INTERVIEW: Joe’s Pub welcomes Barb Jungr for the latest stop on her musical ‘journey’
Photo: Barb Jungr will sing the songbooks of Bob Dylan and Jacques Brel, in addition to her own tunes, at two special Joe’s Pub concerts. Photo courtesy of Steve Ullathorne / Provided by Media Blitz with permission.
Barb Jungr, cabaret star extraordinaire, has chosen quite the impressive lineup of songwriters for her new cabaret show. First there’s Bob Dylan, the highly influential musician who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Then there’s Jacques Brel, the best-selling singer-songwriter from Belgium. Finally, there’s Jungr herself, a mainstay on the London cabaret scene for nearly 50 years.
The show — dubbed Bob, Brel and Me — will be presented Feb. 14-15 at Joe’s Pub in Greenwich Village. Jungr will take the stage at this respected Public Theater institution and breathe interpretive life into these popular compositions, including some of her own. The result will no doubt be original and deconstructionist — in other words, another thrilling day at the office for the cabaret star.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Jungr as she prepared for her Joe’s Pub concerts. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
What can audiences expect from Bob, Brel and Me?
I think when people come to hear me they know it’s a journey. This particular trip is through some new Jacques Brel translations — some songs people may know well and re-translated, and some never before in English, in I think, beautiful, delicate musical arrangements. Then there are the Dylan songs, which are all new for me, too. This whole collection, bar one song, is new material to me, in new arrangements, and all are, in various ways, love songs. I am currently obsessed with the idea that what we need is to open to love. Love of everything — life, nature, people, friends, animals … everything. I think we are at a juncture, a crossroads. I am nailing my feathers and flag to the tree of love.
What inspires you about Bob Dylan’s songbook?
I am never through with the Dylan songs I choose to sing. I have always said that for me, Dylan is the American Shakespeare, by which I mean you can go back to the songs over and over again, and every single time, like peeling an onion of endless layers, you never reach an end. The work suggests rather than states. It leads and then you wonder through it. It’s endlessly beautiful, terrifying and provoking.
When did you first fall in love with the music of Jacques Brel?
I fell in love with Brel, like most people, through Scott Walker’s renditions of the [Mort] Shuman and [Eric] Blau translations of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Then I met Robb Johnson, and he introduced me to a bunch of other writers and poets and questing people who enlightened me about translation and veritas. And I started to travel through the Brel landscape, which is filled with wolves and oceans and politics, and I knew I would never stop, that there was a thirst for something in that singular viewpoint that would never be satisfied.
When do you know an original song of yours is ready for the stage or ready to be recorded? When do you know the creative process is finished?
In recordings, I think of recordings as snapshots — as the way you were that day, with those musicians, in that moment. It’s why I love live work so much because that can never be caught in quite the same way. Live work is an elusive butterfly. Recordings pin the butterfly wings to the wood. But I don’t think you are ever through with songs, or process. You keep on thinking, maybe tomorrow I’ll get this song right.
Is the cabaret scene in 2020 anything like it was a few decades ago when you were first getting your start?
I think times have changed, but so have I. There are some wonderful people doing wonderful work all over the world, and that’s so encouraging for the form. If anything, we need political cabaret more now than we have for some time.
How has the city of London inspired your career? Is it a great city to be based in for this art form?
London is such a live wire of a city. Constantly changing. Demanding. It is a great city to live in, in almost every way. There’s that wonderful quote, ‘A man who is tired of London is tired of life.’ And the other day a friend said to me, ‘I was going to be over London, and then I imagined living somewhere else. And I realized how great it is to be here.’ I feel that way. I find it hard to think of living somewhere else, though I find traveling endlessly exhilarating and life enhancing. London is the city I married.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Bob, Brel and Me, featuring Barb Jungr, will play Feb. 14-15 at Joe’s Pub in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
