Albums on which songwriters sing their own songs, particularly songwriters who are not also professional singers, are always interesting to listen to.
Jamie deRoy, who served as executive producer of this collection, includes some examples of such songs, but she is actually going for a broader (which is to say, less focused) selection; in fact, she seems to have wanted to include a little of everything. So, for example, we have lyricist
Richard Maltby, Jr., accompanied on piano by his partner, composer
David Shire, singing the album's title song, an autobiographical tribute to both of the songwriters' fathers that was used in their 1989 Off-Broadway musical revue Closer than Ever.
Maltby doesn't have the vocal range that
Shire's melody calls for, but his strain to hit the notes makes the already heartfelt lyrics all the more affecting. Despite the string section orchestrated by
Tom Kochan, the track has a semi-professional feel. It's the kind of performance one generally hears on a songwriter album, but it's in the minority here. Not that there aren't other show music songwriters hawking their own wares, including
Andrew Lippa,
Maury Yeston,
Lucy Simon,
Shelly Markham,
Jeff Marx and
Robert Lopez,
Gretchen Cryer, and
Stephen Schwartz. But these people, all younger than
Maltby and
Shire, came of age during or after the '60s, when
Bob Dylan and
the Beatles changed the old paradigm of non-performing songwriters and non-writing singers.
Simon, of course, performed professionally with her sister
Carly Simon as
the Simon Sisters;
Cryer was the star of I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road in addition to writing the songs with Nancy Ford, among them the Off-Broadway hit's best-known song, "Old Friend," included here; and
Schwartz has released several solo albums. Even when it comes to nominal non-performers like
Lippa and
Yeston, however, the ante clearly has been raised. Their tracks, "Live Out Loud" and "Nowhere to Go But Up," respectively, are not mere publishing demos, but fully realized recordings, and both demonstrate good voices.