"It's not too late, you can still attend the 2007 Hampton Social," he wrote in an e-mail to potential subscribers. "If you have not purchased your tickets, now is the time."

Word around the Hamptons is that Meli has been giving away lots of free tickets, to make it appear that his concerts are popular.

It is too early to learn whether Meli's desperate plea rustled up any more ticket sales. But if Joel, looking out over the audience sitting on the grounds of the Ross School, knew that so many of the crowd came because the show, for them, was free, he'd be one disappointed 58 year-old crooner.

"I can't sing to save my life," she said. "I do, even though I'm really bad. I still sing in the car, in the shower,"

"I just nod my head," the "Piano Man" admitted. "I'm glad she's a good cook."

"Ray Charles once told me you better like what you're recording," he said. "You're going to be singing it the rest of your life."

Billy says that during his punishing two and a half hour shows he tends to get very hungry. There's nothing he can do about it.

"I can't eat before a show. So, it's like five hours since I've eaten when I'm stage," he said. "But I think it's good to go a little hungry and a little pissed off. It gives you an edge."

So far, there's no news of a new album, although Billy did release a one-off single last spring, "All My Life," which he wrote for Katie. She says she cried when he played it for her. When I mentioned that it wasn't good for that one song to be out in the world by itself, Billy did reply, "You're right." So maybe one day it will be joined by 11 others. We can only hope."

And, yes: The steak marinade that Katie uses in her book, and which we had last week, was invented by Billy.

"The thing is," he said, "it has to be served cold. And the steak has to be rare. But it is my recipe."

Just so we're square on that.

"I went to the Dave Matthews (Hampton Social @ Ross) concert, but I didn't get to hear that much of the show," Joel told us at a Hamptons magazine party Tuesday night. "I was trying to hang out and be a fly on the wall, but I kept getting accosted by fans wanting pictures, so I had to split. I felt kinda bad."

So what did he think of the concert series that he was a part of? "Well, usually private gigs kinda suck. The people aren't fans; they pay too much money; there's too many distractions and everyone's too cool to be enthusiastic. But (the Social) gig wasn't bad."

That doesn't mean the "Piano Man" would have forked over the $3,000 ticket price for the show, though. "I'd only pay that much for the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix," he quipped.

Joel was at the Hamptons mag party to help fete his wife, Katie Lee Joel, who recently graced the publication's cover. While mag owner Jason Binn led the introductions at the Hudson Hotel event, Joel also shared with us that he reads this column. "If I'm in there, I'll read it," he said. "Katie reads it all the time. I'm more of an editorial pages man myself."

Katie, a chef by day, is no stranger to the celebrity lifestyle. She hosted "Top Chef" during season one and has a cookbook, "Comfort Table," coming out in 2008. But given her choice of things to do, she'd rather sit at home in her sweatpants and watch TV.

Said Katie: "We love 'Entourage.' We're glued to the TV set on Sunday nights at home."

"He bought it without my knowing! I don't know how he pulled it off, because I'm so nosy," she tells Hamptons magazine in its latest issue, which hits newsstands Friday.

She says Joel planned on pulling up to the house in the car, handing her the keys and saying, "This is yours," but he was so excited about the purchase that he told her. "He just did it out of the blue," she says.

The Hamptons locale reminds her of her native West Virginia. "One of the reasons I feel so comfortable in Sagaponack is that the rural atmosphere is very much like home."

Joel, who hosted the first season of Bravo's "Top Chef," is working on a new cookbook, due out next May. She tells the magazine that when she and husband Billy are out East, they enjoy hitting the local farmstands. When not trying out new recipes on her husband, Joel says she enjoys patronizing local restaurants like Della Femina in East Hampton, Trata East in Water Mill, and the Dockside in Sag Harbor.

They also like to entertain at home. "There's something about having people in my home and feeding them that feels so good to me. It's very natural," she explains.

The Joels also own homes on Centre Island, in Sag Harbor, in Manhattan and Miami. Their Centre Island estate, a 14,000-square-foot, five-bedroom mansion on 14.26 acres is currently on the market for $32.5 million with Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty.

And apparently there's no need for an intercom system in any of these rambling homes: Joel always knows how to locate her husband, she says. "He whistles all the time. I always know where he is in the house because I hear the whistling."

The Hamptons magazine photos of Joel were taken at a bed and breakfast called the Seatuck Cove House in Eastport, not her new home.