Ride the vocal elevator with Passing Strange creators on campus tonight

Only a few people came out last Monday for a screening of the Tony award-nominated (and Spike Lee-filmed) Passing Strange at the Memorial Union’s Frederic March Play Circle, but anyone who's seen it has to be taken with the versatile vocals and songwriting of creators Mark "Stew" Stewart and Heidi Rodewald. The two will do a free show in the flesh tonight at 7 p.m. at the Wisconsin Historical Society building. Their appearance is part of this year’s Line Breaks festival, an annual extravaganza centered on the University of Wisconsin’s First Wave program. One of the festival’s organizers, Lauren Young, tells The A.V. Club that vocalist-guitarist Stew, vocalist-bassist Rodewald, and a drummer will crank out some of the brilliant numbers from Passing Strange, as well as a handful of cuts from the duo’s old band, The Negro Problem. The best reason to check this out is that Stew’s voice is a sonic skyscraper with an influence on every level: He's quick to jump from James Brown on the fifth floor to Randy Newman on the 90th. Even for those of us who wouldn't usually care for musical theater, Passing Strange's take on drugs, religion, philosophy, and other assorted social issues brings out the duo's strikingly varied musical palette. Here's Stew narrating a gospel-blues freakout number near the beginning of Strange: