Photo Courtesy of Charlie Faye & The Fayettes is Protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved
|
|
Charlie Faye & The Fayettes Photo Courtesy of Charlie Faye & The Fayettes is Protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved |
More Interviews (Click on the section links below)
Jazz Rock Americana / Roots / Country POP / AC / Crossover R&B / Soul Film & Theater Fashion / Art / Literary About Us Contact Us
|
Fiona Joy Hawkins Interview
Elegant while
seated in front of her piano, vivacious while doing this Skype interview
and giving us a tour of her gallery and down to earth enough to have
become the mother to numerous orphaned Joeys (baby kangaroos), one
immediately recognizes the deep connection between nature and her music. “The love for
nature and animals has
always
been there from when I was a little girl. I used to bring home strays
all of the time. I would land at home with a cat or a dog. I would find
a dog with a broken leg or a bird with a broken wing or that was
starving to death. I have always had a lot of animals. When my kids were
growing up I was a wildlife information and rescue officer.
I took some courses about kangaroos, so I was able to hand raise
joeys (baby kangaroos). When the mother is killed and the joey gets
thrown from the pouch someone has to raise it and that is something that
I did. It was a volunteer job, but I loved it, because I love animals,”
she says. Continuing to talk
about the connection between her art, music and nature Fiona
Joy
Hawkins says, “It is all the same daydream. It is that same type of
daydreaming world. As for
my love for animals, sometimes you can connect more with animals than
you can with people.
Animals are so loyal, so trusting and so innocent, whereas some people
can be so bloody horrible. Animals love you unconditionally. I love my
pets. At one stage I think I had four dogs and six cats. I had a cage
full of birds and I was hand feeding joeys. I just loved it.
I had the good fortune to raise my children on a farm. It was a
hundred acres and I spent sixteen years there. That was really great.
Now I only have one cat, because I travel so much for my music career.
My cat owns the house. He is in
|
Hope Juber Interview Part One
“I have had readings of my movie that I wrote
with my partner Ellen Guylas (Full
House, Newhart,
Three’s Company,
Who’s The Boss?) I am very
passionate about this particular project, because it is totally mine,”
says Hope Juber. For those not familiar with her work, among
other things she has acted in, worked on and produced the television
series for, movies of and musicals based on
Gilligan’s Island and
The Brady Bunch, both of
which were created by her father Sherwood Schwartz. “I had the idea
for this movie a few years ago and I brought it to my partner Ellen
Guylas and we started talking about it. It was the only project I ever
took to my dad. I told him all the different ideas I had and what I was
working on. When I took him this one he said you keep going with this
one, because this is your commercial hit movie. He said I want you to
keep going. Will you promise me you will? I said yes. I have been
working on it for a long time and I am hopeful, because this is a movie
that has to be made. It is a very expensive movie, so it involves major
studio involvement and that is not easy to do. It is going to take me a
while. I won’t say exactly what it is now, but it is a big family movie.
I am very passionate about it. Right now what I am focusing on is casting the
Brady reading. We have a reading of
A Very Brady Musical, which
is going up in New York in February. We are going to be doing a reading
for a couple of producers and we would like to get that up on the stage.
It is coming up to the fiftieth anniversary of The Brady Bunch, which is
amazing to say that, but it is true. We would like to get a production
of the musical going. We are thinking of an Off-Broadway production.
|
Design by Anteprima - Milan Fashion Week
Photo by Daniele Venturelli Courtesy of Getty Images protected by copyright © |
|
Charlie Faye & The Fayettes
“In fact that happened at a show of ours last weekend. Someone who
wasn’t really familiar with us, came up to us after the show and that
person said I thought these were all songs from the sixties until you
said something about that you had written all of these songs. I think
that happens a lot,” says Charlie Faye. The Whole Shebang opens with a song co-written
by Charlie Faye and Bill Demain, “1-2-3-4,” feels like it stepped out of
the sixties, but more importantly resonates with the audience in 2019.
