Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

When does a movie become theater? The easy answer is when it’s adapted a la Hairspray, The Lion King, The Producers and the like.

But there have been rare instances when movies become theater, usually when music is involved. I’m thinking of the rock band Spinal Tap, which, after their mockumentary became a hit, toured like a real band. Same is true of the “folk singers” in the genius Christopher Guest movie A Mighty Wind. I remember going to the Warfield to see the entire cast reassemble, in character, for a concert. The fictional becomes real – or if not real, exactly, then three-dimensional.

During the Mighty Wind show, the New Main Street Singers took the stage, and someone, spotting Parker Posey, shouted out, “Parker, I love you!” Posey didn’t acknowledge the shout in any way, so the shouter re-phrased using her character’s name: “Sissy, I love you,” and Posey, whipped her head around, a big smile on her face, and waved madly at her fan.

Another movie character recently stepped off the big screen for a concert in San Francisco. On Monday, fans and media attended a screening of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the latest from super-hot Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad), who co-wrote and produced.

The movie bundles every music biography cliché you can imagine and skewers them all gleefully. The humor is broad, dirty and silly – it’s sophomoric in the smartest way.

John C. Reilly is Dewey Cox, a kid from hardscrabble Alabama who is born to sing. He rises through the ranks – taught by African-American blues and soul men, schooled by peers such as Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. Drugs and alcohol, of course, play a big part in Dewey’s dark period, and then the ‘60s flower, and next thing you know he’s in India with the Beatles (played hilariously by Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman).

Jenna Fischer of “The Office” is Dewey’s lifelong love, Darlene, and their duet, “Let’s Duet,” is a musical highlight. Music plays a huge part, obviously, but the skill with which the songs are executed (great pastiche songs in all the right styles, with assists from Apatow, director/co-writer Jake Kasdan), Dan Bern and Marshall Crenshaw, among others) is a huge part of the movie’s success.

Reilly is a real singer – you only need to see him perform “Mr. Cellophane” in Chicago or hear him duet with Woody Harrelson in A Prairie Home Comapnion to know that – and a sincere and sincerely funny performer. He carries the movie with effortless skill.

I can say with some authority that Reilly is a real singer because, as good as he is in the movie, he was equally as good in person. After the screening on Monday, fans walked down the block to the Great American Music Hall, where the marquee proudly proclaimed, “Dewey Cox and the Hard Walkers: The Cox Across America Tour.” (If you think the last name Cox was accidental and won’t be joked about in every conceivable way, think again.)

Reilly performed for about an hour with a four-piece band (he played guitar and harmonica), and he never broke character. He was Dewey Cox, outfitted in a black-and-red bolero outfit seen in the movie when he’s performing “Guilty as Charged.”

Because the song stylings move from ‘50s blues and rock ‘n’ roll to ‘60s folk and psychedelia, Reilly really gets to show off his skills as a singer. He’s a little bit Roy Orbison, which is a great thing to be. His live high notes weren’t quite as pristine as his movie high notes, but he makes up for it in enthusiasm and humor.

The best song in the movie is the title song, “Walk Hard,” though I’m awfully fond of the nearly dirty “Let’s Duet.” Dewey’s posthumous tribute to himself, “(Have You Heard the News) Dewey Cox Died,” is probably something every famous singer/songwriter wishes he/she wrote, and his anthemic plea for the rights of little people, “Let Me Hold You (Little Man)” is a hoot.

Reilly is a theater veteran (A Streetcar Named Desire on
Broadway in 2005, Tony nomination for True West opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman, lead in the musical version of Marty), and his comfort onstage shows. He’s great onscreen, but in his Dewe Cox guise, he knows how to give good theater.

In the spirit of the film, let me just add that he rocks out with his Cox out.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is in theaters Dec. 21. Here are two trailers. The first is for all audiences. The second is rated R. Choose appropriately.

With the future of the Empire Plush Room, the Bay Area’s most distinctive cabaret, in some doubt – Will it shut down? Will it relocate to another hotel? – there’s a certain pleasure in sitting under the gorgeous, intimate room’s stained-glass ceiling and enjoying some good music.

The “good music” part was a little difficult during my last Plush Room experience (with Miss Tammy Grimes), but it was much easier Tuesday night with the return of Mary Wilson and her Up Close show.

Wilson, one of the original Supremes, debuted the show two years ago at the Plush Room, and it has improved significantly since then. The set list remains largely the same, and the high points two years ago remain high points today.

