Gabby La La

Gabby La La is tap dancing. Tiny of frame, huge of talent, she tap dances onto the stage -- it's about performance and it's about percussion. Gabby is hooking in to a growing audience, as if the sitar she plays, held like a Strat, is tapping the cosmic escalator and she is ascending into some strange niche that has her associated with, and performing at, miscellaneous jam-band fests -- although she is not quite of that world. It won't help to mention this, but she played with Snoop on Leno four years ago. Gabby also plays the otherworldly theremin, the ukulele, and other fringe instruments, and she sings in a voice that is high and clear, sounding much like art singer Dagmar Krause in helium mode. Gabby's songs are, like the artwork on her first CD, precious candy-colored things, but there is a point where they step beyond that and change into something sly, even unsettling, as if she were bearding Tom Waits' Big Bad Wolf. Like the title suggests, caution is advised.