Baby Dee at CSPS

BABY DEE

Baby Dee is a 55-year-old, classically trained transgender harp player and performance artist from Cleveland via New York. Including her shock of frizzy ginger hair, she’s close to six feet tall, with an indefinable accent and an irresistible laugh that has to be heard to be believed. A distinctive singer and songwriter, she served as musical director at one of New York’s most respected churches, and has collaborated with Antony and the Johnsons and Current 93.

After spending 10 years as music director and organist for St. Jerome Catholic Church in the Bronx, Baby Dee joined the circus at Coney Island as the resident bilateral hermaphrodite. This led to a stint as bandleader for CSPS faves the Bindlestiff Family Circus and a tour with the Kamikaze Freak Show in Europe. Back in New York City, she resurrected her street act, this time on a high-rise tricycle with concert harp.

She recorded her first record, Little Window, on the Durtro label in 2000, followed by an EP in 2001 and the double-disc Love's Small Song in 2002. Her return to Cleveland to care for her ailing parents led to 2008’s release of the backward-glancing Safe Inside the Day on Drag City Records.

Produced and featuring appearances by indie darlings Will Oldham and Matt Sweeney, the release was called “the most remarkable record of the year so far” by the Daily Telegraph.

Now Baby Dee returns with Book of Songs, a kind of song cycle produced by noted arranger Maxim Moston, of Antony and the Johnsons’ touring band. The songs originally saw the light of day as part of a limited-edition book (only 150 copies and long out of print) with bonus CD. The music for that disc was dashed off live at the piano with the hope that it would eventually receive better production. This record does just that, in what Maxim calls “a true collection of art songs, stripped of all excess, just piano, voice, poetry and melody.” The record is all about what love could mean — from Baby Dee’s consuming perspective, and in all its jaw-dropping profundity.

Sat Apr 17 | 8 pm
CSPS | 1103 Third St SE | Cedar Rapids
$14 + fee advance | $18 door

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