Review: Barb Jungr and John McDaniel Try Something New at Birdland

Barb Jungr is a maverick. She sings R&B and blues from her gut, can slide into jazz phrasing like muted brass, dismantles what we classify as rock so it's stripped to its meaningful bone, has a fervent moral compass, and is characteristically acerbic. Whether her voice rips or ripples, it's authentic. You can tell I'm a fan.

In an effort, one conjectures, to broaden her appeal, she's lately partnered with musician John McDaniel, whose background is theater. While the two are amiable on stage and offer appealing harmony, arrangements sound the same--- somewhere between Broadway and pop, no matter what the material. Almost all vocals with McDaniel are brighter, louder, and faster than they might be.

Exceptions to this are a lilting version of "Trains and Boats and Planes" (Burt Bacharach/Hal David) during which Jungr sits eyes closed beside McDaniel on the piano bench, and a lovely, understated "Here Comes the Sun" (George Harrison) which sounds, for all the world, like a lullaby. Piano music here is pared down.

"Back in the USSR" (John Lennon/Paul McCartney), replete with Jungr's fervent, old-soul harmonica, starts as sashay and builds to raunchy honky-tonk. The performer steps side to side. Hips swivel, shoulders tilt, her body bends forward and arches back punctuating with abandon. "Come Together" (Lennon/McCartney) has a dark, effective vamp above which the artist stomps, hunches, kicks, and conjures, shifting the air with her articulate hand as if sculpting. A spacey wow. Choruses are duets.

The vocalist's solo "When a Man Loves a Woman" (Calvin Lewis/Andrew Wright) is prefaced by an amusing story about a Percy Sledge show she attended with VERY few in the audience. Jungr has us distractedly grinning when whomp! she launches into the song's verse with power, presence, and purpose (message). An unfussed-with encore of "Imagine" sets just the right heartfelt tone, fading as the two exit.

Unfortunately, this show has no vertebrae. Numbers start without transition, rhyme or reason, which is jolting. Jungr, who's naturally very funny, does her best to pad with comments and anecdotes, but what's missing is missing. As if insecure about it herself, the artist offers an unmoored version of "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" (Kurt Weill/Ogden Nash) in which she incongruously mugs the lyric. A few other pop songs seem ill matched to her talents. McDaniel's choice of "Stranger in This World" (Boy George)---You always knew didn't you Mother/ I was a stranger in this world---relates to nothing else in the show. His "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (Harrison) emerges the opposite of sober and reflective.

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