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In case you haven’t read it, the title of this post is in reference to the if-I-do-say-so-myself-despite-a-few-tiny-inaccuracies-great-and-rather-large-piece-on-me in last Sunday’s Washington Post.

In current news, I will be taking to the stage in LA again for the first time in over a year, actually the first two times, as there are two impending opportunities for me to regale you with my most humiliating show business stories and watch the audience remember my lyrics better than I do as we sing-along to some of my greatest hits!

First, I will be performing my infamous poolside with Sammy Davis Jr., Elizabeth Taylor slab o’ ribs story as well as a retelling of the single most ego-numbing, dignity-deprivation moment of my career, the Phoebe Snow/Paul Simon “I’m so f%#king hungry and yes, you’re Still Crazy after all these hours” story at Beth Lapides’ I’m With The Band (sorry, Pamela DesBarres who HAS been with the band!) evening at the Skirball Center, Friday night, June 5. It’s rock & roll comedy told by very funny people like John Riggie (30 Rock, The Comeback), Greg Behrendt He’s Just Not That Into You), the lovely Moon Zappa (Curb Your Enthusiasm, America the Beautiful) and, of course, ME, featuring stories about some of music’s biggest legends and presented lounge-style with cocktails and snacks available for purchase. Tickets here.

Then on Sunday night, July 12, it’s big ol’ party time when the illustrious Andrae and I + band hit the stage for a wild, so-affordable-it’s-crazy fundraiser for my Detroit-inspired record, video and feature length film about human spirit, “The D”/ Allee Willis Loves Detroit”!! Featuring a sneak peek world premiere of the record and video with more people in history than have ever been the original artist on a record, joined by some of the biggest stars to ever emerge from the Motor City.  Also sing-alongs to some of some of my fattys like “September,” “Boogie Wonderland,” “Neutron Dance,” and the Friends theme, as well as auctions from the legendary Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch collection! Many more surprises at this outrageous multimedia live feast for the eyes, ears and soul!!  Tickets, thankfully going fast, are here.

And last but far from least, we are making fairly stunning progress on “The D” record and video, both of which are in the area of 85/90% finished. We are constantly diverted from the filmmaking mission having to prepare things like a marketing deck and a movie trailer so we can all stop eating up to the green edges of our food and raise some real money to get this car on the road. But I must admit, despite the financial deprivation – PLEASE COME TO THE BENEFIT ON JULY 12 – we are all having the time of our lives working on something this creative and worthwhile. All we do is laugh, and all we do is feel better and better about what we’re doing every time we look at the joy pouring out of Detroiters eyes, mouths and hearts as we pull everything together.

Exciting news on “The D” song front is that Detroit’s own Maejor, an artist with hundreds of millions of YouTube views and the smoothest voice this Motor City side of Marvin Gaye, is the latest superstar to add his voice to the record.

Plus recent interviews for Allee Willis Loves Detroit, the film, include the multi-seriesed Michael Patrick King, the shy and retiring Jenifer Lewis, the demure Sandra Bernhard, and Earth, Wind & Fire’s stupendous Philip Bailey, among illustrious others.

That’s about it for now. Here’s the link to my story in the Washington Post again:  “Most interesting woman you’ve never heard of” (so please get your ass to my show and help rectify the situation!)

Onward, Detroit! And remember to gimme some gas money on July 12 or pop it down here if you’re in generous spirit and unable to attend.

 

For the past few few years now on the “BaDeYa, say do you remember 21st night of September”, my blessed and magic day because it’s the first line in the first hit record I ever had, I’ve made a tradition of performing live, something that took me over three decades to get together. Other than last year when I was in Detroit conducting one of the 50 sing-alongs for ”The D”, the unofficial official theme song I cowrote for Detroit, in a laundromat with people essentially spinning around in dryers while singing.

As luck would have it, THIS year was a particularly special September 21st as just a couple days earlier NPR did a story on why “September”, co-written with Maurice White and Al McKay, remains such a timeless song, symbolizing warmth, love, and soul.

This year September 21 was even more special because I decided to perform live for the very first time EVER in Detroit, my beloved hometown for whom I’ve (unofficially) been slaving away on a project, “The D”, a record and multiple music videos, and Allee Willis Loves Detroit, a feature length film, for the last 2 1/2 years. As such, my co-writer and partner on the music portion of the project, Andrae Alexander, and I put together a 15 piece band made up of the very best musicians and singers we found during the 50 D sing-alongs we led last year to perform live with us in the show, BaDeYa, Detroit!.

We also wanted to give everyone a preview of the song which finally has a preliminary mix after over a solid year of trying to deal with 5000 vocal and instrument  tracks, each one with up to hundreds of voices on them. There’s just so much room in the sound spectrum and every inch of it we have taken up truly sounds like something you have never heard before. We also gave the audience a sneak peak at the beginnings of the first of many music videos to follow.  (Sorry – no preview here; only a few shots so you can see it ain’t no normal thang and to insure that you get the full punch once the first video’s actually delivered.)

