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Fashion Design by Kate Sylvester - New Zealand Fashion Week Photo by Lisa Maree Williams Courtesy of Getty Images © |
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Cool Country Music From Sweden
“We had a wonderful tour and we played at
wonderful places that most of the times were near water. We had lovely
weather, the sun was shining and the sunsets were so wonderful.
It was a tour that I will have in my mind and in my heart for a
very long time,” says Cina Samuelson (pronounced Keena Samuelson). The year 2020 will
mark the twentieth anniversary for Cina Samuelson’s solo career, after
spending ten years as a founding member of the band Freetown Highway and
another five years performing with other bands. During her career she
has toured and performed in the United States with Charlie McCoy, Dale
Watson, Teri Joyce and Becky Hobbs. To celebrate that
anniversary she is going to start recording a new album this fall (2019)
to be released in 2020 and it will include her recent single “Sweet
Mama, Elvis and Me,” (now available to purchase online). She talks about
that single, “It is a song that I wrote about my mother and me and the
way that she taught me to dance crazy to Rock and Roll and Elvis
Presley. I haven’t got a name for the new album yet. I haven’t decided
which song will be the title song. I am going to record this exactly the
way I did it with the Roots and Memories album (2014), to sit down with
all of the musicians at the same time. I did it that way with this
single as well. It was a smaller studio. I would like to do the album
that way again and do it like a live recording.” Cina Samuelson’s
musical journey began in the small Swedish town of Fristad near Borås
and forty minutes by car, north of Gothenburg. “I have been singing since I was a little girl.
Some of my aunts sang a lot and my grandpa loved music and he loved to
sing. My mother was a good singer, but she didn’t perform in front of
people. She loved to sing at home and she
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Gary Nicholson - Two New Albums
“I am still writing songs about what is still
going on in our culture. I am going to make another record that speaks
to this situation that we are in. I want to temper that with the Whitey
Johnson music that offers some fun and humor and some rocking Blues
music that can go along with the Folk music of the
Great Divide (one
of the new albums). I think the two things work well together and
that is why I chose to put out the two records at the same time.
Thankfully Blue Corn Music was agreeable to releasing both records,”
says Nicholson referencing the other album
More Days Like This released
under his other moniker Whitey Johnson. So, just before we
get into the main part of our conversation we thought we would tell you
how Gary Nicholson, singer, songwriter and guitarist also acquired the
name Whitey Johnson. “The Whitey Johnson persona started when I
wrote a short story about Whitey Johnson who was a composite character
from my youth. He was a guitar hero of mine. He was black, but he was
albino, so his family called him Whitey and that short story appeared in
a book called Guitar in a Tent.
A lot of songwriters wrote short stories for this book. (Kris)
Kristofferson and John Hiatt and others wrote stories. That is how the
Whitey Johnson thing started. When Colin Linden and I started playing a
lot of Country Blues together we felt compelled to go to Sam’s Men’s
Wear in Nashville and there was a white suit in the window. There was a
two for one sale and I got a purple suit for Colin and the white one for
me. We went to the Blues festival and that was it. That is when I
started performing as Whitey Johnson,” he says.
There is not time to discuss both albums
in-depth and since The Great
Divide focuses more on events happening in America right now, while
Riveting Riffs Magazine’s audience is more international in scope, we
are going to turn our attention primarily to the
More Days Like This record.
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Design By Sophie Joy, Rhemy, Olli, FuMoso
Photo by Stefan Gosatti Courtesy of Getty Images protected by copyright © |
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Eilen Jewell Releases Gypsy
“I felt pretty homesick almost as soon as I
left (Idaho). Part of me enjoyed feeling homesick and I wanted to keep
it up and to keep it going, which is why I stayed away as long as I did.
I was gone for fifteen years and then I just felt like I had been
homesick long enough and it was time to go home. I really have enjoyed
being back here. Part of it is Jason Beek my husband and drummer and I,
we were ready to buy a house. We felt we would never be able to afford
that in the northeast. Now
we have this sweet little home and two years after we bought our house
we had our little girl, Mavis. It has been really nice to raise her here
in Idaho. I don’t think I could do the big city parenting thing. I see
people with strollers on subways and I just cringe. I don’t think I
could hack it. I am just a western girl by nature,” she says.
