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We have all at some point in life had hard lessons to learn and so we can relate to the title of Austin, Texas singer and songwriter Nick Pagliari’s new album Hard Lessons, which was released on July 22nd. You have to dig much deeper into a conversation with this amiable musician to discover that some of his greatest influences come from his wife Carmen and the jukebox that was in his parents’ home when he was a young boy.

Reflecting upon that jukebox he says, “That is where my early influences in music were from in general. I was probably six or seven years old when my father had that jukebox. We would sit in the living room and he would play little 45s on the jukebox and we would dance around and sing those songs. I was really fortunate and it was really, really cool. My brother who is about three years younger than me has that jukebox. I don’t know if it still works, but I would love to hear some of those songs again someday.

There were all kinds of Motown music and I remember specific artists like The Four Tops, The Beach Boys’ song “Fun, Fun, Fun,” and “Uptown Girl,” by Billy Joel. My mom was a huge fan of Huey Lewis, but that might have been later in her car.

All that music was an influence on me and it stuck with me as an artist. I think when you are that young, in that stage of your development you are like a sponge. Musically I soaked that stuff up and it stuck with me.”

Just as he was about to embark on a month-long residency at Geraldine’s in Austin, Nick Pagliari took time to talk with Riveting Riffs Magazine about his album Hard Lessons.

“The song “Down in a Rainstorm,” from the new album (came about) when I was out for a jog one afternoon and all of a sudden, I was caught in a big rainstorm. I started humming that chorus part. I got really excited about it to be honest with you, as I was finishing up my run. When I got home, I took off my wet clothes and I took my guitar, while humming that song to myself. I figured out some good chords for it and I wrote the majority of it right there.

Things like that happen on a whim and I try to capture that when I can. It doesn’t always happen that way. If I am out driving my car and I come up with a nice melody I will try and do a little voice memo, to capture it, so I can come back to it. The songs come in different ways. I have never been able to sit down and say I am going to try and write a song now. I have to have some sort of inspiration that excites me.

Sometimes I will go for months without writing a song and then I will spend two- or three-months writing songs. It just comes and goes. There are also songs that might take a few months to write and there are others that might take just a few days. It runs the gamut. I have gotten to the point when I try to focus on my lyrics more and I can come back to songs and redraft and rewrite. I really want each lyric to count and each lyric to mean something. I am a real stickler on that and it has really helped me, especially with these last two albums.”

In listening to “Down in a Rainstorm,” one has to wonder if there was just a little bit of Creedence Clearwater Revival in his parents’ jukebox, because this song is pleasantly reminiscent of their music.

“This Time will Tell,” Read More

Woman On The Moon

Giulia Millanta who makes her home in Austin, Texas and is originally from Italy is a perpetual songwriting machine. Shortly after releasing her album Tomorrow Is A Bird two years ago, she began writing more songs, the best of which now appear on her album Woman On The Moon, to be released on April 8 (2022).

She explains, “It is part of my natural cycle. I release a record and then I take a little bit of time to promote and play shows and regroup. I then start writing again. I never write for a record, I just write.

Once I have thirty or forty songs, I start looking at them and choose what to record. I had a few songs that I wrote early in 2021 or maybe the end of 2020. I write often, but not every day, there are people who are way better than me at that. I write fairly consistently, probably every week. If you think about the fact there are fifty-two weeks in a year and I write every week, by the end of the year I have forty to fifty songs. Probably half of them nobody should ever hear and half of them are decent.

This one was different than my previous records, because I didn’t record it all at once and normally, I do. I (usually) sit down with all of my songs and decide which ones I want to record. I then go ahead and book my session and record everything in three days. This time I did it differently. In June of last year, I approached Gabe and I said, hey I have a few songs. Can we record them, because I think I want to release some singles? I wasn’t planning on a record. (She starts to laugh) We started recording and then one thing led to another. I ended up with twelve songs in the summer. Then in the fall I got back from Italy and I was making plans to release a record, but I wasn’t sure about some of the songs and I went back to Gabe and I said I have two other songs I want to record to replace the other two that I wasn’t sure about.

It wasn’t like a process that I was going to the studio to make a record. It was (more like) let’s record a few songs. Oh, let’s record a few more. Oh, all of these songs belong together and I have a record. It kind of happened is what I am saying.”

The album opens with the very pretty “Mad Man On the Moon,” which put the spotlight clearly on Giulia Millanta’s beautiful and ethereal vocals. The song is 3:33 in length and we cannot improve upon Giulia Millanta’s own words to describe her song, “Floating in a liquid sky, bathing in moonlight, wrapped in a tapestry woven from a dreamy guitar and a lonely piano, while the kick drum beats like a distant heart.”

“(The song) “Mad Man On the Moon,” was written one night in the middle of the pandemic and I had no idea what I was writing about when I wrote it. I sat at the piano and I wrote that song in twenty or thirty minutes. It is magical when that happens and I shouldn’t even take credit for it. It is a musical, magical thing. It is like dictation and someone is dictating to me. I don’t want to sound too crazy or do woo woo, but I am not coming up with anything, I am just writing down something that is in the air. It is really magical and being in the flow.

