The glamorous Lady Rizo is dressed in an evening gown and jewels, wearing eyelashes that could swat the wall 20 feet away. With cellist Yair Evnine at her side, she tells the audience she’ll be reading passages from her “journal” and, in her sultry, bluesy voice—an unmistakable Peggy Lee-meets-Janis Joplin slice of vocal heaven—begins her rendition of Jamie Foxx’s “Blame It (On the Alcohol).”
“Blame it on the Goose/Got you feelin’ loose/Blame it on Patrón/Got you in the zone, blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol.” Same song. Different take. With comedic wit and soulful vocals, Lady Rizo, aka Amelia Zirin-Brown, twists Foxx’s 2008 hip-hop single into such a creative little cabaret masterpiece, you wonder where this lady crooner has been all your life.
The video, recorded in 2009 at Joe’s Pub in Lady Rizo’s home base of New York City, is an exploit she’s been pulling off for years, in formal attire, sometimes with evening gloves.
Her rendition of “If I Were Your Woman,” punctuated with her own ad libs—“If I were your woman, you wouldn’t need to breathe because I would be all the oxygen you’d ever mother-f*cking need”—is raw and powerful, and not as wholesome as her duet with Yo-Yo Ma. Either way, she knows how to bring on the goose bumps. And the laughs.
See her at the Bunkhouse, part of a cabaret tour she calls an intimate, hilarious, raucous show with a narrative arc.
Lady Rizo October 25, 9:30 p.m. & October 26, 10 p.m.; $15 ($10 with LIB wristband). Bunkhouse, 702-854-1414.