The 63-year-old Wilson is gorgeous, and with her regal bearing and status as pop-rock royalty (she is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you know), she set sets her audience all a-twitter.

Vocally, Wilson sounds great. Her voice is husky and warm, with enticing glints of humor and emotion. She doesn’t, however, always pick songs that mesh well with her voice, and some of her choices — “Smile,’’ “Spring Is Here,’’ Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why’’ — come across as pleasant but disconnected.

She says this show is all about ballads, and it is ballad heavy, but she really comes to life during a three-song samba set (“I Remember You,’’ “The Girl from Ipanema’’ and “Mas Que Nada’’). Wilson, the grandmother of eight, can still turn on the sexual heat.

Her take on Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me’’ started out well but turned into a train wreck by the end. Credit that to lack of rehearsal time with her five-piece band led by pianist/musical director Tammy Hall.

Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,’’ another of the pleasant but forgettable tune, was interrupted by an unfortunate monologue in which Wilson talked about going back to college at NYU and about her fabulous view apartment in Manhattan and about how she could see the smoke on 9/11 and how she had to give up the apartment because it got too expensive. From personal information to tragedy to real estate – not a good mix in the middle of a song.

Wilson makes it abundantly clear in concert that she would love to not sing any Supremes songs, but in the current incarnation of the show, she sings “My World Is Empty Without You.’’ (Last time around she sang three Supremes songs). The irony is that as much as she doesn’t want to sing the same songs she’s been doing for 40-plus years, she sings the hell out of this material. It would be great is she included more Motown material – she does include the Four Tops’ “I Believe in You and Me” – not necessarily Supremes songs, but great Motown songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s because she’s such an expert at performing them.

As she did last time around, Wilson includes “I Am Changing” from Dreamgirls, the musical/movie loosely based on the rise of the Supremes.

“I know it’s not about me because I didn’t get paid,” Wilson quipped. “Diana and I don’t talk, so I don’t know if she got paid. She probably got paid. But I sleep at night.”

Wilson’s emotionally charged “I Am Changing,” dedicated to original Supreme Florence Ballard, who died in 1976, was another highlight of the 85-minute show.

Mary Wilson’s Up Close continues at through Dec. 16 at the Empire Plush Room in the York Hotel, 940 Sutter St., San Francisco. Tickets are $52.50 or $57.50. Call or visit www.theempireplushroom.com for information.

This weekend just past in San Francisco was a good one for those of us who savor larger-than-life lady singers.

On Saturday, Jennifer Holliday, the Tony Award-winning original Effie Melody White in Dreamgirls, made a rare concert appearance in San Francisco.

The Herbst Theatre was jam packed with Holliday lovers, though the show started out on shaky ground. The band launched into a slow version of “One Night Only” from Dreamgirls, and after about 15 minutes the audience was wondering where the star was? The musical director kept looking back into the wings to see if Holliday was ready yet.

Finally, one of the three backup singers offered a subtle nod, and out came Holliday. For the next two-plus hours, this former Dreamgirl detonated one musical explosion after another. She dusted off some older solo material, like “I Am Love” and “Come Sunday,” and shined up some standards (”Come Rain or Come Shine,” “A Tisket, a Tasket,” “The Nearness of You,” “How High the Moon”).

Everything Holliday sings, she, in her words, “Jenniferizes” it, which is to say, she sings the bloody h— out of it. She has to choose her material carefully (and she does), because she loads up a whole lot of vocal weight and interpretation on the song’s framework. And the song has to be strong to bear up. Holliday almost becomes possessed when she sings, and she takes a song to places you had no idea it could go.

I lost track of the standing ovations. At first it was fans in the first row (and my date) standing after almost every song. Then it was all of us, standing, cheering, whooping and hollering. She did a tribute to Stax records and threw in a little Elvis love with an extraordinary “The Wonder of You.”

Holliday threw in a Christmas tune (”This Christmas”) and, of course, sang her Dreamgirls songs: I am Changing (all I can say is this: wow) and, as her encore, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”).

I honestly can’t tell you why this woman isn’t a superstar. She’s had bad luck, bad timing and, if rumors can be believed, some true diva moments. But there are undboutedly more difficult people out there who have a lot less talent than Jennifer Holliday.

Someone please get her an extraordinary career.

And on Sunday night at Davis Symphony Hall, Queen Latifah, the Oscar-nominated star of Chicago and Hairspray, made a stop on her mini-tour in support of her latest disc, the standards collection “Trav’lin’ Light.”

