“Songs For Cleaning Women, Part I” reviewed by Julia W. Rath

What happens when you have a lovely concert saddled with poor production quality? Such was the case during Wednesday night’s live performance of “Songs for Cleaning Women, Part I” by singer and guitarist Rebecca Rego, presented by the Chicago Artists Workshop (CAW).

The pluses to this performance were many. Rego has a very sweet, sentimental, and sultry voice and plays the guitar beautifully. Her repertoire of original songs was inspired by Lucia Berlin’s book, “A Manual for Cleaning Women”. Her recently released album is called ” Songs For Cleaning Women”. All six songs feature lyrics that are fresh and heartfelt, and the words to all were provided to the audience in advance. Additionally, actor Leah Casey read select passages directly from Berlin’s book to frame the larger story and intensify the mood. Musicians J. Tom Hnatow (on pedal steel guitar and guitar), Mike Pryzgoda (on bass, banjo, harmonium, and synths), Lisa Kaplan (on piano), and Matthew  Duvall(on percussion) did a fine job backing up both Rego and Casey.

This one-hour concert took place at the Eighth Blackbird manufacturing facility situated at 4045 N. Rockwell Street, in Chicago, and was videostreamed to a national audience. With the exception of Rego and Casey, everybody wore a mask, and there was plexiglass to separate several performers on stage. The set was nicely decorated with all sorts of flowy material and tie dye serving as a backdrop.

Sadly, many things went wrong with the technical side of the production, and all this heavily weighed on the show. These were more than mere glitches: They detracted from the performance. Several issues had to do with sound design. A different microphone would have worked better for Rego’s voice, considering her wispy, dreamier style of singing. There were issues with the placement of the microphones and the sound mix; one could barely hear the piano, and sometimes the music overshadowed Casey’s readings. The worst thing, however, was that sound kept fading in and out throughout. The audio was too low at the beginning and my speaker volume had to be brought up to maximum. Sometimes the sound vanished completely. At other times, the video would freeze up, and we were told on at least three occasions via the chat to refresh the stream. “We had a technical error,” was one of the messages. Another common message was “Sorry this Media Is Offline.” Sometimes we got blank screens; at other times we saw the “blueberry spinning.” The video and the audio were not always synced up properly. I knew from the get-go that the problems were not with my computer but with the livestream and that they affected everyone. “Uh oh,” wrote one of the other listeners in chat. It was about 40-45 minutes into the show when many of these issues were finally resolved (although I still had to keep my speaker volume on max). The unfortunate consequence was that it was only the last two songs and readings that the audience could properly hear and enjoy.

What remained troublesome throughout were the interviews with Rego using a shared microphone. The first two interviews were very difficult to make out when people talked through their masks and stood too far away from the mic. Muffled voices did not add to the overall audio quality of the show. The third and last interview and the question and answer session at the end fared much better once the gain was boosted on the audio. Yet it was still hard to make out all the words when voices dropped at the end of sentences. At the very least, two microphones should have been used with the speakers talking directly into them.

This is my long way of saying that a show with lots of promise and talented performers could have been truly great. It was hard to watch the struggles that the video and audio people were having, and the audience was definitely frustrated as indicated by a chirp or pop that would interrupt and announce some new problem in chat. It is when things go awry that you notice the effort it takes to make a show come together and work smoothly and flawlessly, so that the audience doesn’t have to think about all the fine details that go into making an excellent production.

“Songs for Cleaning Women, Part I”, starring Rebecca Rego and featuring Leah Casey is part of the 2020 fall series entitled “Eighth Blackbird Presents: The Chicago Artists Workshop” (CAW). The next show in the CAW series will be on November 18, 2020 when Eighth Blackbird presents Justin Roberts and Anna Steinhoff.

Eighth Blackbird, the Chicago-based, four-time Grammy-winning ensemble entertains and provokes audiences around the world. For tickets and more information about this show and future ones in the series, turn to their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/eighthblackbird/

Also follow them at eighthblackbird.org.