Angela Di Carlo fans, we’ve got good news and bad news. First, the good news: there’s a brand new “Jo-Lynn Butterfly Country Hour of Sunshine” show coming up at the Wild Project in the East Village.
The bad news: it’s the last one.
Di Carlo, a Lower East Side resident, is a singer, songwriter, playwright, DJ, actress, producer and self-described “glamour clown” who has been creating musical comedy shows since 2008. With a background in costume design, makeup and acting – although, she says, “My high school drama teacher hated me.”
DiCarlo arrived in NYC in 1997 (“the day before Diana died,” she notes). Her friends in the music duo Fischerspooner encouraged her to sing, and she ended up in “Chaos and Candy,” a musical, theatrical extravaganza conceived, written, and directed by Adam Dugas. She was in it every year, racking up eight shows.
“Lady, Lady, Lady” was her next venture, a variety trio that performed covers and originals, with Di Carlo doing all of her own material. Her first solo production was “Ange Rampage,” a cabaret show of all original material. Was that scary, we wondered?
“Oh yeah!” she replied.
Next up was “The Mad World of Miss Hathaway,” a parody of “Mad Men” that she wrote by herself — mostly in the mornings when she wasn’t doing gigs as a makeup artist.
“I got burned out working with others on ‘Lady, Lady, Lady,'” she admits. “Sometimes it’s just easier to do shit by yourself.”
Her makeup skills paid the bills (and still do), with gigs coming in frequently for OUT Magazine and occasional celeb stints for people like Kanye West (“before he was crazy”) and Bryan Ferry (“he was very quiet”).
Di Carlo then began to develop “Attention Deficit Disorder Cabaret,” a showcase for short tunes about pretty much anything from cheese to pantyliners to MTA bus drivers. It was a big hit at Club Cumming, Sid Gold’s Request Room, Joe’s Pub and the Parkside Lounge, a preferred venue. “I wanted it to be affordable, and there’s no drink minimum there,” she explains.
Performing up to a hundred songs (most of them being under one minute long) in one show was a challenge with a band, but it works perfectly with her longtime collaborator and keyboardist Kyle Forester, aka Special K. T
There’s a whole section devoted to the Lower East Side, with subjects such as the frat boys on Avenue D, shoe repair shops that are closed on shabbos, kids on leashes — the list goes on and on!
Timely topics are covered in a section titled, you guessed it, “Timely Topics,” and the older tunes from that have aged out are reprised in the part called (what else?) “Untimely Topics.”
This brings us to the brand new Jo-Lynn Butterfly production, an all-new Christmas special.
Still set in 1974, the show features three generations of women struggling to produce a TV show and get along with each other.
“It’s just about making people laugh and entertaining them and being sassy,” Di Carlo says. “I wanted it to be 100% my idea. The first time it was supposed to run, it got canceled due to the Omicron wave.”
Starring Di Carlo with Louisa Bradshaw, Amber Martin and special guests David Ilku, Fred Sauter, Bradford Scobie, Kyle Supley, Gia Mele and Edie Nightcrawler, the all-new iteration finds Lannie Jo-Lynn Butterfly (that’s Di Carlo) trying to cross over from her country music career to the mainstream like her idol Dolly Parton, who she pays tribute to in her take on “Coat of Many Colors,” a ditty called “Kleenex Box Shoes and a Newspaper Dress”
She’s got a new glam rock boyfriend who she met in Spencer’s Gifts and some spanking new original tunes, including “When You Get Out of the Gutter, Come Look Me Up.” Other tunes include themes such as aliens, Munchausen syndrome and “even some songs about Christmas!” Included in that category is the one reprise of “Everyone is Gay at Christmastime,” which comes from Di Carlo’s “Mad Men” parody.
If you come away from the show lamenting the fact that the Jo-Lynn saga is ending, there is some consolation.
“I’m dusting off the angry feminist comedy that I started in 2016,” she tells us. “It’s the perfect time for it.”
Di Carlo has one major goal. “Being a comedian and making people laugh is important,” she muses. “Nobody takes the comedian seriously. It’s really important to make people laugh. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do my entire life.”
Angela Di Carlo is on Instagram at @missangedc. She has a YouTube channel @attentiondeficitdisorderca3988.
The “Jo-Lynn Butterfly Country Hour of Sunshine” runs from Dec. 12-15 at The Wild Project, East 3rd Street between Avenues A and B. Ticket info: thewildproject.org/performances/jo-lynn-2024.