Dressed in a black blouse, black slacks and spiky black heels, the warm and funny Latifah impressed with her selection of standards (”I Love Being Here with You,” “Lush Life,” “I’m Gonna Live Til I Die,” “Trav’lin’ Light”), rough blues (”Baby Get Lost”), gentle blues (”Georgia Rose”), funk (”Mercy, Mercy, Mercy”) and the tunes we call show (”I Know Where I’ve Been” from Hairspray).

She also made some missteps. She ended the set with a limp “California Dreamin’” and stretched out “Simply Beautiful” to interminable length and allowed her backup trio (all terrific, but do they all really need solos?) their moments in the spotlight. But it was, frankly, boring.

And she didn’t sing “When You’re Good to Mama,” her song from Chicago. She had time for Phoebe Snow’s “Poetry Man” but not for Matron Mama Morton? Come on, Queen!

Read our music critic Jim Harrington’s review of the Queen Latifah concert here.

For Jennifer Holliday, the original Effie White in Broadway’s Dreamgirls, life has had its share of nightmare moments.

Only 19 when the tumultuous Dreamgirls development process began, and 21 when the show opened in 1981, Holliday became an instant Broadway legend as soon as audiences heard her sing the show’s standout anthem, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.”

Holliday stayed with the show for three years, and though she won the Tony Award for best actress in a musical, she was unhappy and isolated — a long way away from her Houston, Texas, roots.

And her weight was an issue. Holliday has estimated that at her heaviest, she was 330 pounds or more.

After a string of failures — her recording career never took off, a Broadway-bound show about Mahalia Jackson self-destructed, her nine-month marriage ended in divorce — Holliday attempted suicide on her 30th birthday.

“I caught a lot of bad breaks,” Holliday says in a phone interview. “Some of it was bad luck. Some of it was other people’s stuff. And there’s my accountability for my own faults and mistakes. I’m making no excuses for anything.”

Diagnosed with clinical depression, Holliday began to turn her life around. She lost nearly 150 pounds (through diet and, later, gastric bypass surgery) and bounced back.

The bounce didn’t take her to Dreamgirls heights, but she has managed to eke out a career.

“My primary living has been through corporate dates — private concerts — and events for the gay community,” says Holliday, 47. “A lot of people think I disappeared, but I’ve been working.”

When the movie version of Dreamgirls finally came out last year — 25 years after Holliday’s splash on Broadway — she was back in the news expressing unhappiness about having been shut out of the movie (only Loretta Devine, another of the original Dreamgirls, made a cameo in the film).

“My anger was directed against Paramount and (director) Bill Condon, the people who tried to say: `She’s too old, let’s forget about her and everything she did and built and struggled for and fought for.’ ”

But Holliday has let her anger subside. One thing that helped was singing “And I Am Telling You…” on a BET awards show earlier this year with Jennifer Hudson – “the other Jennifer” — who won an Oscar for playing Effie, the part Holliday helped create.

The two divas stood side by side and belted out the song as if their lives depended on it.

“That was a victorious thing for me,” Holliday says. “More like an Ali-Frazier fight. I was like, `OK, we’re gonna part as friends, but one will leave with the other’s ass kicked.’ For me, this was a victory bout — one for the veterans, the people my age and older who don’t want to be forgotten. We can still do what we do and not be put out to pasture.”

All the attention from the Dreamgirls movie has given Holliday’s career a bump. She’s performing more concerts now, and Saturday (Nov. 24) she’s at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.

Of course she’ll sing her Dreamgirls songs, as well as some of the R&B selections from her various albums and some jazz standards, including a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald.

“Whatever I’ve gone through, for whatever reason, I sing better now because of it,” Holliday says. “I would have liked to have not gone through a lot of those things, but I have to admit, my music and songs have more meaning for me now. I think I sing from a different place.”

A resident of Harlem, Holliday does not have a manager or a publicist. She doesn’t have a cell phone or a computer. She does have a MySpace page (www.myspace.com/thejenniferholliday), and she checks it during weekly visits to Kinko’s.

“I’m rebuilding my career,” she says. “I’m finally learning how to make my life work as a human being, even with my depression, even with my career not being where I’d like it to be. Through MySpace and YouTube, I have made new fans, young fans. I have a new lease on life, if not success. The true success story is that I’m alive. That’s the greatest thing I can tell you at this point.”

This Dreamgirl, Holliday says, is happy at last.

“What the future holds, I can’t tell you,” she says. “But I do know at this moment, I’m the happiest I’ve been for so many years.”

