when i was a boy | House of SpeakEasy NYC

Posts From Author: when i was a boy

Seriously Entertaining Gala Sets Social Pages Alight

“Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.” — Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice” (1923) So wrote Robert Frost in 1923, eerily prescient in his choice of imagery of this past Monday night. For inside the walls of City Winery NYC, as temperatures outside dipped into the low 20s, the House of SpeakEasy’s opening gala night turned out to be a sizzling-hot celebration of writers and their art. For Page Six, the evening marked the coming-together of “a pride of literary lions”. For the House of SpeakEasy team, it marked the successful start of a series of Seriously Entertaining shows to come in the months ahead. Playing emcee for the night was comedian Andy Borowitz, creator of The Borowitz Report. In the words of Vogue: [The show] opened with writer and host Andy Borowitz regaling-slash-horrifying the legions of literary-minded folk in attendance with a tale of being asked to live-tweet the Oscars last year by an unnamed newspaper owned by “an Australian man” and turned the offer down once informed it was for no actual fee. “They said they would mention my website,” he dryly quipped. Borowitz’s elliptical anecdote laid bare one of the House of SpeakEasy’s […]

The Music of Dar Williams: Many Great Songs

Dar Williams, who is our special musical guest at the House of SpeakEasy’s opening gala at City Winery, has more than twenty years of recording and performing to her name. Described by the New Yorker‘s Hendrik Hertzberg as “one of America’s very best singer-songwriters“, Dar’s back catalogue includes nine studio albums, two live albums, a handful of EPs, a greatest hits compilation (warmly titled Many Great Companions), and two rare early recordings, distributed at concerts or to family and friends and available only on cassette, for the eBay hounds to sniff out. For those of you new to Dar’s witty, incisive brand of pop folk, here’s a quick video introduction… “I will not be afraid of women!” sings Dar on “As Cool As I Am”, originally featured on Mortal City (1996) and re-recorded in this splendid acoustic version for Many Great Companions. It’s a defiant refrain, one that announces her feminist credentials with thrilling boldness, and its confidence is no doubt part of what makes “As Cool As I Am” one of her most popular songs. Many of her lyrics describe the search for truth in the everyday; and it’s a transformative truth, “just like time, it catches up and it just keeps going”. By the end of the […]