Rachael Sage Music
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Anna Carvalho Loves Monsters
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 in common,” she says and nodding yes when we ask, “You were in
the play about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, correct.” Continuing Anna Carvalho says, “Frankenstein is
something I always wanted to do. I love monsters, vampires and all of
these types of things (You are scaring us!). I thought it was
really interesting, because I love that kind of story. Being a part of
the play, I got the part, so it was fascinating for me. It was like
candy for me, like a kid (she has a big smile) woo hoo!
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Secret Monkey Weekend
Jefferson
explains, “Secret Monkey Weekend were the actual words from a 1967 Tiger
Beat magazine. A friend of the family gave us some old magazines and
Tiger Beat happened to be some of them. At the time we were playing here
in the living room and I kept looking at this and I thought it might be
a good band name. We quit looking and that (became) the band name. As for Lemon Drop Hammer, my wife Laura
was in the kitchen and she was making a banging sound. I was probably
watching a ball game. I went in there to see what was going on (brave
man!) and to see if I could help. She had a hammer and she was banging
on a bunch of lemon drops, because they had melted and got sticky. She
was breaking them up. We had the album name, before we even had a
song. (The song) “Lemon Drop Hammer,” was the last song to be written,
during the week we went into the studio.”
Ella adds about
the song, “We had to force it into existence.” Jefferson
continues, “We already had an album name and it was just too good to not
make a song.” Lila who still is
only seventeen years old has now been playing drums, as part of the
band, for seven years.
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Electronic Firefly
Electronic Firefly
website
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Ágota Dunai
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 |
Wine and Jazz Adventures
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.
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Paul Rappaport - Behind the Curtain
“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,
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Paula Parducz - Actress
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
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Jesse and Noah Leave Love Alone
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
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Macartney Reinhardt Says "Hey Girl"
She continues, “We
moved so I could be in the midst of the music scene here. “It was hard,
because I was still in school Then I went to virtual (school) the last
two years of high school. That was the main adjustment. It wasn’t bad
getting adjusted to living in a different state, because we had been
here so much, and we had stayed in hotels for a week every month. That
wasn’t very hard for me. It was harder for me not going to public school
and just sitting at home and doing school. That is when I started
playing out multiple times per week.”
Now Nashville feels like home and as a nod to the city, Macartney
Reinhardt co-wrote the song “Coming Home,”
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Peter Holsapple - Face of 68
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.
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Camilla Roman's New RomCom
The film was
inspired by a real-life situation experienced by one of Camilla Roman’s
friends and the mishaps and misunderstandings that can happen on social
media platforms. Camilla Roman
explains, “This is based on a true story and what sort of happened to
one of my friends, the character that I play. When her ex-husband was
going to get married there was a lot of confusion and stuff on Facebook
with invitations. He invited her and her mom and that was a mistake. He
deleted them and deleted whole events and people were what? Is it
canceled? All of that happened and then there is a lot of fiction into
the mix (in the film). After she told me this story, I wrote it down a little bit. I thought maybe I can do this for something later. I took a year of filmmaking. I got into the final year and so I got my Bachelor (degree) in one year. I had to make a film (for my degree). I didn’t know what I was going to write. There were ten people in the class and my teacher said if some of you still don’t know what you are going to write and what your film is going to be about, now is the time to make a |
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Actor Ruben Yuste
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Kat Violin On the Prowl
Well, she can
describe her new persona much better than we can, “I am producing my own
music, and it is a combination of Classical music and electronic beats.
For instance, music from Classical composers. It is 2.0 and it is
transported to the electronic music. The (goal) is to perform it live at
festivals or bigger events. It is not so easy doing my own music versus covers. I thought it would be much faster to get reach, but when you make your own music, it is like you have to convince everybody first. Even the followers you gained over the years, don’t follow you (when you branch out), because it is yours. I think it will be a lot of work to make this successful, but I will try my best. I love the idea, the concept and the character. It is all about the cat identity, but not like the animal cat, but it is about the character of the cat and the behavior and the attitude.
It
is not so easy doing my own music versus covers. I thought it would be
much faster to get reach, but when you make your own music, it is like
you have to convince everybody first. Even the followers you gained over
the years, don’t follow you (when you branch out), because it is yours.
I think it will be a lot of work to make this successful, but I will try
my best. I love the idea, the concept and the character. It is all about
the cat identity, but not like the animal cat, but it is about the
character of the cat and the behavior and the attitude.
