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Las Tres Sisters  Interview Part One

Valerie Maldonado Interview PT 1 Photo Front PageMaldonado, sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine over a Zoom call recently, from her home in Los Angeles and we talked about her current film, a dramedy, Las Tres Sisters now streaming on numerous platforms in North America and it was preceded by a limited cinematic release. If there was an award in the film and television industry for being the most congenial person, we are quite sure that Ms. Maldonado would be one of the top people considered. She is thoughtful, a smile seldom leaves her face and she has this attitude of gratitude about her.

Our conversation this time focused almost entirely on the nine-year journey to get this film made with her co-writers and co-stars, Marta Méndez Cross and Virginia Novello, who were joined brilliantly in supporting roles by Cristo Fernández and Adam Mayfield.

The opening scenes of Las Tres Sisters seem to set the film up perfectly for the three distinct personalities of Sofia (Novello), Maria (Cross) and Lucia (Maldonado).

“The three of us wrote the whole movie. It was very collaborative between the three of us. We used something called Writer Duet and you can be writing at the same time. It is kind of like a Google Doc only for screenplays. Someone could be doing a scene and then another person could be behind her saying I am going to tighten it up. We would be doing things like that. It was great.

We based the characters on pieces of us, but that doesn’t mean that every line that Lucia said I wrote. It was this is where I want my character to go and I think this. Then we would help each other out. We would write for each other. Sometimes we would go in and go this is how Lucia (Make sure you pronounce this name right. Watch the movie and you will know why!) would say it. We say they are cartoon versions of the unhealed versions of us. What would have happened if we hadn’t worked on ourselves.

Marta’s character Read More

 

 

Tawny Ellis - Edge Of The World

Tawny Ellis Interview Front Page PhotoTawny Ellis is a lot of things and that is the most understated statement you will ever hear anyone make. She is an accomplished actress, she is an excellent singer, songwriter and musician, she has fashioned jewelry, she is a critically acclaimed sculptor with her art appearing in galleries in numerous countries, she is a painter and that is her art on the front cover of her current album Edge Of The World.  She also works with her husband Gio Loria as the vice-president of his company Black Volt Amplification, which acts both as a luthier and builds amplifiers.  a We will stop there, because if we continue listing her other talents and accomplishments you may be in for an even longer read than you anticipated in this the first part of a two-part interview.

It has been five years since Tawny Ellis released her last album and there can be many reasons why, especially with someone this busy.

She opens up, “Honestly, I think I got really gun shy. Something shut down on me, because I had worked on that album for quite some time. I released it in 2020 and I had signed up to go on tour in Europe and open for a really great artist over there. They shut down the whole world (due to the COVID pandemic). The day that I was supposed to get on the plane to go to the U.K.  to hook up and go on the tour and to play all of these shows they shut everything down and nobody could go anywhere. I felt like I had just flown a plane into the mountainside. It was horrible. We had packed everything and promoted and all the gigs were laid out. I am a really sensitive person and it was so hard.

You can’t really re-release an album and I got really disenchanted with the world at large. When I went to write I felt like I had so much to say, but I couldn’t figure out how to say anything. I couldn’t really relate to humanity. I felt like they were at each other’s throats in so many ways. Everybody was turning on each other. I (became) really disillusioned and so I started writing some things three years ago and I couldn’t really catch fire with finding my voice. I did not want to not write about things that were important and pivotal, but I didn’t want to be brow beating or anything. I had to find a magical Read More

 

Electronic Firefly

Electronic Firefly cello 

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Anna Carvalho Loves Monsters

Anna Carvalho Front Page PhotoAnna Carvalho loves vampires and monsters, she was cast as a demon, but instead became an angel, she has been a prostitute more than once, on film! She was in a monster tale.  Those things are not nearly as intimidating as when we briefly summarize her career CV for you. Anna Carvalho is an accomplished screenwriter, a good actress, director, producer and model. Born in Portugal, now making her home in Austin, Texas, she is one of those rare jewels you find in any walk of life, incredibly talented, always with a smile on her face and laughter punctuating her conversation, she has this knack of making one feel like she is someone you have known for years, rather than someone you are beginning your first conversation with.  

