Laura Bell Bundy left LA and the Valley for a couple of summery Monday nights at Birdland. Shedding Elle's sequins and slipping into cowboy boots and a plain cotton dress, she looking as if she were heading for shooters at the local roadhouse rather than opening at the Grand Ole Opry -- or Birdland. That was the feeling of Laura Bell Bundy's show, a celebration of a new, straightforward country CD, she calls Longing For a Place Already Gone.

If you have seen Legally Blonde on Broadway, you already know that this Tony and Drama Desk nominee has energy to burn, and she glows red hot on this stage. Backed by her sizable "Kitchen Band," including an accordion, a couple of guitars, a steel guitar, fiddle, mandolin, bass, percussion, keyboard, trumpet and two backup singers, she opens two-stepping with "Fool Moon" (Larson Paine), bringing, "A little bit of honky tonk to Hell's Kitchen."

There was plenty of honky tonk, all right, the old-fashioned high-energy rockabilly tunes, like Paine's "I'll Make the Money" ("You mak"e the love"), "Designated Drunk" (Paine), and a rocking "Dancing with Myself (Idol and James). She co-wrote most of the tunes herself, like "Long Blonde Hair" ("…and a black heart").

Traditional country singers are usually in one of two camps -- Dolly Parton perky and Tammy Wynette plaintive. Bundy rendered a bit of both, the old-style heartbreakers like "Between You and Me" (Bundy and Paine) -- "What good is heart, when it's broken right in two?" -- and "Just Pretend That You Love Me" (Bundy and Lyon). "The C Word," was Bundy's sexy, sinfully chocolate take-off on "Making Whoopie," and in another tune, she admitted to her leaning toward a "Bad Boy." Harkening back to Patsy Cline's killer-songs, was "Fallin'" by Bundy and Gallahan, and Bundy and Paine's nostalgic Texas, guaranteed to strike the frontier spirit of all things Texan.

In constant motion, energy never flagging, Bundy has a well-controlled voice, and applies it effectively to the loping country style with drawl and punch. In a whole different mode, she can portray a winning Valley Girl, but the versatile Laura Bell Bundy can play as down-home honest country as her tune, "Just Me." Hell's Kitchen will always welcome honky tonk when delivered by such irresistible ebullience.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
August 20, 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org