Jennifer Holliday performs in concert at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. Tickets are $37.50 to $77.50. Call 415-392-4400 or visit www.theempireplushroom.com for information.

Hey, Theater Dogs. I know the following isn’t theater related, but I just wanted to share my experience with an extraordinary performer…

Sweet dreams are made of Annie Lennox.

Quirky, inspired and inspiring, Lennox spent the ’80s as a techno diva with Eurythmics, launched into huge successful solo career in the ’90s and can now do pretty much anything she wants.

Her output has been slim. Since her first solo album, 1992’s “Diva,” Lennox has produced an album of covers (1995’s “Medusa”), a wrenching collection of post-divorce balladry (2003’s “Bare”) and the newly released “Songs of Mass Destruction.”

Four albums in 15 years isn’t exactly prolific. True, Lennox did win an Academy Award for co-writing “Into the West” from the third Lord of the Rings movie, but that was just one song.

It’s a good thing, then, that Lennox’s albums are meaty enough to sustain her fans for years. The new one, which is strong and grim in equal measure, should get us through to at least 2009.

Lennox tours even less frequently than she records, which is why her stop at San Francisco’s Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium Wednesday night was such a treat. Her Annie Lennox Sings tour is only about a month long, and she’s hitting a mere 16 cities.

We got her on the second stop of the tour, and her energy and enthusiasm were extraordinary.

She didn’t waste any time trying to coax fans into the new material. She opened with a full-throttle “No More `I Love You’s’,” which has the great first line: “I used to be lunatic from the gracious days,” and slammed right into the driving “Little Bird.” She kept the momentum going with “Walking on Broken Glass” before slamming on the brakes with the first surprise of the evening, the world weary “Pavement Cracks” from “Bare.”

With lyrics like “Everything I wanna be comes crashing down on me,” the song was but a prelude to the near-apocalyptic depression of “Dark Road,” the first single from the new album, which sings of “the fires of destruction still burning in my dreams.”

With such angst and emotion swirling through the darkness (and the voluminous stage smoke), the crowd should have been weeping and burning black candles. But this is Annie Lennox, the indestructible diva who traffics in depression to the delight of all those who love her.

And indeed, this crowd loved her, adored her, swooned for her every dramatic gesture.

It’s all about that voice — soul deep and so muscular it can pummel you or just as easily carry you away.

At 52, Lennox has lost none of her luster as a performer, from her short-cropped platinum blond hair to her tasteful black, sleeveless mini-dress with black pants. She looked gorgeous. And her voice is as sturdy and powerful as ever.

After nearly smashing the room with the explosive “Smithereens” from the new album, Lennox slowed things down as she accompanied herself on piano through a tender Eurythmics hit, “Here Comes the Rain Again,” followed by “A Thousand Beautiful Things” and a rousing “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves.”

The piano disappeared when she launched into “Cold,” a heartbroken lament sung with such force it became the equivalent of a pop spiritual. The soulful tone burst wide open with “There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart),” which Lennox and her five-piece band and two backup singers turned into full-on gospel number.

“Ghosts in My Machine,” the most insistent song on the new album, followed with a taste of blues to start — “I’ve seen too much, I know too much, I hurt too much, I feel too much, I dread too much, I dream too much” — before it erupted into a percussive, hard-driving expression of existential pain.

The final two songs of the main set were surprising choices — fun and irresistible, but surprising. “When Tomorrow Comes” and “Thorn in My Side,” both from the 1986 Eurythmics album “Revenge,” proved to be a whole lot more fun in concert — with everyone in the auditorium up and dancing — than they ever were on record.

For her encore, Lennox climbed up on a musical soapbox with the new album’s “Sing,” an anthem promoting awareness of and involvement in the fight to end HIV and AIDS in Africa, especially for women and children.

But why leave the audience with the hope of making a difference in the world when you can leave them with the somber “Why,” which revels in fear and dread and doubts and utter pain?

Well, because you’re Annie Lennox, the dark diva. And that’s why we love her and why she continues to enliven our dreams, sweet or otherwise.

For information about Annie Lennox’s SING project, visit www.annielennoxsing.com.
And visit her official site here.

Here’s the video for “Dark Road,” the first single from “Songs of Mass Destruction.”

When I’m not at the theater, chances are I’m at a concert. This week I finally got to see one of my favorite artists live at the Fillmore in San Francisco.

Bird watching at the Fillmore has its rewards, especially if the bird in question is Andrew Bird, one of pop music’s mavericks.

