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Andrea Miller - Maybe Today
Andrea Miller recently released her new album
Maybe Today, composed and
arranged by Michael Cunningham, an album that they hope to tour with
full orchestral support. She talks about
the album, “They are all of Michael Cunningham’s arrangements and
compositions. It is almost like I am the voice of Michael Cunningham on
this particular album. These are his wonderfully orchestrated string
arrangements. A lot of his original material is on the album. We did some covers, “It’s All Right With Me,”
“The Water Is Wide,” and “You Would Be So Nice To Come Home To.”
He wrote everything else on the album.
I love his writing so much and he in turn likes my voice a lot,
so we decided to make an album together. Originally, we met
online through Facebook and he asked me to do a couple of songs in a
work for hire session work. We both really dug each other’s musicality.
One thing led to another and it took us about two years to finish the
album. It wasn’t funded by anything or anybody.” The title track is
a love song elegantly performed by both the musicians and Ms. Miller.
The strings section comprised of Andreanna Moravec (violin), Emi Tanabe
(violin), Jennifer Lowe (violin) and Bill Cernota (cello) and with
Michael Cunningham on piano provides a beautiful accompaniment. Andrea
Miller’s vocals are exquisite which echoes an observation that Tom
Saviano made
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Nobody's Girl Releases Waterline
Drummer J.J.
Johnson keeps the beat on “Waterline,” David Grissom on electric guitar
leads the way eloquently and bass guitarist Glenn Fukunaga is his equal. BettySoo from
Nobody’s Girl took time out from her busy schedule and her touring to
talk to Riveting Riffs Magazine about “Waterline,” and the new album. “The song
“Waterline,” is the most straight ahead Rock song on the record. It is a
little less Pop and positive. David Grissom’s guitar is all over it and
he is really fantastic. The song is about things slowly coming apart. The metaphor used
in the song is of water rising and you do not realize it until you are
under water. You are in the middle of a disaster. As you get older and
you get into adulthood there are things that don’t turn out the way that
you wanted them to and there were signs all along the road. All of us have
lived in Texas for a long time and I grew up around a lot of flood
culture it just seemed like a very salient metaphor for us,” she says. As for why the
group decided to name the album after the song “Waterline,” BettySoo
says, “We had the most emotional investment in that song. We also felt
that the forming of the group, the record deal and with all of the
momentum that it was a demarcation point for all of us. Even though, it
is a grim marker, a waterline just expressed how we felt.” There is always a
danger in covering
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Tom Saviano - Interview Part One
One might say that
Tom Saviano’s journey to becoming one of the most respected individuals
in the music industry began with his childhood in a multi-ethnic
neighborhood in Chicago. On the other hand it is far more likely that we
can say that odyssey began with his father Albert who was born in 1920. “My dad came through the depression. By the
time he was fifteen they were six years (removed) from the ’29 crash.
There were fourteen children in the family and there was not enough
money to buy each of the children instruments, so he waited until he was
married to my mom and I think she helped him buy his first instrument.
(When he was
growing up) he wanted to play so badly, while he watched his older
brothers play (an instrument) that he would play a paper accordion. It
was almost sad and funny at the same time. He was so hungry to be a
musician that once he got a horn he just ate it up. That is all he did. He found Zilner Randolph (Jazz trumpeter) when
he saw Lil Armstrong, Louis Armstrong’s wife coming down the steps of a
hotel, the Grand Terrace in Chicago. He approached her and asked if she
knew anybody who would be a good teacher and who would teach him how to
arrange. She gave him Zilner Randolph’s phone number.
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Outside the Soiree - Erin McDougald
For many years now
Erin McDougald has been compared to Jazz icons such as Anita O’Day and
as flattering as that may be it does a disservice to the tremendous
talent that McDougald possesses. This writer would like to suggest that
it is now time for Jazz journalists, reviewers and fans to start using
Erin McDougald as the gold standard to which other artists should
aspire. The music from
Outside the Soiree is being
played on the radio from coast to coast with stations in New York City
and in Los Angeles raving about Erin McDougald’s vocals, her
arrangements and the fabulous musicians who compliment her so well, such
as, Mark Sherman (vibraphones), soprano and tenor saxophonist Dave
Liebman, percussionist Chembo Corniel, pianist and guitarist Rob Block,
drummer Rodney Green, Tom Harrell (trumpet and Flugelhorn), bassist
Cliff Schmitt and Dan Block (flute, clarinet, alto and tenor saxophone). The couplet of
songs “Linger A-While / Avalon,” will not be as well known to listeners,
but that also is an Erin McDougald trademark, as she
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Arrica Rose's New Album
In describing
Low as the Moon, Arrica Rose
says, “I think for me the theme became reaching for the silver lining
when it seems to be the most obscured and finding the brighter side when
hope seems to be lost. I went through some challenging times and people
around me were going through challenging times. There was a point when I
did not want to be working on anything and I used this set of songs to
help pull me through that place that I was in. It was cathartic. It
helped me to process some of the things that I was going through at the
time. These songs are
specifically written for this record. Everybody in the band and the
producer that I work with everyone was going through a bit of upheaval,
so it took a while to make this record. I started writing these songs
around 2015. I worked on this collection of songs for about six months
to a year and then we started making the record.” In her songwriting
Arrica Rose likes to create word pictures with tones and shades others
seldom, if ever use and it draws the listener in.
