Hey Kid
About ten years back we had the good fortune to see a production of Hello Dali: From the Sublime to the Surreal, performed by Michael Smith and Jamie O’Reilly at the Lunar Cabaret. It featured songs by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Don McLean. Projected in the background were slides of instantly recognizable masterpieces by the likes of Vincent Van Gogh, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Pablo Picasso. However, what drew us to the performance was the premiere of an original song by Michael Smith which was inspired by the work of the only living artist represented in the showcase, a song entitled “Hey Kid,” whose title was taken from a painting my dad did of the same name that had recently been hanging in a show at the Byron Roche Gallery.
Talk about sublime. “Hey Kid” is a beautiful song that, in some ways, captures the essence of my dad’s work. To hear Jamie O’Reilly’s beautiful voice accompanied by Michael Smith on guitar greatly moved us. In addition, a couple dozen of my dad’s painting were projected onto a sheet pinned up on stage. This was pure ecstasy.
We saw the show again when it was performed at The Theater on the Lake, and then again, when it was expanded and performed at The Victory Gardens Theater with additional cast and higher production values. I particularly remember the slick slide show, a great leap of forward in sophistication from the earlier productions.
In any case, I have produced a slide show of my dad’s urban paintings that I have set to Michael’s music (which is available on his cd There). It is a first draft, so it’s pretty crude, but, I think, it does succeed in presenting a sense of what it was like.
Hey Kid: The Art of Leopold Segedin from Ben Segedin on Vimeo.