WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1533 - Tammy Faye Starlite

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Nearly 30 years ago in the alt-comedy scene of New York City, Marc crossed paths with an evangelical country singer named Tammy Faye Starlite. She’s the alter ego of lifelong New Yorker Tammy Lang, who stormed the city’s cabarets and clubs with her own form of performance art and musicality. Tammy and Marc reminisce about the days at places like Luna Lounge, the creation of the Tammy Faye Starlight character, and why she started performing as real singers, like Marianne Faithfull and Nico. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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same as long as you stay with them. No seriously, the price gets locked in and they throw away the key. No hikes, no hidden fees, just one fair and fixed price. And Oxio knows you depend on the internet because they do too. So they make sure to deliver reliable internet with lightning fast speeds. And when their customer service says we understand they mean it. Visit Oxxio.ca for internet from a provider that actually gives a damn and use the promo code WTFmark at checkout to get your first month free. That's Oxxio.ca promo code WTF MARC. All right let's do this. How are you what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the

fuckniks? What's happening? I I'm Mark Marin. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. We've been going strong since 2009. That is crazy and very consistent, I might add. It, I don't know, man. I guess it's just because this is my social life. What you're witnessing here is most of my social life. I meet people I've usually don't know that well

or don't know at all. I talk to them a few times a week and it gives me what I need in terms of human interaction. It's important now. It is important now to have human interaction that is engaged and I would say emotionally, spiritually, psychologically nourishing as opposed to just letting yourself get jerked around emotionally by your primary partner, your phone I am sort of amazed and a little

upset by the compulsive scrolling that happens to me and Probably to most of you and I if you really think about how much attention it sucks out of your life in your brain you ever been Lost in your phone and then all of a sudden you look up and you realize you've been completely detached from the reality around you for anywhere from five minutes to two hours just scrolling along. Whatever your algorithm delivers to you. For me, it's a lot of animal rescue. It's just me going like oh the cats. Oh look at they got they fixed a dog up. Oh my god What are they cooking? How much does that feed? Oh? Grateful Dead one. Oh look at that a 12 year old playing guitar better than I could ever imagine Ah another cat. Oh that guy saved a

Eagle yeah that could go on for hours to the complete diminishment of your human relationship. So I don't know, just be aware, and I'm saying this to myself out loud to you. So today, a few things happening. Today on the show, I have Tammy Faith Starlight. Now, I'm sure many of you don't know her. She's a singer and performance artist.

Her name is Tammy Lang, but Tammy Faith Starlight is her most well-known character. She's a, I've known her for years, really. I haven't seen her or talked to her in a long time, but back in the day, back in the early alternative comedy days in the 90s in New long time, but back in the day, back in the early alternative comedy days in the 90s in New York City, she was someone who was performing around the Lower East Side when I was there.

It was a long time ago, probably the mid 90s, and she was at Luna Lounge with me sometimes, and we talk about a lot of other alternative venues. And I've mentioned things in passing here about that era. And I think you could call it that. It was an era when alternative comedy sort of began to happen. For me, it was just a place to work out. I never saw myself as a quote unquote alternative comic.

At that time I was working clubs, but I used to go to Luna Lounge to kind of blow off steam and improvise and really figured out how I could write for myself and be funny in the moment and sometimes not be funny. That happens. But I don't think we've ever talked about it in depth as much as we do on this episode with Tammy.

She does the Tammy Faye Starlight character, which is sort of a country music character, but she's also done shows as Mary Ann Faithfull and as Nico. And she's bringing that show back to New York next month. But this was a real blast from the past because as I get older, it starts to feel like, man, I've lived several lives and she was around for one of them

and it was good to kind of try to remember that stuff because it was a whole world on the Lower East Side and a lot of stuff gets lost somehow. I think most things do. Everything becomes kind of a clips or content if you go find it with no real context, but it does seem like a lot of stuff that happened, if it wasn't recorded, is just gone forever.

And there was a whole community down there at that time. And, you know, we get into it. It was kind of interesting to go back through it. I'll be in Montclair, New Jersey on Thursday May 2nd at the Wellmont Center Glenside, Pennsylvania near Philly on Friday May 3rd at the Keswick Theatre Washington DC on Saturday May 4th at the Warner Theatre Munhall, Pennsylvania outside Pittsburgh on May 9th at the Carnegie Library Music Hall Cleveland, Ohio on May 10th at the Playhouse Square

Detroit, Michigan on May 11th at the Royal Oak Music Theater. You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all of my dates and links to tickets. You know, I'm starting to wrap my brain around the fact that I'm gonna be acting on a TV show with Owen Wilson. I've had some conversations with Owen on the phone and I've never met the guy. But it's very interesting when you know a guy

from who he is on screen, and then you talk to him, you're like, oh, my God, it's that guy I know from on screen. I mean, that happens here in the garage a lot, but not on the phone too often, and not with someone I haven't met and somebody I'll be working with. And we started to talk about, you know, characters in our relationship but not on the phone too often. And not with someone I haven't met and somebody I'll be working with. And we started to talk about, you know,

characters and our relationship and doing the initial sort of getting to know each other thing and what we think about, you know, the characters and the scripts and the story and, you know, how we're gonna figure out how to, you know, seem like we've known each other a long time. And this is part of the process. And he definitely has a process in place.

I could hear his wheels kind of turning and thinking, and he brought up a lot of good stuff. So, I'm getting into the zone with it. I'm trying to get into the zone with it. I'm trying to push back whatever insecurities I may have. You know, it's a lot, man. Anxiety is a fuck. I'm trying to push back whatever insecurities I may have. You know, it's a lot, man. Anxiety is a fuck. And you can't, you gotta put all that stuff aside and lock in.

I can't sit here and think about who might have been a better choice than me. That's one of my favorite hobbies. But it was encouraging and it was good. You know, I'm starting to look forward to it as long as I can feel like everything back home, back here will be kind of taken care of. I think that's my main anxiety is just like separating my brain from the life

in order to do this job that requires a kind of focus and being away from home. But that's the way it goes. That's show business. We'll see what happens, folks. Oh, at the end of this episode, I'm gonna play a song that's been recorded. It was recorded for a record

that I did a duet with Paige Stark and Luke Paquin who played bass. We just went into a studio. The album is called Love LA. All the proceeds will be going to benefit the Fernando Polum Community Arts Center, providing performing arts instruction to youth in South Central LA. The artists on it are Robin Hitchcock, Emma Swift, Jim James, and Leslie Stevens, me and Paige Stark, Gold Star and Joanna Samuels, Tshaki Miyake and Poppy Jean Crawford, Sunny War and Particle Kid, Cherry Glazer and Jeffer Titi, Joel Jerome, Paloma Parfri. It's kind of a great record.

I did a cover with a page of, the idea was to do LA bands, and I knew Arthur Lee and Love, and I knew a lot of their songs were pretty complicated, but I thought that might be an interesting place to start. And I found a fairly simple song, which is what I need to play effectively. And we did a cover of this slow tune about a junkie called Sign DC.

And we're going to put it up in full at the end of this broadcast. But you can get the record, you know, anywhere you get a record store day records, you can get it on vinyl, you can get it at rsdmrkt.com. I'm pretty proud of it. I never know how I'm going to sound or how it's going to go. We recorded it pretty quickly in this kind of sweet space that's going to be no longer. Paige played drums and Luke played bass. I had my gold top, so I played guitar and I sang with Paige and I played some harmonica at the end, which I didn't even know was gonna happen.

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So look, what's happened since I last talked to you? We've been banking these things a bit so Brendan can go enjoy some time with his family. And the last time I talked to you, I don't think I'd gone to Austin yet. And I went to Austin. And I didn't know how I would feel about Austin because I haven't been to Austin since the giant, meathead comedy takeover.

And for some reason in my mind, I thought like it would just be some sort of sprawling, mind I thought like it would just be some sort of sprawling you know anti woke hack fest would have just consumed the entire city and comedy would be be kind of minimized to that but it didn't turn out to be true the festival was great because I guess I forget and I forget this in the big picture as well, that, you know, all the people that were there before, whatever happened to the place, whether it's Tesla or, you know, whatever, you know, there's a comedy club on every fucking corner now, you know, that it would somehow diminish what Austin used to be.

