77. LIFERS - Kay Hanley

It stands to reason — the longer you stay in the game of writing and performing music, the older your audience gets. But Kay Hanley’s audience has only gotten younger. She went from pumping out the catchiest Cheap Trick influenced alterna-pop for the alterna-kids of the ‘90s in her band Letters To Cleo — to entertaining the kids of THOSE kids writing songs for shows such as “Doc McStuffins” and “DC Superhero Girls”. Along the way, she’s managed to maintain a stellar solo career — and the debut entry in that career (“Cherry Marmalade”) just happens to turn 20 this year. So she’s doing what we all do: Putting that shit out on vinyl and hitting the road. We’ve known Kay for a long time and there’s nobody cooler. On this episode we forget to talk about Josie And The Pussycats, Hannah Montana, and Adam Scott — but we REMEMBER to talk about “10 Things I Hate About You”, Heath Ledger, Mike Denneen, her work with the Songwriters of North America (a foundation she co-founded, by the way), baseball, covering each other’s songs, football, “Jesus Christ Superstar”, growing up across the street from the Wahlbergs, “Melrose Place”, Barry Manilow, and REAL football! We also put Kay’s Rain Man-like ability for remembering lyrics to the Elvis Costello test.