Syd Straw is an American rock singer and songwriter. The daughter of actor Jack Straw (The Pajama Game) and songwriter Barrie Jean Garvin, she began her career singing backup for Pat Benatar, then took her distinctive and powerful voice to the indie/alternative scene and joined the ever-evolving line-up of Golden Palominos from 1985 through 1987, appearing on their second and third albums. Straw was a frequent lead singer and occasional co-songwriter for the group, which was spearheaded by drummer Anton Fier and also featured vocal turns by Michael Stipe, Matthew Sweet, Don Dixon, Jack Bruce and others. She left the group in 1987 to establish her solo career.[1]
She appeared as a featured musical guest on many programs, including the initial episode of MTV's Unplugged, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Late Night with David Letterman.
Straw in 1989 released her first solo album, Surprise,[2] which featured contributions by Stipe, Fier, Richard Thompson, Jody Harris, Peter Blegvad, and a number of other well-known musicians. She released a second solo album, War and Peace, in 1996. Recorded with Midwest rock group The Skeletons, it chronicled a brief and unhappy romance. In 2008, she released a new album, Pink Velour, on her own label, Earnester Records.[1] According to an earlier interview, the title track “is about my family moving back and forth between the east and the west, and my being kidnapped by my mother on Valentine's Day in 1969, and about not seeing my dad for almost seven years.”
A frequent backup singer and contributor to duets with other musicians, Straw has also maintained an intermittent acting career, appearing on the television shows The Adventures of Pete & Pete and the original Tales of the City. Straw's role on The Adventures of Pete & Pete, as middle-school algebra teacher Miss Fingerwood, was introduced in the episode "Valentine's Day Massacre," and was reprised in the episodes "Hard Day's Pete" and "x=why?"
Syd Straw can be heard singing harmony and backing vocals on the Rickie Lee Jones albums Traffic from Paradise and The Evening of My Best Day. She is also featured on Leo Kottke's Peculiaroso, which Jones produced. Straw appears on "What Am I Worth" from the Dave Alvin album King of California. For a number of years she has given an annual "Heartwreck" live performance on Valentine's Day.
In 1994, Straw teamed up with Wilco to contribute the song "The T.B. Is Whipping Me" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country, produced by the Red Hot Organization. She continues to record and perform today, recently in San Francisco's legendary Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in September 2023.
