BIRD & BECKETT CULTURAL LEGACY PROJECT
Johnny Lonely has a repertoire of originals, standards, and songs improvised off audience suggestions that paint a picture both tragic and hilarious.
Johnny (a figment of Brian Lohmann’s tragi-comic imagination) and accompanist Joshua Raoul Brody (a Bird & Beckett regular, known for his work in the Rick & Ruby Show, The Residents and so much more) have collaborated for decades, co-founding BATS Improv and Pulp Playhouse, doing opera in Carnegie Hall with Overtone Theater, regaling tourists in a Las Vegas casino, and touring Europe. Tonight, they’re joined by Andrew Higgins on bass and Ed McClary on drums.
This is your chance to host Johnny and his pals in your living room away from your living room, the sweet li’l bookshop in Glen Park that morphs into a comfy music lounge with shocking regularity.
Reservations: 415-586-3733
Regarding Johnny Lonely’s plaintive talent, the press has noted…
“A sleek, zany send-up of cringing masochism and show-biz self-indulgence… Especially amusing are the original songs he expertly croons: “Why’d You Have to Change Your Sex?” is a small masterpiece, and the theme tune “Welcome to Lonelyville-Population One” haunts you for days.”
The Seattle Times – Misha Berson
“As much fun as a wallow in misery can be… Lonely displays an impressive gift for improvisation…and his expressive voice is so perfect for the woeful songs he’s crafted, his delivery so oozingly sublime, that we long for more…Go alone, and sit next to someone you’d like to meet.”
Seattle Weekly – Sherri Schultz
“Johnny chronicles his miserable love affairs with marvelously funny and painfully recognizable wallowing. There is so much truth in Johnny’s melodrama of rejection…We are lucky and oddly healed by the chance to laugh at our worst pain… a funny performer and writer, but more than that he’s got the guts and the gifts to probe our deepest wounds. And that makes an evening with Johnny Lonely more than funny, more than painfully wry. It’s exhilarating.”
The Stranger – N.W. Barcus
“Clever and perverse…Rejection and despair aren’t automatically funny, but Johnny makes it seem that way”
The Seattle Post Intelligencer – Joe Adcock
“The crown prince of self-pity…an arch send-up of slick romantic excess…if you’re in the mood to wallow, he’s your main man.”
San Francisco Bay Guardian