Seeming to have several projects on the go all at once, we decided to ask her about two of them.

“One of them is a series that we started in 2023 and it is a horror series. It is (comprised of) Portuguese tales that were in a book that was launched in 2023. At that time, we realized in Portugal there were not a lot of women working in horror. In Portugal horror is stigmatized a little bit. One of the women (working in horror) was me. I was the producer and director. My collaborators are Isabel Pina and Sandra Henriques.

We thought let’s adapt some of these tales and create the monster, kind of based on Frankenstein. It was working all of these tales and finding out what they have Read More

Sabrina Culver - Actress & Producer

Sabrina Culver Interview Front Page PhotoSabrina Culver is an actress, both on film, television and theater, she owns a film production company and has sat as a judge at numerous film festivals, but we bet if you asked her what her most important role has been, she would without hesitation tell you, it is as the mother to her son and daughter. According to IMDB she has appeared in eighty-one films, and television episodes, has produced, co-produced and executive produced eleven more and that is not counting her theatrical performances and the commercials she has been cast in. We should also note that although she did not completely walk away from acting while she focused more on her children when they were younger, she did slow down her career for a time. She wants you to know however, she is in full steam ahead mode once again and that should make many directors smile, because she is a very good actress. Afterall how many people do you know that get cast as a young Norma Jean Baker (Marilyn Monroe), more on that later.

As this goes to publication she was beginning to shoot a television series, but that is under wraps and for another day.  

Sabrina Culver grew up near New York City, but now lives in Amsterdam, the second time in her life that she has made Europe her home. Much of her early creative interests were inspired by her father who played piano, sang and acted.  

“He really encouraged my sister, brother and me to be involved in the arts. My brother was not as interested, but my sister is a great pianist. She is probably better than I am. I used to sing Broadway show tunes Read More

 
Paul Rappaport - Behind the Curtain

Paul Rappaport Interview Photo Front Page by Mark SeligerFor thirty-three years Paul Rappaport promoted music icons and in the process he became an icon on the business side of music.  He started working for Columbia Records,  when he was in university and worked his way up through the ranks to eventually become Senior Vice-President of Rock Promotion. In April he will release his autobiography, Gliders Over Hollywood Airships, Airplay and the Art of Rock Promotion. Paul Rapport left Columbia Records in the early 2000s, but what is astounding about that is not how much time has passed in between then and his April release of the book (pre-order links at the bottom of this interview), but the clarity of his memory in terms of his personal memories and the events, circumstances and relationships that he experienced in the music business. The chapters of this book are not merely vague and scattered memories but rather play out like a streaming or television series where we are introduced to the colorful, creative and interesting artists and colleagues of Paul Rappaport.  

“That is what I was trying to do. This was a very magical time, and I wanted to share these stories and for the readers to have fun, like I had fun. I wanted them to have the experience that I had. Somehow, I was (blessed) with a photographic memory, because as you know from reading this book, I am talking to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and David Gilmour and all of these characters. I wanted it to be that and thankfully because of this memory I can recall conversations. I can envision where I had the conversations, what the room looked like, and I know what the backstage looked like. I have this capability. I wrote it that way, because I wanted people to experience as close to that (as possible) and I wanted to make it entertaining in that way, so that you would be right in the conversation with these people.  Read More

 

 

