By Tom Nondorf
03 Dec 2007

FEINSTEIN WINTERACTIVE
Fascinated by the concept of Michael Feinstein's new "By Request" show he debuted Nov. 30 at his namesake club at Loews Regency, I went to the source for details. "By Request" will run through Dec. 29 at Feinstein's in tandem with his seasonal show, "Winter Dreams." The request show will put to the test cabaret's standard-bearer for standards and a guy who works harder than anyone to keep great music from disappearing down the rabbit hole.

Question: How is "By Request" going to work?
Michael Feinstein: I'm going to have cards that will be passed out to the audience, and people will be invited to write down three selections of things they would like to hear me do. And, while they are sitting there enjoying their dinner, I am going to be putting the set together made up totally of things that people have asked to hear, so it is in some ways high pressure, but I love the challenge, and I love the idea of doing a show that people have completely requested. Hopefully, it will fulfill every type of song, so I can put together the perfect set [laughs].

Q: Is your hope that the audience will come up with some songs that challenge you, some rarities?
Feinstein: I expect that they will, and I will do my best. The short answer is "yes." I love the challenge. You never know what's going to come from that. That's the exciting part. It may take me in a direction that hopefully will be pleasing for me and the audience, or I could go down in flames, too, but I'm willing to take that chance [laughs].

Q: But you're committed to it. You don't have a backup set, so you're like, "We didn't get anything good tonight, so I'm gonna do the ol' #27"?
Feinstein: I don't have a backup set, but I will have my book with me, and I can always say, "You wanna hear this? You wanna hear that?" But I really want to keep it honest. It's not going to be one of those pre-planned things like they do on TV where they call it "By Request," but everything's already planned. They just wait till someone shouts out what they want to play or they have a shill shouting it out. I won't be doing any of that!

Q: You figure in an audience of enough folks, there will be enough choices, especially if you're giving them three to write down.
Feinstein: Well, I'm banking on that [laughs]!

Q: Talk a little about "Winter Dreams." You've done similar shows to this before.
Feinstein: Every year, it is always a challenge to come up with a new holiday program. I always try to put together a show that will have interesting things, things that are unexpected, and to do familiar things in a new way, so there is a sense of freshness about the holidays. It is not always easy to do because, for one thing, people like to hear familiar things that they are accustomed to hearing, and one has to be very judicious in the way they dole out things that are not familiar. So for me, it is always the most difficult challenge to come up with a holiday show that has something fresh and will please the people who want to hear holiday fare and also the people who don't. That's one of the reasons I'm doing the "By Request" shows, the late shows. It's fascinating because the shows always take on their own form or life, if you will. And so this show, "Winter Dreams," I got to thinking about all the things that are created in the fall, all the different shows that opened on Broadway, musical shows that produced great standards, people who were born at this time of year and such, so it's something that turned out very nicely, I think.

Q: What makes a perfect show for you as a performer?
Feinstein: Being in an intimate space, the most important thing is feeling connected to the audience. As any performer will tell you, whether it's Broadway or a club or the Hollywood Bowl, audiences are different every night. They've done research and found that some of it has to do with the weather and the position of the planets and the tides and all that. And, it also has to do with the day of the week, where if it is a Friday night, people sometimes are bone-tired. They just have gotten off of work, and they just made it to the club by the skin of their teeth, and sometimes people are gregarious for dinner and they have a few drinks and they kind of lose their energy. Saturdays can be fantastic, but they're all different, so the bottom line is, connecting with people. I discovered early on as a performer that because what I do is largely not staged, I have to be completely open and honest with the people, so they can relate to me. One of the mistakes that people make is they come from Broadway and they do a nightclub act for the first time, and they are too prepared. They are accustomed to saying the same thing every night and playing the same way. And, we've had a number of entertainers in the room who haven't totally successfully been able to make that transition because they're terrified of looking people in the face and just speaking for themselves, as opposed to hiding behind a character. That's not to criticize an actor or an actress, because God knows it's a fiendishly difficult thing at its best. It's just fascinating from my perspective because, for me, being in a club and doing concerts is one of the easiest things I do.

Q: It's important to be able to roll with the punches, too, in that setting because the audience is so close.
Feinstein: They're literally within arm's reach. It's a club where people want to have a good time. There is also alcohol served — that means that people could go over the edge sometimes. [Recently] there was a woman who was having the time of her life, she was putting her hands out and doing high-fives with me and talking and talking through the show. She didn't mean any harm, but she was disruptive, so I had to find a way to get on with the show, to pacify this woman, to get her to be quiet without being angry and upsetting the audience, and I did it. It was extraordinarily difficult, but I knew that I had to just keep the energy up. I just kind of joked with the lady, and I got her to settle down a little bit, and she'd say something, and I'd kind of acknowledge it, and I'd go on. I was never rude to her, and she felt good, and she calmed down, and the audience was able to relax. Now, I've seen performers that don't know how to handle people that are unruly. I guess the first thing for me is to determine what the motivation is. If they're a heckler or just a mean-spirited person, then you gotta get rid of them. But if they're out to have a good time, and they've just had a little bit too much to drink, I try to work with them and get them to calm down and gently let them know that they gotta get with the program. Inevitably, those will be the people who will fight their way backstage and say, "I'm the person you were talking to in the show!" Proud as all get-out [laughs].

Q: And you say, "Aww. No kidding!"
Feinstein: Exactly [laughs]. "You're the one I wanted to kill."

