[ATTENDED: January 30, 2016] Jill Hennessy
Jill Hennessy is an actress who was on Law & Order from 1993-1996 and then starred on Crossing Jordan. She is one of the reasons I watched L&O for the couple seasons that I did. I pretty much stopped once she left, although I never watched Jordan).
I genuinely didn’t think that this was the same Jill Hennessy. It’s been twenty years and all, but she looks so different (ans still so young) and the name didn’t seem that uncommon. But nope. It’s her. She started playing music a long time ago. She was busking in the subway in New York before getting a big Broadway gig. And in fact, she appeared with the Indigo Girls in a Mountain Stage concert back in 2009 (it’s on NPR here). Hennessy’s voice suits the Indigo Girls very well, she even sounds a bit like Amy Ray if you don’t think too hard about it.
Before the concert, I looked her up online and saw her bio–she’s from Edmonton, Alberta–and has been acting for ages. She was even a candidate to be Scully on The X-Files.
Then I found a few songs and really liked what I heard–she’s sorta country but more in line with the style of the Indigo Girls. So I was looking forward to hearing her.
We may have missed a song or two, I can’t find setlists online anywhere, but she played a fairly long and solid set.
Hennessy was accompanied by a very good electric guitar player and a good keyboardist. She played acoustic guitar and sang. She wasn’t connected to the Theater’s sound system, I don’t think, because she didn’t sound nearly as clear as the Indigo Girls did. But she was a delightful performer and has great stage presence (as you would expect from a Broadway performer).
I didn’t know any of her song titles, so I can’t say the names of any songs she played. Except that she played the title track from her new album I Do. She also played a song that is about a transgendered person (I missed details of that one). And she did a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” Afterward, she said that when she was busking in New York City, she used to play that song and Indigo Girls songs and how great was it that she actually had an audience now.
After the set she was signing autographs and there was a surprisingly short line, so I bought her CD and had a chat. She was super cool and I wish her all the best on her recording career (although she assured me she’s still doing TV, too).
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