Alexandra Dean and the Judds

Alexandra Dean 2025 Interview Front Page PhotoThe Judd Family: Truth Be Told is a documentary series, directed by award winning film director Alexandra Dean, born in Hampstead England and who fashioned her career in the United States. She has gained a reputation for at times taking on hard stories to tell and sometimes of people who were misunderstood or their accomplishments were understated. She has however been at the forefront of often telling the stories of women who helped shape our world, who far too often became the fodder for a bloodthirsty media whose appetite for sensationalism far outweighed their desire for fairness and reasonableness. Do you know that Hedy Lamarr, a beautiful actress was instrumental in pioneering the technology that launched the widespread use of cellphones and just about anything else that relied on what became Wi-Fi technology as well as redesigned the shape of the wings of planes. She took us behind the scenes with the women who once lived at the Playboy mansion and their difficult and heartbreaking stories. Alexandra Dean spent almost a year as the travel companion of Paris Hilton, while filming that documentary and now she takes us inside the Judd Family, the late Naomi, actress Ashely and singer / songwriter Wynonna. We would like to tell you this is a fairytale with an appropriate ending, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, because this is a very tragic story, but hopefully one that begins the long road Read More

Jesse and Noah Leave Love Alone

Jesse and Noah Photo 2024 front pageJesse and Noah Bellamy who perform and record simply and Jesse and Noah, visited with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently to talk about their new EP Leave Love Alone, which derives its name from the titular song and to ring in the holiday season with two Christmas songs, one a cover tune and the other an original.  

We jokingly asked them about the song “Leave Love Alone,” and if it was a reference to a relationship that went sideways.

Jesse replied, “That is an older song, so I don’t even remember. I started that song with Simon Bruce, an Australian singer and songwriter who lived here in Nashville for a while. We halfway finished it and he and Daniel Tashian finished it and then it came back to me. Daniel was going to put it out and then I didn’t hear anything for a while and so I thought I would just throw it into this mix of songs that we were doing for our next session. We thought we could do a pretty good job on it. We recorded it, got it ready to go and he ended up putting his out around the same time or maybe a couple of weeks before or something like that.

He released it mostly in Australia. I guess it is worldwide, because of streaming.

The songs ended up being so different and with different audiences, so they didn’t really clash.”

Produced by Pino Squillace, engineered by Brandon Henegar and recorded at the House Of David Studios in Nashville the song is a Country song, with Rock influences and excellent musicianship. Those who have followed Jesse and Noah over the years, should not be Read More

 

 

 

Macartney Reinhardt - New Song

Macartney Reinhardt June 2025 thumbnailThe new single “Two Ships,” from Country singer Macartney Reinhardt is a song about a relationship that has ended and it was written with Kylie Sackley and Stone Aielli,  a duo who have had their songs recorded by Keith Urban, Sam Hunt, Alan Jackson, Priscilla Block and many more.

Macartney Reinhardt describes this experience as, “I have co-written before, but this is one of my favorite ones that I have ever done. I was on Instagram one day and Stone messaged me saying I would love to write with you and then he brought in Kylie. The first song the trio wrote together was “Cowboy Without a Conscience,” released earlier this year (2025). We really meshed from the beginning.”

Although the song has a summery feel to it, don’t let that fool you, because with a big smile on her face and her dimples showing Macartney Reinhardt says “Two  Ships,” was written on one of the few days of the year when it was snowing in Nashville.

“I wanted to write a song about when you go from being so close in a relationship and then after the relationship it (feels) like you never knew that person. That has always been a strange thing to me, how you can go from every day being with somebody and being so close to him and then a breakup. It is like you don’t know him. Then Kylie came in and she said I have this idea called Two Ships. She asked do you think we could combine those. I said yeah, definitely. She had taken it from Two Ships passing in the night that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem. We just started working off Read More  

 

Lucy Gale - It's Never Too Late

Lucy Gale Interview Photo Front PageOn May 24 th in Australia at the JazzLab a sold-out audience gave singer, songwriter, Lucy Gale a standing ovation as her album  It’s Never Too Late made it’s debut. This collection of songs  plays to Gale’s soulful, bluesy vocals and for the recorded album, helmed by producer, composer and keyboardist Dominic Ross, she surrounded herself with some superb musicians, drummer Darryn Farrugia, bassist David Rosa, organist Harry Mullany (who also contributed vocal harmonies) and guitarist Dragan Stanic. They were complimented by saxophonist Gary Deleo, percussionists Alejandro Vega and Sam Oliveri, as well as guitarists Eddie De Marchi and Ben Dewhirst. Adam Calaitzis served as the sound engineer and mastered the record at Toyland Studios.  