The first four lines recall that feeling of meeting “the one” with “1,2,3,4,
That was all it took / A heartbeat and a look, and I was so gone / Felt
my whole world tilting left and right / And suddenly a light just came
on…” It is easy to
imagine being at a Charlie Faye & The Fayettes concert and everybody
being up on their feet dancing to their music. These are songs that
their fans are going to be singing back to them and singing with them.
|
Karin Risberg and Angel Blue
Risberg has a 2019
tour planned with her friend Country music singer Cina Samuelson as the
duo Honky Tonk Angels, a duo that still performs at times with Kerstin
Dahlberg as the trio Three Chicks. The group Three Chicks has been
performing together since the 2010 Lida Country Music Festival in
Sweden, while Honky Tonk Angels made their debut in September of this
year (2018) when they performed at the Sweden Country Music SM. So where did this
all begin for Karin Risberg? Her answer is not surprising, as she
continues the long line of outstanding Swedish singers and musicians who
have come from small towns and villages throughout the country.
“I was born in a
small town called Skelleftehamn
and it is in the
north of Sweden, eight hundred kilometers north of Stockholm. It is very
close to the Arctic Circle. I grew up in a family with my mom and my dad
and a little sister. My mom used to sing in the choir and she also sang
for me every night when I was going to sleep. She was the only (musical
person) in our family. My father always encouraged me. He heard me
singing all of the time when I was a little girl. He was proud of me, so
he had me sing everywhere that I went with him. They started to pay me
with chocolates and things like that. He was a ship broker and he took
me onboard all of these big, big boats.
I got to sing when I was very little.
|
Stellar Album by Mandy Barnett
It becomes
immediately apparent on this album that the producers Marco Giovino
(Norah Jones, Robert Plant, and Patty Griffin) and Doug Lancio (Gretchen
Peters, John Hiatt, and Patty Griffin) ensured that Mandy Barnett was
accompanied by musicians who understood that their role was to
compliment Barnett. They become the perfect dance partners with Mandy
Barnett leading the way and like any truly great performance you find
yourself caught up in the moment. Tom West’s organ sets the mood, Viktor
Krauss is on bass, Giovino keeps beat on drums and Lancio is the
guitarist. Grammy Award winning sound engineer Gord Hammond from The
Nuthouse studio in Sheffield, Alabama does a superb job. Released on Dame Records, Mandy Barnett’s own
label and distributed by Thirty Tigers,
Strange Conversation is a
collection of songs that is a “must have” for anyone who truly
appreciates well thought out song selections that showcase a singer and
make you sit up and go “wow.” In 1962 The Tams released the song “It’s All
Right (You’re Just In Love),” and Barnett puts her own stamp on the
tune, as she brings it back to life with a new arrangement and a
stunning
|
Hayley Sales - "Like Never Before"
Sales, took time out from her busy schedule to
sit down with Riveting Riffs Magazine to discuss at length her album
Slightly Out of Tune, which
will be released in the spring of 2019 (She
has posted some songs on YouTube), her twin careers and to share a
little bit about her life. The self-described romantic co-produced her
album (and yes she really does
know her way around a recording studio) with her father Richard
Sales, known for his work as a producer and sound engineer with the
Grateful Dead, The Ramones and Miles Davis. The songs on
Slightly Out of Tune range
from those that invite the listener to dance, such as the opening track
“I Don’t Believe,” and the retro infused “Waiting It Out,” backed by a
stellar horn section and the soulful “Out of Tune,” to her romantic love
letter “Like Never Before,” co-written with Sharon Stone. Often punctuating our conversation with light
laughter Hayley Sales talks about her musical influences, “I have always
been in love with Judy Garland who was my first influence. When I was
five years old I was madly in love with her and that introduced me to a
different time. In some ways I was that absolute dork. I didn’t know
that Pop culture existed until I was eleven or
|
|
Terri Lynn Davis
Terri Lynn Davis
wrote the song “Times Past,” which showcases her fabulous vocals,
surprisingly so, because she had very limited formal vocal instruction
earlier in life. Yet, those amazing vocals were also evident on a
previously recorded album with, “Montana Love Song.” Davis is also an
amazing songwriter and “Times Past,” paints word pictures, “river of
time,” and the desire to slow everything down “be still my mind.” The
gentle melody is matched by lyrics such as “floating down the river with
you.” You watch a story unfold of two people the first time they met
with the sun glistening on their skin and with their toes in the sand.
Musicians of note on “Times Past,” are Tucker Jackson on pedal steel,
lead guitarist Nick Champeau and rhythm guitarist Jacob Miller. Ben
Nugent keeps time on drums.