And it hasn't. You know, the audiences came out, I had a great show at the Paramount Theater, sold it out. I had a great show at the Paramount Theater, sold it out. Sophie Buddle opened for me and she's kind of great. And I was just happily surprised because you forget, you know, you look at the news, you think about the future, you look at the divisiveness in the country

and you think it all trickles down and there's nobody in the middle or nobody Who is like-minded and tolerant and progressive? Left or they've somehow been scared into their homes, but it just it just isn't true Everybody who who has come to see me before in Austin came to see me again The crowds were great the entire festival the Moon Tower Festival was great. I even got on stage for the comedy jam, the comedy, you know, that thing that Josh Adam Myers does.

I wasn't supposed to be on it, but I was like, I'll just go on and do Hey Joe, you got a guitar for me? And that was fun. The whole thing was fun. It was just a few days. I got to see my buddy, Todd Berry, who I haven't seen in a long time,

and all the guys from the state were there, and women, and I hadn't seen them in a long time, and it's just very interesting to all of a sudden be approaching or at 60 with people you've known since you were in your 20s with, to see how that's coming along. How's everybody's aging coming along? There's no stopping it.

But the other thing I did when I was in Austin was digging back into that past, into people that time or other people in comics have forgotten or don't know. I always knew that A. Whitney Brown was somewhere in Austin. A. Whitney Brown was a guy you might remember from Saturday Night Live in the, I guess it was the late 80s and early 90s.

And he had a segment on Update called The Big Picture. He was a very brilliant comic, a very kind of socially engaged comic. And he always was sort of a mythic guy. Like I'd always heard stories about him, just wild stories that he started as a busker in San Francisco and somehow ended up this very astute political observer. And, and, but he was one of those guys that I don't know what you do in your life, but I'm sure it happens to everybody. You hear a name and you're like,

is that guy still alive? What is that guy doing? So I tracked him down, I texted him and I went to his house out there in South Austin and he's been out of the game for a while, but he's up to other things. He's married to an amazing blues guitar player, Carol in Wonderland, and I went to their house, had some beans and rice, saw Whitney's garden, listened to some of the mixes for Carolyn's new record and did, did an interview and that will, that will happen at some

point in the future, but it was kind of an amazing conversation. Unlike any we've had here, it was good to see Whitney is good that he's still alive and what a fucking life. But, uh, you know, just to kind of pull away from comedy and, and, and go to somebody's home and was good to see Whitney, it's good that he's still alive. And what a fucking life. But just to kind of pull away from comedy and go to somebody's home in Austin

and hang out in the Austin way. There is a specific Austin way. And he's just like almost like an old hippie. And it was kind of a beautiful, kind of amazing. So that's something to look forward to coming down the pike. Also, oh my God, had some kind of life-changing event watching this show on Netflix.

And this is not a paid promo. I guess some people were talking about it. I had no idea what it was, but my buddy Jerry Stahl hit me, hit me to it. This series, this limited series called Baby Reindeer. Holy shit! It fucking turned me inside out! I have never seen a series as honest and raw and emotionally

wrought as as this, as this series. And you know, the guy who plays the lead in it wrote the thing, it's based on a one man show he did in Edinburgh. Richard Gad is his name. And there was just something about the story. You just know that it's disturbing and it's true. And it revolves around his trauma, it revolves around him being stalked by a

relentless serial stalker. It revolves around his sexuality and the impact of trauma and how that opens you up. I don't know, I can't even explain how impactful this thing is in my own life, in terms of like, you know, me dealing with my own personal trauma and what that does to your personality. Also sort of the struggles of, of trying to figure out who you are and identifying, you know, why you, you hate yourself or why you go through what you go through and why you are like you are. But it's very specific, but even if you're not as emotionally or mentally damaged, the story is very compelling and kind of, not kind of, but very disturbing. But I guess the fact that he was a comic who was struggling to make headway in the business

and these things happened to him, it's menacing. But it's menacing in a way that is emotionally grounded in what is clearly a true story and the courage and boldness of the thing is just kind of mind-blowing. I related to it and there's still things that I'm working through, but it definitely gave me a window into some similar sort of feelings and emotional responses and the sort of liabilities of being kind of mentally ill in a very specific way and how that kind of defines your life without you really kind of knowing it

until some kind of catharsis happens. But again, it's rough riding and it's heavy and it could be very triggering for people. But I got to be honest with you, it's the rawest, most kind of courageous series I've seen in a long time. If you can handle it, I would watch it and be confronted with some real disturbing humanity. How's that for a review? Holy shit. On the other side of that,

I'm gonna go out and see my dad in New Mexico and see if we still connect, if he still knows who I am. I'm gonna try to get out there for a couple of days and happy Passover if it's not too late. Maybe I just missed it cause I forgot to talk about it the last show. I hope your satyrs and things went well.

All right, I think that's good, don't you? Tammy Faye Starlight, what a wild thing this was cause I really hadn't seen her in a long time. Her new show, well her live show, I don't know if it's new but it's gonna be at Joe's Pub in New York, the live and Nico show, every Wednesday in May, beginning next week, May 1st. You can go to Joe's Pub dot com for tickets and this is me catching up with Tammy Faye Starlight or Tammy Lang. Why don't I just say her real name, Tammy Lang. Ready is there anyone stronger? No tougher. No funnier. I do not make jokes. I make warriors

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I think I was on your Air America. Oh really? Yeah, and I have, I must have done it as Tammy Faye Starlight, or I might have been in character, which is, you know, really annoying. Everything happened at such an unreasonable hour at Air America. Our show was from six to nine, but then I had to get there at like three. In the morning?

Yeah, so that entire period of my life is like some sort of half dream. Oh my God. So the memories are fragmented. They're the same for me, and my husband remembers because he was there too. And I have, like, I feel bad because I have zero. But I have zero memory of almost everything. Except, you know, I mean, I remember, I have memories of jokes of yours that I remember

from hearing at Luna. Wow. Like that I still use and I obviously, you know, credit you of course. I can't. They made it into the stage show? Into my stage show? Yeah.

I can't, I couldn't do that because I would then have to credit you and I. It'd be weird. Well jokes though, I kind of wonder if I remember them. I have a memory of you saying, talking about tourists and having them say, we went to the New York Applebee's. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember that. That was the Times Square bit. I remember that. Yeah, yeah. It's better than our Applebee's in New York Applebee's. Yeah, it was. I remember that joke. It was hilarious. Yeah, it was kind of a good joke.

It was a really good joke. You had a lot. And you know, I have like, they're discreet memory. Like I have a memory of your joke from your last special, which being a cat, you know, person about, you know, the best case scenario is that you have to kill your friends. Yeah, that's, these things just stick with me. Well, that's it.

Yeah, I think that's a good one for certain people. But I'm trying to remember, I'm trying to put it together, because I just talked to Thurston Moore. I saw that. Yeah, I'll give you, if you want, I've got a galley of his book if you want it. Oh, thank you, yeah, I would. Because we started to talk,

I started to talk about being in New York, New York City in the late 80s, and then starting to really kind of do Luna Lounge, which was alt comedy, quote unquote. But at that time, there was still like, cause you know, you talk to people like Thurston, and really the vitality of New York City performance art as it was, as we saw it, like this mythic time

with Karen Finley and Bogosian and Spalding and people doing kind of crazy, Gigi Allen somewhere on the outskirts. Oh yeah, and also the Charles Bush, like Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, that kind of stuff. Like the theater that was going on that kind of spurred all this, so much seems to have come from just that,

that time. That time. Yeah, and also like, but not performance already, but then there was the Richard Foreman plays. Oh, yeah, which I saw several of. Right. And I remember because I, God forgive me, I just couldn't bear them.

And there was always a clock on the wall of the stage set. And I would just stare at that clock because I knew it was 60 minutes or so. I would just. Yeah, there was a lot going on. I don't remember them ever sort of resonating in a way, but it was always sort of a lot going on. But he was sort of a thing, right?

Oh, he was a big thing at the ontological hysteric at St. Mark's Church. Yeah, and then there was, Brother Theodore was still doing his show. Yeah, on 13th Street, right? Yeah. The 13th Street rep and, yeah, there was so much, I'm trying to even, like again, it's... What was that performance space that was like in a loft? It was some woman's house almost.

Do you remember the kitchen? Was it called the kitchen? Oh, the kitchen, I thought... No, maybe that wasn't it. The kitchen was sort of a big open space, maybe? Like somewhere in the team? This was definitely a woman ran this performance space upstairs in a loft and it looked like she might,

you know, it was nice, but it looked like she might've lived there. I can't remember her name. I remember seeing Ethel Eichelberger do all of Racine's Phaedra, like every single part in a loft. It was around probably like 86 or something like that. It was just the evolution of it that I made the assumption with Thurston that many of

our generation, we were already two generations removed from what was that mid-70s, early to mid-70s performance art scene or 80s even. But the sort of idea that it was still a thing to do was very real. And it was a thing to aspire to. That's right. And I was talking about my friend Esther Ballin and her father started the squat theater. They came from Hungary, I think, in 1977.