Songs like “It’s Never Too Late,” seek to rekindle how love first felt or perhaps get back a love lost, and the  breathtakingly beautiful “Turn Up That Love Song,” remind us of how we felt or may still feel when we are so in love with another that those emotions and feelings burn within us. This latter song should be in a scene for a movie or series, so pay attention music supervisors. The song is beautifully sung, arranged and orchestrated. Rather than overpowering the singer, as so many instrumentalists sometimes do, the musicians compliment Lucy Gale in a way that if you close your eyes, you Read More

 Ágota Dunai - Actor Interview

Agota Dunai Interview Front Page PhotoWhile she has moved around a bit, actress Ágota Dunai now calls Budapest home, in her native country Hungary. You may have seen her in the high altitude action thriller Fight and Flight starring Josh Hartnett, the second time she has worked with him and Katee Sackhoff or perhaps in the film Dr Jason II Lights and Shades, streaming on Amazon (in some countries) and soon you will be able to see her in a Tom Cruise movie (at press time still to be titled). With three films either released or in production during 2025 and two more from 2024, Ágota Dunai’s career is gathering momentum and so it should for this talented young actor.   

In the film Fight and Flight, Ágota Dunai says, “I played a flight attendant. I had flight attendant experience before in another film, and they chose me,” Although she had a minor role in the film she says, “I really hope it made it to the film. I haven’t seen the film yet. There was one scene when the plane starts to crash and there is a lot of shaking and someone falls down. Then I go to the (person) and help him up. I ask if he is okay and ask if he needs medical help. That was my speaking scene, but in many other scenes I was packing, sorting and helping with seatbelts. Also, when there were fight scenes, I was trying to protect the other passengers. There is one scene when somebody gets cut with a chainsaw and there is fake blood scattered on me. There are a lot of action scenes.

I (also) worked with Josh Hartnett in The Fear Index. It was nice to work with him again.”

With impeccable English, proficient in German and of course her Read More 

 

 Actor Ruben Yuste

Ruben Yuste May 2024

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Robert Watts - Album Interview

Robert Watts Interview Photo front pageAustin, Texas based singer and songwriter Robert Watts, sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently, over a zoom call and talked about his current album, BloodWork.  

It is a collection of songs that he describes as, “Indie Pop. The album BloodWork was named, because of the copious amounts of liquid that have exited and entered my body in the last year. Also, BloodWork is the composing and the writing and all of that. For me it is like my blood and something that I am very attached to. On the inside of the CD cover there is a picture of one of my heart graphs.”

Robert there is obviously more to this story.

“The making of the record was brought to a halt when I had emergency heart surgery last year. I am one hundred percent now. When I got out of the hospital and I started feeling better is when “On & On,” (the song) hit me. I had five or six songs ready and some of them I ended up using and some of them I didn’t. “On & On,” just is one of those songs that came out really easily.

“On & On,” although lyrically is not a hopeful song lyrically, has a musical vibe that is more upbeat running counterpoint to the lyrics.

The song “Otis,” is a nod to Otis Redding, “It is just a mashup of his (Otis Redding) titles. I had that idea and I had the guitar riff going and I thought it would be cool to do almost a tribute song to him. Almost every (line) in there is from an Otis Redding song title or line. It just came together and I was very happy with it. A lot of that is in there (“Sitting On the Dock of the Bay”) (He quotes some lines), “The tide rolled away and never came back in. The loneliness lingered with no sign of the end…”

There is a sadness and a longing (in Otis Redding’s songs) that appeals to me emotionally, “he explains.