Q: I have an image in my mind of you as a kind of archaeologist of music, exploring the rarities and some of the undiscovered gems of the past. Is that fair?
Feinstein: Absolutely. It's one of my passions. It has been great to be able to bring songs to people that they embrace. In this show, for example, I'm doing a song called "The Steam is on the Beam," which is from a 1942 Broadway show called Beat the Band, which only ran for two months in the fall of '42. And it's so much fun to tell a little story about that song and to present it. It was written by a man I knew, Johnny Green, who wrote "Body and Soul" and "I Cover the Waterfront." He was a dear friend, and he died in 1989. It makes me feel so good inside to present something of Johnny's, to share with the audience the experience of discovery and also to present new songs from time to time. There is a new Christmas song written by Don Rebic, who is a great musician, and I heard him do it in a club in Brooklyn one night and I asked him for a copy. I'm doing it my show, and people come up to me and say, "Oh my God, what is that song?" So, that's wonderfully fulfilling for me.

Q: To that end, do you have any songwriters that you consider underrated?
Feinstein: There's a lot of them. Even the known composers have songs that deserve more attention. But people like Johnny Green, Ralph Ranger, Burton Lane, Willard Robeson, Arthur Schwartz…there are so many spectacular songwriters whose works are obscure. Or people may know a few songs by the great songwriters, but there's so much else of quality. If I mention Alan Jay Lerner, people think of My Fair Lady, but the scope of his work is much more than that. My Fair Lady would have been enough, but there's much more. So, for me, it's finding the opportunities to present the material in a way that's interesting and will draw the audience in.

Q: Can you talk about the Kay Thompson project you've been working on?
Feinstein: Yes. I was lucky enough to know Kay Thompson. It was mostly a telephonic relationship because she was quite reclusive, then later in her life, she moved in with her goddaughter, Liza Minnelli, and Liza took care of her for the last several years of her time on earth, and I got to know Kay and adore her. She was as crazy as they come, but it was her craziness that was the genius that allowed her to create "Eloise" and this great body of musical works that is largely unknown to the public. Liza has always wanted to do something to celebrate and pay tribute to Kay and to present the great material that she did, and so Liza has been performing in her touring show a big chunk of a tribute to Kay, which she is developing into an individual show that she hopes to develop for Broadway and have filmed for television. She's asked me to produce the album of Kay's material.

Q: That's swell. Will she be doing the "Eloise" song Kay had a hit with?
Feinstein: No, I don't think she's planning on doing that song. Kay wrote a whole "Eloise" score that's hanging around someplace, but at this point, Liza's not doing any of that material. She's mainly doing material that Kay did with the Williams Brothers, starting around 1947. It's considered the greatest nightclub act of all time. People who have seen that act still talk about how it was so innovative and groundbreaking.

Q: That's Andy Williams and his brothers?
Feinstein: Yes. Andy Williams was one of the Williams brothers and was working in Hollywood doing a lot of session work at studios and met Kay at MGM, and the Williams Brothers became her guys for five or six years, and she wrote these fiendishly difficult choral arrangements, did all this extraordinary choreography, had these outfits that she called cat suits, and had them suspend the microphones from the ceiling so they could all work with their hands free, which nobody had ever done before in a club. It was absolutely sensational. And, it's gone. Nobody knows exactly what sets she performed. A lot of the music is lost. Talk about archaeology, this is a real labor of love to try and reconstruct what she did.

Q: A friend wanted me to ask if you have any memories of appearing on her favorite soap opera, "Santa Barbara," back in the day.
Feinstein: I do. It was around the time my album "Isn't it Romantic" came out, and I sang a song called "My Favorite Year," and it took place on a train where this character C.C. Capwell proposed to Sophia, and I was the music that he brought in to propose to her. I had never watched the show, but at the time, I got a lot of attention for being on that show and singing that song.

Q: I don't know if singers and songs are still given a boost via soap operas, but there definitely was a period where that was great exposure.
Feinstein: It was great. It was one of the things that helped get my face out there, so it was wonderful. That was, I think, literally 20 years ago, so time moves on.

["By Request" is offered 11 PM Friday and Saturday nights through Dec. 29. "Winter Dreams" is presented Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8:30 PM. For ticket reservations and club information, call (212) 339-4095 or check out feinsteinsattheregency.com.]

HITHER AND YULE
A wise man once said, "Time moves on." It was actually Michael Feinstein just a couple lines above, but how true, how true. This column represents the end of my first year of work on "The Leading Men," and it has been an absolute blast so far. Look for another great year of interviews in 2008, but I do want to thank a few folks for making 2007 a wonderful ride. Thanks to Playbill.com's Andrew Ku, Andrew Gans and Ken Jones for shepherding my work and giving me the opportunity and ideas to boot. Thanks to all the great publicity folks out there who bent over backwards to get me in touch with a lot of wonderful names over this year. And, thanks to those wonderful names themselves. Sure, performers are on their best behavior for an interview, right? But you can go over the whole list of fellas I spoke to this past year, and to a man, they were generous with their time and info. I don't think there was one person who ended a discussion with me before I'd gotten to my last question, and that has certainly given me a lot of material with which to work. Of course, a huge thank you to Playbill.com's readers, the most intelligent folks on the net. Those who have given me feedback, it has been incredible, and if any of you have suggestions of people you'd love to see given the Leading Man treatment in 2008, by all means drop a line and let me know. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. Until next month, you will find me listening to the Kingston Trio's "Last Month of the Year" Christmas album—on vinyl of course.

Tom Nondorf can be reached at tnondorf@playbill.com