Baby Jane Dexter: Plug in to the Power
If Con Ed needed some extra power last week, they should have hooked up Baby Jane Dexter to the grid; she could have provided the juice to keep the lights on! We’ve often described Baby Jane as a force of nature, and there’s always extra electricity crackling in a cabaret room when she’s performing. These days, she’s at The Duplex for an open run that puts her on stage every Saturday night at 9pm.
She jokes, a little defensively, about playing The Duplex after her much admired stints at Eighty-Eights, the FireBird Cafe, and Arci’s Place. But the humor is apt as she describes the unexpected journey her fans must take up a steep staircase into what she describes as a redneck gay bar with tough-looking pool players wielding long sticks of one kind or another. A sharp left turn brings you to the cabaret room, and the trip is well worth it.
Baby Jane’s current show, Another Spring, is a carefully calibrated musical journey that’s especially notable for its delicate ballads. Oh, the singer fires off her cannons from time to time, showing she’s still got thunder (and the lightning) in her pipes, but she also makes a real effort — a successful one, at that — at tenderness. Consider her version of “Everything That Touches Me (Touches You),” in which she smolders with a romanticism that’s all the more intense because of her vocal restraint. When all is said and done, though, Baby Jane is about busting through ordinary restraints. Numbers such as “Love Me Like I Am, Or Goodbye,” with its driving blues beat and wicked attitude, provide just the right contrast to the ballads and help give her act a wonderful sense of dimension.
The singer’s longtime musical director-arranger-pianist, Ross Patterson, was out of town on the night we caught the show. His stand-in was the exceptional Dick Gallagher, who played Patterson’s stirring arrangements with a stylish flair of his own. The act, which has been going strong at The Duplex for the past six months, contains some songs that have served Baby Jane well in the past (e.g., “Spinning Wheel”) but is largely made up of new material. Part of what makes every Baby Jane Dexter show seem fresh is her patter; she has her own special way of telling a story as if she’s performing a high wire act. She can be very funny — or not — but you listen in fascination, wondering if you’re headed toward a punch line or a train wreck. Happily, we came out laughing.
Baby Jane’s patter is original, and so is her soulful way with the blues. Whether she’s belting a number, pounding the stage with her right foot, or singing with a newfound gentleness, this singular talent deserves her success.
