It’s almost a shame that Jill Sobule’s charming song-centered memoir doesn’t linger longer amid the agonies of becoming a teenager, because we all know what a rich lode that awkward phase can be. There’s a moment, early in the show, when she polls the audience: “Did any of you feel awesome when you were thirteen? Raise your hand if you wanted to die.” On a press preview night, a flurry of hands shot up: the response was near-unanimous.
Sobule delves deep, albeit fleetingly, into her early adolescence. Certain anecdotes are doozies. As a nascent lesbian – anticipatorily flummoxed by the question she recalls in the song “What do I do with my tongue?” – she was nearly ushered toward her true inclination by an ultra-cool, bad-girl new kid (played by band member Nini Camps). No matter how mortifying your own first fumbling sexual overtures were, it’s a safe bet that this story is hard to beat.
The song “Strawberry Gloss” packs the nostalgic wallop of Proust’s madeleines. Once Sobule’s friends began to get interested in boys, she recalls, they abandoned her en masse. “It was my first breakup.… It wasn’t romantic and it wasn’t with one person – it was with that whole group of girls.”
Despite a titillating glimpse of her brother’s Penthouse magazine featuring “soft-focused pictures of really pretty girls in a French boarding school kissing” (“I imagined transferring to that school”), it took Sobule a long time to cast off the culturally indoctrinated notion that “lesbians are gross.” Not until her college year abroad in Spain would she meet the glamorous woman (Camps again) who initiated her into a world where she felt at home.
Next stop: Sobule’s introduction to the music scenes of LA (“Open Mic Night”), Nashville, and ultimately the world stage, where her hit “I Kissed a Girl” made the 1995 Billboard Top 20, thirteen years before Katy Perry co-opted it.
None of these flashbacks feels scripted – but they are. Liza Birkenmeier, author of the off-Broadway hit Dr. Ride’s American Beach House, gets credit for the book. The narrative offers the best of both worlds: seemingly off-the-cuff, but smartly shaped.
Further good news for longtime Sobule-curious newbies like me: You don’t have to be a pre-devoted, certified fan to be captivated. If you are, though, you’ll get all that you came for and more.
Sobule is a wonderful singer as well as insightful songwriter. Her style hovers somewhere between classic folk and rock styles. Unlike the self-enamored poseurs who often dominate those genres, Sobule comes across as down-to-earth and disarmingly modest. She sings with her head tilted downward, almost shyly, and if she doesn’t feel comfortable with how she embarked on a song, she’ll ask the audience’s permission to start over. By show’s end, though, her confidence shines forth – head thrown back, voice at full throttle.
Ordinarily, at any point in her thirty-year career and in fact ongoingly, you’d have to brave an arena to hear Sobule perform. She and her band continue to tour, racking up 100 shows a year. From now through November 5, you have a chance to be in the room – a very intimate (89-seat) room. Don’t pass up this rare opportunity.
F*ck7thGrade opened October 21, 2022, at the wild project and runs through November 19. Tickets and information: thewildproject.com