For an artist such as myself who dotes on every detail of a stage production from designing the invitations to handmaking the set, picking theme food, designing the merchandise, casting people who help us like I’m casting characters in a musical, shipping 20 crates of everything to Detroit, directing, co-producing, and doing just about everything else involved in a production – albeit all with fantastic collaborators – this was no easy feat. And performing out of town for essentially the first time in my adult life makes that even harder. But don’t even ask me how worth it it was!!! Easily one of the best days/nights of my life was this “21st (almost) night of September”!

We performed at United Sound, a still-in-existence historic recording studio in Detroit where everyone from Charlie Parker to The Rolling Stones and some of my all-time favorite records like Isaac Hayes’ “Shaft”, The Dramatics’ “Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get”, and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On” were recorded.

But to turn a brilliant recording studio into a brilliant performance space is another issue entirely, especially when it involves things like sets, choreographed videographers who leap over drums on crash cymbal cues and organ sweeps, and all the other madness that goes into an Allee Willis production..

Of this now 2 1/2 year Detroit gargantuan mofo project,  “The D” and Allee Willis Willis Loves Detroit, the feature-length film about human spirit as seen through the people of Detroit and how my life, a constant conscious battle to keep my own spirit going, parallels that struggle, 99% of it has been funded by me. (Put some gas money here please.) So this meant getting people involved in BaDeYa, Detroit! working for gratis. Which they thankfully, gratefully, and miraculously did. From the band to just about everyone else who worked in any capacity on the show. They are saints. They are insanely talented. They are blissfully soulful, and primary examples of why I feel so compelled to make a film about the people of Detroit and how it is THEY who will rebuild the city because of their resilient spirit.

I want to give a special shout out to Malcolm Haris and Donnevan Tolbert, two young gentleman I saw play Mister and Harpo when their high school, Cass Tech, became the first in the country to license the musical I cowrote, The Color Purple, a couple years ago, and who did a brilliant spoken word intro to my show.

And I want to thank the five brilliant dancers from The Mosaic Youth Theater of Detroit, one of the two beneficiaries of all profits from my Detroit efforts, who donned mechanics uniforms and spun car tires over their heads during the sneak peak world premiere of the first mix of “The D” and boogied their butts off during my second hit,  “Boogie Wonderland”.

I want to also thank the stupendous audience not only for showing up, as songwriters remain the buried treasure of the music industry, but also for participating so wildly so that the show came off just as I had prayed it would. Like a party in my living room. And if you don’t know my reputation for throwing parties you better go here now.

As a result of having so much fun not to mention hitting a new plateau in my budding performing career, I love Detroit even more than I have kvelled about it before, as if that was even possible. And I will eternally love the 21st of September for doing everything from giving me a second birthday because every year since I wrote it I hear from thousands of people that day telling me how happy the song makes them feel. This year it made me the happiest of all.

I hope you can see the spirit that was jumping off of the stage and ricocheting back to us in all the above photos as well as all of these. That room was an automatic power generator and from what I’ve heard everyone, certainly including me, is still buzzing. So BaDeYa Detroit!

Heads up on some upcoming LA and DEtroit happenings:  THIS Saturday night, March 9, I’ll be reprising my “Neutron Dance” and “Stir It Up” sagas and sing-alongs at Eve Brandstein’s Poetry In Motion at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA. 8PM, tix here.  And a week from Sunday night, March 17, I’ll be performing an all new St. Patty’s ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?” extravaganza at Beth Lapides’ acclaimed UnCabaret, 8 PM, at First and Hope in downtown LA, tix here. If u wanna laff, hit those links.

And if you happen to find yourself in Detroit the weekend of April 28, the official unofficial theme song I wrote for the city, “The D”,  is going to be debuted by the Mosaic Youth Theatre at The Detroit institute of Art on the 27th. And I am pleased to the Nth degree of Kitsch to also be a special celebrity presenter at Hump the Grinders famed 2013 Detroit Hair Wars at Cobo Hall on the 28th.  If this doesn’t say it all I don’t know what does:

Anyone who knows me knows that I invite change in my career like most people do with hairstyles. Perhaps because I haven’t changed the latter since 1983 I’m now tweaking the former like crazy since I finally took to the stage last year to do my sold-out-standing-room-only series of live shows, a brief snippet of which you can see here.

The day before my haircut in 1983:

I’m now expanding the repertoire and this Friday night only, February 15th, will be performing live in a charity production of Eve Ensler’s critically-acclaimed “The Vagina Monologues” at the Atwater Village Theatre in LA (3269 Casitas Ave., 90039) as part of Ensemble Studio Theatre LA’s, “Winterfest”.

