeply fulfilling evening for me and my band.

twi-ny: The Café Carlyle on the Upper East Side is very different from the Midnight Ramble in Woodstock. How do you think your unique brand of ironic, cynical songwriting, particularly on COMFORT IN THE STATIC, will go over in a venue used to more traditional cabaret and jazz?

Kenny White will be featuring songs from his latest album, 2010's COMFORT IN THE STATIC, at the Carlyle

Kenny White: I guess we’re going to find out! My songs, even though not widely known, seem to resonate with folks who are looking for lyrics to which they can relate. People who have been around the block once or twice can be satisfied with “unrequited love” or “poor me” songs for just so long. The Café Carlyle has long been a watering hole for the worldly and discerning. And I believe what they’re looking for does not need to be defined by musical genre. If it’s good, they’ll like it. If it’s not . . . Palookaville!

twi-ny: Since 2005, you’ve been part of the Judy Collins Wildflower family, which also includes such artists as Amy Speace, Wes Charlton, and Ralston Bowles. What has that meant to your career?

Kenny White: It means a support system for what could otherwise be a very isolated line of work. Wildflower Records was established by an artist, which, right away, gives it a head start. All the above artists are in touch with each other and are always mutually encouraging and inspiring. And Judy, along with [label president] Katherine DePaul, has an innate understanding of the temperament of the artist. Especially one that started out a couple of minutes past what might be considered the “video friendly” hour.