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Funky Dracula - Ben Brown
Ben Brown talks
about how he arrived in the studio with this collection of songs, “For
some reason I was listening to a lot of ‘80s Prince music, so that was a
sonic strand. At the same time, I revisited reading famous satire
stories, like Orwell’s 1984, Voltaire’s Candide Ou l’Optimisme
and I have also been a fan of low brow horror movies, as well as
science fiction. I like the idea of a horror movie that works as satire,
and you don’t have to know anything about what the screenwriter was
interested in to enjoy it. A lot of cheesy horror and science fiction
movies function as cultural satire. I am a product of the eighties and nineties, so
Return of the Living Dead could be construed as a film about
militarism. H.P. Lovecraft’s Reanimator could be construed as a
story about what happens when you tinker with medicine, biology and
genetic experimentation. One day I had a bunch of material that had a spooky
gothic sound to it. I thought it would be (interesting) to combine those
songs and somehow the title Funky Dracula came to me. To me it
represented the seductive synth Pop of the ‘80s Prince and the spooky
gothic, romantic literature of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The title
was so bad that it was good. Working again with my friend and producer Mick
Flowers who owns the studio where I record, called The Shire
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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.
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Electronic Firefly
Electronic Firefly
website
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Eva Gamallo - Exciting Times
Eva, tell us about your short film África S.A.
“It is fiction based about a mistake I made in Gambia, Africa. In 2012,
I was working with an NGO in Gambia, and when I returned to Spain, I
realized that I had fallen into the “white savior complex.”
Through humor, I reflect on how this complex contributes to a distorted
view of the African continent and our own identity as white people, who
often perceive ourselves as “saviors.” It’s a form of self-criticism
because I made this mistake, and when I realized it, I was so angry and
ashamed of myself that I needed to do something about it. That’s where
this project, África S.A., comes from.” One of the common mistakes
people make about Africa is referring to the entire continent as a
single country, without acknowledging its cultural diversity. R |
dBs Drummer Will Rigby
Drummer Will Rigby
sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine to talk about the band’s history
and the two albums reissued. “We started in New
York City and Chris Stamey was already living there. He invited Gene
Holder the bass player and myself, the drummer to come up and play some
gigs with him in June of 1978. Peter (Holsapple) joined us in October of
that year, to record the first two dBs albums. However, we were all from
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I was in the third grade with Peter, and
I have known him since then, for more than fifty years, going on sixty
at this point. I believe we did meet in 1964. Most of us knew each
other, long before we made it to New York. Gene and I did not know each
other, before we moved to New York, but I knew who he was, and I am sure
he knew who I was. The rest of us all knew each other.
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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. We thought |
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
also are DJs. Charlie takes us
down the DJ pathway, and how it began, “We like playing our instruments
with electronic music, |
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Actress Corinna Seiter
Ms. Seiter who we
will simply refer to by her first name for the rest of this interview,
because for such an affable woman, this seems more appropriate, provides
us with some insight concerning the new short film she is working on. “It has been quite
a while since I wrote my last project. I have always enjoyed writing and
I wanted to do something that is close to my heart. I think it is
something that all of us go for at certain stages in our lives. It (the
film) is about isolation, and it has a bit to do with the whole pandemic
situation. That is not going to show in the project really. It takes
place in a dystopian world that we really do not know that much about.
It is about a character who lives in that world and who is trying to
find their way between what is real and what isn’t. This (individual) is
trying to figure life out in a way, and they are trying to be mentally
well. It also has a big part about mental health as well. I wanted to do
something simpler than the technical side of it and not very
complicated. Something easy to do visually. I want something more visual
without a lot of dialogue in it. It will be more like sensations and
images. There will be a short dialogue at the end. It has more to do
about the inner dialogue that goes on in our heads when we are alone and
everything that comes with it. It has a connection as well to the
digital world; I want to say that we are trapped in
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Raised On TV
The album opens
with “Just Wanted To Tell You,” from whose lines the album takes its
title, a song that will have you dancing from the first few beats. The
brothers Rogers and Greenwood are joined on electric bass by Blaine
Billingsley. “(The song) is
about my wife. The lyrics, particularly the chorus is a love letter to
my wife. It is a sentiment that is good to get across and to say. It is
not strictly on one narrow path the whole time. I wrote the verses,
while we were on the road. I think we were pulled over at a coffee shop
or something and we were taking a minute. I had the chorus about my
wife, and I liked that. I wanted to say that, and it was truthful. The
verses I was still trying to figure out and the words just came. The
verses have a story behind them, but the chorus is about my wife,” says
Keaton Rogers, providing us with some insight about the song. Historically bands
from California, going back to the 1950s, has had a distinct flavor and
we talked about that, before digging deeper into the sound of Raised On
TV, “I would say it still does (have a distinct California sound), maybe
not as much as it once did, if you go back to the Beach Boys and Surf
Rock and The Ventures or the Laurel Canyon scene in the seventies. I
think those times were more distinctly Californian, but
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Maia Sharp and Reckless Thoughts
From her home in Nashville (yes, she did indeed move from California a
few years ago), she talks about when the seeds for Reckless Thoughts
were first planted.
