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Interview: Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman on Resurrecting Kiki and Herb

The indomitable cabaret duo discuss their upcoming show Kiki & Herb SLEIGH at BAM.

Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman on the Salve of Resurrecting Kiki and Herb
Photo: Brooklyn Academy of Music

They may be in their 90s now but Kiki and Herb are still game for putting on a show. The cabaret duo, who first entranced and terrorized downtown New York audiences in the mid-1990s, are set to return with one of their inimitable lounge acts for the holidays. It will be their first show in six years, and it’s just what your analyst might prescribe: comfort and joy, slightly skewed and shakily administered, to a city recovering from a pandemic.

Over the past decades, the self-described “boozy chanteusie” Kiki DuRane and her manic gay accompanist, Herb, have delivered punk-cabaret stylings that run the musical gamut while regaling us with stories from their checkered past. With each performance they take their audience on unpredictable journeys through popular songs, cultural and pop references, political rants, and personal psychodrama that leaves you drained but clamoring for more.

Kiki and Herb are the creation of Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman, who are in real life more than three decades younger than their creations. I met with Bond and Mellman recently at a café in downtown Brooklyn to chat about their new show, Kiki & Herb SLEIGH at BAM, which is slated for a limited run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December.

What made you bring Kiki and Herb back to New York?

Justin Vivian Bond: Kiki originated as a pandemic singer—during the AIDS crisis in the ’90s—so it seemed like a good moment to resurrect Kiki and Herb. And part of the stimulus was just really returning to New York and doing things live again.

Kenny Mellman: Also, a show that people seemed to have a lot of affection for was our Christmas show after 9/11. So, there was definitely some reverberations around that, of New York returning after a trauma.

Bond: We are the trauma clean-up crew.

How do you see Kiki & Herb SLEIGH at BAM in relation to your last show?

Bond: Kiki and Herb Seeking Asylum, which we did six years ago at Joe’s Pub, was pretty much all new material, new stories, songs we hadn’t done before. We stuck to very topical things and what was going on in the zeitgeist, reflecting the election year and all that. But for this particular show we are doing mostly origin stories and songs from holiday shows in the past.

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Mellman: There are a couple of great new songs that I’m really very happy with, not to give too much away. But there’s something nostalgic about coming back. Some of the stuff that we perform in this show we probably haven’t performed in 20 years. It was a lot of work to get it as good as it was, and now it is super fun to dust it off. The thing is, because we did these things across the world hundreds and hundreds of times, I have to remember that even people who were huge fans didn’t see this a hundred times.

But we do have your holiday album Do You Hear What We Hear?

Bond: That was released in 1999.

Mellman: And it has been out of print since. I was trying to get it released on vinyl, but because of the vinyl back up—maybe next year. I’m hearing from indie artists that it’s now going to be 2023 to get your vinyl.

Bond: Good thing I don’t have a vinyl fetish!

Mellman: The only people I’m getting vinyl from is Taylor Swift, which I’m very excited about.

Bond: Ah! You’re talking about records…

Mellman: Sorry we have different obsessions.

Bond: I said I don’t have vinyl fetish. I was shocked to find out you did! I was starting to picture you in vinyl onesies.

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Mellman: Please don’t!

Over the years, from shows past, we have been able to glean biographical details about Kiki and Herb and figure out their chronology. How old are your characters now?

Bond: We take our inspiration from cabaret singer Marilyn Maye, who’s in her 90s. We have in the past talked about Kiki and Herb being at the manger for the birth of Jesus, but we’re not really talking about that in this show. Kiki is 91 and we’re sticking with the more mundane everyday facts of Kiki and Herb’s life since the 1930s.

Your original inspiration for Kiki was also a lady of a certain age. Can you tell us a bit about the genesis of the character?

Bond: She was my friend’s mum, a real person, who, in her 50s, went back to get a degree in social work. She lived in Long Branch, New Jersey. When I met her she was struggling with cancer and radiation pencil marks on her neck and missing teeth. She was standing at the top of the steps in a turban and with these blood-red fingernails. Her first words were: “You’re late! I’ve been waiting for you.” And then we went into my friend’s room and she started dancing around and said, “That’s soft shoe. I was a dancer in Baltimore in the ’50s and I still got it.” And, of course, I lifted that. That’s the origin line of Kiki.

