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Sayonara Sorrow - Ben Brown

Singer, songwriter and musician Ben Brown from Austin, Texas sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently to talk about his new album Sayonara Sorrow a collection of songs whose music is as beautiful as the lyrics are poignant. A common thread throughout these songs is social commentary, which should not be mistaken for being political, because that it is not. Commenting on social issues through music is a familiar theme For Ben Brown as the Pennsylvania born songwriter and his brother Jeff, who tragically passed away a few days after this interview, recorded the song “That’s How the West was Lost,” with their band The Savage Poor.

He says, “The song, “What Will Happen to All that Beauty,” was inspired by novelist and activist James Baldwin. James Baldwin was a writer and activist in the sixties and seventies. I was reading some of his writings a few years ago and the line “What Will Happen to All that Beauty?” is a direct quote from one of his essays called The Fire Next Time. At the end of his essay, he talks about what will happen to the beauty that is blackness. He equates beauty with blackness. He says what will happen to the beauty of blackness, in the United States if we don’t reconcile the racial injustices. He said this in 1968. When I read that line it sounded profound and like a great title. Shortly thereafter I heard music in my head that seemed to fit the mood and the tone, so it went from there. I made a YouTube video with a quote from James Baldwin and some stock footage of 1960s civil rights activism.”

Ben Brown takes the lead vocals on the song, “What Will Happen to All that Beauty,” while producer Mick Flowers lays down the drumbeats, Jeff Brown plays bass and Tim Cappello’s (Tina Turner, The Lost Boys) vehement saxophone graces this song and others on this fabulous album. Ben Brown also plays guitars and keyboards.

As for the former song we mentioned, Ben Brown says, “The song “That’s How the West Was Lost,” is from The Savage Poor album The Grown Ups.

Social Justice and Social Justice commentary has been an issue and concern in my writing and was in the writing of my brother Jeff Brown years. In The Savage Poor I would argue that the writing takes a slightly more ironic tone. In the solo work of Sayonara Sorrow it is a bit more direct and a bit more personal. Social Read More

Ana Muñozo - Costume Designer

Costume designer Ana Muñozo has designed for productions in theater and film, in both Barcelona, Spain and in New York City. She has lectured at Fordham University in the United States and UNED University in Spain. Although, she is a designer, you discover while in conversation with her that she is part costume designer, with a bit of director, a dash of screenwriter and with an affinity for actors and actresses.

Ana Muñozo studied fashion design and in fact spent four years at the beginning of her career in the industry and established a fashion brand with some colleagues.

“On white fabric we hand painted the prints ourselves and we made a color chart for every season.

We designed accessories such as ties, fans, umbrellas, scarves and dresses. Actually, the original idea were nightshirts, I remember when I showed them to a client, she told me that she saw them as dresses and I said, "as long as you sell it, I don't care if they wear it to dinner or to dream." We did everything ourselves, the boxes, the labels, they were exclusive and on the label the client could see the number of the series. (There might be) a series of fifteen and you bought number four, therefore you knew that there were only fifteen of that model. We did fashion shows in different places like the international "fashion cafe" and we also participated in some collective exhibitions. I also worked at different times as a stylist for several publications,” she says.

Ana Muñozo grew up with her parents and one older sister in a rural area outside of Barcelona, before they moved into the city.

Her ties to both the fashion world and theater run several generations deep, “My mom was an excellent tailor. I grew up surrounded by buttons, fabrics and sewing.

My great-great grandfather and his siblings acted in his village since the theater companies did not go there. His brothers were the actors, and he was the promoter. This was the connection my family has with art and fashion,” Read More

French Designer Alice Berry Atelier

Alice Berry May 2021

Alice Berry Atelier website

Gretchen Parlato & Flor

Ten years had gone by since Jazz singer, composer and lyricist Gretchen Parlato and I last sat down to have a chat. A lot had changed both in the world and in Gretchen Parlato’s life during that time. She moved from New York City back to Los Angeles to be closer to her family, she got married and she now has a seven-year-old son. She received a Grammy Award nomination, Best Jazz Vocal Album, in 2015 for her album, Live in New York City. Her sense of humor, which was so evident a decade ago is still evident and as we talked over the phone she was just as insightful, introspective and still comfortable in her own skin.