Terri Lynn Davis
gives credit to her producer Ryan Oxford for assembling the fine cast of
|
Interview with Brad Cole
Brad Cole grew up
in a suburb of Philadelphia and despite the fact it was a burgeoning
scene for Doo Wop, Pop Music and Rhythm and Blues in the late 1950s and
throughout much of the 1960s, Cole was drawn to music far removed from
what most people his age were listening to at the time. “That is a somewhat amusing part of it, because
when I was a kid after a certain time I had no interest at all in
listening to AM radio and bubble gum Pop music. Even The Beatles and
stuff I became a real snob about. I was a Jazz purist and a Classical
purist and I was that way for much of the rest of high school. By the
time The Beatles’ Abbey Road
came out, which was 1969 that is when I started getting reacquainted
with mainstream Pop and Rock. I also liked Cream (Eric Clapton, Ginger
Baker, Jack Bruce). I came back to it |
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
|
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.
|
|
Design by Anteprima - Milan Fashion Week
Photo by Daniele Venturelli Courtesy of Getty Images protected by copyright © |
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.”
|
Nichole Wagner
Nichole Wagner says, “(The song) “Winner Take
All” is interesting to me, because a lot of my songs tend to be very
storytelling, so they cover a large period of time. “Winner Take All,”
is about a moment shorter than the actual song. It is that last few
seconds while the sun was setting on this breakup that I was going
through, but that is not when I wrote the song. I wrote the song a
couple of years after the breakup. Things
in your mind get triggered and you think about what it was like to be in
those very few seconds and if anything could have possibly changed the
outcome. It is a song that came together fairly quickly
and I wrote it in maybe an hour and one-half, which is also unusual for
me. I tend to sit around with songs and work with them instead of just
letting them come. There were a couple of verses that got cut, because
they didn’t say anything new.
They just delved into more of what went wrong in the
relationship. It turned out it didn’t really matter, because the song is
not about the relationship, so much as it is about the last few
seconds.” As to whether or not Nichole Wagner finds it easier
to write about those more personal times, while still sitting with those
feelings or if it is easier once she has a little bit of emotional
distance, she says, “It really depends on the subject matter. There are
other songs on this record that were written very much in the moment.
“Let Me Know,” was written when I was out of town and getting ready to
go on an adventure. I was going out for dinner with somebody that I
fancied and I was really struggling with the feeling. That song was
written in the moment whereas |
|
Jesse & Noah and Neon Pike
Jesse says, “We
cut three songs to begin with and it was going to be a tip our toe in
the water kind of a thing, but we realized we might as well keep on
making an album.” Noah says that
they wrote about forty songs in total and then they picked the best ones
for this record. The album opens
with the up-tempo love song “Unconfined,” driven by Jesse and Noah
Bellamy’s acoustic and electric guitars and featuring some great fiddle
playing by Lillie Mae Rische who also provides background vocals for
this tune. Although, Jesse &
Noah have always played the guitars on their previous albums, we asked
why it seemed for Neon Pike that their talent as superb guitarists seems
even more highlighted. Noah says, “We
brought in more musicians and other engineers, so we were able to focus
more on our parts because of that, whereas before we were producing and
engineering a lot of it ourselves. It took the pressure off with not
having to do that.” To which Jesse
adds, “We could just come in and be the players and not have to worry
about (the rest). We were also able to cut it a little more live.” Both men are multi-instrumentalists and in the past they utilized those
skills for their albums, but this time many more musicians appear on the
album. “We brought in Lillie Mae Rische (fiddle and
background vocals) and Scarlett Rische (mandolin). Linwood (Regensburg)
has been our bass player on the road now for a couple of years (also
plays synthesizer on the album). Herschel Van Dyke has been
|
Design by Anteprima - Milan Fashion Week Photo Courtesy of Getty Images All Rights Reserved, protected by copyright © |
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.
|
|
All written material, all photographs and all designs are protected by
copyright © and patents by the writers, photographers, editors,
designers, musicians, songwriters musicians and filmmakers who contribute to
Riveting Riffs Magazine or have by consent allowThe third song on the album
“Black Rain,” is poignant in its social commentary, Thompson explains,
“Black Rain was inspired by all of the shootings that have been
happening for a good long while. I was thinking about Ferguson when
Ferguson first happened. Then I got thinking about Virginia Tech and
some of these other instances, which were not police oriented shootings,
such as San Bernardino with the terrorists. It is making me ill. If you
think about these schools it just keeps getting worse and worse with the
copycat scenario. It is just too
much and I felt like I needed to write something. I just want to say how
can we stop this? People need to think about it. |
