BOOM! IS A BLAST!

Separately, each is terrific. Together, the two are sublime. When singing sisters Ann Hampton Callaway and Liz Callaway combine their voices and sensibilities—echoing each other’s lines, with glorious harmonies weaving and soaring through songs—it’s one of the best things you can do for your ears.

At 54 Below, through Saturday, January 17 (with a livestream option that night), they are reprising an act they presented 15 years ago and released as a live recording. It’s called Boom!, referencing the music that the Baby Boomer generation (and maybe the next one) grew up with. It’s an unavoidably nostalgic and fond mix that includes the sisters’ own favorites from their youth—remembered from radio airplay, early record purchases, and Billboard hits they sang blithely in the backseat of their family’s 1968 automobile as the Callaway parents drove and the sisters drove them crazy.

As the decade and a half has flown by, even more in the rearview mirror are the music and memories of the Boom! era. Some pop items that might have been relished in anyone’s youth can feel, in hindsight, like guilty pleasures—fluff that isn’t terribly satisfying to more adult and sophisticated tastes. But these arrangements, and those heavenly harmonies, make the cheese feel a little more like musical caviar.

As they were the first time around, Ron Tierno is on drums and pianist/musical director Alex Rybeck is at the piano. Ritt Henn now takes over the bass duties. Messrs. Rybeck and Henn also add some vocal backups. There are chipper ditties like “Happy Together” (which shows its vintage when we hear the line about calling someone from a phone booth for a dime), and more emotional selections such as Carly Simon’s breakthrough hit about being marriage-shy, “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be.”

Some material is done straight, some with a wink, such as “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” with the women seated side by side in white boots and sunglasses. Included are samples from the repertoires of The Beatles and Stevie Wonder (in a big medley). Each Callaway has solos, with Ann accompanying herself at the piano for Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” and Liz combining two classic ballads written by Jimmy Webb (“Didn’t We” and part of “MacArthur Park”) plus two perky Petula Clark hits. (She has the audience sing along on the frequently appearing title word in “Downtown,” and the lyric of “I Know a Place” about a great place to hear music could certainly describe the attraction that is 54 Below.)

Another sing-along moment comes at the end with “You’ve Got a Friend,” by which time it almost feels as if the Boom! room is made up of old friends.

There’s entertaining scripted banter about their different tastes growing up: Liz’s book beside her bed would be the latest Nancy Drew mystery, while Ann was absorbed in the collected poetry of Sylvia Plath. They had their separate rooms, enjoying their separate record collections, but found more and more common ground as they grew older.

Whether you knew these songs when they were new or you caught up later, there’s much to relish in the bounty that is Boom!

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photos by Lorelei Edwards 

Boom!
Ann Hampton Callaway & Liz Callaway 
54 Below
reviewed January 15
ends on January 17, 2026
for tickets and info, visit 54 below

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