ECCENTRIC CHARM,
SWEET AND STRANGE

Enjoying an eclectic, engaging
evening with Nellie McKay

Light-hearted but with some heavier thoughts,
Out-and-out outgoing on the outside,
Sometimes intense on the inside,
Engaging all the way through

With a playful twinkle in her eye and her trademark sunny sound, savvy singer Nellie McKay fills a room with charm in her eclectic set that is one surprise after another. But that only applies to relative newcomers to the merry and mischievous McKay way with a live program or recording. Fellow fans expect the unexpected, but also get a considerable amount of favorites from past encounters, some of which are tried-and-true Great American Songbook classics.

But the lady is a chameleon, an acquired taste worth acquiring. A taste of the confectionery and sprinkles of sass and sorrow make for a compelling mixture if you let yourself fall under her spell. At one moment she’s blushingly demure to shyly deliver “I’m Confessin’ (That I Love You),” a number that’s almost 100 years old. At another, she’s back in the present, looking to the future, with original material that comes with the disclaimer that it is “still a work in progress.” Dreamy-voiced, dewy-eyed, she croons things that drip with sweetness and idealistic views: the anthem of non-materialism, “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” and a girlish “I Wanna Get Married.” The standard “Long Ago and Far Away” is an ideal showcase for her wonderful way of capturing wistfulness without getting woeful and weepy.

Elsewhere, she’s sadder and assertive at the same time, addressing someone with the words “And now I know you’re mad/ I know you’re filled with hate/ I know that as I stand here you know I’m too late/ But do you know you can’t be wrong?” (“Long and Lazy River,” a selection from an album released 20 years ago). Lurking beneath a self-deprecating round of apologies is a zinger at the end of a chorus that’s a kind of “it’s your loss” put-down:

“I’m sorry for the time/ The stupid way I rhyme/ I knew I shoulda chose a life of crime/ I’m sorry for my blues/ I guess it’s all old news/ And yet you know that really I’m sorry for you.”

On the tiny stage of the City Vineyard by Pier 26 in Manhattan at 233 West Street, she accompanies herself on piano or strums a ukulele, mixing whimsy and disappointment for a ditty that was a hit in the 1960s for Herman’s Hermits, “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.”  In another visit to that decade, in a contrasting darker mood, she revives something from The Doors: the unexpected but welcome “People Are Strange,” which she makes her own, facing and kind of embracing the fact that “People are strange when you’re a stranger/ Faces look ugly when you’re alone/ Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted.  Elsewhere she’s subtly defiant, challenging the norm, very much her unique self, dressed in bright warm pinks, green, and a shade of yellow complementing her lemon-hued curly hair, with a sparkly top, not unlike a walking Easter decoration for this one-night-only appearance that happened two weeks before that holiday. In the most quintessentially quirky section among several with quirky and quaint qualities, projections of amusingly odd vintage black-and-white cartoons are projected on a screen as she sings and shrugs “Poor People.”

Daring, darling, and delightful, time spent with Nellie McKay is indeed a special pleasure.

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

photo by John Osburn

Nellie McKay
The City Vineyard
part of the City Winery NYC
reviewed on March 22, 2026
for Nellie videos, visit Nellie and YouTube
for tour dates, visit Facebook and Nellie McKay

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