Moonlighting The Commercial Appeal’s Michael Donahue bangs the keys – piano, not computer – at Cielo. by Mark Jordan f Michael Donahue had never played piano in public again, no one would have blamed him. A few years ago, Donahue was playing at a restaurant called Uncle Henry’s in Moon Lake, Mississippi, and a gaggle of friends and family had come to see him. When he finished his set, several of them rushed over to tell him how much they enjoyed it, including Donahue’s young nephew. As uncles are wont to do, Donahue swept the youngster up in his arms and lifted him high into the air – right into the turning blades of a ceiling fan. Pianist and Commercial Appeal columnist Michael Donahue likes to play the cocktail music of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. “He was all right,” Donahue says, assuring me that the boy survived the trauma and is now a fully-functioning 10-year-old. “[The fan] wasn’t going very fast, but still it caused some alarm. … It’s funny because we just ate there two nights ago, and we were talking about that. The owner was there, and he showed him the fan.” There is, for the record, a ceiling fan hanging over Donahue’s piano at Cielo, the Victorian Village restaurant where the longtime Commercial Appeal reporter has recently taken up a regular Thursday-night gig. But, fortunately, Cielo’s high ceilings place the fan well out of reach. Besides, Donahue says his days of hoisting children into the air are behind him. Donahue is, of course, best-known as the CA’s “man about town,” whose Monday-morning reports on the city’s social scene have driven the most dispassionate of readers to eagerly scan his roll call of partiers for their names. But for a few weeks now Donahue has become the life of the party in a different way. Rather than suffer assaults from tipsy debutantes trying to get their names into his column, now every Thursday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. he has to placate tipsy yuppies requesting “Play Misty For Me” or trying to sing along to “All Of Me.” Donahue is hardly the first newspaper writer to step out from behind his byline into the local arts spotlight. CA music critic and accomplished guitarist Bill Ellis is a frequent performer around town and longtime columnists John Beifuss and Fredric Koeppel have both published works – a children’s book and poetry, respectively – that have been fairly trumpeted around town. But no one, outside of those who know him well, expected to see Donahue reigning over the festivities at one of the city’s swankier nightspots like some kind of modern-day Hoagy Carmichael. “I’ve played at friends’ parties for years, but I haven’t played out in public in a long time,” Donahue says. “But [Cielo owner] Karen [Carrier] is a good friend of mine, and she asked me to do this. So, I said sure. It sounded like fun, and it has been. … People stop by. Friends have been dropping in and saying hello.” Though he does, with his trademark unruly mass of curly black (though graying) hair, recall the figure of old Ludwig van behind the keyboard, not many of his weekly readers would suspect that Donahue has the piano chops to boot. But he does. He started playing piano at age 3, picking out simple classical pieces by ear. For his current gig, however, Donahue prefers to play cocktail music. Irving Berlin and Cole Porter loom large in his repertoire, with a generous sprinkling of familiar show tunes and standards. Featured melodies on one recent night included “It Had To Be You” and the torch classics “As Time Goes By” and “Someone To Watch Over Me,” but nothing more modern than Willie Nelson’s country standard “Crazy.” In all, Donahue’s playing is a perfect complement to the casual-yet-urbane atmosphere of Cielo. Located in a Victorian-era home dressed up with funky, art-deco-inspired touches, the restaurant has just the right mix of old-world sophistication and modern Southern insouciance. Donahue plays on a baby grand piano set up on the second-floor landing. Diners going to one of three upstairs rooms must pass right in front of him as he plays and, as many of the people here seem to be either regulars or friends, most stop to say hello. To one side is a small bar, serving up vodka martinis and pricey wines. In an adjacent room is a lounge with plush, comfortable chairs. The third room is a small dining area. This night, it’s a young, white professional crowd; the kind of people who iron their T-shirts and tuck them in to go out. And as a peach sunset casts a warm glow over the bar, Donahue’s light and casual playing settles softly over the low din of conversation. It’s a laid-back performance – songs end abruptly before they’re played out and blend unexpectedly into one another. But the off-handedness of the playing, again, goes well with the friends-just-having-drinks mood of the place. And Donahue actually brings a surprising sensitivity and creativity, adding nice jazzy flourishes and showing a fine understanding of the forgotten art of dynamics. He is certainly several steps above, say, the hacks who bang out “Brown-Eyed Girl” and “Piano Man” at the bafflingly popular upstairs bar at Earnestine and Hazel’s. Maybe it’s time to quit the day job, Michael. After all, the hours at Cielo are much better and ever since they closed down that bar in the newsroom, well, things haven’t been the same.

