A good sized audience of singers and jazz fans attended the New York appearance of West Coast based songwriter/singer Mark Winkler—with Mary Foster Conklin—celebrating the release of Winkler’s new CD, Till I Get It Right, with musically wired John DiMartino leading a stellar quartet of top jazz musicians (Greg Ryan on bass, Ron Vincent on drums, and Peter Brainin on alto and soprano saxophones). Before Winkler was introduced, Conklin in a sexy red dress (Winkler called it her "bad girl dress, so Ida Lupino") created joy on Joni Mitchell’s "Night in the City," a song about celebrating night life in the city, with Brainin rocking boisterously and beautifully on his soprano sax. Winkler, who possesses a jazzy, masculine voice like those of his idols Mark Murphy, Bob Dorough and Dave Frishberg, started full force with the CD’s rhythmic title song and then did Troup’s "Hungry Man," which has clever rhymes about finding favorite food in cities across the United States ("chop suey in East St. Louis....going to Montana to get a banana split").

Conklin dedicated Winkler’s composition "Trio" (with music by Emil Palame) to all the singers in the room. It's about a singer trying to do a late night set when her musicians are drunk, stoned, or missing ("and the sound man is on the spoon"), a lament that singers in the audience like Laurie Kranz, Terese Genecco and Shaynee Rainbolt all related to. A few songs later, Winkler did "Somewhere in Brazil" (music by the music director on the CD, Jamieson Trotter) about trying to sing for a New Jersey lounge crowd who drunkenly mock his every attempt to sing the bossa nova music close to his heart. "In my mind I’m somewhere in Brazil in New Jersey." A section of the song was sung by DiMartino about the other side of the coin, backing up a singer who is flat, all the charts are scrawled in the wrong key, and "thinks he can scat—he can’t scat." Both songs were terrific and hysterically funny.

Other clever works performed were "How Can That Make You Fat" (music Louis Durra) about Winkler’s persistent diet tries with lists of forbidden food pleasures, and "Cool" (music Marilyn Harris), a hip "Fever"-flavored duet with Conklin. Utilizing her full range, Conklin sultrily sang a Winkler original (music by Harris) inspired by a Humphrey Bogart-Gloria Grahame film noir, In a Lonely Place. The lyrics quote part of the movie’s dialogue:

"You kissed me and I was born,
You loved me and I lived,
and when the love was over, died a little bit...
I was lost in a stranger’s kiss,
In a lonely place,
In a lonely place."

Another movie tribute was "Sissies," a song inspired by the two Truman Capote movies, celebrating Capote as one of the first unashamed homosexuals ("put the out in outrageous...looking like he was gay before it was cool...they don’t make sissies like him anymore"). Conklin sexually reprised a song she found on one of Winkler’s earlier CDs, "Those Eyes," originally sung by Rosa Passos, with English lyrics by Brock Walsh, about body language speaking louder than lips’ words.

Besides "In a Lonely Place," "Trio," and "Somewhere in Brazil," the real find of the evening was Winkler’s song from the CD celebrating life at any age, "You Might as Well Live" (music Dan Siegel; lyrics WInkler & Marilyn Harris). Calling it his "Sinatra-styled song," Winkler sings very literate lyrics about aging and lost dreams but the message of the beautiful story song is to live your life to the fullest, no matter how often your dreams are shattered, and you’ll be surprised how great things can eventually turn out:

"With so much to give,
you might as well live,
you might as well live."

"You Might as Well Live" is a song that I think many singers are going to put in their repertoire and make a new GAS standard.

The encore had Winkler, Conklin and each band member riffing on Troup’s "Route 66."

Joe Regan, Jr.
Cabaret Scenes
April 4, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org