When local favorites Letters to Cleo broke up 20 years ago, frontwoman Kay Hanley was faced with two options: Make a solo album, or party all the time. Her first choice was absolutely not the solo album.
“I didn’t even give it one moment of thought,” she said this week. “It turned out that Michael (Eisenstein, her Cleos partner and soon to be ex-husband) was flying to Maui to record. So here I was, ready to go buck wild with the man out of town. Two days later I found out I was pregnant. So my dreams of debauchery were completely dashed. I was not prepared for that, and I was terrified. But my partying came to an end, and the first thing I did was get my restaurant job back.”
The next thing she did was write the songs that wound up on her solo debut, “Cherry Marmalade.” She’ll revisit that album in a two-night stand at the City Winery Friday and Saturday, with a band of local all-stars (including bassist Ed Valauskas, who played on the original album). Though still very much a pop album, it turned out a bit gentler and more beautiful than any of the Cleos’ three albums.
Her impending motherhood was very much felt on the album, she says (and its title came from a children’s story that her daughter Zoe liked).
“I wrote a lot of it while pregnant, and that was a very isolating experience — which to me wasn’t a bad thing. I grew up in a house with three sisters, two parents and one bathroom. All my life I’d been surrounded by people and activity, but now things were quiet and I really loved it. I felt this optimism that was totally alien to me. In the Cleos, the songs would sound the happiest when I was most depressed. But ‘Cherry Marmalade’ was just the opposite. Because I was feeling so much at peace, I wrote these really hard songs.”
Among them was “Galapagoes,” about her last tour with Letters to Cleo. “It was a pretty dark trip. Not knowing if the band and my relationship would survive, or if I would.”
She wrote a few happier ones as well. “I remember writing ‘Happy to Be Here’ while I was at a movie all by myself. It was ‘Little Voice’ at the Kendall Cinema. The character is a childlike person discovering part of herself, and that’s how I was feeling. Thinking about this person growing inside my body, someone I was going to know and who would become part of my life.”
Cleos producer and Q Division studio owner Mike Denneen ultimately talked her into recording, but Hanley says solo stardom was never on her mind.
“I think it feels Cleo-ish but more thoughtful and patient; there aren’t any songs where I swing for the fences. The loss of Cleo was really more about the family we had; the stardom I couldn’t have cared less about. By the time the album came out we’d done our therapy, and I was plotting my next move — to go behind the scenes, where I always wanted to be anyway.”
And she did get behind the scenes in a big way, leaving Boston for Los Angeles. She was a backup singer for Miley Cyrus for a time and has since become a featured singer/songwriter for numerous animated shows, including the Disney hit “Doc McStuffins” and the forthcoming “Kindergarten: The Musical.” Meanwhile Letters to Cleo still play together when they can, and a new album is even underway (though sadly their two preferred producers, Denneen and Fountains of Wayne member Adan Schlesinger, have both passed away from illness).
“It’s a chance to get together once a year and play music, though I don’t know if it can ever be more than that. So yeah, never again — but we’ll see you in November.”