Mellman: She also said the line: “The saddest day of my life was when John Hinckley missed!”

Was it by chance that you first began working together in San Francisco?

Bond: I was dating this guy, who I told that I wanted to do a glamorous lounge act. He said, “Oh, you should talk to my friend Kenny, he plays the piano.” He introduced us and I went over to Kenny’s house for about six months or longer, and we got our first gig in 1989.

Mellman: I have a feeling that gig was on New Year’s Eve at this old porno theater on Market Street, where you could still smoke in the balcony. I can’t remember the name.

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Did you start off playing Kiki and Herb?

Bond: No, I was myself. We started doing a lounge act with contemporary pop music.

Mellman: We played the straight rock clubs. People were charmed by these two weird queer people going into the clubs and singing ABBA songs and whatever else we were doing, like Led Zeppelin. We were also both enmeshed in the queer universe in San Francisco and protesting and whatever all the time. There was a whole community that was the underbed of it.

Bond: I was a trans androgynous person at that time, on the femme side of things. I created Kiki because I was frustrated with being cornered by these gay men who expected me to act like a stereotypical drag queen. So, one night I was supposed to play this birthday party and I was so frustrated that I decided I was going to give them what they wanted. I put on the original Kiki dress, which my friend had foisted upon me—with these huge birdseed knockers—and I had that wig and I got into character. I showed up at the party and really terrorized everyone. I took it an extra step and it really kind of made me invulnerable. That was the motivation to do it—to protect myself. Kenny was terrified of Kiki!

Mellman: I was a 21-year-old semi-sheltered kid. We did our first Kiki and Herb show at a gay pride event. Vivian was hosting the event and we knew were both going to be tired at the end of it. We had an ongoing gig at Café du Nord at the time and so we just did our exact same show, but we had these characters. We went into character, drank before the show—

Bond: I knew I couldn’t sing very well [that night] so I said, “I’ll do Kiki and you’ll be Herb and I won’t have to look good or sound good.” And we got a standing ovation! I was delighted that I could have a career for myself without having to look good or sound good.

Mellman: Then I think it became nice, because it allowed us to be very subversive in a way that would come off as strident if we were playing ourselves. It was fun to be able to say a lot of things and do music in a lot of different ways…

Bond: …and to speak with authority as this woman who had been everything, instead of being a feminist young queer kid.

Mellman: Right. And it was easy to slip things into this universe that was Kiki and Herb, where it wouldn’t be kitschy. Kiki and Herb never were kitschy because it was so intense.

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Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman on the Salve of Resurrecting Kiki and Herb
Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman as Kiki and Herb. © Brooklyn Academy of Music.

I suppose, musically speaking, this was moving away from anything that you might have thought you wanted as a career?

Mellman: Nope. This is what I wanted! My dream was to put lines on my face—

Bond: When I met Kenny, he was trying to get a job at a piano bar.

Mellman: That’s true. There’s a little bit [of me here]. When I was nine, I played SuperTramp’s “The Logical Song” and all the students were going “What’s he playing, Mrs. Wolf?”

Bond: That can be the title of your memoir, What’s He Playing, Mrs. Wolf?

Mellman: It has a certain ring to it. Anyway, and I can say this: Vivian is the most amazing singer that I will ever work with, so it was an amazing journey to have—and to be actually able to put all of this out into the world with such intensity.

To go back to what you said about creating Kiki as a protection for yourself, those stories that Kiki recounts—about being bullied as a kid, for instance—do they come from your own life?

Bond: Yes. From my personal stories and stories of people that I knew—the stories may not all be specific to me, but they resonated for me and people like me. The story of Kiki attacking her ex-husband with steak knives, that actually did happen. My cousin’s ex-husband was attacked by his girlfriend—that’s how I got that story. I mean, she attacked a cab driver too. But, you know, I’m sure she had good reasons.

