“Orange is the New Black” actress Lea DeLaria (pictured) has a jazzy side career; The Grateful Dead play three final shows in Chicago this weekend to overwhelming demand; a classical music composer takes inspiration from California’s drought; Amy Winehouse’s record producer on the new documentary about the late singer.
'Orange is the New Black' actress Lea DeLaria's other career: Jazz singer
Lea DeLaria is best known as one of the stars of “Orange is the New Black,” playing the larger-than-life lesbian prison inmate "Big Boo."
Big Boo Orange is the New Black
DeLaria is a veteran of Broadway musicals and stand-up comedy, but what you might not know is that DeLaria is also a jazz singer.
DeLaria's new jazz David Bowie cover album, "House of David," is set for release July 24 and is already available digitally. It's her fifth album. Jazz singing is something DeLaria says has been with her since childhood. She cultivated a career in jazz by marrying it with activism and stand-up comedy while performing.
In 1982, DeLaria was initially attracted to stand-up because she saw it as a mechanism for getting her opinions heard. While an active part of the cultural and political movement advocating for queer rights in the '80s, DeLaria was not impressed by many of the more "standard" means of artistry in activism. She started utilizing her talent for stand-up as a means of advocating for equality.
"That cultural movement was mostly, I have to say, lesbians with acoustic guitars," recalls DeLaria. "I wanted to punch myself in the face anytime I heard them. I heard these things and thought, This is the end of the world. I want to do something different." She noticed a cultural movement in stand-up comedy and decided to make an impact with it.
DeLaria not only joined the movement in a unique way as a comic — she was loud about it.
"Now the thing about my stand-up comedy at the time when I started — I literally did not perform as Lea DeLaria. I performed as the Dyke," says DeLaria. "I was so rageful, but I was also funny. So this crazy wild rage would be coming at people and after about five minutes they'd be like, Mommy make it stop!"
When DeLaria was pondering ways to perfect her rage-fueled performance, she turned towards other talents she developed growing up.
"I figured out I could sing. I knew I could sing. I'd been doing it as a child with my father for years. So I would bring a little trio on stage with me and I'd be raging at them and then I would kind of sing a standard. I'd just sing a standard and it would lull the audience into sort of a false sense of security. Then I would start screaming 'dyke' at them again."
DeLaria's interest in singing was something that she says was encouraged by her father, who himself was a jazz pianist. At the age of 5, DeLaria would sing for her father, who proceeded to teach her about jazz music. By 8, DeLaria had learned more of the intricacies of of jazz and began performing at nightclubs with her father.
"Let's face it, I was like the bearded lady. It was a circus act thing," DeLaria says. "It was a way for the cats to get a break and go off the bandstand. Then I would sing a duet with [my dad]. Eventually the trio would join sometimes. It worked so well — people loved it— that he kept doing it with me."
After performing and training, DeLaria discovered that singing was her passion and that she wanted to pursue it as a career. After telling her father, DeLaria says he had guidelines for how DeLaria should pursue jazz.
"He said, Look, that is OK with me, but you can't be just be a pretty girl with a pleasant voice. You need to understand music and learn the language of jazz. He really taught me to sing from my balls. He encouraged me to really sing like a horn player. Like any good horn player, I know when to be soft and I know when to be loud. It's like making love to a woman — sometimes you want a nice light touch and sometimes you got to bang."
David Bowie, like singing, was something DeLaria discovered in her youth. DeLaria pins the origins of her love for Bowie on the moment she first heard the guitar riff on "Fame." Admiring Bowie for not just his music, DeLaria says that, when she was growing up, Bowie was hugely responsible for inspiring her to be herself.
"One thing that I learned from him I think more than any other performer is his insistence to be exactly who he is," says DeLaria. "That is fascinating to me. As a little girl, I have to say as a little bull dyke, growing up in the Midwest thinking that I was the only one — didn't know that there were other gay people even out there — having this man be who he was was a terrific lesson for me."
After a long period of cultivating skills in various performance fields, DeLaria still feels as though all her talents make up a part of her true self.
"It's really hard for me to determine where my true self lies in all the things that I can do," says DeLaria. "I can do a lot of things. It's that simple. I'm really happy when I'm filming 'Orange is the New Black.' I love being down stage center at a Broadway show and belting out a D sharp and hearing that audience applaud. When I'm in a little smokey jazz club at 1 o'clock in the morning, and I am blowing over changes with the cats, and we are digging it, and we are creating this art all together at the same time, I love that too."
After a long history of being engaged in the movement for queer rights DeLaria's work and the working of many others is producing results. The social atmosphere due to the United States Supreme Court's decision on marriage equality has provided DeLaria with a sense of accomplishment.
"I personally feel that I've worked very hard for this, and I have a lot of friends who have worked very hard for this, and the community itself has been out there banging on doors doing everything that we can [to] affect this change. We are standing on the shoulders of giants who came before us — that were banging on the door saying let us in, let us in."
