I began touring a new cabaret show, Legal Immigrant, at the Benaroya Hall in Seattle on Thursday May 3rd. I was with my usual musical compatriots - MD Lance Horne, Eleanor Norton on cello and Chris Jago on drums and guitar, and also joined by Riley Mulherkar on trumpet.
The show was inspired by a few things: my ten year anniversary of becoming a US citizen; the negative rhetoric around the whole subject of immigration, legal or not, being propagated by the Trump administration; and the recent removal of the phrase 'nation of immigrants' from the United States Citizenship and Immigrations Services website. History is being rewritten before our very eyes, and a country so rich in diversity because of the immigrants who have come to live here and pursue whatever the American dream means to them is in denial and claiming that it is no longer diverse. My show is a celebration of immigration, and my feelings on growing older and being an American citizen in the time of Donald Trump.
After opening in Seattle we toured to Denver, Salina, Kansas City, Toronto, NYC (where we played two weeks of shows at the legendary Cafe Carlyle and then midnight shows downtown at Joe's Pub), Westhampton, San Francisco, Chicago, Great Barrington, Washington DC, Boston, New Brunswick, West Palm Beach, Scottsdale and Tucson.
Finally, one night during our mad NYC run we decided to take the subway downtown from the Cafe Carlyle to Joe’s Pub, and we decided we’d have a go at busking! We also happened to have a film crew in tow. So I sang Caledonia on the 6 train!