• The Syd Straw Heartwreck Show
• 8:00pm

Syd Straw

A rock singer and songwriter and daughter of actor Jack Straw (The Pajama Game), she began her career singing backup for Pat Benatar, then took her distinct voice to the indie/alternative scene and joined the Golden Palominos (Michael Stipe, Matthew Sweet, and Anton Fier). She released her first album, Surprise, in 1989; it featured contributions by Stipe, Fier, Richard Thompson, Jody Harris, Peter Blegvad, and a number War and Peace, appeared in 1996. Recorded with a relatively obscure Midwest rock group called the Skeletons, it chronicled a brief and unhappy romance.

In 2008, she released a new album, entitled Pink Velour, on her own label, Earnester Records. According to an earlier interview, the title track “is about my family moving back and forth between the east and the west, and my being kidnapped by my mother on Valentine's Day in 1969, and about not seeing my dad for almost seven years.”

A frequent backup singer and contributor to duets with other musicians, Straw has also maintained an intermittent acting career, appearing on the television shows The Adventures of Pete & Pete and Tales of the City. Syd Straw can be heard singing harmony and backing vocals on the Rickie Lee Jones albums Traffic From Paradise and The Evening of My Best Day. She is also featured on Leo Kottke's Peculiaroso, which Jones produced.

Her voice is dusky and strong and can go from a tender croon to a yearning wail in a heartbeat, she has created an informal party atmosphere that dispels, in a big gust of southern-tinged warmth, any New York hyper-cool posturing. If you enjoy a good laugh, especially one squarely aimed at yourself then you can do worse than join Syd for her annual “Heartwreck” show at City Winery for a Anti-Valentine’s Day treat.