She has a show about it. It's a kind of show about her life. Yeah. I know about it also, because I'm- Growing up in that environment. Growing up in that environment. Niko lived there at the squat.

Really? Yeah. And she, Nico lived there at the Squad. Really? Yeah. And what years was this? In I think around 80, 82. So she was sort of over it. Yeah, she was- Late Nico. Late Nico, but pre like all her European tours.

Right. Still very heroine Nico. Oh really? And Esther, who was a teenager at the time, was friends with her and then was horrifyingly disappointed because I think Nico borrowed money from her without her. Right, without her knowing it. Sure.

She would always say like, do you have money for heroin? You know, like that. Like. At least she was honest. She was honest. So. And that in the early eighties, like- At least she was honest. She was honest. So- And that, in the early 80s, that was when that heroin was real good. I mean, like I-

I get, yeah, I don't know. Well, it was like there was a shift in the dope. Like in the, when I was there, I guess it was, well, I was later, I guess, in the 80s, mid to late 80s, they realized that they could get new buyers by making the heroin more pure so it was snortable and wouldn't scare away the college kids. Oh, well that's kind and convenient and I was just, I'm re-reading a book that I've read 700 times about Nico just because it, you know. Well that's the show you're doing, right?

Nico Underground. Nico Underground. I'm doing it. I did it, well, I did it first in 2010 at Joe's Pub, and then it evolved, it had a different title, and then I had an unfortunate moment where I changed the show completely, and then it was Penny Arcade who said you have to change it back.

She's another one, like from that era. Yeah, I mean, and she's still working, and she's brilliant. Yeah? Yeah, and she's still working and she's brilliant. Yeah? Yeah, and she's a dear friend. What was this change you had to make? Well, I wanted, because, you know, because I'm a crass, I wanted to get into, you know, I wanted to get into a certain festival in New York City.

Right. And the head of that festival saw the Nico show that I did, the same one that I'm doing in May, and he said, well, it's good, but you need a new director and you need to change it. So I... That vague? That vague. And he said, I want you to work with this particular director. And I had to tell the director who is still with me, thank God, but I loved him. I loved Michael Shorali. I said, I have to work with this other director and the other actor who's in the show because the show is based on an interview that Nico did on Melbourne in 1986.

Pete Slauson And when did she die? Nicole Shorali 88. Pete Slauson Yeah. Nicole Shorali 88. Pete Slauson What about that interview? Nicole Shorali That interview was, I was listening to it and I thought, I really want to do this as a play because everything she says is kind of a non sequitur. And yet they talk about all the songs that would be good in a show because her songs are wonderful and brilliant and profound and very dark, but to do kind of a show that people would wanna see, you might wanna have

a few Lou Reed and a few Jackson Brown song and David Bowie and so they would, and the interviewer is kind of desperately trying to keep her on track and she seems to be, there are different interviews of Nico and you can tell if her mood is kind of light like this and then when she's like this and she doesn't answer. Like there's a point in the interview where he asks her about like doing David Bowie's Heroes and about you know the divided Berlin

and there's, it's like it feels like five minutes of silence but it's probably just 30 seconds, but in the show we extend it, because it's funnier when it's, but you know, so that interview was just so, I adapted the interview, I have some of the exact dialogue and I have some that I made up. And this is for the show you're doing in May. This is for the show that I'm doing in May,

and that I did prior to that, that Penny Arcade saw and loved, and then when I changed it and the new director took out the interviewer and had me just talking to the air and to him who was the voice of, anyway, it was a freaking mess and it was horrible. And we did it at Joe's Pub

and afterwards my husband who's in the band, he was kind of like, we were all driving back, me in the band and I was like so depressed and the rest of the band was like, no, it was good. And my husband was's in the band. He was kind of like, we were all driving back, me in the band, and I was like so depressed, and the rest of the band was like, no, it was good. And my husband goes, that sucked, that sucked. And it was all because he took that director's advice. Yeah, and then I went to Penny Arcade. I hadn't been friends with her, but I knew of her,

and I really respected her career, because she had just at, you know, she wouldn't mind, she gives her age, at age 62 at this point, she had gotten this, you know, big profile in the times. And I thought, well, she can do it. Like, was she, like, was she a late Warhol person? She was a late Warhol person in like the seventies.

Um, I believe her, the film that she did was women in revolt. Okay. Um, so what did Penny tell you? Penny told me, she said, I saw the show when you originally did it, and she said, and I hope this doesn't sound too solipsistic or whatever, but she said, I was jealous. And then she said, and I saw what you just did,

and it was shit. And she goes, you have to get back your original director, your original actor, I will get you a run at Theater for the New City and you will do it. And that actually happened. We got a run months later. You went back to the other guy? I went back with my head in my hands

to my director, Michael Cirelli, to the actor, Jeff Ward, who was also part of the Surf Reality crowd. Sure, yeah, we can talk about that. Yeah, he was part of, he had this comedy troupe called Euphobia. Okay. And he's brilliant, and he played the Australian director,

and I was like, please, can you do it again? And we did, and we got this lovely review in the Times. Was that the Cabaret review? That was the Niko Underground review of this actual show and it's it's framed It's looked at as cabaret. It's looked at as cabaret. I was just I just had it Sounding like you know again. It's like my freaking Norma Desperado. I just had an article. Yeah Being part of the alt cabaret scene which well, let's talk about that in this sense of like well First of all Nico for me like, which. Well, let's talk about that in the sense of like, well, first of all, Nico, for me, like, you know,

I was always kind of interested in her, but then a few years ago, I went and got all the records because I talked to John Cale, so I got, you know. Oh, I love John Cale. Yeah, and I've gotten all those records he produced of hers, the desert, what's that one? Oh, Desert Shore. Yeah.

Yeah, which is beautiful. Yeah, it's really something. And, you know, because I had had no real sense of Nico other than I don't think I took to her voice early on with the Velvets. I liked it, but it always seemed a little bit off to me, but it's unique. Yeah, as Cale said, she sang out of tune,

but we played out of tune, so. Yeah, but it was interesting because her phrasing is what's that woman's name? Astrid? She's a jazz singer? Astrid Gilberto. Yeah. Yeah. There's something there that's similar.

Yes. It's, it's, I wouldn't say it's, she's South American, so I wouldn't say European, but it's certainly not American. Right. And there's something about the phrasing too. I mean, but. And the breathiness of that, of her, sorry to interrupt, but of those songs, she used her kind of breathier voice.

Yeah, but Nico was like, I remember reading Please Kill Me, and there was a bit in there where she had gone to Ann Arbor and fucked all the stooges and gave them all VD and then left. Yeah, and she had a kind of sustained affair with Iggy. And he says something in this book by Richard Witts, which is a biography that came out around 1995 or so, where he said, he loved her and she helped him because she said to him, like, you have to be more poisoned.

You're not poisoned yet. You know, like, and that she also taught him how to go down. Oh, good. Well, that's good. Yeah, she said, Jim, there's something you can do for me. Like that, you know, and he also has where he says like, he loved her, but she wasn't the type of person where you'd see her coming

and you'd say, oh, Nico's coming. Everything's gonna be all right. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm one of those people. Yeah. No one's like, you know, inviting you to the party necessarily. No, you are like, you're a joy.

What are you talking, you are. I just think I'm a weighty present sometimes. You are not a weighty present. Oh, thank God. Well, live wire anyways. Which is great. Yeah, but like, okay, so if we go back, like, Nico, now how many, like, when you do the show,

because I'm getting older and I'm seeing where culture is going, I really wonder, you know, who gives a shit about things. Yeah, I know. And these things, because you're probably a little younger than me, but even us mythologizing and admiring these people, there's still decades before us.

