Christine Lavin and Don White, two very, very funny singers and songwriters, return to the to the Mainstay in Rock Hall, Maryland on Thursday May 14 at 8:00 p.m. with their show entitled “On the Funny Side of the Street: A Night Of Brighter Laughter.” Admission is $20. For information and reservations call 410-639-9133. Information is also available at the Mainstay’s website https://www.mainstayrockhall.org.
Christine Lavin and Don White each have successful careers as singers and songwriters and reputations for being very funny performers. Seeing them solo is a treat. Seeing them together is unforgettable. Both are wonderful songwriters whose sideways looks at the world around them will have audience members smiling in recognition and then almost falling off their chairs with laughter. Between the two of them, they have more than 40 years of combined experience making music and laughter.
The Lavin/White co-bills have packed audiences in wherever they’ve played, from the Regent Theatre in Boston to The Ark in Ann Arbor Michigan. Their performance last year at the Mainstay was full of the kind of chemistry you get from old friends and seasoned performers who share a wild sense of humor and an impeccable sense of timing.
The Boston Globe columnist, Scott Alarik once described them as “the two funniest performers on the folk circuit.” He went on to say, “I have laughed as hard at Don and Christine as I have at any comedians I have seen on stage, but I have never heard either of them tell a mean, scornful, or bitter joke. Always, their humor is fueled by the same empathy, kindness and universality that fuels their songwriting… when Christine Lavin and Don White make us laugh, there is always a warm shimmer of community beneath the silliness. Of all the gifts great entertainers can bring to the stage, I think this is perhaps the rarest and most valuable. Many can dazzle us; but only the very, very best can befriend us.”
Christine Lavin is from New York and started her songwriting career as part of the Greenwich Village scene that included Jack Hardy, Suzanne Vega, John Gorka and Dave Van Ronk. She was later a founding member of The Four Bitchin’ Babes. She has made more than 20 recordings with titles like “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind,” “Please Don’t Make Me Too Happy” and “I Don’t Make This Stuff Up, I Just Make It Rhyme” and is the author of the book “Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-Wha??”
Don White grew up outside of Boston where he first became a songwriter, then spent a lot of time in comedy clubs and then combined the two, returning to the folk and festival circuit where he could be serious as well as funny. Much of his material comes from his own life as a blue collar family man. He describes himself as “storyteller-comedian-author-troubadour-folk singer-songwriter.” He has 10 recordings including a digital-only live recording with Christine, Live At the Ark: The Father’s Day Concert, available on CDFreedom.com. He is the author of “Memoirs of a C Student.”
“It doesn’t sound like a folk concert, it sounds like a comedy concert,” says White of his laughter inducing co-bills with Lavin. “We rehearse and we rehearse and then inevitably, she’ll throw something at me that I have no idea about, with a mischievous grin that lets me know she’s been thinking about it all afternoon. Just to see what will happen. And she’s taught me to do the same.”
“It’s hard to describe what it is that Don does onstage, because there simply isn’t anyone out there like him,” says Lavin. “I’m a brave performer to share the bill with someone who knocks audiences out the way like he does. But I’ve discovered if audiences know me and don’t know him — they become instant fans of his. If they know him and don’t know me, the same thing seems to happen for me. Everybody wins.”
Mainstay (Home of Musical Magic) is the friendly informal storefront performing arts center on Rock Hall’s old time Main Street. The Mainstay is supported by ticket sales, fundraising including donations from friends and audience members and an operating grant from the Maryland State Arts
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.