Molly Ringwald is a jazz singer. Always has been. Before she was John Hughes' muse -- before she was the teenage crush of every kid in the 1980s -- Molly was belting out classics with her pianist father when she was 3 years old.
Over the years -- when she wasn't busy defining a generation on the big screen -- she honed her musical talent, and now she's touring, performing songs from her album Except Sometimes. That tour includes a stop Saturday at the McKinney Performing Arts Center. It'll be a fairly intimate setting, a time for Molly to show off her musical side.
But that's not how you picture her, probably. Even as fans of The Breakfast Club celebrate its 30th anniversary, you still see Molly as Claire, the princess in detention. Or as Andie, who somehow ended up with Blaine and not Duckie. Or as Samantha, sitting on the dining-room table with Jake Ryan.
She knows you see her that way, thanks in part to VH1 reruns and BuzzFeed quizzes. But there's so much more. There's her still-strong acting career, with two films due out this year. She's an advice columnist for The Guardian (yes, that Guardian) and an author. Oh, and she's a mother of three.
"I have to respect the fact that those movies are very meaningful for a lot of people, and I'm proud of them also," she said in a phone interview. "I think that they're pretty extraordinary, that they're part of this iconic piece of filmmaking. But at the same time, I'm not even remotely interested in living in the past."
The album is an interesting mix of songs. How did you come down to that list?
(Oh nothing. Just sitting here, talking on the phone with Molly Ringwald. You know, my teenage crush. No big deal.)
Really, it came down to what sounded great with the band. ... I consider myself more of a jazz singer than somebody who does cabaret, where it doesn't matter who is backing me up. For me, it's how the band sounds together as a group.
Are these just folks that you knew, or did you have to go through a whole process of just getting to know people and putting together the right ones?
(That question was a little wobbly. Whatever, just don't mention how you saw the end of Sixteen Candles for like the 200th time on VH1 when you couldn't sleep the other night.)
It came through meeting Peter Smith. We met in New York when we were doing a play together; he's an actor as well. We had no idea when we started working together that we both had this jazz background in common - until we were at a wrap party and he sat down at this big, beautiful Steinway and I listened to him play. It was a revelation. ... When I moved to L.A., he was the first call that I made, and we started working together. These were guys that he knew and thought I'd like.
I've seen little clips here and there where your dad plays with you. He was probably your earliest influence in music, right?
(It was that scene where the sister forgets the veil, so Samantha runs back into the church, and when everyone leaves, Jake Ryan is waiting for her. Then it's that Thompson Twins song.)
Absolutely. He's the one who really got me into the whole jazz thing. His music is kind of more old-timey even than what I do. He's more traditional jazz. Dixieland, I guess you'd call it. I'm a little more modern. My band is more hard bop. I would say the stuff we do is more '50s, late '60s kind of sound. But whenever my dad is at a gig, I always ask him to do the encore with me.
He's got to be as proud of doing that as you are excited to do that with him.
(Man, Michael Schoeffling. That was a good-looking kid. He just up and quit acting. ... Wait, did I just ask Molly Ringwald if her dad was proud of her?)
I think my dad was really excited, and I think not expecting it at all, when I started to do music again. I don't think there was anybody who was happier. Except maybe my mom. My mom was actually the one who discovered that I could sing when I was little. ... She was the one who told my dad that I had musical ability, and he didn't believe her until I went in and actually performed for him.
I have to ask about the song that's not traditional jazz, the version of "Don't You (Forget About Me)" that's a tribute to John Hughes at the end of the album. I'm no expert on this at all, but that sure seems like a tough adaptation to turn it into a jazz piece.
(I mean, it's her voice on the phone. Like, Molly Ringwald's voice, like from Breakfast Club. But she's my age. Like, we're both older now.)
The way that I did it, I cut a line from the song, so it's not even symmetrical. But the guys really like to do it because it's so different than anything else that we do. I really like the way it turned out.
You must hear it that way so much now -- does it sound odd when you hear the original version?
Totally. It really does. ... I don't even know that version any more.
A lot of people probably come to your shows and hear that and think it's a really cool tribute and a nice nod to your past. ... What's your secret to being able to evolve your career, rather than reinvent?
(Because I mean, we're in our 40s now. I'd hate it if everyone who saw me thought I was still 16. ... It would have been cool if she had another option in Pretty in Pink, like not Blaine or Duckie. Like an ordinary-looking guy who wrote for the school paper.)
That's always what I say. I'm not really a big fan of reinvention because I feel like who I am today has a lot to do with where I've come from, and to "reinvent" seems to sort of negate everything that you've done and say, "That's not me." But I feel like it's all me, even if I'm not doing the same things or I'm not the same age or I'm using different elements of my creativity.
Another thing that people really seem to struggle with sometimes is the idea of doing more than one thing. I've been doing a lot of music and writing, and people think, "Oh, you're not acting any more." ... That's not the case, either. We live in such a specialized business that you're only supposed to be good at one thing. Me, I like to do more than one thing. I think it all kind of goes together, you know?
(It was this scene.)
