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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 “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. Changing gun laws
won’t stop it all, but some sort of background checks and making it
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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.
Zilner was the conductor and the music director of the Louis
Armstrong band,” says Saviano. Continuing he
says, “In the forties for the most part when you traveled to gigs it was
by train and there were not many pianos on the trains. If you had to
write arrangements on the way from New York to LA, which might have been
a three to five day trip back then, your band leader might say write an
arrangement on the way
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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 talented lady’s life, but we decided to ask her for
her thoughts about songwriting and along the way asked her to talk about
some of the songs she has recorded, both of her own and of her iconic
parents Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
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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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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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Cindy Alexander - Nowhere To Hide
The album opens
with Cindy Alexander’s original “I See Stars,” one of the prettiest
songs you will hear this year. She is elegantly accompanied by Paul
Trudeau on piano, while Ali Handal plays acoustic guitar and provides
background vocals.
Alexander says,
“(The song) “I See Stars,” is one of the first songs that I ever wrote
and it came about in my life at the time when I didn’t know that I was a
songwriter. I was making stuff up. I took my diary and set it to music.
I was reading the book Running
From Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit by Richard Bach. I have
always been fascinated by time travel and in the book he goes back and
he meets himself as a child. It turns out that the child knows more than
the adult. I think it is true that as we get older we struggle to
believe the things that we innately knew as children. That is what this
song is about. I wrote it as a love song to myself, but I know that
other people may take it as a love song (written) about another person.
That’s great. That is the goal that somebody can find their own story in
my songs.” We were not
willing to let Cindy Alexander off quite that easily, so we asked about
her fascination with time travel, “I don’t believe that time is linear.
I think that we accept it, because it
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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
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Design by Défilé Haute-Couture ZIAD NAKAD Photo by Kristy Sparow, protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved |
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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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 remembers.
Ms. Berk is a mezzo-soprano with a three octave range who has become
celebrated in New York City as a Cabaret singer, but whose lavish vocals
are genre bending and threaten to break those boundaries altogether. For
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Nicholas Wells - Now and Then
Wells talks about
where his songs originate, “Usually the song will come after something
significant happens. I will get a feeling that will hang around me for
days and it will end up in a song or else it won’t go away. If you are
not writing a song for yourself (but instead pitching it to someone
else) you still have to find where the song is coming from, because you
can really sniff out when a song is not authentic. It was always about
go back to your muse. Who hurt you in the past? Let’s bring all that
stuff up now, so we can start writing,” he says laughing lightly. If you find
yourself going through a challenging time or perhaps you have a friend
who is going through a difficult period in their life you may find
yourself playing Nicholas Wells’ song “What I’m Here For,” over and over
again, as it is a very inspirational and comforting song. “That song is one
of the final songs that I wrote for the EP and it was after I looked
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Actress Charlene Tilton
Charlene Tilton did not have time to be bored
in (2017), even if that was in her nature, as she co-starred with Lauren
Aliana in the movie Road Less
Traveled, as an eccentric wine making aunt, had another major role
in Second Chance Christmas,
as the meddling mother of Katrina Begin’s character Caroline who is
dealing with amnesia and she appears in the drama
Vengeance: A Love Story with
Nicholas Cage and Anna Hutchinson, as the mother of two meth addicts and
a drug dealers. In the latter role she says some of her own friends did
not recognize her when they saw the film. She appeared on the revived
Battle of the Network Stars
and she wrote the script for a one woman play
Tammy Faye Tweets. At the
beginning of 2017 Charlene Tilton starred in the stage production of
Driving Miss Daisy. Along the
way there was a stop in October of 2017 to speak at
Voices for the Voiceless: Stars
for Foster Kids, hosted by Seth Rudetsky in New York City, just one
of several charitable causes that Ms. Tilton is involved with.
Charlene
Tilton talks about Voices for the
Voiceless: Stars for Foster Kids, a star studded evening that
featured Broadway stars, Tony Award winning actors and producers, as
well Grammy Award winner Stephanie Mills and stars from television and
film.
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