The Jersey Star Ledger, November 23, 2008 by Jay Lustig
Reminiscing about the early days of her career, Saturday night November 22, 2008 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, Phoebe Snow said that when she started singing in clubs, as opposed to just playing guitar, she did so through clenched teeth.
It's hard to believe. The Phoebe Snow most of us know -- and who appeared at NJPAC -- sings as easily as she breathes, and is capable of building to explosive finales, with superhuman high notes. She is comfortable in a folk or blues mode, but draws from soul and gospel, too, blowing listeners away with the stunning power of her voice. She was gentle Saturday, on songs like "Poetry Man," "Harpo's Blues" and the standard, "With a Song in My Heart." But, backed by a four-piece band, she really belted out other numbers ("Shakey Ground," "Tossin' and Turnin'," "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu").

She confidently tackled songs associated with powerhouses like Aretha Franklin ("Do Right Woman, Do Right Man") and Janis Joplin ("Piece of My Heart"), making them seem like personal statements.

The show, which took place at NJPAC's Victoria Theater, felt like a comeback, even though Snow, technically, has never gone away.

A Teaneck native who now lives in Fort Lee, Snow, 56, emerged as a major talent in the mid-'70s with a defining hit of the soft-rock era ("Poetry Man") and a debut album (1974's "Phoebe Snow") that seems to have left a long-lasting impression on everyone who has heard it. She was nominated for best new artist at the 1975 Grammys. Soon she was forced to slow down, though. In late 1975, her daughter Valerie was born with severe brain damage. Snow devoted so much of her life over the next 31 years to caring for Valerie that her career suffered. She started singing jingles to help make ends meet. She continued to perform her own music, when she could, but without long tours and dogged promotion, it's hard to get music out to the general public, and her albums began selling at a fraction of their former levels. She referred to her 2003 album "Natural Wonder" as "alleged" on Saturday, meaning so few people heard it that its existence seems questionable.

Valerie died in March 2007 and Snow, though devastated, started performing again, a few months later, thinking it would be therapeutic and distracting. It was, and she has continued, booking mini-tours and releasing a concert album, "Live." Throughout Saturday's show, she seemed slightly nervous between songs, but never while singing. Before she sang "You're My Girl," her heart-wrenching tribute to Valerie, she said she was going to take a few minutes to talk about her late daughter. "I have to do this, because I need her with me right now," she said. She also pledged to continue talking about Valerie, at shows, for the rest of her life. She told other stories, too, about the first time she played "Poetry Man" for her mother, for instance, and the recording session for "Harpo's Blues." She also sang some of those jingles that helped pay the rent, and elongated "Piece of My Heart" with a comedic monologue and excerpts from songs ranging from "Summer Nights" (from "Grease") to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." She also, occasionally, delved into the stories behind her cover songs -- most notably, the fascinating history of "It's All In the Game," whose elegant melody was written, early last century, by Charles Dawes, who later became vice president under Calvin Coolidge.

She mentioned, sheepishly, that the song had been recorded by Barry Manilow and Donny and Marie Osmond, but added that the late, undeniably great Levi Stubbs had also been inspired to sing it, with his group, The Four Tops. It's a song about a boy and a girl, but for this night, it became one about a mother and a daughter: "Many a tear has to fall/But it's all in the game/All in this wonderful game/That we know as love."

About The Artist
"I'm looking at this album as a reintroduction and the beginning of a new chapter," Phoebe Snow says of Live, her first-ever live album and her Verve debut.

Indeed, Live marks a welcome return to active duty for the legendary artist. It's also a compelling summation of a remarkable career that's established Snow as one of American music's true originals. With a flexible contralto voice that's won her a reputation as a singer's singer, and a singular songwriting talent that invariably cuts to the emotional heart, Snow remains in a class of her own.

Through the myriad twists and turns of her three-and-a-half-decade career, it's always been the live stage where Snow's unique gifts have been highlighted in their purest form. So it's no surprise that Live captures her at her in top form. Recorded on July 30 and 31, 2008 at the historic Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, New York, the album spans the musical, emotional and chronological range of Snow's body of work, and she rises to the occasion with a set of consistently riveting performances.

