Entertainment :: Music
Night of A Thousand Stevies by Winnie McCroy
EDGE ContributorWednesday May 2, 2007Get your tambourines and lace shawls out, New York City! It’s time for Night of a Thousand Stevies 17, the annual celebration of Stevie Nicks, this year at May 11 at the Hiro Ballroom at the Maritime Hotel. This year’s event celebrates the theme, Edge of Seventeen, and founder/emcee Chi Chi Valenti is ready for the plethora of white-winged doves this event is certain to draw.
Night of a Thousand Stevies first began 17 years ago at Jackie 60, a weekly performance venue on Tuesdays during the ’90s. Founder Chi Chi Valenti credits its start to a Fleetwood Mac concert at Jones Beach where she ran into her New York club friends Dean Johnson and Joey Arias.
"I realized that for some reason this character that was so not of our world was growing a cult around her of fierce New York drag performers," said Valenti. "So I decided to do a night at Jackie 60 around Stevie Nicks, with Dean, Joey, myself and Wendy Wild. The shows were incredible. When we saw how big it grew, we did it every year."
"I think the funniest moments for me were the first ones because it just seemed so absurd," said Johnson. "I remember sitting in the dressing room with Chi Chi and Joey Arias (we were the only three Stevies that night) and thinking, ’Well, this is avant-garde!’"
"And then Joey went up and started singing along to ’Stand Back’...but he didn’t know the words and he had a coke straw hanging out of his nose," Johnson continued. "So he just kinda faked his way through the lyrics...and Chi Chi and I looked at each other and lost it; we just doubled over in laughter and we suddenly and simultaneously realized the endless possibilities for this concept and that there were a thousand ways to interpret Stevie Nicks. We were hooked."
The crowd dished out a mix of adoration and camp, and was as diverse as could be, attracting drag queens, gays, jocks, old stoners and funky club kids. For a few years, said Johnson, the event was plagued by "the Stepford Stevies," fans even too fanatic to have fun with the concept. Camp and cult ultimately merged, and this diversity has remained today, celebrated by Valenti and her co-founders as a sign of the best of old New York, a world of costumes and club parties that seems all but disappeared.
"At Jackie 60, everyone used to call it Noah’s Arc, because it was the widest range of genders, ages, colors-all people who got it," said Valenti. "We’re Stevie Nicks fans, but it’s taking something like Stevie and making it a focal point for a spectacle, a real appreciation for something so you will always find something new in it."
NOTS stayed at the Jackie 60 venue until the year 2000, then moved to Don Hill’s for several years.
"It was comfortable there for maybe the first year," said Valenti. She subsequently moved NOTS to The Knitting Factory, where it drew a capacity crowd split between two rooms. But Valenti said, "the drawback became that we still couldn’t fit all the people in with visibility of the stage." With both regret and anticipation, Valenti has moved this year’s event to the Maritime Hotel’s Hiro Ballroom, impressed by how the staff there deals with large events.
"It’s really a step up, and the idea of so many people being able to be in the main room is really what we are going for," said Valenti. "No matter how good a lounge or dance area may be, it’s all about tribal bonding."
This annual event invites performers both straight, gay and transgender to don their best Stevie Nicks gear and belt out (or lip-sync) the many hits of this iconic Fleetwood Mac singer.
Valenti said the Edge of Seventeen show will feature about 25 acts from established performers like co-producer Hattie Hathaway, Kiki and Herb star Justin Bond, and a farewell performance from "Legend of Stevie Realness" Nicole Nicks. Valenti said the Edge of Seventeen show will feature about 25 acts from established performers like co-producer Hattie Hathaway, Kiki and Herb star Justin Bond, and a farewell performance from "Legend of Stevie Realness" Nicole Nicks. Past celebrity guests have included Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry and The Scissor Sisters.
Return guests include Sherry Vine, the HoHos, Dean Johnson, Amber Garbo, Sweetie, and more. Also performing will be newcomers like DD Sparks from Des Moines, Andrew Burnete from LA, New York’s Coco Baby, and The House of Domination. Legendary NOTS DJs Poison Eve and Craig Spencer will spin all-Stevie, all-Fleetwood all night.
Cathy Cervenka and Jill Pangallo, a.k.a. the HoHos, make up the only Stevie duo in the show every year, and, as Cervenka notes proudly, "two of the only natural born women in the show." Cervenka said, "Stevie’s fashion, vocal style and songwriting are unique and timeless, her romances legendary-that’s what makes her a gay icon."
Pangallo said that NOTS, "Actually brings us closer together as performance partners because it forces us to rework the same material in new ways. That, and we get to break out our of platform boots, handkerchief skirts, and shawls."
These New Yorkers love how the event captures old New York, Cervenka saying, "NOTS is our FAVORITE night of the year -it’s the only night that truly reminds you what nightlife in NYC used to be about...."
"NOTS is a great reminder of what nightlife used to be like in NYC," adds Pangallo. "It’s raw, creatively charged, and super fun. Not to mention, it brings out some of the biggest legends in existence. Somehow, as the city continues to get tamer and more homogenized, NOTS maintains an authentically downtown vibe."
Valenti loves her old crew, but admits that, "Some of the ones that come from really far away get up there and completely rule... and you know it’s a high point of their life."
The event truly does attract fans from across the country. Longtime West Coast performer BellaDonna will return to NOTS for her 10th year, drawn by this, "Celebration of love and music and art and our connection to each other."
"Through Stevie the crowd that flocks back to the venue... is diverse in every way possible: race, creed, height, sexual orientation, celebrity status, age.... all welcomed, and offered a place-a TimeSpace, if you will-in which to express that which we hold most dear," said BellaDonna. "Yes, we are celebrating Stevie Nicks, but only because we are celebrating ourselves."
New for this year, Valenti will instill a crew of dancers, akin to a Greek chorus for the evening’s events.
Night of a Thousand Stevies tends to bring out the most theatrical of the city’s denizens, clad in leather and lace, suede and blue denim. Valenti suggests ivory handkerchief hems and cascading sleeves, nightbird chiffons, white Victoriana, velvet ruched boots, white plumes, tambourines and white winged dove motifs. For those Nicks fans whose taste tends to run a bit darker, Valenti says Rhiannon Gothic-the Welsh witch, black bat look-is always welcome. "I don’t want people to think this is only about the white-winged dove," said Valenti.
Her own costume selections have already been made, said Valenti, and includes a white outfit, and a costume and shawl change, all largely comprised from her own collection of appropriate Stevie Nicks gear culled throughout the years. Valenti looks at the future of NOTS with anticipation.
"The mission for the show going forward... is to show the children that nightlife is not just about bottle bars," said Valenti. "New York can produce these great things which may have been born by accident, but have become tradition. There are certain events born of a New York that is not even here any more, and they remain and are more important than ever."
The Jackie Factory NYC presents Night Of A Thousand Stevies 17: Edge Of Seventeen. Friday May 11, 2007; Hiro Ballroom @ The Maritime Hotel;
371 West 16th Street NYC. Doors Open 9 PM - 4 AM. $25, SmartTix.com or 212-868-4444. For more information visit mothernyc.com/stevie.
Winnie McCroy is a freelance writer based in New York City. She has written for publications including The Village Voice, The Advocate, Curve Magazine, Gay City News, and GO NYC.
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