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Nellie McKay

Since her audacious double��"album debut Get Away From Me, Nellie McKay has been a creative dynamo, releasing Pretty Little Head and Obligatory Villagers, making her Broadway debut (as Polly Peachum in The Threepenny Opera), performing onscreen (in PS I Love You) and currently writing music and lyrics for the premiere production of Election: The Musical.

Since her emergence on the scene, McKay has been known as an outspoken and fierce advocate for animal rights, feminism, civil rights and other deeply felt progressive ideals. But at first glance the choice of material on Normal as Blueberry Pie is devoid of pointed statements. However, as McKay notes, “There are so many ways to be an advocate.” And while the messages are subtle, they’re certainly present. “The people most in need of Doris Day are the cynics,” McKay observes. “She’s such a breath of fresh air.”

McKay also scoffs at the notion that offering an album of faithfully rendered selections from the Great American Songbook means that she’s lost her edge. There’s nothing wrong with beauty, she asserts.

“I’d love it to be a kind of lullaby,” she says. “I don’t mind if people fall asleep to this record because it’s very hard to fall asleep sometimes. We’re so over��"stimulated. You don’t want to have to work yourself to exhaustion. You don’t want to have to take some pharmaceutical. Why not listen to some music and relax?”

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Extended Analysis

Nellie McKay: Home Sweet Mobile Home

Read "Nellie McKay: Home Sweet Mobile Home" reviewed by Matt Marshall


Nellie McKayHome Sweet Mobile HomeVerve2010 Singer and multi-instrumentalist Nellie McKay seems to need a break. Not from music-making, mind you, but from the toils of existing within a bump and drive world that has little time for reflection or respite, and none, seemingly, to worry about repeating yesterday's mistakes. With any luck, McKay, that spunky champion of the underdog, was far away, basking in island breezes when the recent US election ...

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Album Review

Nellie McKay: Normal As Blueberry Pie - A Tribute To Doris Day

Read "Normal As Blueberry Pie - A Tribute To Doris Day" reviewed by Andrew Velez


Listening to Normal As Blueberry Pie, one might say Nellie McKay is not a traditional jazz singer, whatever that is. In the case of this “Tribute to Doris Day," she's just good and also a lot of fun. Musically, McKay's voice can be feathery at times and, like Day, she has perfect pitch and an optimistic delivery that sounds effortless. All but one of the songs are drawn from the hundreds that Day recorded, from her big band days to ...

535
Extended Analysis

Nellie McKay: Normal As Blueberry Pie

Read "Nellie McKay: Normal As Blueberry Pie" reviewed by Matt Marshall


Nellie McKay Normal As Blueberry Pie Verve 2009

Singer, musician, composer Nellie McKay has often--perhaps too conveniently--been compared to legendary big band singer and movie star Doris Day, to whom she pays tribute with this album. And certainly, McKay has played off Day's cotton-candy image all along, from the perky sunshine pose in front of urban blight on the cover of her debut album, Get Away From Me (Sony, 2004), to the large orchestrations ...

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Recording

Forgotten Series: Nellie McKay - Get Away from Me (2004)

Forgotten Series: Nellie McKay - Get Away from Me (2004)

Source: Something Else!

By Tom Johnson This spunky singer, 19 years old at the time, was a lot smarter and had a much more mature ear than her age indicated. Incorporating everything from saccharine Bacharachian melodies to husky jazz to edgy hip-hop, it might have seemed that Get Away From Me was all over the map sonically. But Nellie McKay's smooth, seasoned vocals and wry, subtle sense of humor bonded it all together. She was having a lark on all the overly serious, ...

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Performance / Tour

Nellie McKay at Feinstein's

Nellie McKay at Feinstein's

Source: Miller Wright & Associates

FEINSTEIN'S AT LOEWS REGENCY, the nightclub proclaimed “Best of New York" by New York Magazine and “an invaluable New York institution" by The New York Post, continues its star-studded Winter 2011 season with “I Want To Live!"—an evening with NELLIE McKAY, a woman with dubious moral standards, often a guest in seedy bars... The return engagement of the critically acclaimed singer, songwriter and actress, featuring songs from her latest CD Home Sweet Mobile Home, will run from March 22 to ...

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Performance / Tour

Nellie McKay Returns to Feinstein's

Nellie McKay Returns to Feinstein's

Source: Miller Wright & Associates

FEINSTEIN'S AT LOEWS REGENCY, the nightclub proclaimed “Best of New York" by New York Magazine and “an invaluable New York institution" by The New York Post, continues its star-studded Winter 2011 season with “I Want To Live!"—an evening with NELLIE McKAY, a woman with dubious moral standards, often a guest in seedy bars... The return engagement of the critically acclaimed singer, songwriter and actress, featuring songs from her latest CD Home Sweet Mobile Home, will run from March 22 to ...

229

Festival

Jazz This Week: Christian McBride and Inside Straight, Nellie McKay, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Rockpile Poetry and Music Festival, and More

Jazz This Week: Christian McBride and Inside Straight, Nellie McKay, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Rockpile Poetry and Music Festival, and More

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

We've got an interesting variety of jazz and creative music events in St. Louis over the next few days, starting with the eclectic singer, songwriter, pianist and multi-instrumentalist Nellie McKay, who's in town tonight and Thursday to perform at Kranzberg Arts Center for the Cabaret St. Louis series.Also tonight, bassist Christian McBride (pictured) and his new acoustic jazz group Inside Straight will begin a four-night engagement just around the corner at Jazz at the Bistro. For more on ...

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Performance / Tour

Nellie McKay Texas

Nellie McKay Texas

Source: JamBase

Nellie McKay :: 08.07.08 :: Stubb's BBQ :: Austin, TX

Nellie McKay :: 08.07 :: Austin, TX The brazen Nellie McKay that released Get Away From Me in 2004 doesn't seem to be going through a mid-twenties mellow-out phase. Her amusing stage banter about being undecided in who to vote for, the Austin bats and her half-joking relief that no one was eating BBQ in front of her (she's veggie), shows she's still packing politics dosed with wry humor ...

107

Recording

Nellie McKay Texas

Nellie McKay Texas

Source: JamBase

Nellie McKay :: 08.07.08 :: Stubb's BBQ :: Austin, TX

Nellie McKay :: 08.07 :: Austin, TX The brazen Nellie McKay that released Get Away From Me in 2004 doesn't seem to be going through a mid-twenties mellow-out phase. Her amusing stage banter about being undecided in who to vote for, the Austin bats and her half-joking relief that no one was eating BBQ in front of her (she's veggie), shows she's still packing politics dosed with wry humor ...

"Doris Day is an emblem of sunshine, communion with nature and animals, and common civility… In a time when cynicism rules, her eager humanity is ever more precious…" ��" Nellie McKay, The New York Times Book Review

"Ms. McKay, whose voice is blithe and supple, is a Doris Day fan, but a knowing one, well aware of the distance from Ms. Day’s era to ours. There’s yearning, wryness, and ingenuity in her arrangements." ��" Jon Pareles, The New York Times

"Thanks to (McKay), the Great American Songbook has a living, breathing present as well as a glorious past." ��" Joan Anderman, The Boston Globe

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