Backed by a sterling five-piece band, Snow delivers a haunting rendition of her self-penned signature hit "Poetry Man," and memorable new versions of her more recent compositions "Natural Wonder" and "The Other Girlfriend." Her skill as a versatile, deeply expressive interpreter is showcased on sensitive, deeply-felt readings of the romantic pop classic "It's All in the Game" and the Rodgers and Hart standard "With a Song in My Heart," while she rakes a tougher, assertive stance on a bracingly funky take on the Temptations' "Shakey Ground" and a barn-burning reworking of the Erma Franklin/Janis Joplin classic "Piece of My Heart."

"It's a scaled-down version of my live set, but it's also kind of a retrospective," Snow says of Live. "I have a bunch of songs that I'm identified with and that people expect to hear, so this is a chance to get them in one place, along with some surprises."

The album's emotional centerpiece is "You're My Girl," a heart-rending tribute to Snow's daughter Valerie Rose, who passed away in 2007. "The song was originally written for my mom and called 'I'm Your Girl,'' Snow notes, adding, "It can be tough to sing it, and I truly don't know how I'm doing it every night, but I have to. It's become sort of an out-of-body thing."

The emotional intensity and musical integrity that are displayed on Live have been constants in Phoebe Snow's career. She was born Phoebe Ann Laub and grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey into a family with some roots in entertainment: her mother was a former dancer in the Martha Graham company and her paternal grandfather was an ex-vaudeville comic. She began to nurture her nascent musical abilities during childhood, and as a teenager was drawn into the Greenwich Village folk scene. She also discovered some key sources of inspiration in the emotional directness of old blues, R&B and jazz records. Phoebe borrowed her stage name from a fictional advertising character created in the early 1900s for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.

Snow's stunning live performances helped to win her a deal with Shelter Records. Her self-titled 1974 debut album became a major hit, spawning a Top Five single in "Poetry Man" and establishing Snow as one of the era's most distinctive voices. Phoebe Snow's release was met with widespread critical acclaim, as well as a Rolling Stone cover and high-profile tours with Jackson Browne and Paul Simon (with whom she recorded the hit 1975 duet "Gone at Last").

Her debut disc was followed by the well-received '70s releases Second Childhood, It Looks Like Snow, Never Letting Go and Against the Grain. But the necessity of caring for her special-needs daughter caused Snow to place parental obligations over career considerations. After 1981's Rock Away, she recorded infrequently, releasing Something Real in 1989, I Can't Complain in 1998 and Natural Wonder in 2003. Those albums showed Snow's talent and vision to be fully intact, and her loyal fan base continued to turn out for her live shows, including those with Donald Fagen's all-star New York Rock and Soul Revue. She was featured on that ensemble's 1991 album Live at the Beacon.

Live serves as both a shout-out to Snow's longtime fans and an introduction for new listeners. "I do seem to have a very loyal core audience who've stuck with me through everything, and I'm so thankful for those people," she states. "But I also want to see who else is out there. I am amazed at how often younger people come up to me at my shows and say, 'My mom and dad had your albums, I grew up listening to you.' Or they'll say, 'My mother made me come here and I've never heard of you, but you're really good.'

"I'm pragmatic and I know that the music business now is a whole different ballgame than the one that I came up in," Snow asserts. "So it'll be interesting to see how this works out. I just want to keep making music, because singing is still as cathartic to me as it's ever been. The industry has changed so much lately that getting back in feels a bit like uncharted territory. But my whole life has been about starting over, so I'm not scared of the unknown."

Product Description
2008 live album from the iconic singer and writer of the classic hit 'Poetry Man'. A vocalist's vocalist whose stature rivals those of contemporaries Linda Ronstadt and Carole King, Snow recorded this inspiring set of classics, standards and originals live at the legendary Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, NY on July 30th and 31st, 2008. The album was produced by John Boylan (The Eagles, Boston). 11 tracks.

1. Shakey Ground
2. Something Real
3. It's All In The Game
4. If I Can Just Get Through Tonight
5. Poetry Man
6. You're My Girl
7. Natural Wonder
8. The Other Girlfriend
9. Piece Of My Heart
10. Rockin' Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu
11. With A Song In My Heart

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E2PTIQ/?tag=imwan-20