Mary lyn Maiscott

You may be familiar (possibly very familiar) with my original holiday song “Blue Lights”—and the various iterations of it, including a track on my 2007 CD of the same name and a live recording from a concert I did in 2019. The latter was released during the pandemic as part of my EP Dream: Live Recordings from the Map Room (referring to a former stage at Bowery Electric in NYC).

I always sing “Blue Lights,” which involves my parents' wartime romance, if I’m doing a show anywhere near Christmas, and that…

I met Betty Buckley in 2014, after I interviewed her for Vanity Fair's website. At her invitation, my husband, Robert Rosen, and I attended her concert at Joe's Pub here in NYC, and afterward she asked us to join her table at the club’s restaurant, The Library, where Bob shot the photo below. I soon took Betty's uniquely enlightening master class for singers, and over the years I reviewed several of her beautiful, heartening concerts. 

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“Welcome to Uvalde.” I noticed the sign as my husband and I approached the small city in our grey rental Prius. U-vaul-dee. Three little unified syllables—until recently unknown to most the world, myself included—now heavy with loss, pain, and death. It felt as though Bob and I had driven, taking Highway 90 from San Antonio, into a tragedy. 

I pulled into the Motel 6 on East Main Street, where a “Fox News—Austin” van sat in the parking lot. This was the only place I could find that hadn’t been fully booked…

It was breathtaking to walk into the grand St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church, in Brooklyn Heights, last week and see the spacious altar area aglow with hundreds of candles, a grand piano elevated among them. The realization that the candles were battery-powered didn’t much diminish their effect, and anyway no one wants to risk a fire in this historic house of worship (a fine example of Gothic Revival architecture).
 

The piano—and the many people settled into pews—were awaiting Alexis Ffrench, he of the…

Last Christmas my husband, Robert Rosen, and I went to a friend’s for dinner. I had no idea when we were walking up the steep flights to his apartment that the evening would spark a new song. He’d had us over the Christmas before, but this time, being in the home of Michael Medeiros, who was John Lennon’s gardener—Lennon called him “Mike Tree”—seemed more of a heady, almost magical experience, with the stories and music (and wine) we shared in his spare but cozy space. Lennon’s witty, skeptical…

I’ve been a fan of Rosanne Cash’s since hearing her 1981 smash single “Seven Year Ache” and buying the album of the same name. I’ve seen her live a few times: at WNYC’s the Greene Space, singing songs her father, Johnny Cash, recommended to her as classics, from her album The List (2009); at Carnegie Hall performing songs from The River & the Thread, an artful odyssey (listen to “A Feather’s Not a Bird” and “Modern Blue”), which won several Grammys, including best Americana album, in 2015; and at an event…

A while ago, I was invited to sing my song “Alithia’s Flowers (Children of Uvalde)” at an event in Uvalde, Texas, for the one-year anniversary of the school shooting there, which took 21 lives, mostly children. I had written and released the song soon after that incident, which took place on May 24, 2022. And since that time I've been in touch with the parents of Alithia Ramirez, the 10-year-old victim whose drawing inspired my song (they kindly let me use it for the cover art).

My husband and favorite…

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…