"One Meatball" that's hot, spicy, cute and hilarious: Christine Lavin warms a winter's night!
 by Cliff Garber  ·  9 March 2007

Well, here I am three weeks (LATE!) after the show getting in this blog. It seems that chopping and shoveling SIX INCH THICK ice from our triple-car driveway and long city sidewalks around our property are enough to knock the wind out of anyone. Now that I am finally able to stand erect rather than the ape-like bend I’ve been in, here’s a wonderful little tale about my experience seeing Christine Lavin perform on February 16th at our very own coffeehouse. Apologies to Kathy, Cliff and everyone who reads this blog for my taking so long to compose it.

How does anyone take the breadth of a jam-packed evening’s performance like that of such a talented “whirling dervish” as Christine and condense it into an acceptable length for the ME AND THEE blog (not that anything I’ve ever written for it has been short)? There was no opening act that night, just Christine. As Phil introduced her, she came onto the stage with her usual adorable “pixie-dixie” presence turning in circles with her guitar and “props”, the usual humorous comments to open her show as she checked about where to place everything, and finally settled in.

She was simply and stylishly dressed, her short gray hair neatly placed in a pixie-like “do”, which were polished off with her delightful smile. Christine opened the show with “Alone Again, Naturally”, dedicating this as an ANTI-happy Happy Valentine’s Day song to herself and everyone else who spent that day alone without the company of a “significant other”. The audience did a sing-along during the chorus per her request. It was refreshing to hear her break away from her usual comic tunes and sing something more in the straight vein, which showed off her sweet, beautiful voice.

Christine next asked the audience who’s been to Hawaii, saying she found her own experiences there just wonderful and the islands breathtakingly beautiful. Then she broke into a song called “Wind Chimes”, actually hooking wind chimes onto her guitar one at a time as the song progressed, rocking it back and forth to keep them “tinkling” during the song. The lyrics started off sweetly enough and then gave way to her tale of woe about how their incessant “tinkling” from outside drifted into her room and drove her crazy.

“What Was I Thinking” is a fan favorite in which Christine sings of a willingness to try anything for the love of a man, realizing that’s the ONLY reason she’s doing these things, and then suddenly she snaps back to the reality of the fear of having attempted things such as skiing, etc. Thus the hilarious little refrain, “What was I thinking?” There’s also the stanza referring to Vice President Dick Cheney’s accidental shooting incident and Christine singing, “What was HE thinking?”. As Christine contorted her face into different expressions of fear, idiocy, and delight, the audience howled with laughter through the whole song.

Before the break, she ended the set with “Sometimes Mother Really Does Know Best”, fitting in the names of a mother and daughter who are in the audience as the characters in the song. It seems daughter wants to pierce her eyebrow or nose (For the moment, I forget!), and then it’s a tattoo, to both of which mother says “NO!” Then daughter brings up mother’s wanting a face-left, and compares those wishes with her own body-altering desires. It makes mother think about her answer to her daughter. It was there Christine paused with her song and offered the ME AND THEE audience a choice of two endings to this song, the “happy” ending and the one that goes to the “dark side”. Of course, this audience, like most of the audiences I’ve been in, picked “the dark side” in which both mother and daughter get their surgeries, and after suffering from long post-surgical complications, they die horrible deaths . I’ll spare the gory details for now. Christine is indeed the “Mistress of the Comic Macabre” in this song, and the audience ate it up like it was a hot fudge sundae!

After the break, Christine came onto the stage with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes and was ready to break into word and song. She always seems “fresh-as-a-daisy” and never seems to tire, not even at the end of an evening’s performance. Several audience involvements filled the second half of the show with gut-wrenching belly laughs. She asked members of the audience whose birthday was close to Christmas, had these folks tell aloud what it’s like to feel badly because they got only one gift for both their birthday and Christmas, and brought the two closest birthdays to Christmas (or Chanukah) onstage. After singing a sympathetic song for their plight, she handed them a tiny gift bag before sending them back to their seats.

Christine really showed her environmentally-conscious side in various dissertations about global warming, and in particular, the recent “de-planetizing” of Pluto by major world scientists to the category of “dwarf planet”. She spoke of having foreseen this happening ten years ago when she wrote a song called “Planet X”. Song sheets with these lyrics were handed out to all members of the audience who tried to keep up with this long, detailed and hilarious tune, which is a testament to Christine as not only one of the “queens of folk comedy”, but a most intelligent, brilliant and clever lyricist. Also handed out was a copy of the recipe for Christine’s “French Toast Bread Pudding”, a song and “actual” recipe that is on her latest CD, “One Meatball”. The CD is in the back of a CD-size mini-cookbook chock-full of recipes by the 20+ artists (and Christine) who also sing ditty’s about “food” on the recording, such as Vance Gilbert, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton, and Julie Gold, to name a few.

Another show favorite was her “Sensitive, New-Age Guys” shtick. The lights went out and the room was totally dark except for Christine, with what looked like either a coal miner’s or surgeon’s light on her forehead, perusing the audience for “unsuspecting” male victims. She invited the gentleman SHE chose of all those she’d “spotlighted” to come up on stage and CROWNED him the “winner” of the “MR. MARBLEHEAD” contest. Of course, in each different place she performs, the winner’s title is the name of that city or town. While “Mr. Marblehead” was onstage, Christine hilariously conducted an interview (more like “the third degree”) so the audience could “learn all about this fellow”. Then all of the other contestants were called up to join the winner. While she sang the main verses of the song, they then chorused in with “sensitive new-age guys”, each with their own inimitable faces, stances and dance steps. To me, it was the ME AND THEE version of a Broadway musical comedy!

This routine ended and Christine announced to the audience that she had a surprise for all of us for being such a wonderful audience. From out of a bag on the stage floor she pulled what appeared to be sticks, which actually turned out to be batons she began spinning most proficiently. The light on her forehead also remained on as the house lights were totally shut off. Suddenly the tips of both batons lit up neon lime green and Christine became a bundle of spinning energy as the audience howled with laughter and began clapping. Oh yes, remember that totally “kempt” appearance I mentioned Christine had at the beginning of the show? Well, at the end of this routine, Christine’s hair was more than slightly disheveled and her clothes were lopsided as she comically feigned exhaustion. The audience was both amazed and amused by this wonder woman of so many surprising talents and rose to a loud standing ovation.

In closing, I guess I want to say if Tinkerbell was ever a real human being, it would be in the persona of Christine Lavin. How lucky were all were to be in the audience for a totally happy evening of music and comedy.

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