Ten years ago, she told this writer, “The goal of art is to reflect who you are and to reflect your life. It has been a process for me to get to that place and to realize that it is okay to not try to sound like anyone else or to try to be like anyone else. It is just being completely honest and open and vulnerable. I want to be versatile, but I also want to sound like me.”

Did she still feel the same and does her new album Flor (her quartet has the same name), reflect that same sentiment?

She enlightened us, “I am pleased with my thirty-five year old self for saying that (she laughs lightly). I would agree, that was my path then and it was my self-realization then. It is definitely a continued path now. Our art is a reflection of our life, so my life now and for the past seven years of motherhood is very different than when I was thirty-five, single, independent, and doing whatever I wanted to do, when I was touring the world. It did take me a little bit of time even after I Read More

Liisa Evastina - Actress

Liisa Evastina is a brilliant actress, screenwriter and aspiring producer / director with her own film development company, Scarlet Studios and she has worked in her homeland of Finland, England, Malta, Spain and she spent nine years studying and working as an actress in the United States where she had a recurring role in the television series NCIS / NCIS Los Angles, was featured in the film 13 Hours, as well as the HBO production 12 Miles of Bad Road and she was a series regular on Rock, Paper, Scissors and Uncut. Liisa Evastina’s film and television credits are much more extensive than that, but that gives you an idea of well-respected this multilingual (Finnish, English, German) blue-eyed blonde, five-foot seven-inch actress is, and oh did we happen to mention that she is trained in the martial art, Hapkido and performs her own fight scenes?

Recently with her dog Scarlet looking on and providing encouragement and her cat Oscar offering sage advice Liisa Evastina sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine to talk about her career and her very interesting life. One immediately becomes aware of her great sense of humor, which ranges from subtle to larger than life (in a good way), laughter, which comes easily to her and her gift for making others feel at ease. Although, at the time of our conversation she was speaking with us from her home in one of the world’s northern most countries, Finland, she was already in the midst of planning her move to Barcelona, Spain, while she awaits her visa approval, so she can live in Canada.

She was born Vivienne Liisa Evastina Mannerkoski and that would have been a lot to put on a marquee or in the film and Read More

Grace Pettis of Nobody's Girl

If you have never before heard the music of the Austin, Texas, all-women band Nobody’s Girl, you are going to fall in love with their signature harmonies. Comprised of Betty Soo, Grace Pettis, and Rebecca Loebe, the trio released their self-titled album on July 30 th and they are backed by some fabulous musicians. Grammy Award winning producer was at the helm and he also doubled on percussion and keyboards, as Nobody’s Girl was also accompanied by Glenn Fukunaga played bass, guitarists were Charlie Sexton, David Grissom and David Pulkingham, while drummers J.J. Johnson and Conrad Choucroun kept time on drums. The album was released on the Lucky Hound Music label. Grace Pettis sat down with us recently to talk about the new album.

The second song “Rescued,” is one of those ones that is perfect for summer, with the top down on your convertible, the radio blasting and you and your friends singing along.

Grace Pettis agrees, “Absolutely, yeah, yeah, we wanted it to be that kind of a song when we were writing it. I am really glad that we have a song like that on the record. We are all serious songwriters. We enjoy the craft of songwriting. We take it seriously and in a lot of our songs we touch on things that are a little deeper and meaningful to the cultural things. We also have fun and I think that is a big part of why we want to keep playing music together. We really enjoy each other’s company, and we have a lot of fun. We are like a mobile slumber party when we go on tour. It is work, but at the end of the night when we are back in the hotel room it is a fun thing being in a Read More

Maia Sharp - New Album

Maia Sharp’s new album Mercy Rising takes the listener from the highs, of the beautiful, seductive and romantic “You’ll Know Who Knows You,” which may be the ultimate love song of this century, to the reflective and picturesque “Things to Fix,” about a relationship that has ended. The former, burns with passion, mixed with ‘I want you and nobody else,’ and the latter uses the metaphor of fixing broken and worn things in a house for what the individual failed to address in the relationship, that perhaps would have made a difference. The words, “What I should have said / And what I should have done / Ya’ I keep skipping over number one / On my list of things to fix,” will take anybody who has been in that moment back there again.