Most of the songs for BloodWork were written two years earlier than when the album was recorded.

“After These Fine Moments (a previous album) we (and Hilary Kaufmann) went on hiatus and we retired from playing live. Then I had all of the health issues. I thought man I have to do something. I had always tinkered with writing on the side here in my studio. I had some friends who knew what they were doing, came over and they said you need to do this and that. This needs to be setup a certain way. It was a big learning curve. I felt pretty confident by the time I was done,” says Robert Watts.

As to whom he thinks the album will appeal, he ponders the question for a moment, before answering, “Music affects people Read More

Peter Holsapple - Face of 68

Peter Holsapple Interview 2025 Photo Front PagePeter Holsapple’s new album The Face of 68 serves as an unintentional mentorship for songwriter / musicians closer to the beginning of their careers.  

Peter Holsapple says, “I am extremely proud of the new record. The songs that make up The Face of 68 are largely songs that were written after the release of Game Day, my last solo record in 2018. What happened was my friend Carlo Nuccio from Continental Drifters passed away from cancer in 2022 and I don’t grieve very cleanly, so I wrote a song. Actually, I wrote a couple of songs, but the song “Larger Than Life,” that I wrote and cut, felt good. I thought it had been a few years, maybe the statue of limitations had been lifted and it would be okay for me to do another record.

I had a folder with about fifteen or sixteen songs and I thought maybe there is something in here. Then I got Don Dixon (producer) on the case and I wanted to do it different than Game Day. Game Day was all me and that was fine and I don’t have to do that again. I wanted to do it with this rhythm section and I got a crack team, Rob Ladd (drums) and Robert Sledge (bass) and made it a very tangible record. We could feel it coming out of the speakers, at least if you play it loud enough, which I do.

I suddenly had a bunch of songs and I had a studio (Overdub Lane) six minutes from my house. I had a producer in Don Dixon whom I dearly love and have loved for a million years. I had a great engineer whom I had worked with Jason Richmond. He had done the engineering for The Paranoid Style stuff, the band that I play guitar with these days. It all came together and pardon the pun, but we did it in record time. That really felt good too, I didn’t have a lot of time to second guess myself. I had Dixon taking that role. All I had to do was show up and sing my stupid songs into a microphone and then we had a record. The studio is in Durham, North Carolina.

I love working with Elizabeth Nelson and Tim (Bracy both of The Paranoid Style). Elizabeth is a very singular songwriter. I never got to work with anybody who is this interesting of a songwriter. If you give a listen to a few of the songs on the Interrogator you will immediately understand why I am saying that. I played on Interrogator by The Paranoid Style and I have a guitar solo that I am very proud of on that.”

From our perspective the song “Larger Than Life,” is the centerpiece of the album The Face of 68, with thundering bass riffs, a great melody, and drummer Rob Ladd laying down a strong foundation. We particularly liked Peter Holsapple’s vocals on this song.  In many ways the song is reminiscent of 1970s Cream and Jeff Beck or Deep Purple’s Smoke On the Water (from the Machine Head album), with less gritty vocals. In fact, have we said how much we like Peter Holsapple’s vocals on this song? The song ends on a spectacular guitar solo by Holsapple.

“(The song) “Larger Than Life,” is about my friend Carlo Nuccio,  who was the drummer and founder of a band I was in for many years called the Continental Drifters. Read More 

 

 

 

Wine and Jazz Adventures

Mindi Abair 2025 Interview Front PageAre you looking to take a trip of a lifetime, perhaps something with elegance and maybe combining two of your passions, good wine and good music, in a place you have never been before, while rubbing shoulders with a superstar musician and her extraordinary wine connoisseur? We have something in mind that may just be what you are looking for, Wine and Jazz Adventures with Jazz saxophonist Mindi Abair and her husband Eric Guerra. If you are hesitating a bit on the word Jazz, I will let you in a secret, somewhere along the line in the eighteen years or so that Mindi Abair has been a friend to Riveting Riffs Magazine, we remember her once describing to us, at least at that time, that her music was Stadium Jazz. She can play elegantly and quietly and she has rocked out touring with Aerosmith and Duran Duran during the early part of her career, plus she can play anything in between those two styles. As for wine, not only have Mindi and Eric developed their own brand of wine, but with Eric Guerra’s connections and stature they have connected with some of the world’s most famous wineries and they are inviting you along for the experience.  

