International stage and music star Kim David Smith is truly a unique performer. He is keeping the cabaret genre very much alive while channeling the divas of yesterday, namely Marlene Dietrich, who was challenging social and political norms way before Kim’s time. During a time when politics is trying to silence the queer voice, it is only fitting that Kim releases his album, Mostly Marlene, celebrating the cinematic icon and fighting back against the current political climate in his own way.
To watch Kim at work is to watch a master perform. He transports the audience into a world that has one foot in the present day, and the other in any decade he chooses. He is shades of Marlene mixed with shades of the Emcee from Cabaret, mixed with shades of a magician. He is androgynous in his approach, perfectly mixing feminine and masculine to delight. He has been awarded for his work and has been seen around the globe, from Carnegie Hall and Club Cumming to Adelaide and Provincetown. He hails from Australia but has made New York City his home.
His training in the material of divas from Hollywood’s glittered past started early.
Nanny (my maternal grandmother) and I would pour over movie musical coffee table books when I was a child – I’m talking 4 or 5 years old – and I’ve maintained a lifelong fascination with the gorgeous women in those pages, and in the movies we’d watch when she’d babysit me: Judy Garland, Ann Miller, Cyd Charisse (in Singin’ in the Rain?? To die for!), Audrey Hepburn…these were our main gals. I distinctly recall Nanny not being into Marlene Dietrich, which sparked an urgent interest in my mind from a young age! Who is this troubling vixen? Who is this dangerous woman? Nanny is very British, and I think there’s possibly a bit of a World War II hangover there, in terms of Dietrich’s original nationality (Marlene became a US citizen in 1939 and famously denounced the Nazi party.)
Along with his early training in female chanteuses, he also realized early on that he might not be like the other boys.
Well before I understood sexuality, I knew that I had romantic feelings for boys. I remember sort of coming out to mum when I was 10 or so but also sort of not; my very existence outed me, I was never really “in!” I had an innate sense of the fabulous as a child (dress-ups, art class, music, dance – anything to do with expression) and was not at all drawn to sports and such. I’m so lucky to have had supportive, loving parents as an obviously gay child – honestly, their options were few given my sister is a lesbian, and my brother is trans! We are queer as all get out in my family – goddess help my parents if they had a problem with any of that!
Part of the thrill of seeing Kim perform is how he pays homage to an original singer, capturing the movements, the vocal lilts, and the sensuality, but still making the performance all his own. Besides works by Marlene Dietrich, he also works in some Kylie Minogue, Madonna, and Minelli.
My favorite past time is rearranging songs with my beloved friend and music director, Tracy Stark; a perfect afterlife for me would be noodling away at clever, gorgeous new arrangements of Kylie and Marlene tunes in a shabby little midtown rehearsal room with Tracy, for all eternity. Heaven! I’m not sure that’s what Tracy signed up for, but I’m down! Our main, twin focus when rearranging, and making pre-owned songs “Kimmish” is to 1) entertain and 2) get to the emotional core of the song. We love to tell stories, and we LOVE to work out a good gag.
Kim avoids just giving the audience a rundown of Marlene’s life. Mostly Marlene, recorded live at New York’s Joe’s Pub, is not full of factoids but rather stories and captured moments, whether younger fans are familiar with Dietrich or not, they are captivated. According to Kim, the younger, queer generation has plenty to learn from the classic icon.
Everything is rushed nowadays. Extended mixes of songs have a 2-minute duration, albums are 20 minutes long. Marlene took her time. Liza breathes on stage. We, as an audience, breathe with these women as they survey and size us up in between numbers. As to practical, non-performing life, I’m inspired by their boldness, their colossal wattage. For example, if I’m having a rough day, I play Liza (Liza with a Z, or Liza’s Live in New York 1979), and she, with her commitment to being maximally present, usually put me on the path to exuberant serenity. Marlene oozes confidence. I urge the upcoming generations to borrow the strength of these titans, as I certainly do.
Mostly Marlene also features duets with queer elder luminaries like Charles Busch and Joey Arias. In Kim’s opinion, like Dietrich, the younger generation can look to our gay elders for inspiration and guidance.
I very purposely seek out those who have beaten the paths I tread. I think it’s not dissimilar to when you get a really young, social-media-facing queen on RuPaul’s Drag Race, and they’re pitted against a queen who came up performing in the clubs; there’s a lot to learn for those with ears to hear! There’s so much to be said for the experiences of our previous generations, and specifically for gay and queer people who don’t always leave the nest with a full picture of what’s possible for them. I am so proud and so happy to be queer, and I love, love, love to be regaled by my friends in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. They have the best stories! One of my dearest friends, Charles Leslie (co-founder of the Leslie Lohman Museum), is easily one of my favorite people to lose time with – talk about a life lived to the fullest, and none of his storied stories involve a smartphone. Heaven! I am lucky enough to have grown up with gay uncles in a very long-term relationship – Uncle Alan (my biological uncle of the pair) is a wealth of inspiration and storytelling – he saw Marlene live in Melbourne in the ‘70s, and I make him retell that evening every time I see him.