So I really wonder who's interested. Well, people older than us. And people who... Theater crowd. Theater crowd and people, even people who don't know Nico per se or, you know, have heard of... Are interested about the show. Or, you know, they, hopefully they're interested

because she's such a weird character. Yeah. You know, you try and contextualize it so that you don't have to have any kind of foreknowledge of Nico. Sure. Well, music too, when you have music, it stands on its own above and beyond whatever the context is. Yeah. It mitigates any kind of sense of, oh, I have to go see a play. Right. But where did you grow up? Because I'm trying to put together, when I see people like you, especially after so long, and you were someone I saw around a lot back in,

it would probably be the mid-90s. Yeah. You know, I don't like, I don't know where you came from or what the trajectory is. I know you've been at it. I've been at it, yeah. Where'd you grow up? I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Really? Yeah. So you're a New York kid, up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Really? Yeah. So you're a New York kid, that's a rare thing. It's a rare thing, and we're a rare little Upper West Side liberal Democrat Jews. Yeah, yeah. Didn't used to be rare. Didn't used to, no. We weren't religious, but I went to an elementary school that was Jewish.

So I always had a double curriculum of English and Hebrew, but it was sort of like a, you know, it was like a post hippie school, like so that, you know, there were very few kids. And what, were your parents were New Yorkers? No, well, my father was from Brooklyn and my mother actually converted to Judaism. She was from an Italian Polish Catholic from Rochester, New York. So she had come down to, she was

studying at Columbia School of Social Work and met my father and- Converted. Converted. So actually more Jewish than most people. More Jewish and her name was Judy and she really took to becoming a kind of Upper West Side Jewish lady in St. John Nits, and she was part of Community Free Democrats. What did she do? She was a psychiatric social worker, and then she kind of ascended the ranks in UJA Federation.

My father was a judge. A judge? Yeah, he was a judge. A judge? Yeah, he was a judge. Prior to that, he was the, I guess, the drug czar for Rockefeller. For Nelson Rockefeller. He wrote the Rockefeller drug laws. Oh, and so what kind of judge? What was his bench? He was an acting Supreme Court judge in New York. His biggest case, I guess, was the Jack Henry Abbott case,

which was the... The killer who Mailler got out of prison? Yeah, well, he ended up going to prison for manslaughter, but Mailler... Got him out and then he killed someone else. Yeah, he killed someone else and then Mailler testified on his behalf. The Belly of the Beast. The Belly of the Beast. Was the the beast was the book was the book and the play and But didn't he get out of jail and then immediately kill a waiter

I think that that was the case my father did it when he when he killed the waiter Mm-hmm, and then Norman Mailer also testified and yeah, they didn't help him. What's a waiter when this guy's a genius? I yeah, I know it's you know, that was probably his argument. I don't know. I'm speculating. I think that was it. He's a genius. Yeah, I know. You know, as there's- That was probably his argument. I don't know. I'm speculating. I think that was it. He's a writer. He should have immunity. Yeah.

I mean, as- Wow. You know, like, I mean, Jean Genet went to prison, but- But that changed his whole point of view, I think, didn't it? I think so. Again, this is my dilettante-ism. Yes, yeah, sure. We know the names, maybe not the work.

I know. I read The Maids a hundred years ago. Yeah, yeah. So you're growing up in New York, and are not the work. I know, I read The Maids a hundred years ago. So you're growing up in New York, and are you like, well how old are you, do you say? Oh, yeah, I'm 57. Right, so you're close to my age, I'm 60.

So are you like going downtown when you're a teenager? No, I was like, I mean eventually I did, but I was not a rebellious person. I was a theater person, and I always did plays from when I was very little. I would, you know, drive my parents crazy by writing my own plays. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, rewriting West Side Story and, you know, doing plays for my family and singing in choir and all that kind of stuff. Did you go see a lot of plays? Not as many as I should have. I think the first play I saw was, the first Broadway show I saw was The Magic Show with Doug Henning.

Of course, Doug Henning, the long haired. It's an illusion. Yeah, I saw that show, I saw Beetlemania. Beetlemania, I wish I'd seen. Did you get to see Marshall Crenshaw in it when he was... I wonder, I don't know. I don't remember when I saw it, but that was when my grandparents were living in Jersey

and I'd come back for a few weeks, once or twice a year and go into the city. Oh wow. And then I saw better shows. I remember, I think I saw Brighton Beach Memoirs. Oh, I saw that in... With Fisher Stevens, I think. Was Fisher Stevens in it? You didn't see

Matthew? No. Because that was going to a Jewish high school. Right. That was a school trip. Like, Neil Simon. Look, a Jew did this. A Jew did. Look at us. Look what we can do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do everything. We make the bombs. We cure the right we do look at look at the things look at the Look at the pride. Okay, Matthew Brodov. He's not a Jew, but he is a Jew. Sure. He's a Honor honorary like Nathan Lane. Yeah, Valerie Harper, right? I can't believe Valerie Harper is not you I know or Norman Jewison You know, I knew that that yeah, but Valerie Harper was it I think that was a was a shock to all of us Yeah, I've Harper was, I think that was a shock to all of us. Yeah, I just got a DM from the woman who's now in charge of education at the synagogue in Albuquerque that I grew up in.

Wow. And she's overseeing the Hebrew school and she was asking, is it true that you went to this Hebrew school? Oh my God. Because I'd like to be able to tell the kids that in this time of troubles, in terms of anti- antisemitism, that this guy made it out. Yeah, and look at, you're flourishing.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure none of the kids will really know me unless she brings up the bad guys movie, but- They'll know you. Maybe. They'll know you from glow. Yeah, maybe. I don't know how old these kids are. They're pretty young in Hebrew school.

I mean, you're under 13. Are they, you know, are they very, like, Hasidic? No, it's conservative. Okay. So yeah, that's what I, you know, conservative, people think I think it means very conservative. Conservative was in the middle. Yes, the middle way. It's not the reform. There's no guitars on the pulpit. Right. Not like- Not the Bema.

Not one Seder. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it's, uh, yeah, it's weird that when you There's no guitars on the pulpits. Right. Not like- Not the Beema. Not one Seder. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it's, yeah, it's weird that when you grow up that a conservative, you do develop a resentment for either other side. Yeah.

It's, yeah, we ended up going to Reform Synagogue and it was kind of, I remember we sat behind Ron Silver, which was exciting. Angry Jew. Really angry Jew. Yeah. You know, my day school where I went to, Ben Stiller went there.

Oh yeah. I remember him there because he was, at that point he was, it was very little, I think, only for a few years, but he was Benji Stiller. Oh, I had no idea. Yeah, and we knew that he was the son of Stiller and Meera. Funny people. Funny people.

Yeah, yeah. Funny Jews, because I think Ann Meera converted, right? I don't know if she did. Did she? I don't know. They were funny though. They were really funny, and Jerry Stiller, I mean, they were both hilarious.

Yep, they're both gone, I think now. They are gone. So when does it shift though? So you're doing theater in, what, high school? High school, and you know, I'd always thought They're all gone. So when does it shift though? So you're doing theater in what, high school? High school and, you know, I'd always had, I don't know, it's not a subversive streak, but maybe it was, you know, and it was latent,

but because I would always get in trouble for things in high school and I didn't do, like I didn't do drugs, I didn't have sex, I didn't drink, I didn't do drugs, I didn't have sex, I didn't drink. I did drink once during the high school. It was the high school every year because this was my high school on the Upper East Side, which was my introduction to Jews who weren't Democrats. I couldn't believe that they were like Jews. I didn't learn that till later either. Yeah.

That the sort of pro-Israel bunch, the more radical of them were kind of taken in by the Republicans. Yeah, they were like, and they would wear like the girls, they all talk like this, cause they were from, you know, great neck and they would talk like that. I thought, why do the boys like them? I don't understand. And they were from, you know, great neck and they would talk like that. I thought, why do the boys like them?

I don't understand. Like, and they were, they were pretty, but they wore like little Chanel suits. And I thought like they dress like their mothers. I don't, it was just very confusing. Um, so, um, but I found my little niche of weirdos and, um, and then in the school, high school dinner dance at the Waldorf Astoria that

their parents would pay a lot of money and, um, the choir would sing and the la, high school dinner dance at the Waldorf Astoria that the parents would pay a lot of money and the choir would sing. And I think it was senior year, I decided like, oh, they're allowing me to have like Kalu and cream. Like I can just, and then I was just too, I was like way too far gone to be on stage and sing with the choir. My parents were like, where's Tammy?

I don't know where she is. And then, so I was drunk then. Oh, that was junior year. And then the next year, I was kind of like a cautionary tale. Like, I don't know what your parents let you do at home, but nobody's getting drunk this year. But my parents don't, like my father- She must have made a real scene of it.

