Feel the Holiday Cheer with Sandra Bernhard… Damn It!

Some things just scream “holidays in New York City.” The tree at Rockefeller Center. The Rockettes. Traveling herds of inebriates dressed as Santa Claus.

Add Sandra Bernhard to that list. The acid-tongued singer, actress, comedian and certified NYC icon is returning to Joe’s Pub for her raucous annual holiday residency. This year's installment, titled Easy Listening, will entail a tour of her musical influences, which may or may not include The Supremes, Simon and Garfunkel (Bernhard’s first concert), Peter, Paul and Mary and the Rolling Stones.

“I try to bring something new and timely to the show every year,” she told Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek on The Broadway Show. “Musically, I kind of cultivate songs throughout the year that I think, Oh wow, I'd really like to bring my take to that song.”

On her way to meeting Wontorek, Bernhard said she was drawn into a conversation with her cab driver about the music of Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. Bernhard lives for such moments. “I'm always jotting down ideas and thoughts and conversations I hear, or moments in the taxi,” she said. “All these things are just constantly just bursting around us. They're flavorful and they're inspiring and they're colorful.” The Joe's Pub shows are infused with something of that flavor, too.  “The people who come to the show—whether they're out-of towners or native New Yorkers or transplants—they want to connect to the energy and the beauty of the underlying themes and currents of humanity.”

Audiences can also expect plenty of the fearless social commentary of the kind Bernhard perfected in her tour-de-force one-woman shows including the legendary Without You I'm Nothing (off-Broadway in 1988, on the big screen in 1990) and Broadway engagement, I’m Still Here… Damn It!, which played in 1998.

But, given her taste for provocation, it’s easy to overlook Bernhard’s warmth and generosity of spirit, for which the holiday concerts serve as a great showcase. The New Year’s Eve show, especially, incorporates an almost prayerful reflection on the year to come.

“I can bring people together in that moment,” she said. “I always do a little meditation. It's sort of something to uplift everybody and connect to what the new year could be and should be. We try to plant that seed for a great year.”

And when it comes to the last day of the year, there’s nowhere Bernhard would rather be than on stage entertaining a room full of people. She’s tried attending other people’s New Year’s Eve parties or events. They just don’t do it for her. “It’s just such a bummer,” she said. “It’s amateur hour.”