The person in “Things to Fix,” stands in contrast to “John Q Lonely,” from Maia Sharp’s 2008 album Echo, and he was also dealing with a relationship that had come to an end.

She explains, “It shows that I have been doing it long enough that we can compare the end of a relationship thirteen years ago compared to the end of a relationship now.

“John Q Lonely,” is just a crab and his reaction to being hurt is just takes his football and he is going home. He is not going to play this game anymore. He closes himself off. His reaction is to pout. If love didn’t like me then I’m not going to like love.

“Things to Fix,” is a pretty different mindset. It is open and she is aware enough to see that there is something at the very top of my list that I’m avoiding, but the crux Read More

Camila Rodriguez Bohorguez

It was a journey that began as a child in Bogotá, Colombia, with dreams of utilizing a career path first as a biologist and now as a filmmaker to see the world. In between those two careers, she served as the Head of Production in a company that specialized in new and virtual media marketing for major brands. She is now immersed in several other film projects in both Madrid, Spain, where she now lives and in Colombia, but for the moment she is not at liberty to discuss them.

Each fifty-two minute segment of Atlántico directed by Daniel Landa, who was also the series creator, is filled with culture, adventure, and beauty, as the four person crew filmed in Spain, Portugal and twelve west African countries, which border on the Atlantic Ocean. Other members of the four person team were Tato de la Rosa and Vinsen Modino, the cinematographers.

“Daniel has devoted his life to being a journalist, director and a writer. He specializes in long expedition series and documentary series.

When Daniel (Landa) came to me he was looking for a way to make his product a little more modern within an internet and digital context. We tried to expand the narrative and we decided on a lot of things for social media. We found our principal sponsor Volvo who gave us two cars for the expedition.

It was very interesting to work with Volvo, because the first thing they told us was we are not a 4 x 4 adventure brand. We are not one of those brands that people use to cross Africa, but we do share the spirit, values, and the principles of the series. That is a whole other Read More

Bill Toms is Movin' On

Recently, Pittsburgh singer, songwriter and musician Bill Toms returned to playing before audiences with his band Hard Rain, as North America slowly starts to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. These were also the first times that he had to perform in a concert setting, songs from his new album Movin’ On, so we asked him how all that felt.

“There was quite a bit of nerves. The fact that we had not played in front of an audience for over a year, and we were playing some songs we’ve never played before made for some uneasiness. But that first show in Columbus (Ohio) was amazing and soothed the soul. It also seemed to do the same for the audience. We are (now) certainly rebooted and ready to go. The new songs are being received well. It is always nice to have fresh bait in the box.

We started rehearsing in mid-April, and it felt good to start up those engines and to feel that band behind me. It was an unbelievable feeling. You have to remember too, that I started playing in bars in 1980, so for forty years I always had a gig and a calendar with gigs in front of me. For the first time it was all gone. That was quite a shock. Making this record was therapeutic and saved my sanity,” he says.

Movin’ On is a musical novella, not so much because there is exists a common theme between the songs, but rather, because they are a collection of stories set to music.

Always thoughtfully and reflectively, as Bill Toms shares his views, he says, “I think sometimes storytelling is a lost art. I love to do storytelling types of concerts. I do a Read More

Executive Producer Jeanette B. Milio

Recently, Riveting Riffs Magazine sat down with Jeanette B. Milio who depending on the project she is working on sometimes wears the hat of producer and sometimes she dons the executive producer’s hat. During the course of her career Ms. Milio has garnered significant respect from her peers, networks, film studios and distributors for her keen business acumen and her knowledge of how to finance and produce a feature film or television and streaming series that will put people in the seats in cinemas or have their eyes glued to their television sets at home. We asked Jeanette B. Milio if she would be gracious enough to take us behind the scenes and explain the business side to us.