“The first song that I knew was going to be the beginning of a new album
project was “Kind.” I wrote that with Mindy Smith and Dean Fields in
2019. When we were finished with that one, I knew I needed to start
thinking about another project, even though Mercy Rising (the
previous album) wasn’t even out yet. I knew that one was already
finished. I knew that “Kind,” wasn’t going to be on Mercy Rising.
It already set the wheels in motion and I thought I guess I am going to
be making another record.
“Too Far Now,” was the next one. Those two songs are so different from
each other that they really presented a challenge. How am I going to
write or look through
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Barbara Dennerlein Adventures
Have a good glass
of wine, or a soda or cup of tea and settle in as we explore once again
the life of Barbara Dennerlein. Our conversation
began with her concert in the Church of St Martin in Dundelange in May,
when she played the pipe organ. It was a collaboration with saxophonist
Laurent Pierre.
She says,
“Besides the Hammond organ I play a lot of pipe organ
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Actor Ruben Yuste
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Ciara Grace - Earthy and Edgy
Ciara Grace’s music is earthy, edgy with some of the vocals and music
being staccato in nature. The themes we want to say mostly dealt with
relationships, but that would not be true, because the songs were all
about relationships! Even though they were written between her high
school years and the summer immediately prior to entering college,
whether you are sixteen years old, twenty years old or forty-two years
old, there is something here for everybody to sink their teeth into,
both musically and lyrically. Yes, we are hearing the expression of
feelings from what was then a teenage songwriter, and from a female
perspective, but we think we are correct in saying that many women out
there are going to listen and say, ‘I knew a guy just like that!” or ‘I
remember that guy who treated me poorly,” and “I can’t believe I fell
for that guy.’ Now, just so we do not give you the wrong impression,
while some of these lyrics do bear the signs of feeling jaded or angry
at the time, it is important to note that these are not angry songs, at
least in our view. There are enough images and metaphors that keep this
from becoming a dark brooding album and you can sink your teeth into the
uneven beats and vocals.
We requested an interview and Ciara Grace was gracious enough to accept
our invitation. Sitting on opposite ends of a phone, thousands of miles
apart Ciara Grace proved to be a woman wise beyond her years, very
poised and very affable. Although the musical styles are different her
sense of knowing who she is, being comfortable with who she is and being
professional reminds us a lot of actor, singer, songwriter Maya Hawke at
the same age. We wondered if that comes from both young women growing up
with parents in the entertainment scene. Maya is the daughter of Ethan
Hawke and Uma Thurman and Ciara is the daughter of singer and songwriter
Lizanne Knott and well-respected producer and sound engineer Glenn
Barratt. Alas, we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves, so we will
revisit Ciara Grace’s musical connections in a minute or two.
The
first single released from the album is “Lost Cause,” and well we will
let Ciara tell us about this song, “Oh god he was awful. He was a boy I
met in detention. You can tell right away, especially in high school,
when a boy has a particular aura about him and that he is not going to
care about you very much.
This is kind of a weird story, but somebody deserves to hear this. I
went to his house for the first time, and he lived in this really rich
neighborhood. He had some kind of bet going on with his neighbor about
who could steal more things from each other’s properties without getting
caught. He had stolen an inguana. This big ass lizard and it was running
around his living room. His brother was with him, and they were acting
like idiots and I am going what did I get myself into? He eventually proved that his romantic intentions
were just as I thought,
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Grace Pettis - Being Personal
Talking about the song, “I Take Care Of Me Now,” she says,
“It is completely autobiographical. It is one of those first
songs that I wrote after I left my marriage of eleven years and a
relationship of fourteen years. It was something I really didn’t believe
yet, because I had been in that relationship since I was a teenager and
I couldn’t really conceive of what it would be like to take care of
myself and be alone in the world, because I had been part of a couple
for so long. I remembered thinking that I was going to be okay, and I
could put myself first and take care of myself. I wrote it as a mantra
that I could grow into.
It was like when you are a kid, and your parents buy shoes that are a
little too big for you and you grow into them. It is a song that I wrote
for myself. It is my anti-codependency (song).
