Pamela Lewis with John Hurley: The Many Facets of a Long Island Gem

Some of you out there may have danced to Pamela Lewis' voice: swayed to Journey’s “Good Morning Girls,” hustled to the Bee Gees' “If I can’t Have You,” twirled to Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody” thinking the [wedding reception] night will never end. If you have, you know one dimension of Pamela Lewis; you know “Champagne Pam” the member of Code Bleu one of Long Island’s most successful wedding bands. If so, you have met the glitzy persona she created for the popping of corks and tossing of bouquets.

Some cosmopolitan Long Islanders may have heard Pamela Lewis perform her cabaret shows in Manhattan at The Metropolitan Room. There you may have heard Lewis and her quartet (piano, bass, guitar, and trumpet) perform an all-Billy Joel evening of song punctuated with charming patter. If you missed the show, you can watch it online because happily segments of the were recorded. You will hear her arrangements of “Matter of Trust,” “Just the Way You Are,” or “This is the Time” among others. Perhaps you may have caught her at one of New York’s premier jazz clubs, Birdland, as a performer on the long-running review Jim Caruso’s Cast Party. These kinds of gigs earned her a BroadwayWorld.com award and an award nomination by the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC).

Of course, Long Island has its own class acts, and Lewis has graced the stage at those moments too. She has sung Great American Songbook tunes with The New Millennium Jazz Band, a 19-piece outfit, and Long Island’s premier big band. She has sung love songs at their Valentine's Day celebration and honored “Old Blue Eyes” at the band’s all-Sinatra shows at the Suffolk Theater in Riverhead. Check the videos online, she can entice or belt like the best of big band singers.

These are three facets of Pamela Lewis, but on this Long Island stage episode, we will see a fourth: Lewis as a singer-songwriter. In between all her gigs, she has found time to compose some gorgeous R&B-influenced songs. Pay a visit to her on Spotify, and you will hear a superbly produced pair of her songs “Dreams Come True” and “Secret Language.” These are windows into the heart of her talents.

Lewis’ writing partner Schuyler Deale brings his own goods to the table: a bassist-singer who has played with Billy Joel, Michael Bolton, “jazzy R&B singer Angela Bofill, smooth jazz’s Jeff Lorber, jazz legend Billy Cobham, and perhaps most deliriously with LI’s own Good Rats. Off-stage, she keeps good company too. Together Lewis and Deane have written and produced a collection of songs ready for the spotlights.

For this show, Lewis will be accompanied by her husband John Hurley an accomplished performing guitarist, and ever at her side. They may be rehearsing right now on their porch from which they have been offering “pandemic porch concerts” for months and months on Harbor Isle to fans in beach chairs in the sand. Tonight, you can listen and watch from a beach chair too if you set one up in front of your screen.