Jeanette B. Milio’s story begins in a small town outside of Cologne, Germany, where she was raised by a single mother, who was a hairdresser. At first glance this would appear to be an inauspicious start and far removed from the life she built as a movie mogul, but she credits in part, her success to lessons learned from her mother (more about that in a minute).

“I didn’t have any idea of what this industry would be like.

The one thing I remember that drew me to storytelling even as a child, is that I would come up with little stories and I would engage all the children on our street to perform the stories in Saturday morning theater pieces on the stairs in front of our house. I invited all of the other neighborhood kids to come and watch the plays and to pay ten pennies. I think I was ten or eleven Read More

Evie Sands - New Album

Evie Sands started her music career (writer puts hand over mouth and mumbles, as it is never polite to discuss a woman’s age) that many years ago, but you would never know it from her new album, her vocals are crisp, the music more imaginative than many of today’s artists, and that is not a slam on today’s musicians and songwriters, but rather a nod to Sands. If you were not aware of all that Evie Sands has already accomplished during her career, you might think she was just starting out, because of her unbridled enthusiasm. We wondered how she has managed to stay on top of her game and with such a contagious, positive and fun attitude.

“I trust in the music and then I let it go. I think it is probably a combination of things. It is my ongoing and will be forever, my insane passion for music, about making it, listening to it and breaking it down. I enjoy it, but I like to figure out what is that stuff sonically, what is going on and it is the enjoyment part of it. It is just ongoing. It is just like I was born, and I started listening. I just get excited. Then there is the striving to continually get better and all the skills that are involved, whether it is continuing to be a better singer, a better songwriter, better composer, a better musician, a better producer and engineer. It drives who I am.

I never look to chase the trends. I have learned that is a losing game. By the time we see and hear things, it already took a while for those things to be created and released, so by the time we say that must be the kind of stuff people want to hear and by the time I could get it out there it would be a day late and a dollar short. It would be old news. Also, it wouldn’t be honest, because for me making music is all about being connected Read More

Misley - Fashion for Women

Misley June Test One

Misley - Designed and Made in Spain

Author Leigh Bardugo - Grishaverse

The suspension of disbelief is a phrase that I have become well acquainted with in recent years. Whether it applies to a novel, a film or some other form of art, it refers the artist’s ability for a moment in time to cause us to believe something is possible that are senses tell us otherwise cannot be true. Many people became familiar with the Netflix series Shadow and Bone adapted from the novels Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows by New York Times Best Selling author Leigh Bardugo. Many more people, like this writer, became immersed in the sequel novels written as duologies, their titles, Siege and Storm, Ruin and Rising, Crooked Kingdom, King of Scars and Rule of Wolves.

At first when I read the novels, I became critical to a degree of the situation teenagers who eventually evolved into early twenties adults were thrust into. I thought things like, well that would not be how a teenager would think or react. I was skeptical of the blend of the old-world ideas and the emerging of technology that did not seem to align itself with the world in which the characters live. Enter suspension of disbelief. It ceased to matter to me, because just like the fictional drug parem that became an enemy of the people, Leigh Bardugo’s character development became something I could not step away from.

Leigh Bardugo’s characters offer something for every corner of our diverse society, the LGBTQ community in all of its many colors, every person no matter their ethnicity and color of skin, and the author presents women of strength in various societies who would seek to deny them of that. The cruelty of war is examined, the denial of human rights is exposed, the loss of love, the betrayal of love, avarice in its ugliest forms are on full display, as is compassion in the warmest and most meaningful ways. Small science how is it to be used and what lines should never be crossed?