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Beth Bombara - Americana Rock
Beth Bombara talks
about those first two songs, “Social media has changed how we interact
socially and what I was really thinking about is how it has enabled us
to hide behind this curtain, minus emotion. If you don’t want somebody
to know that you’re sad you don’t have to post a picture of you looking
sad on the internet. Nobody has to know that you are sad or upset. It is
this idea of not letting people behind your emotional curtain. That is
what I was thinking about when I started writing,” the she adds that you
can also convey your true emotions, “I have cried in front of other
people before. It is capturing the idea that it is a lot easier now than
ever to let people see when you are feeling sad.” Although, the song
does not focus specifically on the period of her life when Beth Bombara
was dealing with depression, she says, “I was not thinking about that,
but generally speaking yes. Part of my battle with depression during
that time period was the aspect of feeling stuck and not feeling like I
had any power to do anything. There is an aspect of “Upside Down,” that
alludes to that. It is the feeling of being stuck and not having the
power to do anything and then just flipping your whole perspective
upside down. If you think you are at a place in your life where
everything is terrible there is always perspective and there is always
another side of that. You can always flip it on its head and see it in a
different light and a more positive
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Interview with Lisa Dondlinger
The former Miss America beauty pageant
contestant who represented the state of Iowa (Miss Iowa) sat down with
Riveting Riffs Magazine recently to talk about her current album
Movies & The Masters, as well
as her career. In talking about her album Dondlinger says, “I
have always heard melodies together in my head and I know that sounds
really weird, but I always hear things that lend themselves to something
else. One of the things on the album that I am the most proud of and
sounds the most weird is I was hearing Stravinsky’s
Firebird Suite and especially
two of the movements Infernal
Dance (Of King Kashchei) and the
Finale. I was trying to
figure out what could go with them? What would sound really cool with
them? The thing I came up with was Jai Ho from Slumdog Millionaire. It
is definitely a Pop tune (originally recorded for the movie by
Sukhvinder Singh, Mahalaxmi Iyer and Vijay Prakash). The Pussycat Dolls
recorded it (as well). It
is definitely a Pop dance song. I was working with Chad Rehmann who was
the co arranger with me on
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Mindi Abair Interview
Abair’s comments
were part of a conversation when talking about the song “Whose Going to
Save My Soul?” from the new album
No Good Deed released on June 28 (2019).
About the song she says, “It is
a hard song to sing, because you have to give your all. It is one of
those songs that you can’t pretend. Every ounce of your being has to
emote. This will be one of the songs in the set that takes it out of
us.” Mindi Abair both
sings and plays a lengthy saxophone solo during “Whose Going to Save My
Soul?” and we wondered how much that is going to sap her energy. “I think that it is really helpful to have
songs that I am singing and then songs that I am playing sax on (both
for the same song). It breaks it up. Sometimes if you are just
playing saxophone all night, those muscles get broken down and those
muscles in your face hurt. As a singer different muscles are going to be
worked. It is all energy and it is all (about) you giving, but it is
different. It does help to be able to spread it out over the night and
to go I am going to sing this song and
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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.
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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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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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Interview with Charlotte Martin
Charlotte Martin
grew up in Charleston, Illinois the daughter of Becky and Joseph and
with a brother six years older. Joseph was a professor of music for
forty-seven years and he played woodwind instruments, while Becky was a
singer who also taught choirs and music in general. “I grew up
listening to a lot of music. I listened to a lot of Classical and my dad
also loved Elvis. My mom was also very influenced by Christian music and
I grew up singing in churches. She always sang in the worship band in
church and she played as well.
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Design by Lemon Tree, Rhind, Ruby and Rain
Photo by Stefan Gosatti Courtesy of Getty Images protected by copyright © |
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.. I have worked with a technician Hartmut Welz
for many years. He was on tour with me and he knows my organ by heart.
We have a great understanding |
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
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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 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
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Design By Sophie Joy, Rhemy, Olli, FuMoso  Photo by Stefan Gosatti Courtesy of Getty Images protected by copyright © |
Andrea Miller Continuing a Legacy
Andrea Miller is
one of the more gifted singers of our time and although these days her
preference is to sing Jazz, she has clearly demonstrated throughout the
years that her vocals translate well into a number of other genres. Andrea Miller who
has become a friend of Riveting Riffs Magazine took time to talk about
her three song EP she recorded with Michael Cunningham and she reflected
upon their time working together and their friendship. She says reflectively, “It puts perspective on the big picture of what I
do and why I do it and what it is all supposed to be about. You never
know. Every performance you do and every recording you make and every
song that you sing it makes them even more meaningful. Eventually, at
some point in my life it will be my last song and I don’t think the
people that I have lost ever knew that would be their last song that
they wrote or sang. You have to enjoy and savor every second of it. I
have lost a lot of people in the last two years and especially in the
last two months and it has become even more important to me for what I
do, how important music is and how powerful it is. It is humbling in a
way and it gives me even more purpose if that makes sense.”
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