WENDY: FROM JO TO HO

By Keo Nozari

It’s like having a big dick—everyone wants you to take it out at parties!” explains Wendy Jo Smith. Of course, she’s talking about playing her trash-talking alter ego, ghetto white girl Wendy Ho. Smith’s whipping it out even more than usual these days as she launches her brand new CD The Gospel According to Ho, a music video for the first single “Bitch, I Stole Your Purse!” and an impressive new monthly night at Caroline’s Comedy Club. Gospel is a hysterical, raunchy fun fest that aptly showcases Smith’s rapping prowess and daring sense of humor that simultaneously skewers and reveres hip-hop and gay culture. On making the CD, Smith laughs, “This is the silliest bullshit I could ever take out of my asshole, and this is what people want. So I surrendered to it!”

But surrendering to her inner Ho wasn’t easy. While Smith’s talents gained her attention at Missouri State University, the musical theater major was surprised by the response her Ho character got at parties. “I was like, ‘Really? I’m a good singer! Why?’” professes Smith. “Then I went through a period where I judged it, and I was like, ‘It’s not real talent.’” Smith sang seriously with a soul/R&B band her first year in New York, but she explains,“I always felt like there was an element missing from the [singing] performances. I really feel that I’m funny and wanted to share that with the audience.”

Then one night as her friend played the Oleta Adams/Brenda Russell hit “Get Here” on piano—Smith reunited with Ho, getting into character and launching into a spontaneous send-up called “Fuck Me” about a woman desperate for lovin’. She shared her experience with producer Craig Levy, with whom she was writing more serious material, and the two wrote the original “Bitch, I Stole Your Purse!”

After performing the song all over New York and writing an album’s worth of material, Smith landed a contract at therapy for her weekly “Mo & Ho Show,” which wraps on April 23 so she can focus on her Caroline’s events. “A lot of comedians think a gay crowd is hard. But with my character being basically a drag queen who doesn’t give a fuck, I’ve never experienced that.”

The self-professed “gay man trapped in a woman’s body” plans on opening her one-woman show based on the CD in September. “It’s so freeing when you can get up and say, ‘I don’t really care if you understand it or not,’” she explains. “I’m going to just let my demons out. It’s just a total exorcism on stage!” N