I can't believe it has been six years since I last interviewed Australian Award-Winning Cabaret Artist and Actor Kim David Smith.

As Kim gets ready to perform & release his new live album, Mostly Marlene, based upon his hit cabaret show of the same name, I am beyond excited to speak with Kim about the live recording and creation of this show.

In this NEW interview, Kim once again answered my call, but this time around he shares:

• How he came up with his Mostly Marlene tribute show to Marlene Dietrich
• What excites him about his upcoming live show & album release
• Why he feels audiences today still relate to Marlene and her music
• Falling In Love Again after his divorce
• So much more

Connect with Kim: Website, Instagram, Facebook

 Kim David Smith will be celebrating his live album Mostly Marlene with a live concert at Joe's Pub in New York City on release day, Friday, March 21, 2025 at 9:30pm! Click Here for tickets!

Mostly Marlene, recorded live at New York City's famed Joe’s Pub, features guest vocalists: pop wunderkind Bright Light Bright Light and New York cabaret legend Sidney Myer. In addition to the concert, the 21-track album also features bonus studio duets with Tony-nominated playwright and performer Charles Busch, downtown luminary Joey Arias, Australian opera star Ali McGregor, and Kim’s own darling mother Linda Randall.

The album and upcoming concert feature music director Tracy Stark on piano, in addition to Matt Podd on accordion, Skip Ward on bass, and David Silliman on drums.

The recording celebrates the music associated with Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), the German/American actress, singer, fashion icon, and provocateur. With a focus on Marlene’s collaborations with Weimar-era composer Friedrich Hollaender, the program sees Kim’s queer mega-muses – Minnelli, Minogue, Madonna, and more – collide with Dietrich’s reimagined repertoire in luxurious musical rearrangements, traveling from Weimar Berlin, to Hollywood, through to the battlefields of Europe, and beyond.

1. On March 21, your next live album, Mostly Marlene, will be released and you will be performing it in concert at Joe's Pub that night. You have been performing this show since 2020, so what excites you about this particular performance? I'm excited about every single one of my shows! Any time I take the stage is an opportunity for mayhem and connection. And, a fine excuse for me to put on my lashes, my red lipstick, and my gorgeous custom Miodrag Guberinic leather tuxedo, in which I hope to be buried, in the far off future.

March 21,2025 will be an extra-special concert, with new songs being premiered alongside favorites from my new album. And, I'm thrilled to announce that Bright Light Bright Light will again be joining me onstage at Joe's Pub -- it's going to be fabulous!

2. How did recording your last live album, Live at Joe's Pub, influence the way you recorded this show live? What did you learn from that experience that informed this one? What a wild time that was! We recorded that album in 2019, and then mixed and mastered, and released it during the Pandemic. It was such a gift to have a musical project to work on during that uncertain time -- truly, I felt so lucky to have already had that project in the works.

As to how it influenced Mostly Marlene, I feel my new record is definitely a natural progression from the last; Live at Joe's Pub documents songs and arrangement's I'd worked on over a span of 15 or so years -- very special songs I had cut my New York teeth on, and so it felt important to get that out into the world, spinning in the steamable ether.

Mostly Marlene has a bigger sound, and, with the exception of some songs I just couldn't not repeat (Jonny, wenn du Geburtstag Hast, for example), is comprised of songs I've been singing in the 2020s. Mostly Marlene, for all its nostalgic Dietrich glow, is an album about my current sensibilities.

3. As I mentioned, you debuted your Mostly Marlene show back in 2020. What made you initially come up with the idea to create a show around the songs Marlene Dietrich performed throughout her career? My first performance of Mostly Marlene took place at Club Cumming, in March of 2020 -- I remember packing up my things that night, thinking uneasily about the whispers of Covid...I think the first NYC case had been reported that morning. Needless to say, it was some time before we got to perform the show again!

Daniel Nardicio was so amazing during that time. He gathered us all safely, with stringent protocols, to film some streaming specials at Club Cumming, and I was able to perform and record a mini-Mostly Marlene as part of that series over the summer of 2020.

As to the genesis of the show, it was Stephen Holden's very kind New York Times review of my 2016 residency at Pangea (in which I am referred to as a Male Marlene Dietrich) that watered a seed long planted by my almost-organic love of Marlene from a young age. This show was always going to happen, whether I willed it or not.

4. What was the first song you knew had to be in this show? Friedrich Hollaender's Black Market. It's fabulous! I knew that would be the opener. In fact, I love that song so much, I chose it to not only open the show and album, but it also bookends the album as the final song, in an especially raucous studio duet rendition with the legendary Joey Arias. I love and worship Joey as a friend and apostle, both. We had so much fun in the studio!

5. Why was that song so important for you to have in the show? It's one of my favorite Marlene moments, from any of her films; it tickles me that she's performing with THE Friedrich Hollaendar (her longtime collaborator and composer of the tune, as I mentioned earlier) at the piano, in that smoky scene from Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair. I love that movie! That, and Seven Sinners are my favorite Dietrich films.

Kim David Smith, Mostly Marlene at Joe's Pub 2024
Photo Credit: Da Ping Luo

6. Why do you feel audiences today relate to this show & Marlene's music? At the very least, people relate to me relating to her music, at the very most (and this is what I desire), they find themselves in the songs associated with Marlene; love, death, and sex are timeless and universal!