The words are emotive and at times poignant, “I take care of me now /
Since I made up my mind / I’m gonna be just fine / Every day gets better
and / I got bruises, but the good news is / I take care of me now…” They
are words that describe the scars that may still remain from a
relationship that has ended, but learning to love yourself, which is of
more importance.
Grace Pettis elaborates, “You don’t come out of something like that
unscathed. Where there has been love and betrayal there are going to be
scars. I don’t need to make them go away for me to love myself. In fact,
they are a part of what helped me to become the person who I am. I think
it is acceptance of your own story and learning to fully embrace the
person that you are.”
The
song “Rain,” chronicles a heart breaking, both through the words and
tone of the vocals. There is the packing up of suitcases to fly across
the Atlantic Ocean, to Limerick a city in Ireland. It is the raw
beginning of a new journey in life, but first there needs to be healing.
“I wrote “Rain,” in November of 2021 and it was maybe a week into having
packed up a couple of suitcases and going to Ireland to move in with my
mom, because I was ending my marriage. I went with a really good friend
of mine Natalie, who is also a singer and songwriter. We were in
Nashville, a night or two before the flight. We had dinner with a really
nice guy, a friend of hers and he is kind of a big deal in the
publishing industry. He was really helpful and sweet. He bought us
dinner and gave us a lot of great tips and advice on how to write
commercially successful music.
One of the pieces of advice was there are a lot of commercially
successful songs with the word sunshine in them, so maybe try to write a
song with the word sunshine |
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Kori Linae Carothers
From her home in California, Kori Linae Carothers sat down with us to
talk about her life, her music and might we dare say a very interesting
date years ago, that resulted in her marriage to her husband.
“We
moved to Texas when I was 15 and that was really hard. I didn’t do
change at that age. What was really interesting about that move was
nobody cared where I came from. There was not this popularity contest
that I had in Minnesota. We moved from Minneapolis to a very tiny
farming community southwest of Minneapolis and it was one of the hardest
moves that I ever had. People would tease me, because my hearing was
crappy, and it just was not a good time for me. That is when I started
writing music,” Kori Linae Carothers explains, continuing she says, “I
was thirteen and fourteen when things really started to come to my head.
Then we moved to Texas and things got much better for me. I lived in
Dallas.”
Before we go any further, let’s go back, way back, “My dad’s mom played
piano for the silent movies, and she would improv everything. She would
provide the music throughout the whole movie.
My other grandmother, on my mother’s side, actually she is my
great-grandmother. She was a very talented pianist in Salt Lake City.
She was in demand to accompany people who performed. She was quite
extraordinary.
I wish I could have talked to both of them more. I inherited my mother’s
genealogy and I have been going through all of these papers. Who knew
that these two women were very imbedded in the music scene where they
lived.
My (paternal) grandmother acted in the Shakesperean festivals in
southern Utah. She was on the board, to bring in the actors from Los
Angeles or wherever. She was quite the woman. We did not get along at
first, when I went to college up in Idaho. She was very bossy, and she
drove me crazy. One day I just told her to leave me alone. She liked me
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The Atlantis Puzzle
While the film advances the plausibility of the
existence of the Atlanteans it also seems to leave us with the
impression that these people were far from the advanced civilization
that the ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote about. In fact, Jack
Kelley’s research was so thorough that it has left us with as many
questions, only different ones, from when we first started down this
path. Perhaps that is fitting for a man whom we have known for several
years and for whom puzzles have played a big role in his life. It is
also fitting that Plato, the philosopher whose writings he leans most
heavily on through Atlantis aficionado George Sarantitis, left us with
layers of meanings in his stories and with many puzzles to solve.
Jack Kelley talks about separating the myths from the myth, “There are
probably ten layers of stuff in this story and the question is which
layer do you want to focus on. I think Hollywood picked up on this story
(about Atlantis) and they focused on a lost advanced civilization,
something underwater. Eventually over time it turned into something like
Aqua Man and everything in between. There have been dozens of movies
made about Atlantis. I even think, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
with Captain Nemo getting out and walking on the bottom of the sea and
he sees ruins of some city, if I recall correctly.
This is a subject that has fascinated people for so long and people have
put different spins on it. Then you say what is it in popular (culture)
that people have utilized or put in a form to shape whatever story they
wanted to tell. That is altogether good for them, but Aqua Man has zero
to do with Plato, right?
We have come so far from the original story and then when you go back to
the original story. This is where the subtlety lies that I haven’t been
able to necessarily communicate to people. I cut a lot out of this film
to get
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