The Lascivious Biddies / The New Standards

Show Description

The Lascivious Biddies, an all female cocktail pop quartet based in New York City, are making headlines for having an energetic and tightly woven live show full of humor, expert musicianship, and a dash of sentimentality. This irrepressible foursome is Saskia Lane on bass, Amanda Monaco on guitar, Lee Ann Westover on lead vocal, and Deidre Rodman on piano and melodica . Blending jazz, pop, and cabaret with four-part harmonies, The Lascivious Biddies have carried their fresh, genre-defying sound from coast to coast including performances at The Kennedy Center, Birdland, and numerous theaters across the country. The Biddies and their music have been featured on The Food Network, The Discovery Channel, Fuse TV, a national TV commercial for Chili's Restaurants, a segment on CBS Evening News, and heard nationally on NPR, dozens of local radio stations across America, and internationally on the BBC.



John Munson of Trip Shakespeare/Semisonic fame, Chan Poling, founder of the haute-punk new-wave group The Suburbs, and Steve Roehm, vibraphonist extraordinaire, got together with a plan to play and sing their favorite songs – naked. Well, the musicians are clothed, but the aesthetic is raw simplicity, communication and soul. The song selections span the twentieth century. Each song must be someone's favorite and each arrangement must bring something new to the song. In an age of digital overkill, The New Standards keep the instrumentation simple. Poling on piano, Roehm on vibraphone and Munson on double bass. Chan and John split the singing. If that's not enough, a footstomp here, a shout-out, a fiery solo, and it's cooked. Simple, elegant, illuminating. "As a trio, they have made a practice of dressing up punk and pop classics - "I Will Dare" by the Replacements gets a place in the pantheon - in jazz arrangements that overlay piano, upright bass and vibraphone...The DNA of the band and its members has its feet firmly rooted into punk/pop culture. Mr. Poling was the pianist and leader of the Suburbs, a seminal haute punk band from Minneapolis that may not have landed nationally, but more than held its own in a musical context that included Hüsker Dü, Soul Asylum and the Replacements." - NY Times