Few singer-songwriters multi-task the way Bird does in concert. He sings and plays the guitar. Nothing unusual there. He also plays the violin like a mad genius, whistles with the clarity and purity of a flute and — here’s the real distinction — plays the glockenspiel.

Bird’s sold-out Fillmore show Tuesday follows buzz-worthy appearances at the big music festivals: South by Southwest in Texas and last weekend’s Coachella in southern California.
Tuesday’s hour and 45-minute show featured Bird — sort of the thinking person’s James Blunt _ ably supported by bassist Jeremy Ylvisake and percussionist and electronics whiz Martin Dosh.

Here’s how a typical Bird song — let’s choose “Fiery Crash,” a cheery number about the fear of flying _ goes in concert. Bird lays down a musical foundation using a multi-track loop. He’ll record a few interesting measures on his violin and, using his feet to control the buttons, play them back and add some whistling and/or glock.

The resulting sound can make Bird’s violin sound like a chamber orchestra. Combine that with his Silvertone electric guitar and the other sounds, and he’s a one-man marching band.

Pulling primarily from 2005’s “Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs” and this year’s “Armchair Apocrypha,” Bird and his band turned what are, on the record, three- and four-minute gems into protracted loops of sound that push, pull and swirl into musical tornadoes.

Not every tune got the full-on, multi-layered treatment. “Heretics” provided a welcome oasis of straightforward, no-frills pop (that called to mind the Belle & Sebastian sound), but for the most part, Bird concentrated on turning songs like “Masterfade,” “Plasticities” and “Dark Matter” into jams that _ as jams often do _ began to sound alike.

Sometimes the bombast worked in a song’s favor, as on the epic “Scythian Empires,” which blossomed under Bird’s symphonic treatment.

But other tunes, such as “Fake Palindromes” and “Armchairs,” grew wearying, and though the likable Bird is capable of a sort of dry, intellectual humor — he paused Tuesday night to introduce the audience to a fan-created sock monkey dressed in a suit and carrying a violin case — his musical approach is deadly serious, and he often seemed lost in a sonic world of his own creation.

Such commitment to the creation of interesting sounds is one of the reasons Bird’s albums are so rich and fulfilling. But in concert, Bird tends to fly off in loop-the-loops, leaving his audience behind — entertained but not quite satisfied.

For a guy who used to play with the retro-swing band the Squirrel Nut Zippers, you hold out hope that he’ll lighten up some, or at least lay off the special effects. Whistling is great and so is a glockenspiel, but do we need to hear them on song after song?

Andrew Bird is what you might call an NPR rocker. He’s got talent and gusto and brains to spare, but there comes a point in his live show when you want less challenge, less complexity and more simple beauty, which is already there — it’s just a little overwhelmed.

Visit Andrew Bird’s official Web site at www.andrewbird.net.

Here’s Mr. Bird in action:

In New York recently, I had an amazing experience with Ricky Ian Gordon, an extraordinary composer who has written for the theater (My Life with Albertine, Dream True) and for the opera (his adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath recently premiered at Minnesota Opera).

Sitting in the apartment he shares with his boyfriend, Kevin, Gordon was talking about his upcoming trip to Berkeley — he performs alongside fellow composer Jake Heggie and Alameda’s resident opera star, Frederica von Stade, on Sunday, April 29, as part of the Cal Performances season — and he brought up a poem by James Schuyler called “Virginia Woolf” that he had set to music and that will be performed on Sunday.

Being a man of music, just talking about the song was insufficient, so he got up and sat at his spinet piano and indicated that I should sit next to him. Then he played the song and sang it full out.

The experience of sitting next to a composer performing his own work is mesmerizing, and the song itself, full of the intricate, haunting melodies Gordon is famous for, is spectacular. If Sunday’s version is anything like Gordon’s, the audience at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus should be blown away.

Gordon says his half of the concert will be typically him, which is to say, a little bit of a lot of things.

He’ll be joined by Heggie on a four-hand piano piece, “Ring-a-Ding-Ding,” followed by vocal performances by von Stade and others of songs with texts by Emily Dickinson, James Agee, Stanley Kunitz, Edna St. Vincent Milay and others.

There won’t be anything from his well-received The Grapes of Wrath (libretto by Michael Korie), although that epic endeavor will arise again in Utah next month and in Pittsburgh and Houston in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

So how does a composer like Gordon, with feet in both worlds, decide if something is musical theater or opera?

“There’s nothing I can’t do in the theater, but I do feel often like there’s this thing you face with musicals: the critics,” Gordon says. “You’re writing for critics who don’t know how to write or talk about music. I often feel musically misunderstood in the theater.”

