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Valley native with crystal voice is dedicated to helping others Maureen McGovern
Danielle St. Laurent
Blondie will perform Monday at Packard Music Hall in Warren.
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
Maureen McGovern is a music therapist at heart.
The Grammy-nominated singer who hails from Boardman has a multi-faceted career that is in a resurgent mode. She’s become a renowned interpreter of the American songbook, with considerable film and Broadway credits.
But using her voice to inspire others, or to help them through tough times, is her passion.
McGovern will return to the area Friday night for a show at Nighttown in Cleveland Heights.
In a phone interview from her summer home in central Ohio, McGovern talked about her career and the gratification she gets from giving back.
The long-time Muscular Dystrophy Association board member recorded her 2008 album “Works of Heart” – named after the foundation she founded – to lift the spirits of patients and their caregivers.
She takes joy in visiting hospitals and hospices and singing with patients, using the mysterious power of music to bring them outside their pain.
“A neighbor of mine is 92 and has cancer, but she was a very vibrant woman, very talkative,” said McGovern. “I went to see her at the hospital, and she was despondent. She obviously didn’t have very long to live. I asked her what was her favorite song, because she had sung in the church choir, and she said she didn’t have one. I said, ‘Do you like Gershwin?’ She said yes, and I asked if she would sing ‘Our Love Is Here to Stay.’ I started singing, and by the third line she started singing with me. Soon after, she was singing fully loud, and then she started talking to me. The shift in her spirit went from inward to outward.”
McGovern also occasionally works with Deforia Lane, music therapy director at University Hospitals in Cleveland, in a similar program to uplift terminal patients.
“I have gone on rounds with her. I call her the Mother Theresa of Cleveland,” she said. “I have seen hearts and minds turn around, people with cancer not giving in.”
McGovern’s four-decade career began in earnest in 1972 when “The Morning After,” the theme song to the disaster film “The Poseidon Adventure,” catapulted her to fame.
Her acting credits include the films “The Towering Inferno” (1974), “Airplane” (1980) and “Airplane 2” (1982).
She made her Broadway debut in 1981 in “The Pirates of Penzance” and returned in 2005 in “Little Women.”
She performed for 33 consecutive years on the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, and has been an artist spokeswoman for the American Music Therapy Association since 2001.
One of McGovern’s favorite experiences is giving her “Surviving The Morning After/Musically Speaking” lecture and song series in tandem with her interactive master class for college students and professional artists.
In addition to her current tour and recording plans, she plans to spend much of the summer finishing her autobiography.
“Right now it is a lot of notes,” she said.
Titled “Surviving the Morning After,” the book is part of her effort to inspire people who are going through tough times. “I’ve very much had highs and lows myself,” she said. “[The book] will go back to my whole life journey. Some of the things that happened to me are hilarious, some not so nice,” she said, referring to the early part of her career when she was naive to the ways of show business.
“I hope it will help young people starting out today,” she said. “You think you are the only one going through something, but it’s a common thing.”
Publication is tentatively set for 2016.
In March, her “American Songbook” concert special aired on PBS. It featured songs from her 12th studio album, “A Long and Winding Road” (2008), a collection of her interpretation of ’60s and ’70s pop standards.
McGovern turns 66 in a month but has no plans to slow down.
In addition to her performance schedule and book, she plans to record an album of spirituals.
She is currently touring a show that she and her music director put together titled ‘Sing, My Sisters, Sing.”
“It’s a celebration of women singer-songwriters,” she said. “Everyone from Billie Holliday to Ella Fitzgerald. It includes some of the most iconic songs of the 20th century, like ‘A Tisket A Tasket.’ There are also songs by Joni Mitchell, Phoebe Snow, Annie Lennox, Janis Ian, Carole King, Melissa Manchester. There is a very different take on Helen Reddy’s ‘I Am Woman.’ I try to go back to these songs I love for one reason or another and reinterpret them. I don’t set out to do a museum piece.”
McGovern’s Friday performance will be the “Sing, My Sisters, Sing” show. That performance also has a higher purpose: It’s a fundraiser for the Cleveland Heights streetscape beautification program.
Her future plans include recording “Sing, My Sisters, Sing.” She is also preparing a one-woman show that will premiere next summer in New England. “It’s an autobiographical journey with me,” she said. “It will be my life intertwined with music and film footage.”
Although she won’t have time this weekend, McGovern said she returns to the Youngstown area frequently to visit family and friends.