Rendezvous with Baby Dee

The Drag City artist isn't waiting for her train to come in.

by A.D. Amorosi

Jim Newberry YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY: Dee's been a church organist, a circus act, an avant-garde harpist, a go-go dancer and a man. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Long before she made the panicky confessional cabaret of Safe Inside the Day — her Drag City debut released this week — Baby Dee had a hysterical history as long as your arm. The fiftysomething Cleveland native was a church organist, a circus act, an avant-garde harpist, a go-go dancer, a tricycle rider, a performer/barkeep/habitué of Manhattan's famed Pyramid Club, a contributor to the work of Current 93 and Antony and the Johnsons and, once upon a time, a man. By 2002, the red-headed instrumentalist and impossible-to-categorize vocalist (Tom Waits as a female opera singer, maybe?) conjured up the tales of loss and horror that was Little Window and Love's Small Song. Brilliant efforts both, they pale next to the Sensurround escapade of Safe. I found Dee in London before coming here to play with Espers' Meg Baird.

City Paper : I love your hair. I have a funny feeling that's your natural color?

Baby Dee: I'm glad you like my hair color and I'm even happier that you think it's natural — as well you should.

CP: Why'd you leave Cleveland for NYC, and why'd you go back some 30 years later?

BD: I left Cleveland because I wanted to. New York was exciting and different and full of possibilities. I remember being mystified that anyone ever stayed in Cleveland with New York a paltry eight-hour drive away. I pretty much never looked back and over those 30 years if you counted up all the days I spent in Cleveland visiting, it couldn't add up to more than three weeks. I came back in '99 to visit my mother and found her in the clutches of all these horrible people — home-health aides and social workers and nurses — ostensibly helping her to care for my father, who had Alzheimer's. It was horrendous so I chased them away and took over.

CP: You were a go-go dancer and a church organist. Where does God fit into Baby Dee's life?

BD: It sounds like you're asking me if I'm a saint or a sinner. That's easy, I'm definitely a sinner.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

CP: Who's the singing inspiration I'd least expect you to tell me you love? And do you think you inspired Antony's singing as much as he did yours?

BD: How about Peggy Lee? There's a great singer. There's inspiration. And hearing Antony's music for the first time and working on his first album was one of the most inspiring times of my life.

CP: Do you feel as if the art that you make now as a woman has the same feel it did when you were a man? Did you even create any brand of art as a man?

BD: Next question.

CP: I understand Will Oldham and Matt Sweeney helped prod the new album?

BD: Will talked me into doing my new songs, which I hated. Actually, no. I didn't hate all of them but the ones that defined them in my mind and set them apart as new and different — "Fresh Out of Candles," "The Only Bones That Show," and "[The Dance of] Diminishing Possibilities." Those were the ones I couldn't stand and I couldn't do the album without them and I didn't want to do it with them. But Will and Matt made it OK. And they took those songs and with Andrew W.K.'s help, etc., were able to transform them from something I hated into something I loved. From the moment they got their hands on them, they made it OK. I love those songs. I love to play them. I love to sing them. It was completely miraculous for me.

CP: I remember you back from the old Pyramid days. ...

BD: Then you must remember Otter and her marvelous "What will you do for $50?" contest. This had been happening for months and for several weeks the same person won every time: the Bottle Guy. What he did for $50 was to have empty Heineken bottles broken over his head. Except that each week he had to have more and more bottles broken over his head. By the time I started working there, he was up to a six-pack. After which I would drag out my exquisitely beautiful Wurlitzer concert harp and play Debussy's "Clair de Lune."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

Baby Dee performs Sat., Feb. 2, 10:30 p.m., $10, with Meg Baird and Ex Reverie, at Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0978, tinangel.com.