Ann Hampton Callaway Gets Personal with Own Songs on New Album, Club Dates

"When the pandemic came along my mind went to, 'I may not have long to live,' and what really matters is telling your own story, what you've learned, telling the truth, and sharing things that feel a little scary. That's what makes life worth living. The merger of art and heart is what connects us," says MAC Award winner, Tony-nominated and out singer/songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway. It was that dread-fueled determination that inspired Callaway to finally release a collection of her own songs entitled "Finding Beauty - Originals, Volume I."

In the liner notes Callaway describes the title song as, "a musical celebration to commemorate finding the love of my life, Kari Strand. It tells some of the story of how we met and how Kari transformed my life. I felt it was an appropriate title for this project as finding beauty is a daily throughline in my life – seeking to recognize truth and the many forms of beauty that life surprises us with every day, and looking for the silver linings in all the challenges we face."

As a singer, Callaway has always been known as a champion of the Great American Songbook, amassing 17 MAC Awards and filling stylish boîtes from coast to coast and across oceans, sometimes literally, as the headlining entertainer on jazz cruises or RSVP cruises on the QM2.

Callaway is also a prolific songwriter, probably best known for penning the theme song to the television sitcom, "The Nanny." Many of her recordings contain at least one original composition, which she glibly refers to as "Ann-dards." In her concerts, to audience delight, she employs one of her party tricks where she composes and performs a song on the spot using words thrown out to her by the audience. One of her songs, "At the Same Time," an anthem for world peace, has even gone platinum. Written in the hopes that Barbra Streisand might one day record it, Streisand indeed picked it up and recorded it on her platinum-selling album "Higher Ground."

But until now, Callaway hadn't recorded an album exclusively of her own songs. "Finding Beauty" is Callaway's answer to that. Bobby Patrick of BroadwayWorld.com describes "Finding Beauty" as "the result of a lot of mining of creative diamonds using her pen and piano, and spotlights moments both rough and smooth in the lives of anyone with a heart."

Using the 2023 release of this project to launch a tour, Callaway is bringing her show "Finding Beauty" to Jimmy's Jazz & Blues Club in Portsmouth, NH on Wednesday, May 1, then to Scullers Jazz Club, Boston on Saturday, May 4, before heading to Florida, Palm Springs, and Las Vegas the rest of May.

Not only is this recording Callaway's first recording exclusively of her own songs, but it is the first time she has relinquished control over producing and arranging, leaving that to her two friends and colleagues, Paul Viapiano and Trey Henry.

Callaway felt that despite all the songs being from one songwriter, there is still a lot of variety. "I am a very eclectic human being," notes Callaway. "When people ask me what my favorite color is, I tell them, 'The rainbow.' When you come to my shows, you get a variety show, and perhaps that's why I've been able to have 'the family that music makes.' I want to write a song with that title someday."

Callaway credits her arrangers, Henry and Viapiano, with giving her collection of songs musical continuity using their sonic style to tease out nuances in Callaway's songs that she didn't know were there.

Audiences of this tour might hear songs going back to 1986 with the song "Perfect," recorded by such artists as Julie Budd and Roslyn Kind, and as recently as 2022. Wondering how her early material stands up against her more mature songs, Callaway contemplates, "I feel that I've grown a lot as a person. But there are certain things about being a young songwriter, untouched by the disappointments of life, that bring a refreshing innocence to a song."

A collection of original songs on a single album and in a concert is a lot like going to a retrospective museum exhibit of a painter or sculptor, where you get to understand more about the artist through the juxtaposition of earlier and later pieces. "I like the cross section because the later years have other songwriters writing with me, which I couldn't have had in my early years. So, it's nice to see the full range," contends Callaway.

"People don't listen to albums the way they used to – they hear them on playlists of many artists and Spotify. My CD is great for a long drive because you can live in the songs from my early years to the present." Of course, in the show, Callaway can curate that experience even more so for a live audience.

Callaway feels she is her most vulnerable with this show, comparing herself to another artist she admires, "Like Picasso's paintings, where all his figures have his eyes in them, all my songs have my heart in them."

