Since Jill moved to Los Angeles, we don’t get as many shows here in her former adopted home town as we used to. Joe’s Pub, a classy little downtown room, has become her new Manhattan home base, and on Thursday January 26, the second of two shows, many of the usual faces are scattered throughout the crowd.

The stage is set up for a full band, a pleasant surprise for a Jill gig; I personally had never seen her with a band before. Others in the room report that the night before, Cyndi Lauper’s band had sat in; we expect to get them again. Jill hits the stage solo at 7:30, nods hellos around the room, and strums her way into “Jet Pack.” I’m sitting at a table for one at the foot of the stage, and it seems as if Jill makes eye contact with me as I applaud the song; a momentary distraction that causes her to lose the line. She curses, asks me for a prompt, which I provide, and she tells the crowd, “This is why I don’t do blow anymore.” Right out of a wistful “Jet Pack,” Jill assays “Cinnamon Park,” declaring that tonight she was playing the hits, and noting that only at Joe’s would this song be received as a hit. Jill does the song alone, stepping onto the effects pedal to raunch up the freak-out section in the middle, which decays into a “Name That Tune” take on 70s classic rock and ends in an instrumental “Dust in the Wind.” Then back to the acoustic sound for the song; towards the end she notes that sometimes I play a horn part on the tune, and then invites me to stand up in the audience and play the air trumpet to take her into the outro. As usual, I kill.

Next she plays a new song, clearly about a musician, with the refrain “The most miserable person in the world;” apparently a musical idol who disappointed when Jill met her. Whoever this person is, she seems to be even worse than the “Bitter” girl. Next up, with a laptop-holder still onstage (it was Chelsea, the tall girl with the green hair, who as it happens is my friend Ira’s cousin), Jill answers a request to play “Ready for the Rapture,” her song based on an email dialogue with ex-gay ministries chief Steven Bennett. “I thought I was done with that song,” she noted. Jill notes that the guy’s website, for converting gays, is in fact the world’s gayest site; you be the judge.Next up was a sensitive and melancholy take on “Strawberry Gloss;” then “Underdog Victorious,” her rock anthem for acoustic guitar, with a feedback-drenched outro. (For those keeping score, each of the 4 familiar tunes she’s played are from the most recent record, Underdog Victorious.)

Here’s when things get interesting. Most of Cyndi Lauper’s band joins Jill onstage: Steve Gaboury on keyboards, Bill Wittman on bass, Sammy Merendino on drums, and Allison Cornell on violin (or maybe it was a viola?) and vocals. Jill picks up her electric (well, to be truthful, Jill asks me to hand it to her); and she leads the band into the title track from her latest, an anthemic “Underdog Victorious,” her 70s arena anthem usually performed solo acoustic. We hold lighters aloft and sway as Jill soaks the outro in feedback. Next a brisk and staccato “When My Ship Comes In,” jangle-driven, Jill rocking out with bursts of electric guitar. Jill totally smokes like a guitar hero on the break; Allison drives the song home on violin (or, prehaps, viola).

Labels: The tunes