When I look Read More

The Bablers from Finland

“In all art you have to do something that is meaningful for you. If it is not meaningful for you it will not touch another heart,” says Finnish singer, musician and songwriter Arto Tamminen of the band The Bablers. “It has been a bit scary, especially when it comes to the Psychadilly Circus album some of the songs are deep and even spiritual and very personal. They are not just Pop nonsense.

Talking to us from his home in Finland, the affable protagonist of this conversation explains when and how the band’s name was birthed, “When young people are choosing the name for a band it is not always logical and it can be quite chaotic. In many cases later on many bands regret (the name they chose).  In this case we don’t. It came from the word babble or bubbling. It is active. Then we took one “b” out of the word and it looked right. We ended up using it and we never looked back since. I think one of the most important things with a band’s name is it has to stick in your mind. Many of the crazy names stick there.

We (Janne Haavisto) were located in the same area and we were friends. Many of us went to the same school. The drummer Janne Haavisto’s older brother and my older brother were great mates. Janne’s brother’s band rehearsed in the basement of our house. I come from a family with five children and we lived in quite a big house. They also had great parties (he laughs). I was there as a little boy in my pajamas listening to how they played the old Blues stuff and Irish Folk music. Janne and I just became friends.

I started to write songs from the time I was ten or eleven years of age. I had a disease as a child and I didn’t have anything to do. I was already playing cello when I was six years of age and my fingers worked quite well. My older brother gave me a guitar and he showed me a few chords. Almost immediately I started to write some songs. (By the time) I started to hang around with Janne I had already written some of them. We made a two-track demo. I used to play some of the demos for Janne and I asked him what he thought about them. I said to him do you want to try and play these together and we can find some other guys. Janne said finally you made the suggestion, because I was just about to pop the question.

We started to look for people to play with and we both knew Juha Mieskonen, who was the bass player and he had perfect pitch every time he sang. Miko Lankinen a local guitar player was attending the local jam session. We formed the band rapidly. Three or fourth months after we began rehearsing, we made our first demo and we sent it to the record company which is now Warner Music Finland. We received a phone call from Tommi Liuhala of Hi-Hat Records / Warner who said you sent us a demo. I said yes. He asked would you like to make a record with us? (He laughs) I said yes and it was like it was too good to be true. We were very young then Janne was fifteen and I was seventeen and Read More

                                                   Carrera Couture

Sylvia Hutton

Nature Child - A Dreamer’s Journey released recently by Sylvia Hutton, better known to music fans all over the world as the American Country Music Award, Billboard’s # 1 Country Music Female Artist and Grammy nominated singer Sylvia, is one of the most beautiful collections of story songs you will hear this year. With numerous # 1 and top ten hits to her credit, the former RCA artist, who has for many years recorded as an independent artist, once again collaborated with longtime friend John Mock (Dolly Parton, The Chicks, James Taylor, Kathy Mattea). Other co-writers includes Verlon Thompson, Craig Brickhardt and Thom Schuyler.  

The opening song for the album “Avalon,” transports the listener to Camelot and the days of King Arthur. Sylvia and Verlon Thompson wrote “Avalon,” a beautifully orchestrated song with lush vocals by Sylvia. For any child, any teenager, any adult whoever wished you could close your eyes and open them to find yourself in a magical place, Sylvia invites you to take her hand to travel to a place where the walls are made of freedom and every tear becomes a shining star.  

Normally, we would not credit so many musicians, but they earned their due on “Avalon,” guitars, both electric and acoustic by John Mock, as well as mandolin and percussion. Matt McGee played bass, Skip Cleavinger played the Uilleann pipes, oboe by Somerlie Pasquale, Emily Bowland on clarinet, trumpet (Jeff Bailey), French horn (Jennifer Kummer), violins by Conni Ellisor and Mary Kathryn Van Osdale, viola (Betsy Lamb) and cellist Nicholas Gold.

About the musicians, Sylvia says, “They are wonderful people and fabulous musicians. John Mock is playing many of the instruments on the record. He did the strings arrangements, the wind arrangements and he and I arranged the ethereal vocals together on this record. I have worked with the bass player Matt McGee since 1983. We worked together on the road in the eighties and he is a fabulous, world class bass player.”

She takes time to explain what the Uillean pipes are that Skip Cleavinger plays, “A few years ago we put Uilleann pipes on Where in the World for the song “Crazy Nightingale.” They are similar to bagpipes. They are quieter and they operate a little differently. They have a similar sound to bagpipes, but they are not as loud and you can control the sound a little bit more. There is a bag of air under your arm that you pump the air into, as you finger the pipes. It is a very complex instrument to play.

Sylvia talks about the song “Avalon,” saying, “I thought about naming the album Avalon, but I thought it would be too confusing to people and they would think it is about King Arthur and it is not. I felt really good about naming it Nature Child – A Dreamer’s Journey.

This album Nature Child is for families and for children and Read More