By John Amodeo***On January 4th, we caught Amy Armstrong’s show at Nacho Daddy, located in the heart of Puerto Vallarta’s Zona Romantica, home to a large selection of cabaret venues and piano bars. Armstrong has held a Saturday and Wednesday night residency at Nacho Daddy for the past eight years and for good reason. She is one of the top entertainers in town and one of the finest cabaret divas 
in the business. At this show, she was accompanied by Eugenia Prieto on violin and Mimi Ramirez on guitar, two superb local musicians with whom she has performed for eight years. This trio could not have been tighter.
Armstrong has a powerhouse voice that can belt to the rafters or sound as smooth as silk when she lowers the mood. In this show, she gave us a collection of ‘80s hits with unique arrangements, including a tender slow ballad version of AHA’s “Take On Me” that had you thinking about the song in a whole different way, and an upbeat Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” that had us dancing in our seats and singing along.
A natural comedian, Armstrong mixed in a healthy dose of sidesplitting, irreverent, standup comedy that took us far away from world turmoil and allowed us to revel in her entertaining orbit for a very happy ninety minutes. Her humor ranged from the culture shock American’s often have visiting Mexico (“handrails on steep steps? Ha!”) to her love for and roasting of the gay commu
nity, who is often out in full force in her shows as they were that night.
A fan of Casey Kasem’s Top 40 back in the day, Armstrong peppered her show with one ‘80s cover after another, by the likes of Cindy Lauper, Pat Benatar, Jon Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson, but through her own filter, with arrangements and deliveries that had you listening to every word. She sent us out the door with the sweetest, slow ballad arrangement of a Beatles pairing, “Blackbird”/”I Want to Hold Your Hand” that kept us for a shining moment in our reverie as we left already planning our return to her next show.
We returned the following Saturday, January 11th, just for the sheer joy of seeing her again. Backed up this time by musical maestro Mark Hartman at the piano, Armstrong gave a completely different show than last Saturday’s ‘80s show, this one filled with Broadway tunes and a few wonderful pop hits.
Opening with “When You’re Good to Mama” (Chicago), matron Mama Morton being a role sh
e was born to play, she showed off both her impeccable comic timing and her extraordinary singing voice. She and Hartman had fun dueting with complex counterpoint on “The Money Song” (Cabaret), and she belted out Helen Reddy’s “Don’t Cry Out Loud” with heart-rending determination.
Armstrong’s 30-year career has help her amass a collection of signature songs, one of which is Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia,” which she sang with searing emotional depth, as Hartman, standing in for all the Pips, provided choreographed hand gestures while still playing the piano, no easy feat! Another signature song, which Armstrong has confessed in interviews will haunt her until the day she dies, is “The Cat Song,” a comic novelty singalong with off-color lyrics and overt double entendre that her returning audiences demand she sing.
Peppering her show with gut-busting comic standup between songs, Armstrong easily segued into such hilarious numbers as “All the Good Men Are Gay” (The Gay ‘90s Musical) and “Otto Titsling”(sung by Bette Midler in Beaches). More difficult but done so deftly nevertheless, she turned on a dime to touch our hearts with “Isn’t It Better” (Funny Lady) and “I’m Not That Girl” (Wicked), as she spoke humorously but poignantly about her own experiences with love but also growing up feeling “other” as “the big girl.”
Her encore, Leon Russell’s “A Song for You” says everything about her honesty and authenticity as a performer. She’s a giver and what she gives us is her song. And how lucky we are that she shares that gift with us.