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Diane Marino at Her Best!
Marino talks about her decision to delve into
Lynne’s catalogue, “I wasn’t too familiar with her, but I heard the name
years ago. While I was doing a gig up in New York my drummer was Vince
Ector and he was Gloria’s drummer for the last fifteen years of her
life. He knew all of the material very well.
We were doing a tune called “I Am Glad There Is You,” which I
recorded on another album many years (earlier) and I didn’t realize it
was one of her signature songs. When we played it on the gig Vince told
me that. Then he said her big song was “I Wish You Love,” and that I
know and I sing it too. It got the wheels
turning and I investigated her catalogue of music. I thought these are
really cool tunes. I had not heard a lot of them. She also recorded a
lot of standards, but the songs that we picked out for this CD I had
never heard before.” As for why this particular selection of songs
she says, “It is a combination of the song and how she sang them. It is
great stuff. How do you put your finger on how it struck you
emotionally? When I listen to her versions, I go wow.
She was very dynamic and very soulful. I sang from the heart and
the soul and it just went right through me. That is what brought me to
these particular songs and in listening to more of her music I came to
appreciate who she was and what she did.”
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Sass Jordan - Racine Revisited
“We did that on purpose, because the question
that I had to the people I was working with was, why the hell would
anyone want to buy a record that they already have? We wanted people to
talk about 2017 is the 25 th anniversary of the release of that record.
That record was a big record for me. I think it was the biggest record
that I ever did. There are a lot of fans that were directly affected in
some way. I said if we
record it again, let’s put a twist on it. Instead of bringing it up to
date and making it sound all spangly (This word is a Jordanism) fresh in
2017 why don’t we make it sound as much as possible and to the best of
our ability as if it was recorded in 1975. Let’s record it as if we were
in 1975. There aren’t any
click tracks and there isn’t any Auto-Tune. We adhered as much as we
could to the idea that it was 1975 and not 1992 and not 2017. That is
when I would love to have made this record,” says Jordan. The album opens
with “Make You A Believer,” a powerful, vocally driven song, backed by
strong guitars from Chris Caddell and
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Billy Thompson Sizzles
As for recording the songs, “Stranger,”
“Hourglass,” and “Phoine” at Ultratone Studio in Studio City, California
where it was recorded by Johnny Lee Schell (Marcella Detroit, John Lee
Hooker Jr., Bonnie Raitt, Joe
Cocker) and calling up old friends Tony Braunagel, “Hutch” Hutchinson
and Mike Finnigan, Billy Thompson says, “I feel the bluesier stuff
always works great with those guys. I recorded four songs, but I only
used three and the fourth one will be on the next album. I think those
guys are the cream of the crop when it comes to Blues based playing.
They are some of the best players in the world. Mike Finnigan played
with Jimi Hendrix when he was twenty-two and Tony Braunagel was with
Back Street Crawler, which became Free with Paul Rodgers and he played
with Eric Burdon.” The album opens
with the somewhat funky “Burn It Down Bernadette,” cuts to the jumping
“Phoine,” a song on which Thompson’s guitar seems energized by
Finnigan’s splendid organ and vice versa. The third song on the album
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Interview with Louise Goffin
Goffin says, “Releasing this song the week of
Valentine’s Day made sense. It’s an upbeat love song. The conventions of
this holiday push so many buttons. What’s love? Are people supposed to
feel less-than if they’re not in a relationship? The cultural messages
for Valentine’s Day are full of myths that have nothing to say about
love being a state of being. The myth is that love is a state of having.
