“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
— Virginia Woolf
I saw Michael Kelly-Cataldi perform a while back at a backyard gathering of jazz singers and musicians. In a crowd of amazing and seasoned performers like the great Jeannie Brooks and our host Wendy Simon, Kelly-Cataldi brought the house down with his whimsical version of Ella Fitzgerald’s “A-Tisket A-Tasket.” While on stage he mentioned that he and his husband Dino were opening a supper club called Dino’s Backstage. The dashing and dynamic pair already own and operate the popular Kelly-Cataldi HOME boutique in Glenside.
Dino’s opened earlier this year next to the Keswick Theatre. The restaurant boasts a top-notch menu from executive chef Scott Howlett and fabulous entertainment in the glamorous Celebrity Room. Kelly-Cataldi gave us a preview of what we can expect from the new space.
PGN: You’ve worn many hats. Tell me about some of them.
MKC: Well, currently I’m wearing the hat of restaurateur, performer, shop owner, dog mama of three dogs — who are outside barking right now — and genealogist. I have about 70 different trees that I’ve done. That started out from my passion to find out about who and where and what I came from. I went as far as I could with my family, back to William the Conquerer, which is ridiculous, but that’s how far back I went. Then I found an old family Bible at a flea market and decided to research it. Family Bibles were the repository of family history back when they didn’t have safety deposit boxes or weren’t able to keep your history on a computer; the Bibles are where they recorded when someone was born or when they died, who they married and what kids they had. A lot of that stuff never got recorded elsewhere.
PGN: That’s amazing.
MKC: Yes, I tracked it forward and contacted a direct descendant of the original owner. I’ve returned many family histories to great-great-great-grandsons or daughters.
PGN: What’s something interesting that you found out about your family tree?
MKC: Well, my maiden name is Kelly and whenever anyone asked me my nationality, I’d say that I was Irish and Welsh on my father’s side — which is what he always told me — and French Canadian, Native American and English on my mother’s side. As I was looking back at the Kellys, I found relatives in Pennsylvania going all the way back to 1755. I found about 10 relatives who’d been in the Revolutionary War. I kept thinking, Are these Kellys ever going to trace back to Ireland? But then I realized, my nationality is American. I think that we’re the only country that, when you ask someone about their nationality, they respond with the nationality that their parents descended from. For example, I have a friend whose mother is from Spain and whose father is from Tunisia but who was born and raised in Paris; if you ask him what nationality he is, he’ll respond French of course. It’s interesting that we don’t do that here. Interestingly, this work has made me have a much deeper ownership and allegiance to being American, which is kind of shocking to me.
PGN: I read that you also took an early interest in design.
MKC: Well, I started drawing houses and interior layouts at the age of 6. My mother was a great one for rearranging things. You’d go to bed and the sofa was in one place and you’d wake up and stub your toe because it would be in another place entirely. I learned about scale and positioning really early on, but my great love was always music.
PGN: How far back?
MKC: I’ve done professional theater since I was 17. I was still in high school when I did my first show and I had to take time off from it to go graduate.
PGN: Were you in musicals?
MKC: Yes, the first was “Bye, Bye Birdie,” then “Godspell,” “The Me Nobody Knows,” “Cabaret” — even though I was from an Irish background, I was the only blonde so I had to play the Nazi — “Pippin” and on and on.
PGN: What was your biggest stage mishap?
MKC: I was doing a show called “The All Night Strut!” named after a Bessie Smith song. In 1985, I did it in Philly, Atlantic City and in Monte Carlo, then in 1992 I toured it in Detroit, Cleveland, Rochester, Denver, you name it. We did it in A.C. the second time around too but that producer was kind of stingy. There was a lot of singing and dancing and I needed the rubber replaced on the soles of my shoes. I told him and told him but he kept procrastinating. I was doing a high kick in one of the numbers when my foot slipped and I landed on my butt underneath the piano! I sprung up like, “I meant to do that …” and people thought it was part of the show!