I guess I did, but I really wasn't like I would get sent because it was the 80s and I wore a mini skirt and I would get sent to the you know, principal's office. I didn't do anything. Yeah. It wasn't so I don't know where did I go from there. Then I remember going downtown to like dance clubs, the peppermint lounge. Sure. Dance Danceateria. I went to Danceateria and then in college,

which was NYU, I went to Tisch. I started out in Tisch, School of the Arts. And I hated it. I hated it. Why? Because they, you know, you audition for Tisch and they put you, if they take you, they put you in one of the five theaters, like Stella

Adler or Circle in the Square. They put me in experimental theater because like, oh, she's weird. We'll put her in experimental theater. But I had no interest in like movement or dance or being an animal or contact improvisation. Yeah. Or, you know, you'd have to kind of, everybody

closes their eyes and, you know, feels you. Yeah. You of, everybody closes their eyes and feels you. Yeah, not your thing. Not my thing, and also guys were like, they're 18 years old and they're feeling all the girls. It's like, ugh. As somebody once said to me, in sweatpants. Because you could feel like when nature happens and you're closing your eyes

and everybody's feeling each other and you suddenly, ah! Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then I started taking acting classes outside of school and I would go to, and again, I didn't really do anything. Like I hated living in the dorm, so I started living at home, which my parents were not pleased with,

but I didn't care. And I started going to like clubs like Palladium, but only if I could get into, like I'd see if I could get into the Mike Todd room, if I could sneak into like the big- The cool people room? The cool people room. I remember going to the MTV Awards, like in 1986,

getting a ticket and thinking I would be with all the big stars. Yeah. And I thought, wait a second, no, I'm just gonna be with the people on the floor. The rabble. The rabble, the hoi polloi. So I'm like, I see a door that says,

do not enter, so I went in. And all of a sudden there's like everybody. There's the Hooters, there's Madonna. And I just stood there and was like talking to them and hanging out and you know, and you know, the bell waves at me and I'm like, okay, I'm in. It's like the greatest night of my life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. And then when did you start music? Music? I started, it was around like when I started getting into the, because I was doing traditional acting, I got on a, I did a role on a soap for a while, like a little, just a small part that became bigger. I was like a maid. I had taken over for Allison Jani, who was a maid on Guiding Light, and then she got a role on another soap, so the

casting director said, can you just be this maid? And I kind of created a little character out of it, and they kept, and I would make up my own lines, and they kept calling me back, and then they're like, we're putting you with Allison. So Allison and I were the two wacky maids on Guiding Light for like two years. Really? Yeah. So you worked with Alison Jani for two years? I worked with Alison for, she came to my first wedding.

Really? Yeah. That's crazy. It was so crazy. And we got along so well. And I mean, the humor was cause I'm five three and she's, she would say five 12. Yeah. And you know, I said, Alison, I'm making up my own lines.

And we would make up our own lines together. We had- Did you talk to her anymore? No. I mean, I wish I did. Why not? But because she's like got how many Emmys and Oscar and she's famous.

And what was your name then, Tammy? It was Tammy Lange. Yeah. And I started Tammy Face Starlight because I was going to Surf Reality. So how does that happen? So you're acting and then you go down because that place is a very specific place that doesn't have a real place in history. And it was a place.

It was a place. I mean, I think Rob Pritchard used to live there. He did with his then wife, Jenny, and their four-year-old daughter, Sky. It was a place. I mean, I think Rob Pritchard used to live there. He did with his then wife, Jenny. Yes. And their four-year-old daughter, Sky. What was it on like, on second? Allen. Oh, on Allen.

Upstairs. Upstairs from like, Blue Stockings, the lesbian bookstore. Yeah, right. Yeah. And this was like a performance, it was a venue, but it was also kind of a collective, right? But it was really more performance art and variety based. Cause it was, I remember when Luna Lounge started that there was this tension

between that world of performance art, which was surf reality, collective unconscious. Yeah, I forgot about collective unconscious. Oh my God. Yeah, and then like the sort of mainstream comics come down there. And you've got all these weird little acts around that are like, what the fuck is this?

This is our place. It was, I remember, because what happened was my first husband, he was a comic and a comic actor, and we did a play together, Coed prison sluts, the musical, which was something that the producer of the show saw. It was done by the, originated by the Annoyance Theater in Chicago, who did the real live Brady Bunch.

They did this in Chicago and we did it in New York. Coed prison sluts. So, and then, one of his best friends, Frank Hall, who is known as Face Boy. Face Boy, yeah, I remember Face Boy. Face Boy said, hey, I've been going down to this place of reality, you can do characters there.

Face Boy, right. So you did this, you just got cast in the prison sluts thing? In the prison sluts. Were you part of the, from the ground up or what? No, it was I was working My ex and I were working at this telemarketing company that sold theater tickets over the phone and everybody there was an actor and the boss and his wife were

Producers and or they wanted to be and so the boss producers or they wanted to be. And so the boss went to Chicago, saw this and said, I wanna do it here with and cast these like people who I work with. So it was great. And we held auditions for the other roles and we ran for like a, I don't know, a year and a half or something.

Oh my God, that's a big thing. Yeah, and it was all- So it was a thing. It was a thing and it was like, it was dirty. It was like, you know, in prison, and there were songs that were called Shit Motherfucker. That was, again, I think that was due to- Wonder if you could do it today.

I think you could do it today, but I think the cross-dressing psychiatrist might not be considered as funny as it was then. Like that the joke was that the psychiatrist was... Had problems. We had problems and wore women's clothes and lipstick and that that was you know like a little...

That was the joke. That was the joke like something like it hot like that. And so maybe it would have to be adjusted. Sure, sure. So you got in that and that's a year and a half. And Faceboy's in it? No, he wasn't in it, but he was best friends with my ex.

And he ended up, oh God, he ended up living with us for eight months, which was in my apartment, which my ex-husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, and he's like, oh, can Frank just stay here for a few weeks? And I said, yeah, because I didn't know how to say no. But like my one bedroom, yeah, okay. But through Frank, we got to surf reality.

I never could get a handle on him. His brother is John S. Hall, who was the lead singer of King Missal. Yeah, I remember them. Yeah, I remember John. He was an odd sort too. Brilliant poet. Yeah, yeah, I like that guy. I think I interviewed him at some point. I don't remember if it was on this show or another show. I liked King Missal a lot, because that was a Kramer band, wasn't it?

Yes, it was. And I actually did a record with Kramer. Oh, yeah? We did, like, it was a one-off on Shimmie Discs called, it was his title, Glenn or Glenda, and I did the lyrics and he did the music and I sang. Yeah, it's interesting, that's a whole other world too, that era of performance in New York, the Shimmydisc era and Kramer era. Yeah.

I mean, there was a lot going on. I think Anne Magnusson did stuff with Kramer, Jim Bongwater was Kramer. She had Bongwater was Kramer, and Kramer's still around, like, and he's a brilliant musician and, you know, he had his stuff. Yeah, it was such a rarefied thing, but like it doesn't sort of factor into, like I don't know if there's any histories or books written about that era of New York performance.

Maybe that, maybe Rob's book, which I didn't read, the guy from Luna Lounge. Oh yeah, Rob Sacker. Yeah, I think he wrote a book that probably brought in some of that stuff. Probably. I don't know, because he was more of a music venue, but Faceboy, okay, so that was his brother.

Yeah, Faceboy was sort of a, he was sort of an impresario, like he would present things. Yeah. I had, I forgot, I forgot, that we had a little comedy troupe, me and my ex-husband, Jay and, um, Faceboy and John Hall, his brother, we had a short-lived comedy troupe called

Squeal Like a Pig, where we did all these kinds of characters. And one of the characters that I did was this right-wing country singer named Tammy Faye Starlight, which I named because my name is Tammy, and Tammy Faye was in the news. I thought Starlight sounded stupid, like a cheap lounge. So I thought, okay, that's fine. So that was just a character in a sketch group. It was a character in a sketch group.

And the only thing I had was that I did the song Stand By Your Man and in between the two choruses, I would put in a monologue about being happily gang raped to the tune of Stand By Your Man. And so that kind of took off. And then I thought everybody's doing all these different characters like John Leguizamo and certainly Eric Bogosian who was a big influence. And I mean even Whoopi Goldberg or Lily Tom, and I just didn't wanna do that.

So you just locked into town and you said- I just was like, I wanna do one thing, and if I'm gonna do it, and I wanna do it, I don't wanna wear wigs, I don't want it to be camp, I want it to be mean, and so she was mean, and in a sweet way, but hated Jews. Yeah, sweetly hated Jews. Sweetly hated Jews. Sweetly hated Jews.

