Storm Large a hit at SSU’s Schroeder Hall

If singer Storm Large, a saucy mix of cabaret chanteuse, punk rocker and stand-up comic, felt the least bit intimidated playing the Green Music Center’s $9.5 million, six-week-old Schroeder Hall on Sunday, it didn’t show.

Performing barefoot and wearing slinky, low-cut dresses (one for each act), with the tattoos on her back showing, the 6-foot-tall blonde singer belted out songs by everyone from Cole Porter and Randy Newman to Cheap Trick and Black Sabbath.

When her pianist, James Beaton, found his way to the organ loft above the stage, and started to play Schroeder Hall’s 1,248-pipe organ, Large launched into a spooky version of the Johnny Cash classic, “Long Black Veil.”

Urging Beaton to stay in the loft, she turned to the audience and threatened to steal the pipe organ.

“We need to take that with us,” she said, vowing to stay after the show with screwdrivers and a forklift to liberate the instrument from its loft. She did linger after the two-hour, two-act show ended, but only to sign autographs and copies of her memoir, “Crazy Enough.”

The capacity crowd of nearly 250 people consisted mostly of older fans, familiar with Large’s slightly less rowdy and bawdy work with the sophisticated musical ensemble, Pink Martini, but they readily accepted her other side.

“She’s edgy. That’s why we like her,” said Carol Lusk, 80, who came up from Novato for the show. “She’s wonderful to watch.”

Santa Rosan Adam Carston, 37, was one of the younger Storm Large fans in the Sunday afternoon crowd.

“I just like her personality,” he said. “She really puts herself out there.”

Between songs, Large delivered a series of salty, short monologues on love, sex, music and her own childhood.

She shared her perspective on the human race: “We’re just monkeys with bank accounts.”

The singer talked about her passion for love songs: “I have this super kink for love songs, but I like love stories where the police get called in.”

And she joked about her own name, shortened from her real birth name, Susan Storm Large: “If you Google the name Storm Large, you’ll get the Weather Channel.”

She led the audience in a sing-along of her Internet hit. “(My Vagina Is) Eight Miles Wide,” urging the men in the crowd to join the chorus.

Large also sang her own powerhouse interpretations of “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” from the movie “Grease,” and Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas,” partly in French but also using the English translation, “If You Go Away.”

She made each song her own, transforming Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” into something much more raw and sexy than what most singers traditionally attempt. And she sang her own songs, including the pounding rocker “Boom, Boom, Boom.”

Large, who lives in Portland, Ore., is touring California with her own quartet, Le Bonheur, and will perform Thursday at the City Winery in Novato.

For more information on the “Sundays at Schroeder” concert series at Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, go to sonoma.edu or call 866-955-6040.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.