		Music Notes by Mark Jordan Review: B.B.’s Blues This leather jacket autographed by Madonna will be auctioned off at the Blues Foundation’s Don’t Lose The Blues fund-raiser Thursday. The term children’s production rarely raises anything but eyebrows and dread – and almost never anticipation. And so it was with appropriately lowered expectations that I went to see B.B.’s Blues at The Orpheum on July 8th. The one-night-only finale of Blues Camp, a three-week city schools’ summer arts program designed to teach children their blues heritage as well as the artistic and technical aspects of live performance, B.B.’s Blues is a production almost entirely written, produced, and performed by children, ranging in ages from 6 to 18. But the show these kids put on that night, though it certainly had its rough spots, was a remarkably sophisticated, ambitious, vital, largely well-executed, and, most importantly, fun piece of musical theatre. B.B.’s Blues is a rough stage biography of B.B. King. The organizers of Blues Camp received special permission from King himself to dramatize his life. Using the framing device of a live WDIA broadcast of King playing in his Beale Street club, the story follows the bluesman’s progress from orphaned Delta farm boy to green young Memphis guitarist to international music star. Along the way, the audience is treated to a number of fine comic and musical performances, including a hilarious quartet of gate crashers trying to get into B.B. King’s Blues Club and an actor playing Sonny Boy Williamson II. Playing King as an adult, Moses Stewart not only looks uncannily like his part but has the voice to match. The audience that attended the Wednesday performance was made up largely of friends and family of the approximately 250 kids who took part in Blues Camp, people who could be expected to be enthusiastic boosters of the show. But sprinkled in among them were a handful of objective observers who came away impressed with the raw talent on display and with the quality of the Blues Camp program. In a city where the city school system is more often known for its failures – no air conditioning, school violence, falling test scores – Blues Camp seems like a conspicuous triumph. It’s a program in trouble, however. Sorely underfunded and underpromoted, Blues Camp needs the support of individuals, the business sector, organizations like the Blues Foundation and NARAS, and The Orpheum (who charged the group, albeit at a reduced rate, for use of the facility) to help expand and improve the program. As B.B.’s Blues shows, it would be more than worth the effort. More Tea, Officer Selby … And Step On It On Thursday, July 16th, the Blues Foundation will hold its second annual Don’t Lose The Blues fund-raiser at the Hard Rock Cafe, featuring a silent auction and local celebrity waiters. Tickets for the event are $40 for foundation members and $50 for non-members. That price includes a dinner which will be served by one of several volunteer celebrity waiters. Among the well-known personalities scheduled to work the floor that night are Judge D’Army Bailey, Convention and Visitor’s Bureau president Kevin Kane, the P&H Cafe’s Wanda Wilson, the Flyer’s very own Tim Sampson, and notorious speed-trapper Lt. Owen Selby. After dinner the results of the silent auction will be announced. Items on the block in this year’s auction include two round-trip tickets to Amsterdam aboard Northwest Airlines, Gibson guitars signed by B.B. King and John Lee Hooker, a Hard Rock Cafe leather jacket signed by Madonna, and rare, classic blues LPs. To reserve seats or to place absentee bids on items valued at $500 or more, call the Blues Foundation at 527-2583.