Mary lyn Maiscott

I’ve always found Amy Irving compelling as an actor, something about the combination of beauty, delicacy, and intelligence. She was Richard Dreyfuss’s enticing rival in The Competition, Peter Riegert’s literary uptown girl in Crossing Delancey, and Barbra Streisand’s consummate (if unconsummated) beard in Yentl, among other roles.

At the age of 69, Irving has now teamed up with the big band Goolis to do something new—an album, Born in a Trunk (her father was a director and her mother an actor)—that reflects…

Here's a preview of an upcoming post (Wednesday) from the blog of Robert Rosen, my husband the writer (because it's about my new song and more!):

On Billie Holiday's Birthday

April 7 was Billie Holiday's 108th birthday, and Mary Lyn Maiscott and I celebrated by tuning in to St. James Infirmary, Michael J. Mand's show on OWWR. In his three-hour webcast, which begins 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Fridays, Michael plays an eclectic selection of rock, jazz, and blues—old classics as well as new material from unknown…

As I’m listening to Michael J. Mand’s St. James Infirmary show on OWWR, I’m thinking of last week when he played my cover of “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” right after Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy-winning “Just Like That” and John Lennon’s “God”—love the segues! This set starts about 45 minutes in, with my song about 9 minutes later.

Michael chooses his songs very carefully, and a couple that I especially like on this podcast, besides the two I’ve mentioned, are “I Wish It Would Rain,” another cover, this one from…

Here is a first for me: My song “Alithia’s Flowers (Children of Uvalde)”was named Song of the Year by OWWR (Old Westbury, Long Island) host Michael J Mand. Michael has played the song (as well as my rock song “Left It on the Stage”) a couple of times on his terrific show, St. James Infirmary. As that name suggests, he seems especially fond of the blues, but he always puts together an eclectic blend of recordings. For his last broadcast of the year, he does an awards show that focuses on albums, with such…

For the 15th anniversary of my album, "Blue Lights," I've just released the new lyric video for its title song, "starring" my parents, Edgar and Floy Lyn Maiscott, and inspired by their wartime romance and marriage.

Christine Haire created the video for me, using old photos of my parents, a few of which my mother had taken, developing them in their darkroom. My sister, Cecilia Maiscott Pectol, gathered most of the photos as well as a few of their letters from that time.

When I was little, my mother told me…

In my last post I wrote about Carly Simon and her sisters, who, very sadly, had both died (within a day of each other) in October. I’d been reading Simon’s memoir Boys in the Trees—as well as doing other research on her life and music—at that time. I’ve since written a piece for The Village Voice about Simon and Pat Benatar, the two 2022 inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Performer category, who were born in New York City. (I also read Benatar’s memoir, Between a Heart and a Rock PIace.) I hope…

Lately, pursuing a writing idea, I’ve been immersed in Carly Simon—her stimulating, almost fantastical childhood in NYC (the Village and then Riverdale) and Stamford, Connecticut; her transitions from stuttering child to folk singer, in a duo with her sister Lucy, to pop-rock sensation; her consuming love for James Taylor (they divorced in 1981); her life in an ever-expanding eccentric house on Martha’s Vineyard; and of course her music. 

Carly’s two sisters play large parts in her entrancing memoir, Boys…

I met the singer/songwriter/actor/activist Nellie McKay in 2009, after I interviewed her for Vanity Fair. Since then I've seen her versatility in action many times, as when she performed Doris Day songs at the swank Feinstein's (now closed), 60s songs at the supper club 54 Below, and more recently a combination of standards and originals at the Blue Note, which happens to be in my neighborhood. The Blue Note show, on July 31, was the first of three Sunday engagements (two brunch shows each day), and there's…

The other day I got a Facebook notification about a post by Michael J. Mand, aka Michael the Molar Maven, an NYC dentist who moonlights as a radio host for the Old Westbury, Long Island, station OWWR. He had included my song "Alithia's Flowers (Children of Uvalde)" on the August 26 episode of his show St. James Infirmary, which airs on Friday afternoons. When my husband and I listened to the podcast (click on image for link), Bob said it reminded him of Don McGee's eclectic show, Mixed Bag, on WFUV here in…

My song "Alithia's Flowers (Children of Uvalde)" has led me down a few paths. I contacted Alithia Ramirez's parents, Jess Hernandez and Ryan Ramirez, shortly after recording it. I wanted them to know that I'd been inspired to write the song by a drawing made by their daughter, who died in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. Since then we've had several exchanges, and I've also frequented local social-media pages, such as for Uvalde Strong. As the Times reported in a recent article, Uvalde is a tight-knit…