And that was, cause that's when I knew you, that was what you did. Yeah, that was all that I did. Tammy Faye Starlight, that was it. Yeah, that was it. And I was like locked in and I- And you had a band? I had a band, which at one point included Billy Ficca

from television. Oh wow, yeah. Because I knew him and I saw him perform with like the Washington Squares. So I thought, well, I want to- The Washington Squares. Yeah. Oh my God, well, they were sort of like a take

on a folk group or something. Yeah, they were actual like great musicians. Lauren Agnelli, who's the only one who's still around, Bruce J. Pascoe and Tom Goodkind, who were, and they, I remember seeing them in college, I remember seeing them at Irving Plaza. The reason I went to see them was because- It was kind of half a bit, wasn't it?

It was sort of a bit, but they were so good. They were so talented. They sang like Peter, Paul and Mary. But they were the first people in 1984 I ever saw do, they did like a funny version of, like a folk version of Come On Feel the Noise. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of where that, you know, that kind of meta.

Yeah, yeah. Sensibility. It kind of broke your brain in terms of like that, you knew that musical satire, you know, could not be stupid. Yeah. Right. And it could be. And so as Tammy Faye, I started, then I started like, oh, I can write songs.

So I wrote the anti-abortion song called God Has Lodged a Tenet in My Uterus. That was the first one that I wrote. And later on I wrote, it was a parody of the Dina Carter song, Did I Shave My Legs for This, but only, not lyrically, only through the title, Did I Shave My shave my vagina for this. And that was, and then I decided to just start going down

to Nashville and doing kamikaze. Like I was like, I loved Nashville and I studied everything. I read all the biographies and autobiographies. And I read Naomi- Of the music business down there. Yeah, of Naomi Judd and Tanya Tucker and Barbara Mandrell. Right.

All these, and with all these quotes that were so good, like Barbara Mandrell saying, Christians aren't better, only forgiven, like that kind of stuff. Right. I loved, I thrived on it. That's good. I loved going, and so I decided I would go down to Nashville and I was like, how am I gonna get there?

And I saw that there was an ad on the Nashville network, like do your songs for industry professionals and get assessed to your marketability. So I thought I'll go down as Tammy Faye Starlight and do my stupid songs and see what they say. Because I thought it would be hilarious. So I go down there and I took Lauren Agnelli from the Washington Squares who played guitar for me

and I dressed like this big Loretta Lynn ball gown and white kabuki makeup and black lipstick, and I'm walking through the halls of Opryland Hotel, which is, you know, the world. I know that place. It's like a theme park almost. It's a theme park. It's got like, you know, water rides.

It's just all under a dome. So I'm running up the stairs and I look like a freaking, like, you know, Susie and the Banshees refugee. And somebody goes to me, oh, you look pretty. And I thought, okay, I'm in the right place. And I did God has lodged a tenant in my uterus. And the woman, for the industry professionals. And the woman wrote, she wrote in the little card, I don't know what you're

doing but keep doing it. And then I was standing in the hall, it was surreal with all these cowboys in their Garth Brooks, half green, half white shirts and the cowboy hats going, do that Eater song again. And then I just kept going down there and like doing open mics with the Stand By Your Man or doing a song that I wrote called Ride the Cotton Pony about going down on a woman during her period. And I would get, I did it at the Bluebird Cafe, which is, you know, the hallowed ground where, you know, not only Taylor Swift played, but Garth Brooks started. No, I know that place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I did Ride the Cotton Pony and I think I did, oh, I did a song called Moonshiners Child that I wrote,

which is Mike Kullminer's daughter about a girl whose father's a moonshiner, and then he fucks her and she has his baby. And I got hissed at the Bluebird. But there were people in the back who were laughing, and I just ran out, and then I would do The Stand By Your Man with the gang rape monologue and people would, you know, yell at me and shut me down. But I didn't care because I thought it was hilarious.

And then it started to kind of build and then I kind of got a following in a sense in Nashville. And- Did you do a record? Well, I did a Tammy Faye record before that, like in 1998, 29, and it was actually, bizarrely, with Jeff Ward as an interviewer, it was a radio interview. And I was horrible in two levels on that,

because one, this is so awful, I was having an affair with somebody who was in my band. And I didn't, my husband didn't know, my ex-husband. I don't do that anymore now because I'm happy with my husband. But I was doing it, I was, for whatever reason, and I decided on the record, it would be funny

if in the script, it would come out that Tammy Faye was having an affair with this bass player. Yeah. And, you know, my husband was on the record and he was, I gave him lines, say, I can't believe you're having an affair with, you know. And it was all real.

It was all real. Oh wow. And, um. Did he find out? Yes. It was later. But... The Cry For Help album.

It was, and, you know, I was so, and then, and I was so awful, um, I wrote reams of poetry that I would just leave by our bed. Like, I wanted, and, but then, before he found out about it, I had booked myself on the Columbia University radio station, I think it was WKCR or something. The guy who booked me knew what my stick was, the wish stick. But when I got there, it was this Barnard girl who was subbing. And I just went into Tammy Faye Starlight and I was saying, I could tell she was Jewish and I'm like, honey, why don't you take all that filthy Jew money and just cleanse

it? Give it to Christ. And then I did the uterus song and after the song, she goes, okay, we're going to go for a break now. And then she turns off, she puts on a record and she's like, you have to get out of here. People are calling and they're screaming at you. And like, they're so angry. And I had my whole band there. We ran out of there like it was like the cops were chasing us, like a Scooby Doo. And then we hear on the radio as we're listening, she has a nervous breakdown on the air. And my ex-husband, God bless him, taped it and we put it on the record where she starts, where she's crying.

Oh, what happened to that girl? I don't know. Her name was Allie Gold. Yeah. And it's- on the record. Oh. Where she starts, where she's crying. What happened to that girl? I don't know. Her name was Allie Gold, and it's, it's. Have you made an amends? No. I don't make them. I mean.

It's comedy, man. Some Yom Kippur, I'm going to have to do that at some point in the day of reckoning. So Tammy Faye really had a life. It was kind of a radical thing, huh? Yeah, it was a radical thing. And then I did a Tammy Faye really had a life. It was kind of a radical thing, huh? Yeah, it was a radical thing. And then I did a Tammy Faye play and then it kind of petered out. Then I decided to write about Nico.

But did you tour with Tammy Faye? Oh yeah, I toured in California. Did you open for people or you just did smaller venues? I did smaller venues. I mean, it was all self-funded. Did you make any money? No. You just did smaller venues or what did you do? I did smaller venues. I mean, it was all self-funded. Yeah. Did you make any money? No.

I don't make money now. I don't, you know, my- How do you survive? Because my family is gone and because my brother, my dear brother had a malpractice suit that he won and then he passed away. And so, you know, I got some money saved. So, yeah, no. So where was I?

Well, it was after 10th. You got to Nico. I got to Nico. But like at this time, so like, you know, you're doing all this stuff and there was an environment for it. You know, Wheeler Walker Jr. does the thing. Oh, yeah. What's his name? Ben?

I forgot that. Oh, it's another Jewish guy. Yeah, somebody else was just mentioning him. He does big production Nashville, you know, country music satire. Yeah. Ben Hoffman. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's really Jewish. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's a funny guy.

He's an interesting guy. That Willard Walker character, something. But just that type of parody is common, but you were doing it very thoroughly, he's doing it very thoroughly. Yeah, I didn't want it to be cute or, you know. The rights and edge, where if you weren't really paying specific attention, you would think it was the real thing.

Yeah, I've had, I remember doing a show at NYU, like the Skirball Center, and I don't know why, but I had, it was for a Jewish group, and they were running out of the theater. Oh my God, you've had so many experiences with this sort of like truly offended people. Oh, I did a show, I don't know if you remember, Suzy Felber used to do a show at yield. Yeah, I remember her and I Was doing the Tammy Faye thing and it was a cop bar and this cop comes at me with a dart and says like

Don't make fun of Jesus and I said can I make fun of Jews and he said? Okay, all right like I've had people call me like fucking anti-Semite. And I used to do like, I would sometimes sing songs in Hebrew, like, oh, I can speak your language if I can just hold your hand and I can feel, I can feel that coming into me, you know, and I know that your characters are right to left.

And you know, so I, and I'm like, why would I know this stupid language? Like not this stupid, but this language if I didn't, if I wasn't Jew, like. Yeah, but there's also like sort of a quality to committing to a character. It's almost a vaudevillian thing where you are that person and, but you're just an actress in a way.