There were parts of The Grapes of Wrath, Gordon says, that sounded like musical theater, but musical theater along the lines of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess or Weill’s Street Scene.

“My vocabulary includes music in the American vernacular,” Gordon says. “There are moments when it sort of explodes in operatic texture, while other moments could feel like a musical. Then you’re back into an aria. The truth is, that is so my aesthetic. To me, that’s me doing what I do. I had room to spread out in this opera and just be so Ricky. That’s what was totally fun about it.”

Just because he’s found success in the modern opera world (the Metropolitan Opera has even been sniffing around), Gordon insists he has not forsaken the world of musical theater.

He and Korie (also the lyricist for the Broadway hit Grey Gardens) are working with playwright Craig Lucas on a commission for the Signature Theatre about a major choreographer at the end of his life trying to come to terms with who he has been as a human being and an artist.

He’s also working with the director/writer Tina Landau on spiffing up an old project, “States of Independence,” and creating another opera, Morning Star, with William Hoffman.

“Yeah, I have a lot coming up,” Gordon says. “I’m going to sort of do it all.”

Theater in Song: Music by Jake Heggie and Ricky Ian Gordon is at 3 p.m. April 29 in Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus near Bancroft Way at College Avenue. Tickets are $62. Call (510) 642-9988 or visit www.calperformances.net.

I know Rufus Wainwright is not a theater person…yet. One day he’ll actually write the musical version of Tales of the City, which has been buzzed about for years, and then he’ll justify my including this concert review on a theater blog.

Wainwright’s wall of sound concert anticipates `Stars’ release

Before he was famous as the star of a televised murder trial, Phil Spector was a vaunted music producer noted for creating a distinctive “wall of sound’’ in ‘60s tunes by the likes of Ike and Tina Turner (“River Deep, Mountain High’’) and the Righteous Brothers (“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’’).

As Rufus Wainwright, one of the best and brightest pop craftsmen out there, matures as a singer and songwriter, he’s entering his own “wall of sound’’ phase.

This was especially evident Wednesday night when Wainwright performed a sold-out show — or “showette’’ as he called it — at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts Theatre.

Sort of a public rehearsal, Wainwright and his seven-piece band (guitar, bass, drums, three horns and a multi-instrumentalist who played piano when Wainwright was on acoustic guitar) used the show to work through the elaborate tunes on Wainwright’s upcoming album, “Release the Stars,’’ which drops May 15.

On many of the new songs, Wainwright is clearly going for a Spector-ish feel, with epic arrangements for strings (heard on pre-recorded tracks), backing vocals and electronic samples.

It’s a style he first demonstrated on “Beautiful Child,’’ a thrilling track from 2003’s “Want One’’ (and also a highlight of Wednesday’s show). Filled with symphonic, Wagnerian chaos, the song was clearly laying the groundwork for new tunes like “Release the Stars,’’ “Tiergarten,’’ “Between My Legs’’ “Do I Disappoint You?’’ and “Slideshow.’’

Such baroque arrangements give Wainwright ample opportunity to show off his grandly theatrical side and marshal his considerable musical talents. He’s always pushing his voice farther and farther, and, surprisingly, he keeps gaining more vocal control.

Unfortunately the wall of sound was too often a wall of noise on Wednesday, with the sound mix at the Palace of Fine Arts often tending toward terrible, especially when the live band was augmented by tracks.

But the audience didn’t seem to mind. They were there for Wainwright’s trademark blend of quirkiness and brilliance, and they got what they came for.

It says a lot about the 33-year-old poperatic performer that his best new songs — “Nobody’s Off the Hook,’’ “Not Ready to Love,’’ “I’m Leaving for Paris No. 2’’ — don’t’ seem at all out of place next to classics like the Gershwins’ “A Foggy Day’’ and Noel Coward’s “If Love Were All’’ (both songs are from Wainwright’s near-legendary re-creation of Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall concert).

The first single from the new album is the ballad “Going to a Town,’’ a classic love-gone-wrong break-up tune. But in this case, the misbehaving lover is America, and Wainwright has had enough.

After singing the tune and praising the Bay Area’s liberal slant, Wainwright praised House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “God, I love her,’’ he said. “I want her to be the mother of my children. I guess I’m not having children.’’

That distinctive Wainwright humor is apparent in the new songs “Rules and Regulations,’’ which he says is about “an overweight, out-of-shape guy watching the Olympics,’’ and “Tulsa,’’ a musically complex tribute to Killers lead singer Brandon Flowers that begins, “You taste of potato chips in the morning.’’

