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Also this issue: The Sound and The Fury The Beatmaster The BellRays Uri Caine's Goldberg Variations 20 Miles Alô Brasil Rainer Maria/ Mates of State Beat Box |
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March 13-19, 2003
music
 SCHOOL OF COMEDY: Flint makes 'em laugh as a performer and cry as a substitute teacher. |
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"Where's the grieving songs for when you lose a friend?" Deirdre Flint asks. "And I'm not just talking about when a friend dies, I'm talking about when friendships fade."
There are several answers to that, and as with any question that's equally rhetorical and earnest, the answer depends on your disposition.
Answer No. 1 -- Suck-up: "Well, Deirdre, your own 'Caroline Back to Me' and 'The Shuffleboard Queens' are very moving."
Answer No. 2 -- Know-it-all: "Off the top of my head? Tori Amos' 'Bells for Her,' Michelle Shocked's 'Anchorage,' The Reputation's 'The Uselessness of Friends'"
Answer No. 3 -- Sincere: "You're right. There aren't enough."
Answer No. 4 -- Cynical: "Change a couple of words, and half the world's love songs are about broken friendships."
But when you're in Flint's company, it's tough to be cynical. On "Caroline Back to Me," from her second self-released album, Then Again, the Queen Village folkie recalls the year she lost her best bud to a new friend from summer camp. Twenty-odd years later, the sting's still fresh.
"I don't tend to write about romantic love a lot," Flint says, as we sit out the snow at a South Street coffee shop. "It's been done. But female platonic friendship's definitely something that I grapple a lot with, and so is religion."
"Sister Catherine Claire" is a valentine to the open-minded women who mentored Flint in high school and in her own teaching career. Ironically, the tribute grew out of her impulse to write an angry song. With a sunny disposition and a supportive family, she had to dig deep, finding a suitable target in her rough grade-school teachers. "I was all set to write a song about really not-very-nice nuns, and then I realized that would be so disrespectful when some of the most amazing women I've met have been nuns," she says.
Flint didn't pick up a guitar until she herself was teaching at a Washington, D.C., Catholic school. From winning students' attention with made-up songs about the Louisiana Purchase, she says, it was a natural progression to write funny songs for adults. Her distinctive, high-pitched voice cements her single-woman persona. ("Who needs a pretty voice for funny music?" she says.)
Acknowledging the similarities between stand-up comedy and teaching -- as Gabe Kaplan or Billy Connolly could attest -- Flint admits she spends more time honing her between-song patter than writing new songs. She's never done comedy without music, but counts opening for Steven Wright as a career highlight. "He's my hero," she says of the deadpan comic. "Because he's able to be funny without poking fun at people." (Poking fun at the Dalai Lama's man-boobs is OK, Flint says, because His Holiness would take the ribbing in stride.)
"Sister Catherine Claire" notwithstanding, Flint doesn't try to be a cool teacher. As a 5-foot sub, she has to be strict to earn respect. You might say she's gotten a bit of a reputation. "The proudest day of my life as a substitute teacher: when I had made some fourth-grade boy cry, just walking into the classroom."
Her Catholicism lapsed a decade ago -- she gives props to the Church's social work, but could no longer abide the patriarchy -- and has been replaced by the lovely spirituality of "When Maribel Runs." With allusions to hymns and homilies, "Maribel" juxtaposes the grace of a body in motion with the heavy hearts of a harangued congregation. Flint's serious songs (listen also to the poignant "Grandmother's House") have come a long way from The Shuffleboard Queens' mopey "Marrow."
Humor's still her bread and butter (and, on "Food," her pancakes and fondue), and her appeal is set as long as she writes couplets like "Patrick Duffy ruled Atlantis, Charlie's girls upheld the law/ We all prayed we'd grow up Farrah, we became Kate Jacksons all."
But her cleverest ploy is "Jenny of 100 Dates," one of Then Again's two live tracks. Flint speeds through 39 (must be the new math) unsuitable suitors before letting the audience pick Jenny's destiny. Flint wrote several endings; each of the album's four pressings hitches Jenny with a different mate.
"It's really important for me to be as entertaining as possible," Flint says of the gimmick. "I'm not a poet, I'm an entertainer, as far as I'm concerned."
Entertaining she is.
Deirdre Flint plays Sun., March 16, 7:30 p.m., $10, Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0770.
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