Mindi Abair sat down with us one afternoon recently to chat, “At the very end of 2019 my husband and I kind of had this ah ha moment. We came together and said we both have dream jobs. I get to go off with my band and travel the world and to make records. For all of all his life Eric has run really amazing wineries, so he would go off to Kendall-Jackson or he would run Mountain Napa (winery). We both had amazing jobs, but we said let’s get out the whiteboard, the marker and a bottle of wine and see if we are truly living our best lives. It may sound trite. We wrote down what was really important to us and what we loved to do. We wanted to be together and we wanted to share his passion for wine with everyone, with people, instead of corporations. For me I wanted to expand my world in music to places outside of the U.S. more and play with different artists, explore and expand. We came up with a company that was the best of both of us. Obviously, he is the wine and I’m the Jazz.

We don’t have to be anything we are not, but obviously the combination of wine and Jazz is pretty spectacular. Eric and I have been together about fourteen years now. It is awesome to fall in love with someone, but it is even more awesome when what he does for a living completely compliments what I do for a living.”

So, when did this all start?

“We started our little company at the end of 2019, with the idea being we would make eight wines each year. He hires winemakers like I hire musicians, because he knows everyone. You and I as civilians can’t do something like that, but he can and that is his world.  Read More 

 

 

 

 

 

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Paula Parducz - Actress

Paula Parducz Photo front pageThis seems like a good place to begin when talking about film and theater actor Paula Parducz, her stage name and you will understand why we clarified that in a few moments. She was born in the state of Kansas (United States), grew up in Costa Rica, lived in the London (U.K.) for five years, lived part of her adult life in Asturias, Spain and now is her eighth year living in Budapest, Hungary. Now you understand.  

She is cerebral, talented, at home in comedy or dramatic productions, but leans more to drama as a preference, which we will explain in a bit and she shared some insight to that side of her acting while discussing the role she played in the theater production Beauty, directed by Carna Krsul.

“My favorite role is Annabel in Beauty. I liked it because it allowed me to (get into) a vulnerability that I really had not explored before, because in a way it touched a part that I really had not dug into (previously).

She (Annabel) stepped out of her own shell. She is afraid of going out (Annabel is agoraphobic), but she is masking that by looking young and  pretty. It was very powerful on stage and it was always interesting to feel the reaction of the people when they could see the mask dropping,” she says.

We wondered about the dynamic of an actor performing in front of an audience and in the role of a character who had difficulty with mixing with others and certainly Annabel would never have performed before an audience.

Paula Parducz explores that dynamic with us, “You are the actor, you know the story, you know what is happening and you know what is coming, but the character doesn’t. A Mexican director Luis De Tavira said actors have the ability to be and not be at the same time. I am the actor, but I am not the actor I am the character, but I am not the character. You are and you are not at the same time. There are moments when you truly forget yourself and you are just the character. It is a very interesting dynamic. You can also see the reaction of the audience and that is why I like theater the most. You have the people there and you can perceive when (they are engaged) and you know when you are losing them. You know who is connected and who is not.”

Beauty was the third play that she was cast in by Carna Krsul, the others being the first Most Budapest in 2019 and then Square

“Most Budapest (2019) was the first one, then Square in 2021, before we did the third one, Beauty. I found a casting call online for Most Budapest. Carna is an amazing director and she is a lovely person Read More

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