What happens when a group of highly-skilled professional musicians get hijacked by a slap-happy little folksinger and dragged downtown to play in dubious night spots? Well, after a few drinks you get The Phyllis Newman Health Initiative Dancers!

Gary Adler, Michael Croiter, Mark Hartman, Jen Barnhart (and, one time, David Finch) have been misled by Phoebe Kreutz in this giddy band for almost a year now. In addition to honoring such Phoebe favorites as “Taco Bell” and “Good Irish Lad” with superb orchestration, the Health Initiative also has a few hits all their own. Songs co-written with the evil genius, Mr. Adler, include “Drinkin’ for Two” and the immortal ballad, “Bitch, Don’t You Know I Kill You?”

Is Phoebe moving up in the world? Or are these pros just slumming? When the room is this dark and the music this good, it’s pretty hard to tell.

 

GARY ADLER has a record collection that includes some of the most horrific and offensive songs ever produced by man. Listening to one of his mix tapes is the aural equivalent to being hit in the face with a rubber chicken. Hard. So it is quite surprising that the music he makes himself is so fantastic. This February will bring the opening of “Altar Boyz”, the Off-Broadway musical he co-wrote about a Christian Boy Band. It’s as sick and wrong and delightful as Mr. Adler himself.

JEN BARNHART is a bad mutha. She regularly lends her husky baritone and formidable puppeteering skills to the front end of Snuffy’s Mom on “Sesame Street” and the mother on “Between the Lions”. This winter, Jen will be performing with said lion puppet at the White House. This should not, in any way, be viewed as an endorsement of the administration. Rather, it is only an endorsement of the joy she will bring to the attending inner-city children. Anyway, when not collaborating with fascist regimes, Jen enjoys making jewelry and bumping into things.

MICHAEL CROITER is a very useful and productive young man. He is a terrific drummer and right fielder. He is polite and organized and clean. He won “Most-Improved Bowler” in 2004. But it wasn’t always like this. Mike used to be a goddamn hippie. And not just any hippie; He was the long-haired, stinky kind that plays xylophone in a touring band that has 1⁄2-hour long songs and smelly fans. One presumes he danced around bonfires and got into fights about The Grateful Dead vs. Phish. Watch him carefully. He could revert at any time.

MARK HARTMAN’s Halloween costume this year was “an optimist: an accordion player with a cell phone.” But, in fact, if Mark didn’t carry his cell phone with him at all times then it is quite possible that Broadway would shut down altogether. He never knows when he will be called upon to host a cabaret or serve as music director for some celebrity-riddled benefit concert. With his southern accent, witty barbs and whisky-appreciation, a night with Mark feels like a night with Tennessee Williams. Ask him how he’s doing and he’ll say, “lovely”. You should believe him.