S02E01 #

Lullaby Lounge: Season 2 Premiere

Aired: 2020-06-23 Posted: 2020-08-09

This episode was the first of season 2, and the change-over to Tuesday nights. Kate had taken a break for about 2 months to let her voice recover from some serious strain. This episode was also the first with “The Part Where I Talk” including a proto-version of the jingle.

I wanna tell you a story, about why I became the type of musician that I am today. Because there are times in my life that I was definitely different, uh, types of musician. I was definitely playing different types– genres of music, and had certain goals. And I can boil down why I became the performer that I am today to this one show that I attended that was super influential for just my life as a whole, like, as a performer. And also influential for how I conducted myself at shows, and what it meant to put on a show, and what a show could contain.
So, this had to have been ten years ago or so, probably. Um. I would have been… After tour, maybe late 2010, early 2011. Um. There was a show– Jason Webley, for those of you who don’t know, is, a long time collaborator of Amanda Palmer. He’s an amazing musician in his own right. He does sort of, like, uh, vagabond punk cabaret music. … So, I am in my early 20’s, I would say 20 or 21, and my– I decide to go to this Jason Webley show with my sister and her girlfriend at the time. Um, Jason Webley, for those of you who don’t know, I was just explaining, is a long time collaborator of Amanda Palmer, most famously, probably, a part of Evelyn Evelyn, if those of– if you’re familiar with her work around that time. Um, problematic project, but Jason Webley is a great musician and performer and person. Um, so I go with my sister and her girlfriend to this show and I pay less than twenty dollars for all of us to get in because the show is being held at this place called the Trumbullplex. If you’re not from Detroit, the Trumbullplex is basically like an old house, like an old– it’s not Victorian, it’s– but it looks Victorian to me because all big, old houses look Victorian to me. It’s this– … So it’s this big Victorian house that has a garage, kind of. It’s just basically like an additional room. It’s kind of a garage, it’s kind of another house that’s like attached to the house? And they held punk shows there at the Trumbullplex. It was just this giant open space that had like graffiti and stickers and Christmas lights all over it. It looked like what you think a, like, crustpunk artsy venue of that type would look like. At six bucks a person to get in, and the only person performing that night, I believe, is Jason Webley. And Jason Webley performs with just a pallet to stomp on for percussion and an accordion. And he plays a lot of beautiful music throughout the night. He plays a parody of his own song with Evelyn Evelyn. He plays some of his more famous works. He plays all sorts of music. But, about a third of the way through the show, he stops the show and says, “Okay, this is how things are gonna work from now on. We’re all going to pretend, that there is this song in the nineties, called Hockey Star. And Hockey Star was one of those songs that everyone knew, it was all over the place in the early to mid nineties. Hockey Star was a huge deal.” And he describes to us how this song that “we all know,” supposedly. That we are all– all learning of at that time. He’s like, “You all know this song from the mid nineties. And the only reason you’ve come to this show tonight is because I’m the Hockey Star guy. Like the only reason you showed up and paid your six bucks to get in the door to come to my show tonight is because I’m the Hockey Star guy and that’s what you know me from.” And he tells the audience everyone knew this song. “Hockey Star was such a big deal, and you knew all the words to it and everyone knew the dance.” And he’s describing all these ways that things “were” in the nineties for this song. And he plays a couple of chords on his accordion and he says, “Okay, when you hear this grouping of chords, later in the show, I need you to lose your minds. I need you to go crazy.” And everyone is just like, “Okay… alright. I guess this is just happening.” Um. … “So when you hear these chords,” he informs the audience. “When you hear these chords, you gotta go absolutely insane.”
…
So he plays these couple chords and he informs us of our instructions, that when we hear these– when we hear the song, the reason that we’re all here tonight, we have to go insane. So. … So he continues with the rest of his set, and he continues playing beautiful cabaret music, and this vagabond music, and just having, like, doing his thing. His normal Jason Webley thing. And then. Right before the show is about to be done. He plays those four chords. And everyone loses. Their. Minds. The place goes ballistic. It is insane. Everyone is losing their shit, like, we are watching a solo Backstreet Boy play the only Backstreet Boys song any of us knew. And he played this nineties pop song that he had written, um, as a side project with some other friends of his. He played this nineties pop song on accordion– er, nineties-style pop song, on accordion, and we all lost our shit! And we were all doing a da– Like, everybody was looking at each other, trying to figure out what the “dance” was that went to Hockey Star and we were all in this alternate reality game for the rest of his show. And that experience of being led through storytelling basically, like, being dragged through a story as a part of this one person act, to me, was– That changed everything for me. It was– It completely opened all doors as to what was possible. What I could be capable of and what solo performance was capable of doing. Because that moment is completely unreplicatable. Like, I– that experience was one of the funnest, most enjoyable concerts I’ve ever been to, and it was in part because he took the risk to be like, “No, this is a story that we’re all a part of and we’re all in it together.” And it’s just one of those moments that I look back into my life– look back to in my life that I think of as completely formative of my art and who I am, because he made the story happen whether we liked it or not. And it was amazing to be a part of.
But yeah. That is my story of tonight. Of my– of when I went to a Jason Webley concert and everything changed. And it didn’t– like, it wasn’t, it wasn’t because of lights, or ext– er, or makeup, or excess, or anything. He literally was just like, “We’re doing this. This is what’s happening. This is the way the show is gonna go.” And, it just– I was– I didn’t– I didn’t know! I didn’t know you could just be like, “Oh, we’re all playing make-believe now.” (whispering) And now I do that all the time.

Setlist #

• Black Sky Lullaby - Kate Nyx
• Kiss From a Rose - Seal
• Annabelle - Kate Nyx
• Hey There - Kate Nyx
• sell out! - Kate Nyx
• heroine - Kate Nyx