Kim David Smith Loves Mashing up Marlene, Minnelli ,and Minogue for Show and New Album

Kim David Smith is an Australian-born, NYC-based cabaret artist who has been called "slyly subversive" by the Wall Street Journal, the "male Marlene Dietrich" by the New York Times, and the "David Bowie of cabaret" by BroadwayWorld. He describes Marlene Dietrich as "one of the world's most celebrated bisexuals" and his album, "Mostly Marlene," "a behemoth joy of gay sensibilities."

The international singer and actor, who has performed everywhere from Club Cumming to Carnegie Hall – and, of course, Provincetown – promises "a celebration of all things QUEER in a roomful of [his] people." His latest album, being released on March 21, was recorded live at Joe's Pub and features guest vocalists Bright Light Bright Light, Sidney Myer, Joey Arias, Australian opera star Ali McGregor, and legendary playwright, author, and performer Charles Busch.

EDGE recently had the chance to chat with Kim as he prepared for his upcoming album release, and a show to celebrate it on March 21 at Joe's Pub called "Mostly Marlene: a Dietrich-Drenched Album Debut." (For more information, follow this link.)

EDGE: Who is Kim David Smith?

Kim David Smith: Well, I'm a self-described internationally fame-ish cabaret nuisance. I grew up in a country town in Australia. When I started visiting the U.S. in 2005, after graduating from university with a Bachelor of Arts in Musical Theater, I began excavating myself and developing myself from that point onward. My first ever performance in New York was at the Delancey. It was this Earl DAX thing, and having seen the film "Shortbus" when I was still in Australia, I knew I wanted to get in amongst these folks. I contacted Earl and sent him a bunch of stuff that I'd been doing at the time, like this crazy Weimar absurdist cabaret set in a jungle. I was in jungle explorer drag, and my accompanist would drag around her keyboard. He said, "Oh sure." Meow Meow was there, and Justin Vivian Bond. It was the most crazy night.

Then I booked myself at the Duplex, but the "X" had gone out on the sign, so I like to say I debuted at the "Duple." I moved to New York in the spring of 2007, and Sidney Myer warmly embraced me and booked me at Don't Tell Mama. It was the most fabulous way to sort of continue to birth myself.

Honestly, I'm still birthing myself, and here I am birthing this new record, which is based on work I've done over the past. It was a very challenging five years. Very strange. Did we see this in the tea leaves, in the cards? No. But we are surviving, attempting to thrive. And amongst all of that, I am attempting to be as faggoty fabulous as I can be.

EDGE: There's a lot of different perspectives on what cabaret is. How would you describe it?

Kim David Smith: Everybody loves cabaret, but not everybody knows that they do until they see the right one. I'm the right one for a lot of folks, but it's different for everybody. It's such an amazing, astonishing art form in terms of connectivity, community. I was in Justin Vivian Bond's "Woo Girl Miracle" last month, and it was this galvanizing sense of community. It's like a brand-new oxygen that we queer people breathe and generate somehow, like we are each other's trees. Just to breathe this queer oxygen in the room from her cabaret. You can't get that going to see a film – maybe "Shortbus" a little bit, but you can't get it from seeing a movie.

I love musical theater, oh my goodness, yes. But it's obviously very strict and scripted, very much according to plan. Cabaret is about the room and the people in it at the time. You can plan a whole bunch of stuff, and sure, I've got a couple of bits that are in every single show, but what is special is the breathing space around those bits. The mistakes that will happen in a song on one given night make it that special version these 200, 80, or 60 people in the room are experiencing with you. That's what they remember. It's special because it's so frank, so immediate and utterly unique to the people who are in the room.

EDGE: Do you think the frankness you describe is what makes cabaret such a unique artform and experience?

Kim David Smith: Shaking the roof off, shaking the sense out of people, like the Number 6 train rattling under Joe's Pub. I approach my shows with a certain archness that crops up through the show, but by the end of the show, I'm sort of an exhausted, panting mess of celebration.

Cabaret is an opportunity to be your most absolute human self. I'm guessing for most gay and queer people, we're not finding ourselves on the Little League... I don't even know what it's called... field? We find ourselves in a Julie London album as a 10-year-old, or a Marlene Dietrich biography that our father gave us when we were 15. I would find myself reading it over and over at 2 am on a school night. That's where we find ourselves.

Even "The Muppet [Show]" TV show had the fabulous queer icon Liza Minnelli, smoking, while singing Peter Allen on it. We find these wonderful camp, amazing women who just give and give; these divas who speak to so many of us, whether it's Diana Ross, or Liza (Happy Birthday!), or, very much in my case, a mash of the divas we love. Mine are Marlene, Minnelli, and Minogue. The three Ms.

EDGE: Your father gave you a biography of Marlene when you were 15?

Kim Davis Smith: He did. He keeps going on it, too, with all these secondhand books he finds on her. He sends them all the way from Australia. He's the best.

EDGE: Why her?