Allowing herself to be vulnerable has been freeing for Callaway, who in the past 20 or so years has opened up to her audiences about her bisexuality, and acknowledges her wife, Strand, as "her rock, her muse, and my great love." That vulnerability has paid dividends in letting down guards and offering more expressive interpretations that resonate strongly with audiences, gay and straight.

She cites her recent concert with the Boston Gay Men's Chorus, noting, "I was the guest artist in a gorgeous concert of the 'Tyler Suite,' and I was one of the composers of this piece about Tyler Clementi. It was a very inspiring evening." [Clementi was a Rutgers student who died by suicide in 2010 by jumping off the George Washington Bridge because his straight roommate outed him by secretly live streaming over Twitter a private sexual encounter between Clementi and another young man.]

Support of the LGBTQ+ community, which has always been a part of Callaway's work, emerges elsewhere in her songwriting. "Love and Let Love," a song written during the pandemic with renowned songwriter Michele Brourman is an LGBTQ+ pride/human rights anthem.

Originally treated by Callaway and Brourman as a serious ballad, Callaway reveals, "When we got together with Trey, the arranger, he came back with a celebratory energy, unlike the gospel anthem arrangement I use when I sing it live. The up-tempo treatment made me listen to the song differently, and I thought that, of course, we can be who we are, and you can't stop me."

Another collaboration, "Revelation," where Callaway wrote music to a poem by the late Robert Frost, this interviewer viewed as an anthem of encouragement to the LGBTQ+ community. "I never heard anyone say that, and I appreciate you acknowledging that," sighs Callaway gratefully.

"As a person who has loved both men and women, for me, the feeling that you aren't safe to love someone who you want to, when you can't tell your own truth and live your own truth, your body will rebel against you. The self-sabotage that happens is tragic. Your mind doesn't work as well when you live in fear. When I was a kid in Winnetka, Illinois, reading this poem by Robert Frost, I wondered how I could live as I felt I needed to. I kept this poem in my jeans pocket."

Another song, "Forever and a Day," written with Alan Bergman, half of the Oscar-winning lyricist team and married couple Alan & Marilyn Bergman, was initially intended as a present to her Tony-nominated Emmy-winning sister Liz Callaway and her husband Dan about their great love for one another. But as she was writing it became more and more personal for Callaway.

"I was home when I was writing the music, and sharing my life with Kari, who I feel is the love of my life. It was a daunting experience to write music of finding everlasting love with the person you want to share your life with," confesses Callaway. "I was so grateful that Liz found her everlasting love, but I couldn't write a song about love without thinking about Kari and our love."

Collaborating with such an icon of film, television, and stage as Bergman "was daunting," Callaway admits. "Being in Alan's room where he and Marilyn wrote such great songs was almost surreal. Alan and Marilyn felt that a song began with the music, but I'm the opposite. I can't help thinking about the music and the melody as I write lyrics. When I played the melody for Alan, I hoped he would like it, and he did. I was honored that he would entrust me to write a song with him because he had been writing with the best. His words had such an innocence in them, as if about young love, as if he was looking back on his own life with Marilyn."

As her career progressed, and Callaway's reputation as a noteworthy songwriter grew, she attracted other songwriters to collaborate with her, some of whom were icons she had admired since her tween years, like Melissa Manchester and Carole King. And Streisand not only recorded "At the Same Time," she commissioned Callaway to write, "I've Dreamed of You," so that Streisand could sing it to James Brolin on their wedding day. Callaway gushes, "I was very honored that she included me on p 811 of her memoir on writing that song."

As exciting as her connection with Streisand is, she hasn't yet made it to the inner circle. "I wish we were closer friends," laments Callaway. "She recently had a birthday party with all these great women, and I thought we would have a great time if we were friends. She is very self-deprecating and astute about herself. And she sounds amazing at 82. When I think of my own career, I want to be like Barbra and Marilyn Maye and still sing until I'm 96."

Ann Hampton Callaway will perform "Finding Beauty" on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, 7:30 PM, at Jimmy's Jazz and Blues Club, 135 Congress Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801. Tickets are $10-$40. For reservations call 888-603-5299 or follow this link, and on Saturday, May 4, 2024, 7 PM at Scullers Jazz Club, 400 Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA 02134. Tickets $35-$95. For reservations, follow this link.