Though his head is clearly in the new material at the moment, Wainwright did throw in a few older tunes, mostly from “Want One’’ (“I Don’t Know What It Is,’’ “Harvester of Hearts,’’ “14th Street’’ and “Pretty Things’’) and “Want Two’’ (“The Art Teacher,’’ “Gay Messiah’’).

He also dedicated an old Irish tune, “Macushla,’’ to his mother, Kate McGarrigle, and dueted beautifully with old friend (and opening act) Teddy Thompson on “One Man Guy,’’ written by Rufus’ father, Loudon Wainwright III.

Even in a throw-away show like this one, when he’s obviously getting ready for bigger, better things, Rufus Wainwright is able to please his fans, have some fun and reassert his peculiar pop genius.

Visit Rufus’ official Web site at www.rufuswainwright.com.

Stream samples of three of the new songs here.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day today, and to celebrate the work of my favorite singer-songwriter, I’m posting my review of Patty Griffin’s concert Friday night at the Warfield in San Francisco. There is a theater tie-in: she’s writing a Broadway musical for the Atlantic Theatre in New York that’s supposed to begin performances in May.

Singular singer-songwriter Griffin shines in S.F. birthday concert

You might not recognize the lady in the goofy party hat as one of this country’s finest singer-songwriters. In fact, you might not recognize her at all — with or without the festive headgear.

If you don’t know Patty Griffin, you may know some of her songs. The Dixie Chicks are big fans and have recorded Griffin’s “Let Him Fly,” “Truth No. 2” and “Top of the World.” Even Jessica Simpson found post-Nick solace in “Let Him Fly.”

Other pop mavens _ Bette Midler, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris among them _ have recognized Griffin’s distinctive voice, yet she remains an obscure treasure. She has her fans to be sure, lots of them.

The Bay Area Griffin contingent turned out in force last Friday at the Warfield in San Francisco for what turned out to be a giant birthday party. The day before St. Patrick’s Day happens to be Griffin’s birthday (hence her first name, Patricia).

She turned 43 during her swing through the Bay Area to promote the new album, “Children Running Through,” which happens to be her best collection of songs yet — and that’s saying something. She hasn’t really written a bad song, but they just keep getting better and deeper.

Dressed in a festive green ’50s-style dress with a belt and a full skirt, the ever-ebullient redhead was treated to an impromptu birthday serenade from the audience, and during the encore, her band offered her a cake complete with candles (not 43) and a balloon.

Funny thing is, though, Griffin was the one doling out the presents. Her 100-minute set, accompanied by a four-piece band (guitar, electric bass, upright bass and drums), was full of tuneful treasures from the new album and from her rich catalogue.

Though her musicianship is superb — she played both acoustic guitar and piano — and her clarion voice remains as bright and strong as ever, Griffin’s greatest strength is her ability to tell stories that convey mood and emotion through perfectly matched words and notes.

Now, you might think all songs do that, but they don’t. You can have good words and a nice melody, but the two don’t necessarily work to tell the same story.

When Griffin sings a song like “Burgundy Shoes” off the new album, for instance, she begins quietly, conveying a childhood memory about an early spring bus trip with her mom from their Maine home into the nearest town, which happened to be Bangor.

There’s a childlike simplicity to the song, but complexity enters in as memories return: her mother’s red lipstick, the coldness of the vinyl seat, a hummed pop song (the Beatles’ “Michelle”). And then there’s a burst of pure joy in the repetition of a single word: sun.

It’s a gorgeous song, and Griffin sings it with the kind of intimate passion that she brings to most of her material. Though sad songs about flawed people struggling to hold on to some kind of faith or hope are her specialty, Griffin can let loose when she wants to.

Some of her more upbeat moments Friday night included the twangy “Stay on the Ride,” the rapturous “No Bad News,” the bluesy “Love Throws a Line” and the rousing “Getting Ready.” She even offered a gospel-tinged love song, “Heavenly Day,” and admitted she’d actually written it to her dog.

But for all her spirit and zest, Griffin is at her best when she’s giving voice to the darker side of day-to-day life. “Trapeze” from the new album is a stunning song about an aging trapeze artist in a run-down circus. “One of these nights the old girl’s going down,” she sang.

In “I Don’t Ever Give Up,” a quintessential Griffin creation, Griffin crafts a portrait of despair: “I’m no fighter but I’m fighting…I’m not clean; I’m not washed up.” But the bleakness is tinged with cautious hope: “Love isn’t here, but it’s somewhere.”

