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
|
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 new album
and the song poses questions that cause the listener to be introspective
and ask have I? Word such as, “Don’t
forget we are all worthy / Of a little faith and a lot of mercy,”
remind us to perhaps to forgive ourselves or simply just to cut
ourselves some slack. Perhaps if you are someone whose confidence is a
bit shaken or you still have some healing to do in your life, you need
to make this song, your song this year.
|
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, which is my friend Greg Franco’s band and I got to (wear) the
producer hat on at least one song. I really like having that control and
making the song as beautiful, as I can.
It is like a painting. It is like getting the whole finished
product, because often when I do arranging I don’t get to have a say in
what the mix is going to be and I don’t have a say in how to edit it.
Very rarely do I say oh wow, I really like what I did (she laughs
lightly).” |
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.
|
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. It is vegan and cruelty
free and it coincided with what we do with wellness. It was a great
product and there was a market out there for that.”
|
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.
|
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. |
|
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.” |
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 |
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
|
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
|
|
Design by Anteprima - Milan Fashion Week
Photo by Daniele Venturelli Courtesy of Getty Images protected by copyright © |
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 revised,
tempo was discussed and the feel of the song
|
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 |
|
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.
Zilner was the conductor and the music director of the Louis
Armstrong band,” says Saviano.
|
Design by Anteprima - Milan Fashion Week Photo Courtesy of Getty Images All Rights Reserved, protected by copyright © |
The Age of Adaline - Film Review
The Age of Adaline
received mixed reviews and the box office take is best described as
modest, even though during the first week it ranked as number three. J. Mills Goodloe
and Salvador Paskowitz crafted an excellent screenplay that drew some
criticism for being slow moving in the beginning, but that criticism
came from people who obviously do not understand the necessity of
building a strong backstory for a character, Adaline Bowman whose life
spanned 107 years. Did we happen to mention that she stopped aging, when
she was twenty-nine years old? We are not going to give away all of the
secrets of this movie, but suffice to say that Adaline endures a life
that simply does not allow her to live.
The fact that she never ages would become suspicious and subject
her to becoming a medical sideshow, so she stays in one spot for a year
and then moves on. As the
decades pass, so do the people she has known and her own daughter
(Flemming played by Ellen Burstyn) becomes the senior citizen that
Adaline will never be.
|
|
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. |