Yeah. So what happens to Tammy Faye? Does it, you just burn out? It kind of burned out and it kind of, she comes back, she came back for the 2012 election when it was, because I remember that it was, DOMA was big, the Defense of Marriage Act. And I called the tour, the Doom Tour,

the Defense of Opposite Marriage, because that one of some, I think some beauty contestant said she called it opposite marriage. Like she called it. What does that mean? It's a heterosexual marriage, opposite marriage. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah.

So, and also she came back to be pro-Trump in 2016, because I thought that would be hilarious. Um, I did a show on election night. 2016, I was hired. You brought her back. Brought her back and we thought it would be, and actually, um, we did it. It was an early show. We were, we were hired by this guy who worked for publishers weekly to do the

show at Pangea, which is a club that I play at. And I actually threw it producer Russ Tittleman, who I know got Keith Carradine to come to the show and he sang it. Don't worry me with us. Oh yeah. He did that in Nashville. Yeah. In Nashville. In the movie. In the movie. He wrote it. Right. I remember. It was kind of a hit. It was kind of a hit. Yeah. Like, and, and we thought, oh, it's funny, you know, then it wasn't that funny. He did it pretty earnestly? No, he did it earnestly, but the night turned out not to be so hilarious when Trump won. Oh, right. That night. Yeah, that was not great.

Yeah, everybody was... I was on the set of GLOW with 14 women. Oh my God. On election night. Jesus, was it. I was on the set of Glow with 14 women. Oh my God. On election night. Jesus, was it? A lot of crying. A lot of crying and just... It was in shock, yeah. Yeah, pretty dumbfounded.

Yeah. And then I came back after, during the pandemic, in 2020 of that, during the election cycle, Tammy Fay came back to do like, it was a live stream because we weren't doing live shows yet at, through Pangea. We also got a really nice Times Review. Yeah. Tammy Faye became QAnon. Oh, good.

Yeah, of course. So, you know, the whole show was, I just wrote it as like one kind of long monologue interspersed with classic rock songs. Oh, okay. And she went really bat shit cute. So I did a kind of dive into that. Okay, that's good. That's funny.

It was funny. And when did Nico sort of happen? Nico happened, it started in 2010. And then I did it at the duplex of all places at old school Greenwich Village in 2011 and 2012. Yeah. David Frick from Rolling Stone came and Robert Chris Gow liked it and like all these people. Then we did it in LA and I had a great band with Pete Thomas, you know, from Elvis Costello's band.

And then it happened in 2013 where the guy saw it and said you have to have a new director and then. Here we are, and when did you do Mary Ann Faithful? Mary Ann Faithful, I started around that same time as the Nico show in 2014. I mean, basically everything that I do is I Lucy Ricardo my way into everything. Like getting onto, doing your show. Like I just, I'm like please let me be on the show.

So I, the guy who used to, Bill Bragan, who used to book Joe's Pub, then he was booking Lincoln Center. And I'm like, please can I do a show at Lincoln Center? Please can I do a show at the Atrium? Please can I do Nico? And he wasn't like a huge Nico fan. And then I said, a friend of mine wants to do Broken English.

Can I do Marianne Faithful's Broken English? And he loves Marian Ann Faithful. And so I broke him. Finally, I broke him. And that's late Mary Ann Faithful. Late Mary Ann Faithful. Well, she's still going, so it's mid period. But that was when she had the scary voice.

Yeah, that was the emergence of that really, the raspy voice. Well, it's weird, because I used to work at a coffee shop in Harvard Square when I moved to Boston To start comedy. It must have been like 87. Oh, and she was at McLean's Oh my god drying out and she would come in she Yes, yeah, and I didn't know her but she would come in like every day and she looked beat up. Oh Yes, she had a hard time. I think it was in Boston where it might've been there.

I can't remember if there in New York, she had a husband or a boyfriend who killed himself. Yeah, I don't know, but I think what I heard was she was going, she was at McLean's probably as an outpatient or something because that was the psychiatric hospital at the time. Yes. And she used to come in and, you know,

like I remember, I don't think we could smoke indoors then, but she would go out to smoke, but she was like, it was intense. She was intense. Yeah, she's, there's an interview that she did with Danny Fields around that time, at FMU, that he gave to me, you know, the copy of, and she's talking about her sobriety and then, and you know, she's very protective of her sobriety and then, you know, things. She relapsed? I don't know if I could, if she relapsed,

but I think there came a point where she has said that she would have, like she went on Tom Snyder a few years later and said that she does have a drink now and then. But she's still around. Yeah, still. When I find her records or they come to me somehow, I'm always happy to hear them because they're so haunting. And I think Broken English is really the beginning of that haunting Mary Ann Faithful business. It's brilliant. And I just did a, there was a compilation album that was just done of,

There was a compilation album that was just done of, you know, by this, spearheaded by this rock writer, Tanya Pearson, who wrote a book about Mary Ann Faithful and she wanted to do something for her. So all these artists, you know, did. Covers? Covers, so I did it with Barry Reynolds who played with me because if, like I said, like if I wanna do something, I wanna do it with the real people,

so Barry played with her, so I was like, I want him to play with me, so he plays with me. So he played, we did the ballad of Lucy Jordan, but Cat Power and Peaches are on it, and- Oh, Peaches, I haven't heard her for a while. And Shirley, it's Shirley Manson and Peaches do Why'd You Do It, which is the really filthy song. Cat Power does Working Class Hero,

Tanya Donnelly of Belly and Drooms. Yeah, so it's a really good compilation. That's great, but so the Mary Ann Faithful Show was just doing the full record? It was doing the full record. That's what I did at the Lincoln Center Atrium. And then I ended up doing a variety of Mary Ann Faithful shows.

A few in... Let's see, I did some kind of a melange of her songs. Do you do early Marianne too though? Not too much, because I don't have that kind of soprano. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to do the broken one. Right, the broken one that's, you know, in the lower key, or when she, you know, or the octave below where she sang it originally. Yeah, yeah.

But some of her more recent, I mean 2002 is how recent is that, but Vagabond Ways, which is a really great album. And then I did, I recently, in 2019, and I found out that she didn't like that I was doing it through the producer Hal Willner, who I knew through Penny and through Barry and the scene. Yeah, everybody loved him. Everybody loved him.

He was wonderful. And he said that she didn't really like it and said, why can't they leave me alone? And so I stopped doing it because I thought, well, and then in 2019, I realized it would be the 40th anniversary of Broken English. And of course, any excuse to do like a show, like 40th anniversary, who cares? But I decided, I knew her nom to Facebook,

which she was on at that point. And I wrote to her and I said, hi, I would love to do the broken English, if that's okay with you, if not, that's fine. And she wrote, do it darling, it'll be great. And I think she didn't give a shit at that point. She was just like, what the fuck, who is this person? So now the Nico thing, like now, what is the difference?

Like sort of the context of Cabaret, you know, has more of an audience than kind of random performance art. Yes. So that must be nice. It is, and this I always see more as just kind of, it's almost a jukebox musical because it's dialogue and then there's the song.

And you're in character the whole time. In character the whole time and Jeff Ward is the hapless Australian interviewer. It takes place in 1986 and we have a large band. My husband's in it. Yeah, I saw some footage of it. Yeah, it's a big band, good band, tight. Who's that drummer? Oh, Ron Metz, he's great.

He's great, and he's loud. And he does the Velvet song perfectly. And Keith, my husband, he does these days, we have a recording of it with him and my other guitarist, Rich Faradun, that we recorded and we did a little video for, also during lockdown, it was the first time I'd taken the train since, you know, in 2020. It was like, ah!

Yeah, scary, terrified. And Danny Fields is in it, in the video. Is he still around? Oh yeah. Okay. He's a dear friend and hilarious. I interviewed him years ago, I love him. I remember that, I listened.

It was hilarious, It was great. Yeah, Danny is wonderful and just a brilliant man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's seen it all. He's seen it all, he's had it all. And he's- Over it all. Over it all, and you can just, you could say anything.

Yeah, yeah, sure. You could release your id. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. With Danny. And that's kind of what I like about Nico is that she says things that are so wrong. Yeah. We even had to tamp down for,

we did it kind of as one shots last year in March at Joe's Pub and then in July and having revisited it after several years of it kind of being dormant, there were some lines that I thought were hilarious back in the day, back in 2014 or 2016, which I think the last time we did it. We did that at Lincoln Center too. But given the climate, there are certain things that became gratuitous.