We thought a lot about the name. Hmm, I think because a cat has a very strong character and also the music is very characteristic that we chose (Kat Violin). Cats are elegant when you see them walking. The combination of this with a very strong character and maybe a little bit of being stubborn. They are special and I think it is good for the brand,” she says.
As for her audience, “They like the music, because I mix it with other
electronic or techno songs, so it fits pretty good. I think it will
work.
I am producing the music together with a friend. He is coming more from
the Classical part, and I am bringing the electronic vibes to the
production.”
The native of Augsburg, Germany, one hour from Munich is continually on
the move, and to catch her for just a moment, she may be on a high-speed
train, waiting for her plane at the airport or driving her car down the
highway.
“Last year I had
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Electronic Firefly From Spain
Silvia explains
what happened next, “That was not when I met Charlie (Perez-Íñigo now
her husband). I needed an electric cello for the project and another
person recommended that I call him. It was a difficult
time in my life and Charlie became my friend and he helped me in many
aspects of my life. At the time I was living in a small village called
Villarejo (located in La Rioja, Spain) and he started to visit me often. He also
recommended me for a show called “Music Has No Limits,” and that is when
we started to work together. We toured with them, and we started our
relationship. We have been together ever since. It was after we left
“Music Has No Limits,” that we started Electronic Firefly.” In 2023 their
daughter was born and for two performing musicians that has brought its
own challenges, but more on that later.
The two world
class musicians have also expanded their music careers and in addition
to performing sometimes as a duo and other times for solo gigs, they now
The two world class musicians have also expanded their music careers and
in addition to performing sometimes as a duo and other times for solo
gigs, they now also are DJs.
Charlie takes us down the DJ pathway, and how it began, “We like playing
our instruments with electronic music, so we managed to mix some DJ
music with the instruments. We would play a song and then mix some
things.”
Silvia picks up the conversation, “We make a DJ session and between the
session we will greet the guests at the hotel, because we usually work
at hotels, bars or restaurants. Sometimes we will play (our
instruments).”
Charlie adds, “Then we return to the DJ table and mix. It is a very
creative activity, because you will never make the same session twice.
It is impossible.”
At the same time, they both tell us that there is a lot of improvisation
that takes place.
Being a neophyte to the world of DJ music, our appetites for more
information, wanting them to pull back the curtain to reveal what goes
into being a DJ, just continued
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Noah Vonne - Heart Of It
Most of her
childhood and teenage years were spent growing up in New Braunfels
nestled between Austin Texas and San Antonio, in a family with five
older sisters. All of them were softball players, almost enough to form
their own team. When asked if she
was spoiled, being the baby of the family, she says while laughing, “ It
is true. All of my sisters would say one thousand percent. In comparison
to some of my friends, maybe not so, because my parents were pretty
strict for the most part. Compared to my sisters I was very spoiled.”
She
was the trailblazer in her family as far as someone having artistic
leanings and says, “What I was going after was very different.”
A familiar story for many great singers, Noah Vonne’s journey began as a
child singing in a large church in San Antonio, the Community Bible
Church with by her estimates 2,000 people attending for services.
It was beautiful and the music program was really, really strong. One of
the choir leaders was also my voice lessons and piano teacher in senior
high school.
We drove from New Braunfels to San Antonio. It wasn’t too bad, because
New Braunfels is wedged between Austin and San Antonio and just barely
closer to San Antonio. It was like a thirty-minute drive. In Texas time
that is not much.”
As for the first time that she recalls singing in front of other people,
“When I was really, really little I remember singing “King of the Road,”
by Roger Miller at karaoke with my dad when I was five or six. You know
that song. It is a classic. It is one of the best.
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Audray
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Lisa Hilton Lucky All Along
Lisa Hilton set
aside an hour of her time and spoke to us from her Malibu home, from
which she can watch the dolphins play and where she composed this, her
30 th album. It has both a missive about finding our way, even through
dark times, through struggles and emerging on the other side intact and
still pursuing our dreams. It also pays homage to women in music, to
those who perform, to those who compose and in some instances to those
who do both. Not just with this album, but with previous
ones, Lisa Hilton has nodded in the direction of Joni Mitchell, Janis
Joplin, Ann Ronell and Lana Del Rey. For Lucky All Along, she
arranged “Snow On the Beach,” written by Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey and
Jack Antonoff.
It seems crazy that the vast majority of music played at Jazz clubs, Classical music performing arts centers and Opera houses is written by men. So, on my albums, I try to include a composition written by a woman,” she says. (editor’s note: It should also be noted that Lisa Hilton also records her own compositions)
That has
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