The shows will be performed on February 14th, 15th & 16th at 8pm. Each night will feature a different cast of twenty actresses from TV, film, and theatre (list below), and will be directed by LA Talk Radio’s Sheena Metal (“The Sheena Metal Experience”). Proceeds go to the anti-abuse charities V-DAY (http://www.vday.org) and PROTECT (http://www.protect.org). For more info on the shows, the charities and to get your tickets visit: http://www.vdayla.com .

Also, on March 9th I’ll be hitting the stand up trail again at Eve Brandstein’s Poetry in Motion/The Road Not Taken (tickets: www.EveBrandsteinPoetryInMotion.com) as well as performing an all-new pulsating St. Patty’s Day routine at Beth Lapides’ UnCabaret on March 17th (tickets: www.uncabaret.com).

So be it for vagina, poetry and/or shamrocks, I hope you come play with me!

THE 2013 V-DAY “Vagina Monologues” LA CAST:

Rosemary Alexander (“Sordid Lives, “Cold Case”)

Zuri Alexander (“Fierce: Relations”, “Supernatural: The Play”)

Alison Arngrim (“Little House On The Prairie”, “Confessions Of A Prairie Bitch”)

Jill Bennett (“In Her Line Of Fire”, “Dante’s Cove”)

Lisa Bishop (“Ensemble Studio Theatre LA”)

Kim Chueh (“Without A Trace”, “Strong Medicine”)

Patty Cornell (“Faux Baby”, “Bob Funk”)

Kathleen Coyne (“Who’s the Boss?”, “Locked Up: A Mother’s Rage”)

Kristen Dalton (“The Dead Zone”, “The Departed”)

Anne DeSalvo (“Arthur”, “My Favorite Year”)

Tamika Katon-Donegal (“Boston Public”, “Something Like A Business”)

Bobbie Eakes (“The Bold And The Beautiful”, “All My Children”)

Kim Fitzgerald (“Leap Year”, “Janeane From Des Moines”)

Caitlin Gallogly (“The Turn Of The Screw”, “Snow White”)

Ilene Graff (“Mr. Belvedere”, “Grease”)

Jessica Graham (“2 Minutes Later”, “And Then Came Lola”)

Elizabeth Greer (“The Shield”, “Cold Case”)

Geri Jewell (“Deadwood”, “The Facts Of Life”)

Mary Kennedy (“ER”, “Oh Mary Radio Show”)

Jacqueline King (“Deal Or No Deal”, “From Grace”)

Emily Kosloski (“Helen Of Troy”, “The New Normal”)

Tracey A. Leigh (“Grey’s Anatomy”, “Criminal Minds”)

Carol Locatell (“Mad Men”, “The Family Stone”)

Elizabeth Logun (“Birds Of Paradise”, “Butter”)

Meredith Scott Lynn (“Legally Blonde”, “CSI”)

Sandy Martin (“Napoleon Dynamite”, “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”)

Gates McFadden (“StarTrek: The Next Generation”, “Franklin & Bash)

Sheena Metal (“LA Talk Radio”, “97.1 The FM Talk Station”)

Minae Noji (“General Hospital”, “Memoirs of a Geisha”)

Susan Olsen (“The Brady Bunch”, “97.1 The FM Talk Station”)

Amy Paffrath (“Jersey Shore”, “E! News”)

Angel Parker (“Lab Rats”, “The Soul Man”)

Lizzie Peet (“Cold Case”, “ER”)

Tracy Poust (“Ugly Betty”, “Will & Grace”)

Kim Rhodes (“The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”, “Supernatural”)

Jamie Rose (“Falcon Crest”, “St. Elsewhere”)

Heather Robinson (“Slice”, “Doesn’t Anyone Know What A Pancreas Is?”)

Ingrid Rogers (“All My Children”, “Cosby”)

Jamie Sara (“September”, “Bitesized”)

Eve Sigall (“End Of Days”, “iCarly”)

Ilana Spector (“Ensemble Studio Theatre LA”)

Charlotte Stewart (“Little House On The Prairie”, “Twin Peaks”)

Ashleigh Sumner (“The Event:, “And Then Came Lola”)

Susie Tanner (“TheatreWorkers Project”, “Lady Beth: The Steelworkers Play”)

Barbara Tarbuck (“American Horror Story: Asylum”, “General Hospital”)

Ann Walker (“Sordid Lives”, “Southern Baptist Sissies”)

Dee Wallace (“E.T.”, “Cujo”)

Keliher Walsh (“Year Of The Rabbit”,”Let It Go Already”)

Allee Willis (“Boogie Wonderland”, “The Color Purple”)

Debra Wilson (“MADtv”, “Avatar”)

Jacqueline Wright (“North Country”, “Gilmore Girls”)

Kim Yarbrough (“The Voice”, “Conan”)