Photo Courtesy of Charlie Faye & The Fayettes is Protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved
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Charlie Faye & The Fayettes Photo Courtesy of Charlie Faye & The Fayettes is Protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved |
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Barbara Dennerlein - Blues Album
“There are two
things that came together, one is I love Blues and my roots are Blues.
For a long time I wanted to do something with the Blues, because I have
a lot of contact with the audience when I play concerts. Over the years
many people have asked me on which of your CDs are the most Blues
compositions? I realized that one day I should do some kind of a Blues
compilation (album). This has been in my mind for many years and I have
thirty-three years of Bebab Records, which is my own label. I thought it
would be nice to do it now. I have been in the business for long enough
now to do a compilation from my label,” she says, laughing lightly.
Because it is a
compilation album, it is important to note that the songs were all
recorded at different times throughout the years and then remastered
recently. Barbara Dennerlein says, “First I had to pick
the songs I wanted on the album. There were many Blues compositions
(that I recorded) over the years. The difficult part was to pick the
ones that I want on the compilation.
There are so many that I like. There are a lot of different
albums with different songs and some of them were recorded live and some
of them were recorded in the studio. Naturally the sound and the lineups
are very different. I have solo recordings and band recordings. You have
to make one kind of sound for a compilation and everything has to
connect. It has to work together. I did not want (to leave) the
impression that one song sounds different than the others.
That was one of the reasons we had to remaster them. The second
reason was I tried to make them even better than the originals.
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Charleene Closshey Interview
We are out of
breath after that whirlwind tour of the past year of Charleene
Closshey’s career and you probably are as well, so let’s turn out
attention to our recent conversation with this multi-talented and
creatively brilliant native Floridian. Even though
No Postage Necessary was in
theaters during the summer of 2018, it can still be viewed through a
variety of means, iTunes, Amazon and through the new media platform
Vevue. Closshey
says, “I produced the film with my business and life partner Jeremy
Culver. He was the writer and director on this particular script. We
opted to produce as well, because we are gluttons for punishment. It was
a story we wanted to get out there in an efficient (way) and with a very
quick turnaround. The concept came up in March. We had a first draft of
a script by May 1st and we started shooting August first. That
turnaround time for pre-production is unheard of. Because of that we
knew there was a level of intensity and efficiency that needed to be
built into the production process. That also informed the decision to
film in the Tampa area. Knowing what we had on the ground to work with
locally allowed us to more effectively and efficiently build out the
infrastructure that we needed to support ourselves fiscally, as well as
creatively. |
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Kaitlin Wolfberg - Rising Star
“Working with
H.E.R. and her team on her Grammy Performance was a real treat. Everyone
wanted to make the performance perfect and we were all on the same page.
So much positive energy swirling around that performance, it was a very
special, inspiring and memorable moment for me that I will treasure
forever. Also, being on that stage, in front of The Academy and so many
legends was certainly a humbling experience.” Perfect is not a
word that you hear very often when Kaitlin Wolfberg describes one of her
musical endeavors, as she continually seems to be pushing herself to
achieve a higher level. When asked however, which of the many areas of
music that she works within that brings her the most satsifaction she
says, “Lately, I get a lot of satisfaction out of arranging and making
big, beautiful arrangements. I guess that would be it. Recently, I did a
bunch of arrangements on Alice Wallace’s record that I am pretty happy
with. I did two string quartet arrangements for Junior Thomas and the
Volcanoes (record). I have been working on this new record with Man’s
Body
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Give Up Your Ghosts - Rebecca Loebe
“The record is called
Give Up Your Ghosts, because
it is about what is holding you back or what is no longer serving you.
That is the global theme of the whole record. It is pulled from specific
lines from the song “Ghosts,” which are “Give
up all of your ghosts / At least the ones you love the most / They were
never holding you as close / As you were holding them.” That song
came together pretty quickly in the writing process. Some songs I labor
over for many months, but this one was a stream of consciousness writing
experience. It felt like I was writing gentle instructions to myself for
how to be happy, how to handle my life right now and how to handle
(times of) feeling overwhelmed by the world at large. I just have to
remember to relax and to chill out a little bit. I feel those lines in
particular are about letting go of your fears or these giant roadblocks
that you see ahead of you, because often they are really only in your
own mind or they are much bigger in your mind than they are in reality,”
explains Rebecca Loebe. “Ghosts,” is the second song on the |
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.
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Interview with Singer Margret Avery
Margret Avery grew
up in Ohio where when she was growing up she sang in school productions. “The first things
that I sang when I was very young were Hungarian Christmas carols. Later
I had a girl group that I put together. There were four of us singing
(again) in school productions and we did some classic Motown things. It
was a lot of fun. We didn’t go anywhere with it, it was just something
that we enjoyed. I started to develop some stage fright and when
I made my plans to come to New York to go to college I put it (singing)
on the backburner. I decided to make a different career choice, but I
had a roommate who would hear me sing, while I was doing my homework. I
was sitting there as a designer stitching and sewing and she could hear
me sing. She would pop her head around the corner and say to me, what
are you doing with that voice? (She laughs). She said you could be
making money, why aren’t you singing? I said maybe another time. She
tried to introduce me to a couple of people, but I just wasn’t motivated
and I knew I had to battle stage fright.
Here is the story that clinched the deal for me.
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Hope Juber Interview
“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
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Doubledown Cosmetics - All Natural
The seeds were sown a long time for their
cosmetic line, as Marvin explains, “I will give the shorter version of
this. Almost nine years ago when we first met, I was in North Carolina
and I had custody of my daughter and she had a dance recital that
weekend. As a guy I knew nothing about makeup. I didn’t know what I was
going to do. I put my thinking cap on and I called Kristen up and I said
I need help and lots of it.
She knew a lot about makeup and I thought she was an expert. She was
always so passionate about it. Fast forward down
the road and she was always sharing makeup tips with people and always
watching people and the gurus. I have always been of the mindset that
when you are with someone that you love, a close friend or family member
and definitely a significant other you try to help them make their
dreams come true. I kept saying to
Kristen you really need a product, because this is something that you
are so passionate about and you are so great. She was a guru from my
perspective. She was really into it. Last year (2018) we just decided to
go for it. The first product was a makeup bag. |
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
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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
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Photo by Daniele Venturelli Courtesy of Getty Images protected by copyright © |
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.
We had a youth
club in Skelleftehamn
and every young
kid went there after school. We had a room where we could go and play
guitars and sing, so I started to sing with some friends. In Sweden we
celebrate something called Lucia (after
Saint Lucia and celebrated on December 13 th) and the youth club had
a soiree. It is like a show with different kinds of numbers. Some people
were speaking and some told jokes or did music. You could do anything
you wanted to do. I was
singing with my guitarist
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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 classic R&B
performance |
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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 musicians for
Chasing Parked Cars, which also includes Andew Jones on bass guitar.
Michele Linn who appears as a background vocalist as performed with
Terri Lynn Davis for several years.
“I met them the day that we recorded the album in person, but I had sent
those charts, rough recordings and the ideas for some changes a couple
of weeks prior to that. The magic happened in one day at the studio and
before each song I explained what I wanted. The charts were
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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, but I missed a chunk of it. I definitely missed all of
the stuff that was going on in Philadelphia. Number one I wasn’t sure I
was going to become a professional musician and number two it wasn’t the
kind of music that I paid attention to at the time. (The music) that was
going on locally slid by me. Pop and commercial music wasn’t a focus for
me. I have a big gaping hole in my upbringing compared to some of my
friends who listened to nothing but Pop and Rock music. Subsequently
they aren’t up on the Classical and Jazz repertoire in the same
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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. |
