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Note of Hope, A Celebration of Woody Guthrie is based on the words and writings of the great American singer-songwriter and folk musician. Previously unreleased, the collection features GRAMMY’-winning bassist Rob Wasserman’s collaborations with Jackson Browne, Ani DiFranco, Kurt Elling, Michael Franti, Nellie McKay, Tom Morello, Van Dyke Parks, Madeleine Peyroux, Lou Reed, Pete Seeger, Studs Terkel, Tony Trischka, and Chris Whitley. The release is the first in a series of events leading up to the 2012 centennial celebration of Guthrie’s birth.

429 Records

 

 

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By Libby Molyneaux, LA Weekly

The always unpredictable Nellie McKay applies her staggering musical talents to a new project The New York Times calls “brilliant, zany.” In musical biography I Want To Live!, she takes on the role that won Susan Hayward an Oscar as the scheming, lying, fun gal Barbara Graham, the convicted murderer who was the third woman to die in the gas chamber in California at San Quentin in 1955.
L.A. WEEKLY: What inspired you to write a musical about Barbara Graham?

NELLIE MCKAY: Strangely, the title came first, then I watched the gripping, chilling movie with its sinuous score by Johnny Mandel, featuring a combo led by Gerry Mulligan — it’s very much an L.A. tale in that ’50s, noirish style. Barbara didn’t get a fair shake in life, but we try to give her one in our show.

Is it fun to play a bad girl?

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June 30: Nellie McKay continues to expand her creative vision with her latest offering, “I Want to Live!,” a dreamlike musical reconstruction of the 1958 Susan Hayward film about the death-row inmate Barbara Graham. Part B movie, part seedy cabaret act, part existential meditation, and all musical exploration, McKay and an excellent band mix some original tunes, some period tunes, and some wildly anachronistic ones—Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and Lennon’s “I’m So Tired” are particularly effective—to create a brilliant piece of theatre.

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