What about Herb’s backstory?

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Mellman: A lot of the stories about Herb aren’t far from my life either.

Bond: Kenny did attend a teenage drama workshop—

Mellman: Yes, I was bullied as a kid, was abused—there’s always some truth. We have an incredible synergy which, you know, flippantly we can put down to the fact that we did mushrooms for every show we did, once a week for a year and a half, when we first started Kiki and Herb. We can say, “Oh, we learned from being in a drug trip together.” But it’s also a testament to each skill we have for what we do that it comes together in such an amazing way.

You took a nine-year hiatus before you did the last show. Do you ever go, “Oh God, not Kiki and Herb again”?

Mellman: Why do you think there was the huge break?

Bond: After the last show, I didn’t want to do it again. Now the idea appeals to me.

Mellman: It’s a very difficult show to do and we did it for over 18 years in the original incarnation. Personally, it takes a lot of psychic energy. I think I was vaguely addicted to this weird psychic drama and trauma that was in the show. And then, for me, that was enough.

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Bond: It was wearing me out.

Mellman: We were in different places when it ended the first time.

Bond: I was ready to be the vulnerable person, to step into that power that I was afraid of. I came out as trans in 1990 when I was touring with Kate Bornstein in her play Hidden: A Gender. But it was easier for me to just not make it about that, really. And then after the tremendous amount of energy that we put as artists into those characters, it was a whole new state of mind—of regeneration, rebirth, and recreation. I thought, “I have to remember who I am.” I realized that when I have the urge to do drugs and alcohol, it’s because I’m unhappy and I’m somewhere I don’t want to be. And I was doing a lot of cocaine in those last years. I was someone I didn’t want to be.

How did each of you ride out the pandemic?

Bond: Well, for me, as a single person, it was very lonely. But I was saved by being an artist. I never stopped working. I pivoted and started streaming shows, which I did for 17 weeks. And then, when I stopped doing that, I started painting and I had an exhibition of my artwork in Provincetown at the end of the summer. But during the holidays I was alone on Christmas and I was really depressed. So, I bought a cheeky little ticket to Miami. I went down there just to show myself that I had agency. Also, the whole time I was working on a project [“Only an Octave Apart”] with Anthony Roth Costanzo. That’s the wonderful thing about being an artist. I have never waited for anybody to give me a job, I just created my own.

Isn’t Kiki’s motto “In spite of everything I sing!”?

Bond: That’s mine, not Kiki’s. Malgré tout ce que je chante!

Mellman: I have a partner and so, when it felt safe, we just disappeared into his family’s house upstate, into the woods. And we watched every Jane Fonda movie and every Jessica Tandy movie, every single one in order. And I took care of family. I was living the end of Candide—what is it—“make your garden grow.”

Bond: I had a whole Gloria Swanson thing. I decided to be inspired by people who had lived through a big national tragedy like the Great Crash. Or people that had lived through the AIDS crisis or through the original Spanish Flu thing. I wanted to see what they did afterward. But then as things progressed and I had that lonely Christmas last year, I thought it would be an exciting thing to just to welcome people back for the first holiday. That made doing this show feel like part of the re-opening of New York.

What would you most want Kiki & Herb SLEIGH at BAM to be?

Mellman: A salve. A lot of the show is going to be about the relationship between Kiki and Herb. It’s like watching a great love affair that isn’t a love affair. So, it’s skewed enough that anyone can cycle themselves into it. I think there’s something very charming and sweet about it, because of the bond they have and the fact they are still in their 90s and they’re still going “you’re my everything” and “this is the greatest man I’ve had ever.” I think people will really appreciate that this year, when they haven’t really been around family and friends.

Bond: And I think it’s disgusting! But I do like the idea that it’s going to be just good fun for all those people in a room together. It’s going to be a good vibe.

The Kiki & Herb SLEIGH at BAM runs from November 30—December 4.

Gerard Raymond

Gerard Raymond is a travel and arts writer based in New York City. His writing has appeared in Broadway Direct, TDF Stages, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and other publications.

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