When Griffin sets out to move her audience, she does so with apparent ease. There’s a quality in her voice that wavers effortlessly between pain and joy, so she can rock through her ode to the gay kid in her homeroom class who committed suicide (“Tony”), or she can conjure the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. in the sublime hymn, “Up to the Mountain (MLK Song).” Both impeccably crafted songs brings tears — maybe for different reasons, maybe not.

Patty Griffin may not be one of our best-known singer-songwriters, but she’s undoubtedly one of the best. Those of us who have fallen under her spell have fallen hard. She’s great on record — as the new disc attests — but in person, especially in a green dress and a party hat, she’s everything you hope music to be.

Visit Patty Griffin’s Web site here.

Read our music critic Jim Harrington’s excellent review of the Streisand concert here.

At first, Barbra Streisand was the kooky kid with the voice. Then she was an Academy Award winner and a box-office sensation. By the time she was a mother, feminist, activist and superstar, Streisand was already a legend.

But what does a legend do to remain legendary? In Streisand’s case, you pull away from the limelight. You still crank out albums to meet your recording obligations. You make (or direct) the occasional movie. And you raise money for the Democrats.

And then, if you’re really lucky (and want to work your butt off), you decide to make sure they know you’ve still got it. You go on tour — maybe two or three times because saying goodbye takes a long time — and you blow people’s minds.

That’s what Streisand did Monday night at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. As she nears the end of her farewell tour, her voice is a little ragged, but such an extraordinary instrument can stand a few rough spots and still soar.

Monday’s show was, like all the others before it, very nearly Barbra unplugged — just her and a 54-piece orchestra. No video montages, no fancy sets. There was a guest (the operatic quartet Il Divo), but they were basically back-up boys.

Barbra fans such as myself were in heaven. The only downside was toward the beginning of the show when Streisand came out singing “Starting Here, Starting Now.” I whooped and hollered to make sure Barbra knew I was there (after spending $350 she perhaps should have tossed me one of her earrings). And the older lady sitting in front of me, apparently not at all pleased by my volume, turned around with her pinched little face and actually wagged her finger at me.

But nothing could dim my enthusiasm. This was relaxed Barbra, happy Barbra (her men and women took the House and the Senate last week, and she’s positively aglow). And most importantly from the Theater Dogs point of view, this was show tune Barbra.

Here are the theater songs she performed in San Jose: “Starting Here, Starting Now” (Starting Here, Starting Now Maltby/Shire), “Come Rain or Come Shine” (St. Louis Woman Arlen/Mercer), “The Music of the Night” (The Phantom of the Opera, Lloyd Webber/Hart), “Unusual Way” (Nine Yeston), “Carefully Taught” and “Cockeyed Optimist” (South Pacific, Rodgers/Hammerstein), “Children Will Listen” (Into the Woods, Sondheim), “Somewhere” (West Side Story, Berstein/Sondheim) and a whole heap of songs from Funny Girl (Styne/Merrill): “The Music that Makes Me Dance,” “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “People” from the Broadway show and “Funny Girl” and “My Man” from the movie.

In the Q&A when she read from notecards submitted by audience members, Streisand was prompted to say, “Shoot the swans? Dese lovelies?” from Funny Girl, and she recalled getting a voice lesson in San Francisco after losing her voice during a gig at the hungry i. She said the voice loss was psychological prompted by someone asking her how she held her notes so long. “I don’t know,” she answered the person. “Because I want to?”

My favorite songs of the evening: “Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair?,” “Down with Love,” “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?,” “The Woman in the Moon,” “Cockeyed Optimist,” “My Shining Hour” and “Happy Days Are Here Again” (performed with such glee you knew she meant every word).

And yes, the George W. Bush impersonator Steve Bridges showed up and was hilarious. He said last Tuesday had given him a good “Texas thumpin’.” “What’s that?” Streisand asked. “It’s when your butt stays blue for two years. He he he he.” He and Barbra sang a new duet on “Side by Side” with newly re-written lyrics about Madame Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (to whom Streisand dedicated “The Woman in the Moon” along with the 71 women in the House andthe 16 in the Senate).

Streisand recited a long quote by William Saroyan from the preface to his play The Time of Your Life, and it captures beautifully the spirit of the evening (especially considering she cut out the part about killing):

In the time of your life, live…Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed…Be inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself…In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the mystery and sorrow of the word, but shall smile to the infite delight and mystery of it.