Cleveland’s own Mary Bridget Davies set to rock the Beck Center

LAKEWOOD, Ohio - A stoked Mary Bridget Davies is back in Northeast Ohio.

Fresh off a limited five-week run performing "A Night With Janis Joplin" in London's West End, the Tony Award-nominee and local superstar is planning quite the homecoming with a return to the Beck Center of the Arts.

The Lakewood resident and her band will be performing "Live In Concert: Janis to Alanis" for two shows Nov. 15 and 16 in the Senney Theater.

"That's just me with a smoking hot New York City band," said Davies, a 1996 Fairview High School graduate. "We're going to just rock out. The whole premise of 'Janis to Alanis' is just everybody knows for Janis but my era of growing up as a kid was the '90s, so Alanis Morissette was our Janis Joplin.

"I saw her three years ago at Blossom and was blown away, and then again last summer before we left for London. It was just so good, so I was like, what if we did a show? Plus, nobody has seen me do a concert here in a very long time."

The concert will celebrate iconic artists including Tina Turner, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Nicks, Melissa Etheridge and other female artists.

"It's going to be in two one-hour sets - with an intermission - of just like my favorite, knockdown, drag-out female rock artists from the '60s to the '90s," she said. "Since we are greater Cleveland, I was like we have to do The Pretenders.

"We have a mini-set, an homage to Chrissie Hynde. There's something in the water here. The artistry of players in this town is topnotch and it should be celebrated."

The singer is also celebrating her recently released compilation album "Don't Compromise Yourself."

The diverse effort includes selections written by Joplin songwriter Jerry Ragovoy, original songs written by TJ Armand and Mark Berman for Davies' new play inspired by Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" and a reissue of her previous effort, "Stay With Me: The Reimagined Songs of Jerry Ragovoy."

The lynchpin of the project is the Ragovoy-penned title track, which Davies said was Joplin's credo.

"He wrote the song for her and she never got the chance to record it," she said.

"I am dear friends with his widow, and she gave us the right to record it. So we'll be doing that and new stuff we recorded at Power Station in New York City."

In case you can't tell, Davies is quite busy these days, including next month returning as the narrator in the Beck Center's production of "Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."

"The coolest thing is we crushed London, so I'm sure that there are talks," she said. "It would be amazing if it were to go to, say, Australia, which was kind of like a little Tinker Bell buzzing around the ear before we left London.

"So if that were to happen, incredible. And if not, this particular project - 'Janis to Alanis' - has caught some really good heat, so we could be touring. There's lots of irons in the fire and it's a great place to be as an artist. The creative fire is stoked right now."