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With her holiday show, singer-songwriter Storm Large may mark the season in ways that are spicier than most, but she also makes plenty of room for miracles and a big helping of goodwill. Stanford Live presents Large and her “Holiday Ordeal” show Dec. 8-9 at the Bing Studio.
In music, Large has made a name as a powerful, versatile vocalist equally at home with everything from standards to classic rock, and as a witty, spirited songwriter with a feminist, frank and often funny take on life.
She has taken center stage in performances with a variety of orchestras, including the Philly Pops, the Seattle Symphony and BBC Symphony.
Large is also an actor, playwright and author. She wrote candidly about mental health issues in her family in the memoir “Crazy Enough,” which she adapted into a one-woman show. Other stage credits include Portland Center Stage’s “Cabaret” and “Harps and Angels” at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum. She debuted at Carnegie Hall in 2013 singing Kurt Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins” with the Detroit Symphony.
Since 2011, Large has performed as guest vocalist with the band Pink Martini, a popular regular visitor to Stanford Live’s stage. For “Holiday Ordeal,” she performs with her own band, Le Bonheur.
The show is a mix of seasonal songs, tunes that weren’t written for the holidays but suit the season, and Large’s original music, along with storytelling. One of her best-known originals, the bawdy “Eight Miles Wide,” isn’t a holiday song, but features in the show nonetheless, along with the equally ribald “Christmas at the Hotel.” “Stand Up For Me,” which Large wrote in support of an Oregon marriage equality measure, is also a regular in her set.
The Voice spoke with Large about her career, her take on Christmas miracles and her “Holiday Ordeal.” This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Mountain View Voice: What drew you to music?
Storm Large: Not unlike most people, I had kind of a s—–y home life. My mom was mentally ill and my dad was “perfect.” I was the youngest and the only girl. … So I was very lonely and I figured out I could imitate pretty much anything I heard like birds, dogs, things I heard on TV or the radio. And then I started singing songs. I liked something and imitated it: songs, jingles. And then it was the Beatles’ “Abbey Road.” I could sing all the songs, all the harmonies, all the guitar parts … so it was just something I did. I was lonely and I was bored and I was just amusing myself. And then I noticed grownups noticing me when I would do this, and kind of championing what I could do. My dad would shut it down and my family would shut it down: “Oh, she just wants attention. Ignore her,” you know, and a couple of them would be like, “she’s actually very talented.” …
But I knew even in my little baby mind, “no, I have something very cool that people like, so I’ll just be careful with it. It makes me a bad person, obviously, but I want people to notice me and be happy when they see me.”
Mountain View Voice: At one point you had been planning to pursue a culinary career. Do you still cook?
Large: I cook like a m———-r. I was gonna go to Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Portland when I moved there, but when I got there it was like, holy s–t, it’s so expensive.
I had already been in different bands for 10 years. And then Sept. 11 happened and the whole world changed. … I think differently, much differently, now about music and art. It’s far more valuable now to me than to the world, I think. But I felt like it was a shallow pursuit, because back in the day, it was like, “Oh, you’ve got to get signed. You gotta have a record label. You’ve gotta have a single on the radio. You’ve got to be skinny. You gotta be like five years old but somehow amazing.” … So it was like, “you can make it if you’re anything but who you are.”
… When I was a kid, I was running away and living on the street a little bit now and then and I could get a place to stay in different scary ways, but also I could cook. I would make meals for everybody in the squat. So I wanted to maybe learn how to really cook, learn how to be a nutritionist or be a value in some way with food. And then, when I couldn’t afford this school … and they’re like, “Well, let’s talk about, you know, payment plans” or something like that, I was bartending at my friend’s club. It was part burlesque club, part rock club. The guy who owned it was a huge fan of mine and he really wanted me to sing. Then after about almost a year of him asking me to do something, he got screwed over by a band that had a regular slot at his club … and he’s like, “could you just put something together to fill the slot? You’d be doing me a huge favor.” … And that was 20 years ago. I started singing and it just sort of clicked that what I did wasn’t shallow. It wasn’t. I just think maybe it was the old voice of “you just want attention. That’s bad.” … You know, it’s not just musicians. But it’s what women are told, what girls are told. It’s any vocation, really.
So I’ve just kind of spent my life sort of “clamsplaining” to the world: You can actually be a f—–g awesome working musician and not be famous and not have a record label, and not have videos.
Mountain View Voice: How did you get started doing cabaret?
Large: I just get called cabaret because I tell stories. I’m a singer. Obviously, I’m a singer and a storyteller, and I have friends who are comedians who are like, “Dude, you’re a comedian” and I’m not a comedian. I do not have the skin for that. …. But I do a lot of storytelling and I use songs to sort of color the story. So that gets me called “cabaret.” I call it “lounge-core.” I mean, it’s still rock ‘n’ roll stuff. I write with sort of a rock ‘n’ roll angle, not so much sound, but in sort of an attitude and from an empowered perspective, and sometimes a sarcastic perspective.
Mountain View Voice: What inspired “Holiday Ordeal?”
Large: Even though I had a s—–y childhood, there were enough moments around Christmas that made an impression on me as a child that Christmas time, solstice, is a magical time, where there is redemption, hope in a hopeless place; forgiveness, love, magic. And every year I pray for our Christmas miracle.
Now a Christmas miracle isn’t like a Jesus-type miracle. I look for something that strikes me as amazing. I tell some stories on stage about Christmas miracles that I’ve encountered.
As long as I have been a performer professionally, every Christmas I have a Christmas party and I invite guests to sing and I do some Christmas music, of course — some traditional stuff which is really beautiful. But also, I sort of decide that these songs, these other songs are Christmas songs just because of their exuberant nature and the way they make me feel. For example, “Don’t Stop Believin'” by Journey — that’s totally a Christmas song. It could be the story of Mary and Joseph, you know, “just a small-town girl living in a lonely world.”
Two Christmases ago, half the band had COVID, and I can’t play drums, but I ended up playing drums. I love playing drums. This is probably the Christmas miracle that happened. I didn’t really realize it till just now. … We’re playing this gig, and I’m not kidding, in a church but it was also a venue (in Plymouth, Massachusetts). I’m like, “I can’t play drums. Everybody pray.” And I tell the story: “So if you know the story of Jesus, when he’s walking around on that dark night of the soul, and I heard this song (and thought of his story) and it’s a Boston song” and I sat down to play drums. I played it perfectly, and sang at the same time and it was the song, “Dream On” by Aerosmith — “Every time that I look in the mirror/All these lines on my face getting clearer.” — I played the drums perfectly, and that was a Christmas miracle.
Mountain View Voice: You also include some original songs in the show?
Large: I do have some originals (in the show). I wrote a song in support of gay marriage a long time ago before the Supreme Court did the right thing. When I was living in Oregon, we had a ballot measure that was going to go in the constitution to to codify gay marriage in the state of Oregon. They asked me to write a song for that and I just sort of meditated on it and asked the question about love and love songs. There are so many love songs, and there’s so much about loss and being in love, being infatuated, missing someone, losing someone, sending someone our love — you know, love is our human magic kind of thing. So I just asked, “well, if humans really depend on love, all of us are just really asking everything of love. What If love could ask anything of humans? What would love ask?” So the song “Stand Up for Me” happened and that sort of became this anthem for gay marriage, but also just kind of everyone, for humans. That’s in the set all the time. But yeah, I have a lot of originals. I have an original Christmas song, too, and it’s not so high-minded. It’s a true story, and it involves a Christmas miracle but I don’t describe the Christmas miracle. It’s about when I got snowed-in at Pittsburgh and ended up drinking the bar out and sleeping with this dude at this hotel, so it’s called “Christmas at the Hotel.” But no vows were lost or broken in the writing of that song.
Mountain View Voice: What kinds of stories do you tell during “Holiday Ordeal”?
Large: This year, because things are so so divisive and scary and angry and rage-filled, I’m going to be really gentle — just remind everybody that right now in this space, we are safe. And with each other we are safe and to look around the room, take a breath, trust me. I’m going to show you a good time. And let’s just rest our minds and our hearts and leave the darkness outside tonight. We can go out and fight again another day, but we need rest and we need togetherness right now.
Storm Large’s “Holiday Ordeal” takes place Dec. 8, 7 and 9 p.m., Dec. 9, 7 p.m. at Bing Studio, Stanford. $50-$75. live.stanford.edu.