The ending of Crooked Kingdom caused me to shed some tears, but of happiness, and I shared in the grieving of the characters in King of Scars and Rule of Wolves. Hope, apprehension, fear and suspicion are emotions that leap to the forefront, at least for this reader. Ahh, you say, but these are just characters in fictional novels. They are not real! That my friends is the suspension of disbelief. We know there are no heartrenders, healers, fabricators, tidemakers, squallers, inferni etc., but are we so sure? We know that the kingdoms and lands of Kerch, Shu Han, Ravka, Fjerda and Novyi Zem do not exist, but did they once? Stories of mythical gods, similar, but with different names exist in such diverse cultures as that of Greece, Roman and in Norse mythology and yet in ancient times it is probable those parts of the world did not even know of the existence of each other and stories of lost cities such as Atlantis, but others too, exist in ancient societies separated by thousands of kilometers. Are the Grisha so different than the ancient mythological gods?

Yes, Leigh Bardugo has written an excellent series of novels introducing us to characters who are believable than not, such as Zoya Nazalensky, Nikolai Lantsov, Alina Starkov, The Darkling, David Kostyk, Kaz Brekker, Jesper Fahey, Nina Zenik, Genya Safin, Inej Ghafa, Malyen Oretsev and no doubt we forgot someone’s favorite character. Their conversations are believable and often I found myself laughing aloud.

Whether Leigh Bardugo’s novels bend the reader towards the suspension of disbelief or the author keeps that flicker of hope alive in us that for all of our human frailty, for all the mistakes that we have made, for all the suffering that so many of endured that the forgiveness, the willingness to move on, the kindness Read More

Fuchsia & the Grey - Eden Iris

Eden Iris’ new album Fuchsia & the Grey opens with the song “Death is a Teacher,” which is punctuated, but not dominated by, edgy vocals that segue into her more ethereal and beautiful singing. If that sounds like a bit of a contradiction consider that the theme is grief, but it opens with an aria that is ever present in the background.

She explains, “I had a friend pass away and the song started out that day. It was a good three years until I finished it. At that point I took it to another friend of mine who came in and helped me finish the production and the writing structure. My friend’s death was the one experience, which triggered it.

It is (interesting) the way that life unfolds, that I would have to be in a particular mood or state of mind, when the song would just float into the room or my mind and how it brought comfort at the time.”

The accompanying video for “Death is a Teacher,” is shot in black and white and is quite stark. Eden Iris talks about the video, “I do a lot of hiking around Southern California and I have always been fascinated, because growing up in New Zealand it is such a different terrain. The video was just me with my iPhone and Samantha (Myles) that day in the park.

We stumbled upon a clearing, and we improvised those shots. I made the decision when editing it to put it into black and white to give it the feeling that you are in a dream, and you aren’t sure if what you are experiencing is real. She is haunted by this persona and feeling of death, which I represented.

When I was writing the song, I had this other vision about a woman who came to my door when I was very little. When I was about eight years old my great aunt died and that was the first time that I experienced death in my life. She (death) comes to the door and (it is like) she says I am not going to hurt you; I am here for someone else. You don’t need to be afraid of me. She comes into the house, and she takes that person. I would see her again throughout my life. I was kind of embodying that imagery that I had in my mind. It is a really bizarre imagery. I think we often process the world through images.

We shot this in January after nearly a year of being in lockdown. Everything seemed really dark, but I feel optimistic now about everything. That is what I was feeling at the time and so I put on that big black cloak.”

The song “Death is a Teacher,” was a collaboration between Eden Iris and Australian songwriter Jess Harlen, who lived in Los Angeles at the time, but has since moved back to Australia. This was not the first time the two artists had worked together, as they co-wrote the songs “Dangerous Mind,” the edgy, more Pop and piano driven tune “Demons,” and “Queen,” from Eden Iris’ EP Demons. We would highly recommend you check out “Demons,” on YouTube. Jess Harlen directed the video for “Demons,” and she also took the photos for both the EP and for Fuchsia & the Grey.

As for the songwriting process when Eden Iris and Jess Harlen collaborate, “I will have a seed of a song, normally the melody and lyrics and she has this amazing ability Read More

Amelie Blake - U.K. Interview

Amelie Blake may not be a household name or at least yet, but some of the films and television shows that you watch and many of the movie trailers enticing you to watch a particular film have music created by Amelie Blake. The new mother and affable British woman, who grew up in Warrington, England is now also turning her attention to writing songs for other artists. She is very focused on her music, but also quite low key about her success, a far cry from that moment when she first learned one of her songs had been picked up.