PGN: It’s all about owning it. Speaking of owning, let’s talk a little about the club. Why is it important to you to have a formal supper club?
MKC: There’s a picture in the restaurant and on the website of a group of women dressed up. It’s from 1965 and Dino’s mother is in the middle of the group. They were at Palumbo’s in South Philly and they were there to see Johnny Mathis. Dino and I have been together for 18 years and that picture always stuck in my mind. Everyone’s dressed up and having a great time. Someone probably came around and took their picture before the show and it was the epitome of that time period. We aren’t casual people; I own one pair of sneakers that I’ve had for eight years and only use at the gym and just two pairs of jeans. We wanted to create a place that we would want to go to. A lot of the customers at our home-goods store would also talk about wanting an adult place to go to, a place that wasn’t a sports bar with 15 TVs, that wasn’t a dance club with music blaring and that wasn’t a “family-style” restaurant with kids running around. We wanted someplace elegant for grown people to go. Nowadays the only thing you get dressed up for are weddings and funerals or an office party once a year.
PGN: I was just talking to my friend about holiday travel plans and how her mother still dresses to go on a plane and how rare that is.
MKC: Exactly. People have the clothes, there’s just nowhere or no reason to bring them out. Now there is.
PGN: Describe your act for me.
MKC: My act is cabaret. There’s music — ballads and up-tempo numbers — stories and laughter. I try to elicit some emotion from you. I want you to think, to feel melancholy and then laugh again. You’ll experience a rollercoaster of emotions. It’s one of the lovely things about music: It makes people recall what they were doing at a certain time or reminds them of a certain person or place. It’s one of the biggest memory-inducers, aside from smell.
PGN: What’s the difference between a singer and a performer who sings?
MKC: For me, singers sing at the audience, they’re not engaging them. A performer sings to and for the audience. They want a connection, whereas a singer is satisfied with you just listening to them. A performer wants you to feel something, to understand the lyrics and the pain or joy behind them. They will make you feel something by the way they interpret and perform the song.
PGN: Back to you: Where do you hail from?
MKC: I’m originally from Schenectady. My mother’s family is all from upstate New York. My father is from Clearville, Pa., and in 1940 he got a job as news anchorman at a radio station in Williamsport. Then in the early ’50s he got a job in Plattsburgh, N.Y. He was 39 and she was 22 when he met my mother. My father was married previously but didn’t have any kids, so he made up for it; I’m the youngest of five kids. He became a television news anchor and used to do the 6 and 11 o’clock news when I was a kid.
PGN: Oh wow! So that’s where you get your mellifluous voice from?
MKC: Yes, it’s all his.
PGN: My mother also did radio and TV and whenever I talk people tell me I sound just like her.
MKC: So you’re a broadcast brat too. I’m friends with Edie Huggins’ daughter, Laurie, and that’s what we call ourselves. We grew up in radio and TV stations and had a warped sense of reality. I thought everyone’s parents were on the air because all my friends were the children of other TV and radio personalities. My dad was on Channel 5 and Sue’s dad was on Channel 3 and Billy’s dad was on WRVW, wasn’t everyone’s?
PGN: Ha. I used to get mad at my mother when she was on the radio. I’d hear her voice and try to talk to her and couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t answer me!
MKC: I thought there were people actually in the radio talking and singing, even though I knew my dad was at the station.
PGN: So what’s your Philly connection?
MKC: I was working at Six Flags Great Adventure and became fast friends with a woman from Philly. I got an opportunity to do “Bye, Bye Birdie” with Kate Flannery from “The Office” at Riverfront Dinner Theater. That got me situated in Philadelphia. I fell in love with the city, the architecture and the feel of the place. Then I was lucky enough to get “Forbidden Broadway” and that made me a medium-sized fish in a little-sized pond. But my love of Philadelphia goes back farther than I realized. My parents got divorced after my mother rekindled a romance with her high-school sweetheart who lived in Trenton, N.J. When I found out that we were moving there, my first thought was, Oh my God, that’s where Washington crossed the Delaware! And it’s close to Philadelphia! I’d had one of those big Viewmaster sets with the wheel that had the little slides in it and I was fascinated by it. Fast forward, when I did my genealogy I found a William Kelly who served in the Revolutionary War. And it turns out he’d served under General George Washington when Washington crossed the Delaware. He couldn’t cross “on account of the great freeze” but he waited for Washington to bring the captured Hessians back over and he then marched them all the way to Philadelphia. And I found other family members from this area back into the late 1600s. It was crazy! I think I’m the only Kelly not born in Pennsylvania.
