“David”
from the album Get Away from Me
2004
[iTunes]
Nellie McKay is a singer-songwriter and former stand-up comedienne. Her critically acclaimed first CD, Get Away from Me, was produced by Beatles sound engineer Geoff Emerick and released by Columbia/Sony Records in February 2004. McKay is the first woman to release a double album as her first release; although all the music would fit on a single disc, McKay insisted on a double disc debut.
McKay (pronounced mah-KAI) was one of the major breakout artists from the 2004 SXSW Festival and was a finalist in the 2004 Shortlist Prize. Her music combines different genres from jazz to rap and disco to funk, drawing comparisons to everyone from Doris Day to Randy Newman and Eminem to Norah Jones (McKay’s album title is a playful dig at Jones’ first album Come Away with Me).
She was born in London, England to an English director and an American actress, Robin Pappas. At the age of two, after her parents split, she moved with her mother to New York City, where they stayed until 1994. After one year in Olympia, Washington, the two returned back East and lived in the Poconos area in Pennsylvania, where McKay spent her high-school years.
In 2000, Mckay started attending the Manhattan School of Music but, bored and unsatisfied, dropped out after two years. In the meanwhile, she started performing as a stand-up comic in Manhattan clubs and eventually started playing in Greenwich Village’s gay bars. In February 2003 Nellie opened for the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players at Tonic, on New York’s Lower East Side. Jay Ruttenberg, from Time Out New York magazine attended the show and the following month he published a prominent article about McKay. Shortly afterwards, several record labels contacted her and started a bidding war. She eventually signed with Columbia/Sony and started producing her first record in the late summer of 2003.
McKay’s actual age was a matter of some debate. At the time of Get Away from Me‘s release, most publicity and Internet sources indicated that she was 19 years of age. Her father has reportedly stated that she was actually born in 1982. McKay’s own web site now reports her birthdate to be December 13, 1984, making her 19 years old at the time of the release of her first album.
 Nellie McKay |