Amanda McBroom | A Clean Sweep of Talent

Famed Singer-Songwriter Will Perform at Santa Barbara’s Marjorie Luke in a Benefit for the Center for Successful Aging

Amanda McBroom will perform a special benefit concert at the Luke Theatre on March 30. | Photo: Courtesy

What do Bette Midler, Donny Osmond, Curious George, Eminem, and Alvin and the Chipmunks have in common? Win your next bar trivia contest by knowing that all of them have recorded songs written by the über-talented performer Amanda McBroom. The longtime Ojai resident will show off her singing and songwriting chops in a rare local concert appearance on March 30 at the Marjorie Luke Theater at Santa Barbara Junior High in a benefit show for the Center for Successful Aging (CSA).

McBroom has been musical royalty for decades as a Broadway performer, hitmaking songwriter, and audience-pleasing singer. Heck, she even writes her own musicals, has appeared on TV in Star Trek, and started her own record company. She’s such a multi-hyphenate, we’re going to run out of hyphens!

“I like to say I’m like spumoni ice cream — it’s everything all mixed together,” McBroom says with a laugh. “The acting and singing came first. The songwriting came second. And then when I started to have success as a songwriter, I formed my own record label. At the time there were very few women running their own labels. And nobody seemed to be interested in me. They all were interested in Bette Midler [for whom McBroom won a Golden Globe Award for writing the award-winning single “The Rose”]. So, I formed my own label. So, I do it all and I’m still doing it all. And I can’t believe it.”

The event will be McBroom’s first in Santa Barbara, though she has lived in Ojai since being chased out of Los Angeles by the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

“A friend said she had just bought [famed singer] Rickie Lee Jones’s house in Ojai,” remembers McBroom. “We came to visit and we fell in love with the town!”

McBroom’s performance at the Luke, which will feature her own songs as well as classics from Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and George Gershwin, as well as familiar show tunes, is a benefit for the CSA. For more than 30 years, the CSA has been helping local seniors and their families with peer counseling, emotional support, and programs like the CareLine, a daily check-in service that helps isolated seniors stay engaged.

McBroom is a living example of aging successfully.

“It is a battle every day, trying to not let numbers intimidate you,” she says. “I always call it exchanging wisdom for muscle tone. I enjoy the fact that I’m smarter than I used to be. And I know how to manage my resources better than I used to. Also, I used to have no focus. I tried to do everything all the time, everywhere at once. Now I know how to focus my attention. One of the blessings of getting older is that you know what is a waste of your time and what is not.”

McBroom will be accompanied at the Luke by her songwriting partner Michele Brourman on piano and by Larry Tuttle on bass.

“I’ve written songs with several people, but Michele and I have been writing together for a very long time. We just click. We have the same sensibility. We both come from kind of a theatrical background. Once we have an idea, I will usually write the lyrics first. And then I send it to her, and she will put it to music. It’s never what I expect it to be! She always surprises me, and it’s always better than I had anticipated.” McBroom and Brourman specialized for a while in creating songs for animated movies, including Curious George and the Land Before Time series.

Poster for “Amanda McBroom: Let’s Fall in Love” benefit concert for the Center for Successful Aging on March 30. | Photo: Courtesy

But performing came first for McBroom, who performed on Broadway, in Los Angeles and San Francisco as well as Europe. She also had guest roles on a raft of TV shows that will be familiar to her March 30 audience, including The Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O, and Charlie’s Angels (and she was an officer on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation!).

One of her gigs was performing in the song-filled Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, during which she was inspired by the French songwriter’s style and versatility. While noodling on the piano, McBroom found that she had written a song. To her surprise, songwriting soon became her bread and butter.

“Because I come from theater, the songs I started to write, I wrote for myself,” she says. “And they were all like little one-act plays. I would find a character that I liked and create a little musical, a three-minute play about a character that was somebody that I would like to act. Hmm. Some of my early songs were more like letters to people that I would never send.”

Adds event producer Rod Lathim, a longtime friend who came up with the idea for a McBroom show at the Luke, “Amanda is such a storyteller, and that’s part of what I love about her music. It’s not just a song; it’s taking you on a journey.”

The most famous song that McBroom wrote, “The Rose,” was performed by Midler for the 1979 movie of the same name. After the songwriter herself performed the song on the Golden Globes TV show, McBroom’s solo performing career kicked off big-time and she’s been touring, writing, and singing ever since.

On Sunday, March 30, at 3 p.m., the beautiful Marjorie Luke Theatre (721 E. Cota St.) will fill with McBroom’s songs, music, and stories, performed with the experience of decades of theater chops, and will be sure to delight fans of all ages. Tickets are on sale now at csasb.org/mcbroom and will also be sold at the door.