PGN: Any relation to Grace?
MKC: No, no. But back to Philly, I was in and out of doing theater. One day in 1994 I was walking down the street with a friend and shared an idea I’d been percolating for years. I had money in hand and I wanted to buy something nice for my dog but the only places to go were the big pet stores like Petco or whatever the equivalent was back then. So I opened up a little pet boutique where you could find a really beautiful collar or unique items for your pooch. It was called … and Toto, too!®. It was open for five years and even received a Best of Philly award!
PGN: Speaking of the best, I also read that you’re a member of the Rolls-Royce owners’ club.
MKC: [Laughs] Yes. We have an issue with cars. Well, I have one and Dino obliges me. It started when I was 10. It was my first Christmas in New Jersey and my best friend collected these little British toy cars called Corgis. They had doors that opened, seats that moved and I begged Santa for one. I got a two-door Silver Shadow that year and for years I got more Corgi cars and books about Rolls-Royces. I even got a belt buckle that had the symbol and the Rolls-Royce motto. There was no Google in 1975 when I was 13, so I wrote a letter to national headquarters of Rolls-Royce asking what the motto meant and I received a lovely response from them along with a whole portfolio on the cars with pictures and pricing, all sorts of stuff. The letter stated, “Dear Master Kelly, Thank you for your interest in the Rolls-Royce motor car … ” and it closed with “ … With luck and hard work and perseverance hopefully there is a Rolls-Royce in your future.” I never forgot it and I still have that two-door Silver Shadow. In fact, quick story, when I was touring I had all my things in storage and all my Corgi cars were packed neatly in the original boxes. The only one that wasn’t boxed was the Silver Shadow. A year later when I went to unpack, I looked in the boxes and every single one of them was empty. Someone had gotten in and taken every single car except the one that was out of the box, my Silver Shadow. So, to answer your question, we ended up falling in love with a 1989 white Rolls-Royce with a white interior and a red dash. So yes, I am a happy member of the owners’ club.
PGN: Who would you bring back for one last performance?
MKC: Ella Fitzgerald so I could hear the rest of her concert. I was doing a show in Detroit and I heard that Ella was coming to town to perform. I told my producer that I needed that Saturday off because, before I died, I needed to see her perform. There were only two people in my show — two guys, two gals — and he didn’t like my understudy so he said, “I’m sorry, we’re sold out. I can’t let you go.” To which I responded, “Oh, I can’t take off? Well, that’s a shame. (Cough, cough) Oh my, I don’t feel so well. I hope it doesn’t get any worse … ” So he said, “OK, OK, wait, wait, wait …” and he arranged it so that there was a really long curtain speech before our show and let us go to catch the beginning of her show. We wore our costumes under our coats, they took us to the music hall, which was two minutes away, and I got to see the first five songs of her set before we had to run back and do our own show. It was the last concert she did. So I would want to hear the rest of the show.
PGN: And what’s coming up at Dino’s Backstage?
MKC: This is a jazz weekend so we have Wendy Simon here Dec. 2 and Jill Salkin Dec. 3. I’m doing every Sunday until the end of December and for two following weekends, Paula Johns, who is a local favorite, and I are going to be doing a holiday tribute called “The Snow Show.” We’ll have two shows on New Year’s Eve — one is already sold out — and then some of my favorites both locally and nationally will be performing in 2017: Eddie Bruce, Marilyn Maye, Mark Nadler. I’m really looking forward to it.
For more information about Dino’s Backstage, visit www.dinosbackstage.com.
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