She recalls that moment, “My husband, Mike and I created some demos and we sent them to a lot of production companies, trailer houses and publishers and eventually after hundreds of emails one got back to us. They asked if we could do music for this brief and so we did. (Next) we were introduced to several publishers. We then wrote the album Songs for the Soul, which was a collection of a few songs we had written over the years and we also wrote some new ones for the album. It was put out there for the music supervisors to pick from. It is not written for a (specific) trailer. We write them and then we do not know what is going to get chosen.

I was driving to a job interview for a teaching job, but I had wanted to get out of teaching for a few years, because I really wanted to pursue my music. The phone call came (when I was driving) and I could not answer it, so my husband answered the phone and put it on the loudspeaker. My dad said, do you know that you are on this trailer? He started playing it over the phone and that is when I started to scream (as I was driving) down the motorway, because I was so excited. I didn’t care about my job interview after that.”

Since this writer is a neophyte to the world of movie trailers, Amelie Blake enlightened me, “Usually, trailer music is just for trailers and it is not usually featured in the movie, because they have a different composer. There have been features and series where my songs have been featured in the series and film, but usually if it is in the trailer, it will not be in the movie.”

From what we understand, it almost sounds like Amelie Blake came out of the womb creating music.

(She laughs lightly), “Yes pretty much. Even generations of my family that I haven’t known were musical. When I was very young, I learned how to harmonize. My sister and I were in a talent competition. We sang ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” and I remember every time that we got it wrong my mom would go no wrong and then she rewound the recording again and again until we got it right. That helped me to develop my musical ear. Then I was in the school choir and the teacher noticed that I have a musical ear as well.

From then I saved up to buy an electric guitar and I tuned it by ear. I learned some chords and then I started to write. Music became a way to escape and express my inner world and be who I wanted to be. Read More

Cozy Rebel

Cozy Rebel June 24 2021

                           A Collection from drezz2imprezz and Beatrix Reuschel

These Fine Moments - Season 10

It would be easy to lose track of how many prestigious universities and how many countries film producer, screenwriter and director Lara Celenza has studied in. She has studied in Bologna, Italy, at Cambridge University in England, in Moscow and in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Lara Celenza, chronicles her travels, “I studied everywhere. I did my bachelor’s degree in Bologna, which was already very different from where I grew up, because Italy, as a country is very culturally diverse. I grew up in the south-central part of the country and then I moved to Bologna, which is a sophisticated, university city. It was much bigger than my hometown, but not like a big city. It was kind of a mid-size city.

I experienced the first culture shock of my life there. It was more of an intellectual type of environment, where everybody was sitting down, drinking wine, and discussing literature and movies. It was very inspiring, but at the same time, at the beginning I felt very intimidated (she laughs lightly). It was also kind of wild with the partying. I wasn’t used to having all of these students around. My parents were very conservative and strict. When I went to university it was party, after party, after party. I had the chance to meet people from all over the country and some people from other countries.

I did the Erasmus programme in London, at UCL (University College London), which is quite a prestigious school.

I also studied in two different universities in Russia, one in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg. Then I went to Cambridge where I did my Master of Philosophy and that shaped me a lot. It gave me a lot of discipline and resilience, because it was a very intense course.

Then I moved back to London where I started working mostly corporate jobs, but I really hated them (she laughs), and I was so miserable that I started saving. I did my directing diploma at the Raindance Film School, which was founded by Elliott Grove, who is also the founder of the Rain Dance Film Festival, which is quite well-known on the indie film circuit.”

As for what drew her to study in Russia, she explains, “The attraction for me came from my childhood, because I grew up reading Russian fairytales and I had an impression of it as a mystical land of snow and mysterious creatures, folktales, old grandmas, brave warriors and princesses. It left such an impression on me that later in life I fell in love with Russian literature. I read my first Russian novels Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina.

When I went to university, I had to choose two languages, so one of the languages was obviously English, because my intent was to travel and to be an international person and the other language was Russian. Because I was struggling with the language, I decided to go for Read More

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