DeLaria's jazz cover album "House of David" will be released July 24 and is currently available digitally.
Deadheads old and new prepare for frenzied final Grateful Dead shows in Chicago
When The Grateful Dead announced that they would be playing a handful of shows that would be both a celebration of the band's 50 years and also their final shows, people lost their minds.
The Wall Street Journal reports that over 500,000 people tried to purchase tickets for the three shows at Chicago's Soldier Field, which has a capacity just over 60,000. All of that excitement and interest resulted in very, very expensive tickets (look upon this Stubhub page and despair).
The band later announced two shows in Santa Clara, California, which took place this past weekend, and while observers were skeptical of the band's ability to put on a good show, reviews from Billboard and the LA Times were mostly positive.
The largest source of controversy surrounding these shows? A rainbow that appeared at the conclusion of the band's first concert, which was maybe real or maybe fake.
Coming up on the band's last shows, we talked with Greg Kot, the Pop Music Critic at the Chicago Tribune and the co-host of the show Sound Opinions at WBEZ in Chicago. He's also seen around 20 Grateful Dead shows.
When he joined us on The Frame, he talked about the corporate entity the band has become, the importance of Soldier Field in the band's history, and the issues he has with the band touring under the name 'The Grateful Dead' without Jerry Garcia.
Interview Highlights:
Tell us a little bit about the scene right now in Chicago. What kind of anticipation is building for these three shows?
As soon as they announced that tickets were on-sale, there was an overwhelming amount of ticket requests. I know the California shows didn't sell hugely well and tickets were available for cut-rate prices, but that's not the case in Chicago. I hear from Dead Heads and jilted fans almost every day about how the ticket sale was screwed up, asking things like, "Is there a way to get tickets? I'll pay anything for tickets." You're seeing these ridiculous prices being paid, so there's an incredible amount of anticipation for the shows.
Why is Soldier Field so important in The Dead's history?
The band played there numerous times, and I saw a bunch of shows there, including their last two at Soldier Field in July of 1995, almost 20 years to the date. Those were Jerry Garcia's last shows, and I think he was dead less than a month later. I reviewed those shows and I was not particularly kind — I'd seen the band a bunch of times, and I thought they had two off nights. Jerry in particular was off his game, he was blowing lines and he seemed distracted and rather out of it. I hate to say that I was presaging something, but in many ways you could see the end coming, and it was right there on stage.
That's so sad. Obviously, this is a band playing without Jerry Garcia. I don't know if you've been able to see the songs they've played without him, but what's the composition of the band? How can you actually replace someone as iconic and talented as Jerry Garcia?
I think it's folly to even think you could replace him. I'm extremely skeptical about the band calling themselves The Grateful Dead, which they're actually doing for the first time since Garcia's death. It's important to note that the four core members, as they're calling themselves or as the promoters are referring to them — Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh — have done other reunion shows in various guises over the years.
God bless 'em, they're still here, but the notion that this is somehow going to evoke the old days...I suppose it could, but Garcia's style was unique and I'm very skeptical about any attempt to recapture old glories under the guise of a brand name, which is essentially what's going on here.
So what's actually driving this reunion? Is it sadly all about money?
I think you nailed it. This is a sad money-grab, and I think the fans of The Dead who have been longtime fans, the ones who were mailing in envelopes for the shows at The Auditorium back in the day in Chicago, those are the ones who see through it and see that this is not the same thing any more.
It's become a corporate band, and Bill Kreutzmann, to his credit, said pretty much the same thing in his book, "Deal," his memoir that came out earlier this year. He said this apparently before he agreed to this reunion, but basically he says that the band has not been the same since Jerry, it couldn't be the same, and they were turning into a corporate entity even before Jerry Garcia died. In many ways, this is just a continuation of that legacy.
Now, if you can't get into the shows, you're able to watch the shows via other means, correct?
Yeah, there are all sorts of ways to access the shows, but virtually every one of them requires some sort of payment. They're simulcasting the shows in theaters, you can get them on the web, there's a radio component to this — virtually any way you'd want to experience the show without having a ticket, you'll have access to, but for a price, of course. In a way, that's the way it should be, but it's too bad there has to be a price attached to everything these days, including being able to see the show even if you're not there.
Even if you saw Jerry Garcia in one of his lesser performances, is there a song that is special to you from the band in its heyday that you cherish?
Too many to mention. I cherish the songs and I also cherish the lyrics, particularly those by Robert Hunter, who was Garcia's great collaborator. I would have to say that Garcia's ability to create a philosophy around the band could be said in countless songs, but I go back to a song like "Dark Star," which encapsulates everything that The Dead were about.
There are multiple versions of that song out there, there is no one definitive "Dark Star," and that's the beauty of it — it changed every time the band performed the song. To me, that's the one song that summarizes what The Dead is about. And it's an off-putting song to some people, because it is long and it's kind of a journey, but in a way it says everything about the band and what it stood for.