Freedy's Tuesday Night Live with Tammy Faye Starlite

Freedy Johnston's Tues. Night Live with special guest Tammy Faye Starlite, April 14th, 2026 at WFMU's Monty Hall in Jersey City, 43 Montgomery St, Jersey City. 8-9pm

Doors open at 7:30pm. Show starts promptly at 8pm.
Monty Hall will be selling soft drinks and snacks. Bring your own alcohol.
No admission charge, but we’ll be passing the hat. Seating is limited, so register early.
https://FreedyJohnstonTuesdayNightLiveTammyFaye.eventbrite.com

One block from the Path train & HudsonBergen light rail Exchange Place stations.
If driving, street parking is best on York St.. Parking garages nearby: LAZ Parking - 105 Greene St. (1 min. walk) or LM Gotham Parking Garage, 129 Montgomery St..

Freedy Johnston is a singer-songwriter, originally from Kansas. In the 1980’s, he landed a deal with Bar None Records in Hoboken. His 2nd record for them in 1992 was his breakthrough album “Can You Fly”. He then signed to Elektra Records, and in 1994 worked with producer Butch Vig on the record “This Perfect World,” which featured the radio hit “Bad Reputation,” and earned him Rolling Stones’s Songwriter of the Year award for 1994. His songs were featured in the movies “Kingpin,” “Kicking and Screaming”, and “Heavy.” His most recent album, “On the Road to You,” was released in 2022 on 40 Below Records. He lives in New Jersey.

Tammy Lang a/k/a Tammy Faye Starlite has come to be one of the brightest stars in the Downtown New York scene. The always peripatetic Tammy maintains a busy schedule of performances, guest appearances and benefits, not only in Manhattan but around the country with appearances in LA, Palm Springs, Chicago, St Louis, Pittsburgh as well as the farthest reaches of New Jersey and New Hampshire. She’s been a girl on the go-go since her soap opera days when she was a regular on The Guiding light portraying one of two “wacky maids.” Allison Janney was the other one.

She later came up with the Tammy Faye Starlite character, a chipper yet bitter country music singer whose reactionary rantings and authentically convincing Partonesque vocals made for sophisticated satire of the highest -- or lowest -- order. Her jaw-dropping repertoire included such ersatz country classics as “God Has Lodged A Tenant In My Uterus” and “Did I Shave My Vagina For This?” among other campfire favorites. Against all odds, the act was accepted not only in New York and LA but also in Nashville where her sold-out performances both scandalized and thrilled club goers. Her following in Music City grew exponentially to the point where the fire marshal had to be called on at least one occasion.

In recent times, her startling feats of musical reincarnation have created a new kind of cabaret. Equally gifted as an actor and singer, Lang deep-dives into the vaults of art-pop-rock-whatever and returns clutching buried treasures. In Nico: Underground-- her bio-show, as it might be called – she brings back the late Velvet Underground icon in all of her fuzzed-out, deadpan glory. With mentions of Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Jackson Brown, John Cale and Andy Warhol, she animates the character providing both historical context and up to the minute contemporary references.

With Cabaret Marianne, Lang salutes Marianne Faithfull one of the great, straight-talking divas of modern pop music, another foreboding yet tragically vulnerable blonde icon of the 1960s. She pays homage by performing a singular repertoire that is bitingly and world weary while commenting on the continuing downward spiral of the culture. Both portrayals are much more than mere concert tributes; she possesses these real life characters, with spiky monologues woven between songs that have had audiences alternately laughing and gasping. Nico and Faithfull were women committed to following their own rocky paths. They stood for a bruising new vision of love and other let downs. Now, thanks to Lang, they stand before us once again.

Beyond those portrayals, Tammy has been pursuing a new concept that she’s in the process of refining. Her aim is to adapt and rearrange noted Rolling Stones songs in order to make them come alive in a cabaret context. Just A Kiss Away, her latest project, finds her tackling Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street; it is scheduled to run for a month of Thursdays at Manhattan’s Pangea this October. Tammy’s approach to the Jagger/Richards songbook finds her bringing intimacy to the Stones’ repertoire while channeling the attitude and affect of Mick Jagger, but with less estrogen.

“Remarkable — and howlingly funny.. a funny, morbidly fascinating night of theater.” Charles Isherwood/NY Times

“Tammy Faye Starlite channels the chanteuse’s languid essence..” (she is) "..a performer who thrives on spontaneity and improvisation." David Keeps/LA Times

“Jaw-dropping.. a serious comic creation intended to be so authentic that it might be mistaken for the real thing.” – Stephen Holden/NY Times

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