Bandleader Thomas Lauderdale reflects on Pink Martini’s wild three-decade ride—and its debt to Pee-wee Herman
The legendary Portland group hits the PNE with some of its greatest hits in 25 languages
Pink Martini will play tunes from almost all its albums at the PNE show. Photo by Chris Hornbecker
As part of the PNE’s Summer Night Concerts series, Pink Martini featuring China Forbes plays the PNE Amphitheatre on August 29
THOMAS LAUDERDALE Lauderdale owes his musical career to Pee-wee Herman. Sort of.
These days, Lauderdale is firmly established as the pianist and band leader of the Portland, Oregon-based Pink Martini, which deftly blends jazz, classical, and innumerable other old-school genres into a unique style that rises above kitsch thanks to the impeccable chops of its players.
To hear him tell it, however, Lauderdale had no ambitions of becoming a professional musician; he formed Pink Martini out of necessity.
“The band came out of the political work I was doing back in 1994,” he tells Stir in a telephone interview. “There was a nasty attempt to amend the Oregon Constitution to declare homosexuality illegal. So I was working on a campaign in opposition to this, and I had just seen Pee-wee Herman’s Christmas special, with every guest star imaginable—including Cher, Charo, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Magic Johnson, Grace Jones, and kd lang, among others—and the Del Rubio Triplets.”
For the benefit of those too young to remember them, the Del Rubio Triplets were a trio of acoustic-guitar-wielding sisters (Edith, Elena, and Mildred Boyd) whose career had two distinct phases. The first came in the 1950s, when they performed with the likes of Bob Hope and Xavier Cugat.
They re-emerged in the ’80s, when the charming spectacle of three 60-something women in matching mini-skirts singing songs like “Whip It” and “Walk Like an Egyptian” proved irresistible to a new generation, leading to bookings on Good Morning America, Late Night With David Letterman, and, of course, the Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special.
“I brought them to Portland to do a series of concerts in nursing homes, hospitals, and retirement homes, and at the end of their set they would very sweetly say, ‘Please vote no on Amendment 13,’” Lauderdale recalls of the Del Rubios. “At the end of the week, there was a big public concert and I needed an opening act, so I threw on a Betsey Johnson cocktail dress and I started Pink Martini. So if it wasn’t for Pee-wee Herman’s Christmas Special—and if it wasn’t for the anti-gay-rights initiative in Oregon in 1994—the band would not exist.”
Paul Reubens, who created the character of Pee-wee Herman (in collaboration with his pal Phil Hartman) and played him on-stage and on screens big and small for nearly 40 years, died in July after a very private six-year battle with cancer. Lauderdale was fortunate enough to become a part of the legendary comic actor’s social circle, albeit decades after his dealings with the Del Rubios.
Thomas Lauderdale with China Forbes. Photo by Autumn de Wilde
“I was so thankful that I finally became friends with him last year,” Lauderdale says. “I’d been trying for decades, and finally got to spend some time with him before he died.”
Reubens was well-known for his generosity of spirit. He famously bombarded his friends—and he had a lot of them—with a constant stream of texts, video messages, and memes on their birthdays.
“I can barely answer my phone and keep up with my texts, let alone doing videos for all of my friends on their birthdays,” Lauderdale marvels. “I don’t know how he did it. Like, how did this man do this?”
Lauderdale himself evidently has no lack of energy. In addition to his work with Pink Martini, the pianist recently expanded his musical horizons by teaming up with long-running surf-rock act Satan’s Pilgrims for an LP titled Thomas Lauderdale Meets the Pilgrims. He also reveals that he has plans to compose a ballet based on Austrian author Felix Salten’s 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods.
(This revelation kicks off several minutes of discussion about whether or not the book—which was the basis of the classic 1942 Disney animated feature Bambi—is in the public domain. The answer, for the record, is yes.)
In the meantime, Pink Martini is hitting the road for a tour that includes a Vancouver concert spotlighting the talents of long-time member China Forbes on lead vocals.
“It’s sort of like a greatest-hits tour,” Lauderdale says. “We’ve done songs in 25 different languages. I think in this set that we’re going to be doing in Vancouver, we’ll sing in, like, 15 different languages, and songs from every album—except the holiday one, maybe—and then a cool song that we’ve not recorded or really even performed before. So it’s a big mix of everything.”
Reflecting on the fact that Pink Martini will turn 30 next year, Lauderdale admits that the day he donned that Betsey Johnson frock on a lark, he never anticipated that the band would ever play a second gig, let alone go on to sell out back-to-back concerts at Carnegie Hall or find itself inducted into both the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame.
“That’s over half my life,” Lauderdale says of Pink Martini’s wild three-decade ride. “And I thought that I was going to go into politics. So it’s shocking. When I was in college or high school, I never would have imagined myself to be in a band. I thought I was going to be the mayor of Portland.”
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