Kim David Smith: I think he just kind of got it, like this feels very Kim-ish. And, dear readers, it did, and it still does. My husband recognizes it as much as my father did when I was a kid, if you can imagine a 10-year-old walking around and you think, "This kid kind of reminds me of Marlene Dietrich." Obviously, I wasn't drunk on champagne and asking for a Quaalude. I felt like there's an interrupted-ness to her, where she seems like she's constantly on the brink of being cross, even when she's just having the absolute time of her life. There's something on that sort of a molecular personality level I get. And then there's just the poise. She can look someone up and down and just say good night. She's hilarious. My husband and I, because we're super gay, we'll have Marlene double features every now and then: Make a martini, put on "Seven Sinners," followed by "Desire."

There's something that magnetizes me to her, and I think it's in her. She was utterly professional, took absolutely all of it so seriously. Then she also was this raging domestic tempest, famous for cleaning her own dressing rooms and bathrooms, bringing her own bleach and Ajax to the theaters. And on sets she would make beef soup for everybody.

It's a fascination with her in me that I don't yet fully understand, but I am working on exploring it. The Kylie part I get. I got Kylie's first record on vinyl when I was six, so she's part of the family. We love her. I can't wait to go see her. Kylie's the only one of my main gals who is alive and working. I mean, Liza is alive, but she's, you know, she's, she's... [Long pause] Kylie's the only one who's really working and doing stuff. I'm exploring and excavating this fascination with Marlene.

EDGE: Perfect segue. Let's talk about your upcoming show and album.

Kim David Smith: Yes, please. I want to sell it out. We're celebrating the release of my "Mostly Marlene" album, which has been a long-anticipated event. I'm so proud of this record. It's really a celebration of a lot of things: A. Marlene, B. me, which you can interchange as you see fit, and C. my friendship with my music director, Tracy Stark. I'm so proud of our arrangements, nothing we do is as it is on the page. I say this album is a testament to my ideal afterlife, just being in a crummy Midtown rehearsal studio hammering away at a new arrangement of some forgotten Kylie Minogue song.

EDGE: Aren't those rehearsal rooms the greatest place on earth?

Kim David Smith: The most magical places on earth. The shittier, the better. I adore them.

EDGE: How about the show?

Kim David Smith: It's like all of this time I've spent in my most favorite unglamorous little nest of both of our minds is all there now, ready to be listened to. We're doing a new jazzy arrangement of my favorite song from Kylie's latest record, "Tension II," and an amazing camp treatment of probably my favorite Tom Waits song, "A Good Man is Hard to Find." I can't even deal with the fact that she never did it. I haven't looked at the timelines, so I don't know. It's going to be such a fabulous night. My friend Bright Light Bright Light is returning to a different kind of Minogue disco duet at the end of the show.

I'm so excited to spend time with my people. I feel there's a sense of urgency, literally. Our queer existence is resistance, and I am very much waving that flag. All of this is designed to keep us scrolling in fear and rage, to keep us immobile. What I'm excited about is to be in a room with my people celebrating, not saying those horrible people's names, saying our own names, singing Liza all in German, singing Marlene, singing Kylie in French for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and having an absolute blast.

EDGE: Do you remember when gay clubs were a sanctuary of sorts, a safe space for gays to gather to socialize, dance, be a community?

Kim David Smith: There's so much that's great about the dragification of our culture. I think it has taken us away from just being the gay best friend. Now we're all horny, we're all online, we're all visible. I think whenever culture expands like that, it can easily homogenize.

And that's another thing I absolutely adore about cabaret. If someone else took exactly my set and did it, it would be so completely otherwise. There are folks who will strive to homogenize cabaret, whether they realize it or not. For me, it's just, "Be yourself." I keep it absolutely, utterly gay, like my real life. Be the gayest little bee that you can, and just buzz the hell out of your life.

EDGE: One more cabaret question. You played the Emcee in "Cabaret" at The Cape Playhouse a while back. The ghost of Gertrude Lawrence is believed to be in residence in her old dressing room there. Did you meet her?

Kim David Smith: I wanted to. I laid traps for the ghost. I invited the ghost, and she was not having it. We had the blue hydrangeas in the dressing room. I'd chatter to her while I put on my lashes. She might have been there and just did not want to disturb the peace. Maybe she thought, "Not this queen, this poor queen wants it too bad."

My Marlene show is much more of a séance than a tribute show. I'm waiting for her to show up every night I get on stage. This next show could be the night!

EDGE: Where do we find your music?

Kim David Smith: It's everywhere that's streaming: Spotify, Apple Music, you name it. And on my social media, Instagram, Blue Sky. I've completely abandoned Twitter. Kim David Smith on everything. No dots, no anything. And my Web site, kimdavidsmith.com. That's it.

"Mostly Marlene: a Dietrich-Drenched Album Debut" will be performed on March 21 at Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, New York, NY. (For more information, follow this link.)

For more on Kim David Smith, visit his website.