Audrey Appleby
Life…a Seduction Tour
The Gardenia, West Hollywood, CA, March 8, 2025
Reviewed by Les Traub
Audrey Appleby’s Life …a Seduction Tour focused on people, places, and passions. This was an autobiographically themed show that included mostly original songs along with some other well-chosen standards that served her storyline. Appleby’s pleasing voice was mostly delivered in a conversational style to convey the point of the lyrics. Her quintet of talented musicians, led by music director/pianist Daryl Kojak (in a too-frequent LA visit) ensured the music would be first rate.
The opening song, her original “Paris Heart Rio Soul” (Appleby/Beledo) was set in locations that were important to her, and its mood was carried throughout the evening: love and romance from Paris and a free-spirit attitude from Rio. The Paris influence continued with “Les Soirs d’été” (Michel Fugain) beautifully sung in French. The next song, the ASCAP and MAC Award-winning “Miami Mosaic” (Appleby/Belado) expressed her reactions to and influences from Miami from the time she first remembers it when she was three or four to her later years when “My feet felt the rhythm of Miami’s dance.” “Not Really Me” (Appleby) was set in Italy and was about a broken love affair with an artist. Its poetic imagery related to art. “The girl you tried to paint/was the woman you wanted me to be/Not really me.”
Appleby sang of love and loss in “Beyond the Curtain” (Appleby/Sean Harkness) and “Soul Crush” (Appleby). Her happy marriage to Jim, her college sweetheart, who was there for all her shows, “sitting at the bar with flowers in hand,” (and) “Beyond the velvet curtain/It’s just you and me.” A sudden illness after years of marriage took Jim from her, and she sang sweetly of her memories of their time together in “Soul Crush” (Appleby).
A rich sax solo by Alex Budman gave “To Paris” (Appleby) just the right tone as Appleby sang of her very personal feelings about Paris. She returned to art imagery in her song, “Picasso Woman,” with music by the much-missed former LA resident, Shelly Markham. It described her body moving first from Greek and Roman symmetry to a Picasso asymmetrical Cubist manner as she marveled that she was still “Your Picasso Woman.”
Appleby is also a dancer, and she concluded her very satisfying show with “Pour un flirt” (Michel Delpech/Roland Vincent) adding some dance moves as she went down the Gardenia’s aisle. As a postscript to the show, Appleby brought up friends Jeudi and Steve Sieck, who each sang a couple of songs. That made for an awkward end to the show, and it would have been better placed earlier as part of the Paris-themed section.
