Christine Lavin at Birdland

            Christine Lavin's show at Birdland Monday night had everything: audience participation, book readings, a movie star, a nonagenarian songwriting legend, baton twirling, a dessert recipe--even the New York Jets!

            Yes, Lavin started with a dramatic reading from her memoir Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-wha??, the passage about growing up in Geneva, N.Y.--the summer home of the Jets--and babysitting for assistant coach Buddy Ryan's young son.

            "Holy crap! I was Rex Ryan's babysitter!" she exulted, Rex Ryan, as everyone in the room knew, now being the AFC Championship-bound Jets head coach. "Let's go, Jets!"

            The music started with a marvelous "Birdland On A Monday Night," where Lavin began with mouth percussion effects that then played back on a tape loop, same with her harmony voices as she sang about the night's setting--even adlibbing about people sitting at nearby tables. She later returned to her book when she introduced legendary songwriter Ervin Drake, who now claims to be 91 (last year he said he was 90).

            Lavin read the section about how Drake reconnected with his wife Edith (a former showgirl who originally rejected him when he was an aspiring 23 year-old songwriter) after both had read the obits of their respective spouses. Drake then sang his hit compositions "Good Morning Heartache" (the Billie Holiday classic written about Edith) and "It Was A Very Good Year," the latter featuring two new verses (relating to the years 52 and 89) and a funny reprimand after the verse about the many girlfriends of his 21st year: "I wasn't always 91, you know!"

            Another Lavin book was employed when she performed "Amoeba Hop," the song inspired by a microscopic look at a drop of stagnant water in 9th grade, that became a children's book in 2003 with delightful illustrations by Betsy Franco Feeney. Feeney and her daughter came up to turn the pages of an immense version of the book as Lavin sang the song.

            The audience was engaged, too, by Lavin's recipe for her famous Petit Pain Au Chocolat ("Start the night before and leave it on the counter overnight. It will rise, then fall, and look like a weird sponge from outerspace."), whch she passed out after observing that no one took down the ingredients--as she had instructed--in her performance of "Sunday Breakfast with Christine." The inveterate foodie also put words to a tape of "Pachelbel's Canon"--mainly, "guacamole."

            Other Lavin friends in attendance besides Drake and Feeney included Julie Gold and Jeff Daniels. Gold recalled how Lavin, "a selfless Pied Piper of musicians," passed out 10 tapes of her song "From A Distance," when it had been rejected everywhere.

            "Within two weeks it was being played on radio in New York, D.C. and Boston, and I got a call from Nanci Griffith who wanted to record it!" said Gold, who then sang the song that Griffith did in fact record, as, of course, did Bette Midler, whose huge hit version earned it the Song of the Year Grammy in 1991.

            After Lavin sang a "dude's-eye view version" of her much-requested "Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind," where the dude in question silently complains about pretending to enjoy accompanying his girlfriend to the shopping mall instead of watching football and having to see chick flicks like Pleasantville and Terms of Endearment, she brought out actor/singer-songwriter Jeff Daniels, who was in both.

            Daniels, who like Gold credits Lavin with a big part of his music career (he wrote the foreward to her memoir), sang "The Dirty Harry Blues," a song he wrote about the joy of being gunned down by Clint Eastwood in Blood Work.

            Lavin otherwise focused on her most-requested songs--her absolute most-requested being "The Kind Of Love You Never Recover From," which cabaret star Colleen McHugh performed. Noting that she's starting to get songs covered by theater/cabaret types, Lavin herself sang "Air Conditioner," which Tony-winning actress Sutton Foster released on her debut album.

            After getting the crowd to sing along on a nifty blend of the Everly Brothers' "All I Have To Do Is Dream" and Chad & Jeremy's "A Summer Song," Lavin suddenly heard marching band music (emanating from her tape player) and closed with her incredible baton-twirling act, in which the tape plays her thoughts while she twirls one baton, than two, then a pair of glow-in-the-dark sticks.

            She encored with her classic "Sensitive New Age Guys," bringing up said guys and girls in the room, including Daniels, Drake, and even Edith Drake. Members of Birdland's Monday night Broadway open mic "Cast Party," which followed, also joined in on the Tom Paxton finisher "Peace Will Come."

[The Examiner is cited on Page 362 of Cold Pizza For Breakfast: A Mem-wha??]

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