A total delight on Kim’s album is the track “A Little Yearning,” a song he performs with his mother, Linda Randall.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for singling out this song; mum is the absolute brightest light in my life, and it’s my honor, truly, to have her appear on this record. Mum has always made space for me to be myself and continues to be my most unabashed supporter – whether it’s from the audience (ABBA’s “Super Trouper” is one of “our songs”), or in galvanizing and guiding me through the myriad personal crisis that we all wrestle through in day-to-day life – and all from afar! We talk and text often, and I feel enormously connected to her despite the time differences between America and Australia. Actually, our closeness inspired the new lyric I wrote for “A Little Yearning,” the song we recorded together for Mostly Marlene: “I know together we are stardust aglow, connected across the world.”
I’ve been singing “Yearning” for years, and mum has always loved it, and so we thought: why not? Mum even learned the chorus in German for the recording! She’s such a trouper; I love her forever.
Dietrich was openly bisexual. She was a figurehead in Hollywood but also enjoyed the gay bars and drag balls in 1920s Berlin. She stirred controversy with her masculine clothing and sexual energy. Kim has been capturing that essence by encapsulating the best of both worlds – male and female. Over the past few years, it seems that Hollywood’s straight cis males have started to explore both worlds by adopting different expressions of fashion and makeup on red carpets and at appearances. What is Kim’s take on the recent trend?
The thing about feminine-leaning clothing is that it is infinitely more interesting than the drab fare most men wear (or are conditioned to wear). We are living through hyper-visual times, and so it makes tons of sense to me that the straights are dragging up for red carpets and magazine shoots. I’m not sure how earnest these men may be, in terms of relaxing gender boundaries, but I suppose I should be generous in imagining at least some of them may be actually experimenting (and enjoying it!). Marlene loved to get around in trousers. LOVED it. But there were songs she insisted needed to be sung in a gown. Even she, with her nonconformist lifestyle and depictions, had at least some small sense of a binary. Ultimately, I full-throatily celebrate the diminishing of toxic masculinity, and I think playfulness is a great start, be it in clothing, melody of speech, listening habits – what have you! The hard-up, toxic straights have forgotten how to play. I myself love slipping into a gown when the occasion calls for it; I wore the most gorgeous vintage Mugler gown for Death of Classical’s Tiergarten last year (a fabulous Weimar-infused co-production with Carnegie Hall) – and had the time of my life singing Vikki Carr’s brassy “The Silencers” into a harrowing arrangement of “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (popularized by The Pogues). I very much, through the journey of those songs, felt myself dancing across the gender spectrum in real-time. It was magic!
And what does Kim want audiences to walk away with most from experiencing Mostly Marlene?
I want my audiences to feel well-fed, and entertained. I am in some ways a walking, sentient Marlene Dietrich Wikipedia, but my shows are not about education – they are strictly about entertaining and community. And, as to the second point of community, I am proud to create shows at which our queer siblings and allied fabulous folk gather. More than ever before in our lifetimes, we need to gather; we need to celebrate one another, safeguard one another, and we need to tell, hear, and repeat our stories.
The primary mission of the show is exposure. And, by that, I mean the amplification of queerness, and gay voices. And boy, is mine a gay voice! I have a queer voice, a queer story to tell, and have made some fabulous, queer art to share with those whose hearts beat to a similar rhythm.
When celebrating music by Dietrich, Minogue, Madonna, and Minnelli, the word icon gets used. Icons build legacies, what kind of legacy is Kim creating with his work?
As far as legacy goes, I’d love for people to feel inspired to put together a cabaret for themselves and get up on stage. I hope Mostly Marlene causes a billion cabaret artists to find their voices, build their arrangements, write their jokes, and book themselves at the Don’t Tell Mamas of the world. At the very least, I hope I inspire some curious boys to slap on a smouldering red lip.
And what is his message to his fans?
My chief message is thank you! I feel so fortunate to be able to sing these glorious second-hand songs, and so grateful to anyone taking the time to stream and visit with my and Tracy’s arrangements. It’s an honor to be in your earbuds!
Mostly Marlene is now streaming.
Visits KimDavidSmith.com for show dates.
Last modified: April 4, 2025
