Nellie McKay is not your normal vegan cowgirl.
When you think of Kentucky, you immediately think of Bill Monroe and Loretta Lynn. As well you should. But, you could not tell that from the SRO crowd at Natasha’s downtown bistro and performance space in Lexington on Saturday night when Nellie took the stage in gold lamé and cowboy boots as the band played “Purple Haze.” When she stopped twisting and turning and sang, “‘Cuse me while I kiss the sky” the crowd was in the palm of her hand.
Along with an appearance earlier in the week in Louisville, these were her first visits to Kentucky. In both recognition and appreciation of that, she performed spirited versions of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and Loretta’s “And One’s On the Way” — without undue affectation or patronization.
While she’s definitely touring to support the latest album, “Home Sweet Mobile Home,” Nellie did a wonderful job of mixing it up. She had the temerity to follow “Purple Haze” with her most heartfelt ballad, “Portal.” Then nearly alternating her own four albums worth of highly original material with standards of many different eras, Ella’s “Tisket A-Tasket,” “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” and Lennon’s “I’m So Tired” from that White Album.”
All Nellie had to compete against that night was a UK home basketball game — and still she sold out the house. The crowd was, as all the shows I’ve seen, an eclectic mix of professionals, students and youngsters, but with one a decided difference, it was a warm audience. Not like, say, the infamous one in Minneapolis that greeted her with a stone cold, dead silence when she performed “Mother of Pearl.” Here, they got the joke.
Even though part of her on stage persona is acting like she’s often in a tizzy, Nellie can slide effortlessly from the melancholic anger of “Bruise on the Sky” and “Adios” into a sublime rendition of the Doris Day classic, “Mean to Me.” It’s as though her mind is going in half a dozen directions at once, and, of course, only one being able to get out into real life at a time.
And this maybe one of the few times when Nellie is on the road that she doesn’t have to go too far for vegan meals. Less than two blocks away from Natasha’s is the town’s original organic restaurant, Alfalfa’s. Now, forty years later it recently moved from its hole in the wall origins near the UK campus to a revitalized downtown. We ate there back in the day, we ate there that night. Only the faces had changed.
All photos by Amos Perrine at Natasha’s Bistro, Lexington, Kentucky, January 29, 2011