“Good Times Call,” is not about roses, chocolates and chivalry. When we
are open to loving ourselves as we are while loving and allowing others
to be who they are, that’s when the good times call." Louise Goffin originally wrote “Good Times Call,”
with songwriter / producer Chris Seefried and singer / songwriter Ethan
Burns, with Burns being the intended singer. Goffin’s recording provides
us with the perspective of an empowered woman. "Whenever cars are involved in songs, it’s 98% the
man driving. It makes a nice change to hear a woman say what “Baby,
drive my car means," she says. Recently Riveting Riffs Magazine chatted with
Louise Goffin and we could have covered a wide variety of subjects that
relate to this very
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Fanny Walked the Earth
The self-titled
album Fanny Walked the Earth boasts numerous solid songs, including one
“When We Need Her,” that is heralded as somewhat of an anthem for women.
The
song begins with a strong downbeat on the drums, served up by Brie
Howard Darling (led vocalist) and with the Millington sisters clearly
demonstrating that time has not eroded their abilities as musicians,
with Jean on bass and vocals and June on electric, slide guitar and
vocals and in fact there is a spellbinding guitar solo. If listening to
the three of them play is not enough to get you excited, they have an
all-star cast of singers backing them up. How about this, three members
of The Bangles, Vicki Peterson, Susanna Hoffs and Debbi Peterson? On top
of that Cherie Currie, the former lead singer of the all teenage girl
band The Runaways, Patti Quatro, Teresa James (also plays piano), Sherry
Barnett, Alicia Velasquez, Kathy Valentine, Wendy Haas-Mull and Genya
Ravan also sing background vocals.
Brie Howard Darling explains how having this all-star cast of women join
Fanny Walked the Earth on the album came about, “The very first person I
thought to have on as a guest was Sherry Hagler who is now Sherry Taylor
and she is from the group Birtha who were our contemporaries
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Aaron "Quick" Nelson - Actor
Aaron Nelson talks about his character “He
seems to be this tough bodyguard, this intimidating looking guy and a
very militant type, but what you start to realize is he’s like a teddy
bear and he cares for little Sophie who is played by Brooklyn Rae
Silzer. She is a very talented and phenomenal actress.
He always had advice for everyone and you start to realize that
Gavin has a lot of wisdom and (you learn more) of him later in the
story. With Jessica (Taylor
Cole) she falls in love and she asks Gavin questions and he has answers
for them. He gives her what she needs, so she can see in life what she
always wanted. She is a phenomenal actress and (her character) falls in
love with Matt played by Michael Rady.” There is an aww
moment in the movie when child actress Silzer and Nelson have an
extended scene at a pretend tea party.
“That
was a fun scene that I did with her. We had a ball. That was by far one
of my favorite scenes. You start the see the big teddy bear side of
Gavin in that scene as well,” then we share a laugh when I point out he
was even holding a teddy bear in the scene, “That’s right his is holding
a teddy bear! That’s
funny,” he says.
As for how he prepared for the role of Gavin Williams he says, “I
thought about who was involved in Gavin’s life and I had to understand
each character. For instance I looked at what Jessica McEllis was going
through in her life and I then looked at what my purpose was going to be
in her life. For
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Alexandra Dean - Film Director
It is therefore an easy step to understand what
attracted Reframed Pictures and in particular Emmy Award winner
Alexandra Dean to make the film
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, a film about an iconic actress and
an astounding inventor.
“There were two
reasons (I was drawn to Hedy), I was interested in inventors. I was
doing the series with Bloomberg and I was looking at all the inventors
who created and shaped our world today and seeing the obstacles that
they faced. I found out that those who didn’t look like Thomas Edison
felt they were at a disadvantage when it came to getting funding in
Silicon Valley. I wanted to find somebody who would shatter our tidy
notion of who would invent. I found that person in
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Celia Berk
It is about a
woman who was born in Manhattan and grew up on Long Island, before
eventually moving back to New York City, as an adult. As a young girl
her mother would take her to the Opera on Saturdays and Celia Berk’s
father inspired within her a love for the Great American Songbook.
“My mother took me to the Opera and she started out when she first came
to the city and they had a subscription at the Metropolitan Opera. My
father, because he commuted all week long into the city, the last thing
that he wanted to do (was come back to the city) on a Saturday
afternoon. Frequently I was
the one who went with my mother. I saw some of the absolute greats doing
the Opera repertoire. That was my whole life,” she
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Opportunities for Women In Music A Guest Editorial by Manda Mosher
From the comments that I receive on social media,
it is clear many men believe the divide in equality is fabricated,
imagined, or an effect of women not wanting to do the work or take a
seat at the table. This is untrue. I have had the pleasure of working
with and witnessing incredibly hard-working women threaded through the
entirety of the business; it is just that there are so few of them.
Billboard recently spotlighted a new report from
the USC Annenberg School for
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