7. According to press notes, you are quoted as saying, "Releasing this record in 2025 feels akin to an act of protest, in fact, I declare it as such." How do you feel this album reflects an act of protest to what is happening in today's society? In the full quote, I touch on the general air of chaos 2025 has already visited upon us. And, in visiting with Marlene's rebel sensibilities, and her hatred of fascist Germany (and, her heartbreak at watching her beloved country devolve -- relatable, no?), I feel galvanized and determined to not cower; queer existence is resistance!

These bullies are so clueless; you'll absolutely never meet a stronger person than a gay, queer or trans person. What some of us go through simply to carve out a place in this world...the straights could never!

8. Three of your queer mega muses are Minnelli, Minogue, and of course Marlene. Let's play with this for a moment:

• What Marlene Dietrich song would you like to see Liza Minnelli perform? I think Liza would be phenomenal singing "Look Me Over Closely" -- I know I channel Liza as best I can in my rendition (available March 21 on Mostly Marlene!), in terms of seeking to be as present in the song as possible.
• What song of Kylie Minogue's would you restyle to sound like a Marlene Dietrich song? I would have to say "I Should Be So Lucky," in German, which I happen to perform as often as possible!
• If Marlene Dietrich were still alive today, what song of hers would you like to sing as a duet with her? I think I'd like to sing one of her sillier songs, like "What Am I Bid for My Apples?" or "Puff, the Magic Dragon, auf Deutsch." That would be a scream! 

Kim David Smith
Mostly Marlene at Joe's Pub 2024
Photo Credit: Da Ping Luo

9. Let's get to know you even more through some of the songs on this album.

• "The Boys in the Back Room" - Do you have any back room stories you can share with us? I have the stories, but will I share them? Let's just say I've made a lot of friends in my time, but I honestly couldn't tell you all their names...
• "Just a Gigolo" - What was the most gigolo thing you did during your single days of dating? I was single for one calendar year, and made a big effort to get out there and make new friends. In the immortal words of Patsy Stone: "It is a miracle I can walk at all."
• "Falling In Love Again" - What was it like to fall in love again after your divorce from your first husband? I fall in love all the time! With songs, paintings, and myself, even. I remarried in 2022, and have never, ever been happier or more invigorated about life. And, I love singing that song -- Marlene grew weary of it, but I absolutely melt whenever Tracy Stark (my music director, co-arranger, and one of my absolute best friends in all the world  -- in fact, Tracy married my husband and I in 2022!) begins the opening strains of "Falling in Love Again," I do exactly that - I fall in love AGAIN! 

10. What is something we didn't get to talk about in this interview that you'd like my audience to know about you? Oh, I would love to talk about the incredible album art we worked on for Mostly Marlene. Another of my dearest friends, Michael J Hildebrand, is a brilliant artist and designer (I have modeled for him for years and years -- we have a fabulous friendship) and I came to him with a self portrait in marker (I journal and sketch with markers every day), which he crafted, distilled, and transmogrified into the clever design now gracing the album. I was inspired by Joe Eula's incorporation of text into his illustrations and poster designs, and thought it would be so neat to have my eyelashes form the album's title. I love it!

More Kim David Smith Interviews:

2019 (Read Here): Morphium Kabarett Live at Joe's Pub
2018 (Read Here): Kim Sings Kylie Live at Joe's Pub
2017 (Watch Here): No Thrill From Champagne at Pangea NYC

Kim David Smith
Photo Credit: Travis Chantar

More on Kim David Smith:

Kim David Smith hailing from Australia, is a Helpmann Award-nominated actor and cabaret artist. His debut live album Live at Joe’s Pub received a 2022 Bistro Award, and is available online and on CD.

Kim starred in the title role of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé at the Provincetown Theater in 2017 and he portrayed the Emcee in Hunter Foster’s production of Cabaret at the Cape Playhouse in 2016. Kim participated in Carnegie Hall’s 2024 season-long programme Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Edge of a Precipice, with a musical tour through Weimar-era works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and served as emcee and principal vocalist for Death of Classical’s Tiergarten, in a co-production with Carnegie Hall.

Kim’s 1930s-inspired holiday offering, A Wery Weimar Christmas, premiered at Club Cumming, streamed via Club Cumming Productions during the pandemic, and returns annually to Club Cumming for in-person Yuletide performances, with guest appearances by Bright Light Bright Light, Boy Radio, Sidney Myer, KT Sullivan, David LaMarr, Alexis Michelle, Boy Radio, and Natalie Joy Johnson, among many others.

Kim Sings Kylie – Smith’s evergreen, ever-transmogrifying musical salute to perennial pop goddess Kylie Minogue – serves as an intimately fabulous cabaret celebration of Kylie’s gargantuan hits and glittering deep-cuts alike. Since 2018, Kim Sings Kylie has been performed at the inaugural Sydney Cabaret Festival, The Bard Fischer Center’s Spiegeltent, and the Provincetown Post Office Cabaret.

Smith’s Morphium Kabarett, conjuring the glitter, doom, and decadence of 1920s Berlin, toured Australia, earning a 2015 Helpmann Award nomination for Best Cabaret Performer, while also enjoying Stateside performances at Joe's Pub, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie. The show enjoyed a six-month residency at Pangea, which boasted guest artists, including Joey Arias, Ali McGregor, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Gay Marshall.

In 2009 Smith was presented with a Bistro Award (honored alongside Liza Minnelli and Charles Aznavour), and in 2023 received the Singnasium Trailblazer Award. His electro-pop albums Nova and Supernova are available online.