Oh yeah. Certain lines that, a certain line that Nico said, because she had things that could be, we don't like to use the word racist, but adjacent. Mm, right. And she would sometimes say things, I think, just to shock, or I don't know what she really felt. But I think it was, she just liked to provoke.

Didn't she die in a bicycle? She died in a bicycle in Ibiza. She was, she had, it was July in Ibiza and she somehow wrapped herself up all in black and was bicycling and fell off. And somebody found her and it took, this cab driver was trying to bring her to all these hospitals and they wouldn't take her because they thought she was just some junkie and finally got a hospital.

But they had diagnosed, I think, a cerebral hemorrhage and too late. And from what I've read, again, they couldn't find a vein because, you know, so. She was at it the whole time, huh? Yeah. And I think she was on methadone at that point. Like she was trying to- Oh, Jesus. Yeah, people, it's very hard to get off that shit.

That is, and so, but yeah, she had some things that were, you could say were racist, that she said that I would say, you know, thinking that I could say it with impunity. Because you're in character, yeah. Because I'm character. And you got pushed back? I didn't get pushed back, but I pushed back on myself

because I realized there are certain things that I could let in a little bit of it, and the things... I wrote some lines for her that she didn't say, but I thought, okay, that's a softer version. Because there are certain things that if you say, it stops the audience from thinking, should I laugh? Is this funny? Takes them out of it, maybe.

Takes them out of it. And you don't need him. And I don't need him. And I didn't need, like, I certainly didn't need lines that she didn't say that I just made up because I thought it would just heighten the racism. Right. And so. To make it more ridiculous?

To make it more offensive. Right. I just, I really, I never like things that are just, you know, everybody gives a sense of bonhomie. Like, I just, I don't like that kind of stuff. Which is why I love you. And like, you know, and there are certain comedians that I love because you transgress. But not, you know, not in a, like, not in a crass way.

Right, if you do it from your own point of view. Yeah, and in a way that you know where you're coming from. Sure, exactly, yeah, yeah, it's important. You know, as you get older, to sort of engage your empathy and also decide whether or not it's worth it. Yeah, yeah, and it's, you know, the comedians that I love are still the ones that, like, I saw at Luna, like you, and Louie. Yeah.

You know, if I can say that, you can. It's all right. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I worked with him. Atel. Atel is great. I just saw Atel. He's hilarious. Always. Jim Gaffigan. Oh, yeah, great. Always funny. Yeah, it'saffigan. Oh yeah, great. Always funny. Yeah, it's so funny, we remember those.

I remember when Gaffigan was just like kind of this strange, depressive, large, pale man wandering around. I remember that. He was kind of an aberration because he wasn't this hip, downtown like. No, he's a real joke guy, but he was much more uncomfortable before it became a character. Yeah, and I like that. Yeah. I mean, Rick Shapiro, I don't know.

He just called me, dude. It was great to hear from him. I let him, kind of kept him on the phone for a half hour and heard him out and told him I, it was good to hear from him. Oh, that's so good. But he's down in Florida. Oh, God.

But what happened to Michael Portnoy and those people? Oh, Soybomb. Yeah. I remember that when we were like, that's Michael Portnoy. I know. He was like a fixture down there. Reverend Jen. Reverend Jen is still around. Yeah. I've seen her over the last decade or so. Yeah. She seems to have kind of, she became sort of a more kind of a sex positive. I think she wrote a book. Did she? I think she wrote like a BDSM book, 101. Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she, you know, I think she let go of the elf ears and the troll missed him. I was wondering about that, about the elf ear because I don't see her without the elf. Like I can't. Yeah, no, she was great. And I can't try and remember some of the other person.

Of course, Todd Barry. Oh, he's around, yeah. He's around. And I don't know if you remember, do you remember Russ Riley? He wasn't, he was a surf guy and he was quiet. But he had this one character that I used to, I would tell my husband, Keith, about this.

And then he actually heard Bill Burr talk about it because he saw it, which was, Russ did this thing at Surf Reality called the KKK comic. Yeah. And it was, he only did it once. And I remember thinking he, Jenny Pritchard, it was the mistress of the, she made him a KKK hat. And he did this joke that was, as a Jew I loved it.

He goes, you know, as the KKK comic, he said like, you know, they say six million Jews died in the Holocaust, name two. Yeah. I thought like that's. Sadly, that stuff is too, especially now. The act of normalizing anti-Semitism, you can't, there's no satire to it anymore. I know. And that's with Nico, she says a few things about Jews, which I have, you know, again, I had, being Jewish, I don't have that kind of, you know, I don't need to have a delicacy about it. But I haven't done it since October 7th.

Sure. I did a little bit of Nico once in, around October 15th. Yeah. I was doing a show of like, you know, just the different characters just briefly. And I mentioned, you mentioned, as Nico, you mentioned the Jews and it's zero, not funny. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't land.

Yeah, so- Causes a weird discomfort. Yeah, so hopefully by May, I think everything should be fine by then. Oh yeah, sure, everything will be resolved by May. Yeah, I think by May everything, you know. So do you have a run? Yeah, it's a run and it's four shows at Joe's Pub,

which to me is like a, I'm really grateful that they gave that to me and I just. It'd be great. Yeah, I hope, like I hope it should be fun. It's a really bizarre show. It's funny, it's dark, and there's popular songs. Good. Like These Days and all that.

Oh yeah, it'll be good. Altamaro's Parties. It'll be good, Altamaro's Parties, sure. Yeah. Well, great talking to you. You too, thank you so much for having me. Nice to see you. I'm so grateful.

Yeah. ["The Time of the Year"] There you go, that was a trip down memory lane for me. Her show, Nico Underground, is at Joe's Pub every Wednesday in May. Go to joespub.com for tickets. Hang out a minute, folks. Addiction doesn't discriminate people. In Canada, for instance, we lose 20 people to drug overdose every single day.

So if you're listening to this and you've experienced addiction, just know that you're not alone. CAMH is the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, and they're hard at work creating better treatments and interventions for anyone experiencing addiction. CAMH is revolutionizing our understanding of the brain and transforming patient care by knocking down the barriers that keep people from getting help. Sometimes it feels like there's no hope if you're feeling the impact of addiction in your life. Maybe you experience it directly or maybe indirectly, like if you're dealing with the effects it has on your family or friends or co-workers. You don't have to surrender to hopelessness because CAMH is confronting addiction head-on through groundbreaking research. And right now you can partner with CAMH

to build a future where no one is left behind. Help change mental health care forever. Donate at camh.ca-wtf to help CAMH treat addiction and build hope. That's camh.ca-wtf. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks.

Visit heartandstroke.ca. Hey, people, more blasts from the past on The Full Marin this week. We're talking almost 20 years in the past. We posted some interviews from my old radio show, Morning Sedition, with future WTF guests Chelsea Handler, Joe Pantoliano, and Andy Richter. You know, the only sort of thing is that there are times when you got something to say, you like something, and then the moment passes and it just is sort of wasted.

So there is like wasted material just because of timing. You don't want to go, wait back up guys. You know that thing you were saying about shirt? You can't do that. But it is true that then there's a lot of times too, and especially like if Conan and I were, you know, being crabby with each other and there'd be a bad interview, it was just so much fun, you know, like you're just kind of like, having fun Conan?

I'm not, and he'd look at me and he'd like, no help, no, no I won't. To get all the bonus episodes on The Full Marin, that's two exclusive episodes every week, plus all the WTF episodes ad free. Go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF+. And remember, before we go, this podcast is hosted by A-Cast. Now this is that song I was telling you about

at the beginning from the record store Day release, Love L.A. This is me and Paige Stark and Luke Paquin on the bass doing a cover of Arthur Lee and Love's Sign DC. You can go find this wherever you get your Record Store Day vinyl. All the proceedings are going to benefit the Fernando Pullum Community Arts Center, providing performing arts instruction to youth in South Central LA. And I think this is the first time I've been this prominently featured on a music record. Sometimes I feel so lonely I come down, I'm scared to face I've pierced my skin again, Lord Again, no one cares for me My soul belongs to the dealer

He keeps my life as well I play the part of the leacher of the leecher No one cares for me cares for me I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling

I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling I'm falling I can't unfold my arms I've got one foot in the grave yard No one cares for me

Cards for me, cards for me, signed DC I'm gonna be your man Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you

I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to tell you I'm gonna be the one to blame I'm gonna be the one to blame I'm gonna be the one to blame I'm gonna be the one to blame I'm gonna be the one to blame I'm gonna be the one to blame I'm gonna be the one to blame I'm gonna be the one to blame I'm gonna be the one to blame you