The Lovell Sisters | Musician Jessica Lovell

June 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. On the four part of each show I like to feature an author of sounds. This group the Lovell Sisters really impressed me the first time I saw I heard them and that was on Garrison Keillor’s Show “A Prairie Home Companion”. They were pretty young when they were on the show. And I was blown away by their sound. This group is just come back from Sweden. They were on about a week tour in Sweden and now they are back in the Midwest and their going to go down south pretty soon and out east. They’re going all over the place so now I have Jessica on the line from the Lovell Sisters. Welcome to the show.

Jessica: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. How are you doing?

Dr. Kent: Very Good. So you just come back from Sweden I see.

Jessica: Yes we actually just got off the plan not long ago and then drove Atlanta where we flew in up to we are now in Middleton Wisconsin and we’re doing a show here tonight. So it’s been a good time. Everybody had a fantastic time in Europe, we were in Norway and Sweden for almost three weeks and now we are going on another 10 day run. Kind of in Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and down to Maryland and gong back home. We live in Callhoun Georgia. But our mother and father, we have a little brother who is 6 years old. His name is Thomas are very much anticipating out return home. But we’re having a good time.

Dr. Kent: Now your three sisters. Tell me about the family a little bit you told me you got a little brother and parents but tell me about the Lovell Sisters.

Jessica: Well my name is Jessica, I’m the oldest. I play fiddle. The middle sister, her name is Megan. She plays the Dobro. Our youngest sister Rebecca plays mandolin and also plays finger style guitar. That’s the three of us we’re also touring with two guys in our bank who are fantastic instrumentalists. Daniel Kimbro playing the bass and Matt Twingate playing guitar. So we really have fun on the road. It’s been really a great band. The band is really tight and of course we’re very excited about the new CD in our lives we’re playing the new songs and so it’s been awesome.

Dr. Kent: So how about without further a do I’d love to play the title track from the album were going to play the whole track so you can put me on speaker and chill out a bit. Its called “Time to Grow” the title track from the Lovell Sisters new album. When’s it come out?

Jessica: I think over the summer date not exact the release date not been quite set. That is should literally know that in the next couple days here. We’re really excited about that and I think its going to be released a little sooner but kind of more information TBA later on that.

Dr. Kent: Cool.

Jessica: The record we just finished recording in Nashville.

Dr. Kent: We’ll talk to you in a minute after this tune is done.

Jessica: Ok Thank You so much.

Music Playing

Dr. Kent: That’s a beautiful tune from the Lovell Sisters “Time to Grow.” It’s the title track of their album that’s going to be released this summer. Jessica promising us that there be a digital version to released before that. So welcome back to the show again Jessica.

Jessica: Thank you so much.

Dr. Kent: Tell us about tack

Jessica: Sorry one more time?

Dr. Kent: Tell us about that track a little bit.

Jessica: That track we had some fun making this record. I think for us the last couple years have been a real learning experience for us. WE basically have decided to keep creative control and through make the record the way we wanted to. Just play the music that inspired us and this is a song that Rebecca out baby sister and she’s playing finger style guitar on this track and Megan playing Dobro and I’m playing fiddle. So we went into the studio and were able to create the sound that we wanted I think that not being on a label is really giving us the able to do that and so “Time to Grow” I think is also kind of what this whole record really means for us. WE put out our debut CD in 2005 after going on Prairie Home Companion. Which was an awesome experience for us going on Prairie home Companion. We put out that first CD and so now it’s been awhile since we put out a CD. That time for us to learn a whole lot and find out own voice. I think this record really is a good snap shot of what we are over the last couple years. We’ve toured a lot and had the opportunity to meet a lot of really really cool people and artists and just to have a lot of experiences. We certainly wouldn’t have otherwise had except for just having people supporting us and going out on the road. Rebecca was 25-26 when that first record come out and she just turned 18. So getting involved with songwriting as well that all those different things floating around the creation of into this CD and which that was the title track.

Dr. Kent: I was listening to the show that night the Prairie Home Companion and that was my first introduction your group and you did a bang up job on that show. I remember going to your website that same day because I was so struck by it wasn’t only you guys have great sound and a great song style but I was blown away by your instrumental talent as a trio.

Jessica: Wow! Thank You so much. That’s really cool, I mean that was actually out 2nd official; gig we been involved in classical music and like sing in our church choir prior to that so we heard bluegrass and just started messing around more like at home on weekend and we played this little place called the Sigoneon Opry on Friday nights and that’s where we heard Bluegrass for the first time. That acoustic music that how we landed that one and found out the same time we were going to be playing on Prairie Home Companion. We sent in a demo and so we were so nervous to go on that program but it went well and that opened a lot of doors that we didn’t’ even know existed and its been am amazing ride since then. Now we’re making music which is just a great blessing it’s an opportunity for us to be touring around especially us sisters as well.

Dr. Kent: As part of that your on the your not an easy from the outside seem oh what a blessing you get to play all these gigs but then when you describe all the nitty gritty of it you get off the plan and drive for tons of hours to the next gig and to the next one. It’s a hard life on the road.

Jessica: You know it is but I think that from a lot of that comes a lot of inspiration for the song writing itself as well and makes you feel like a step away when your away from home. It’s a different kind of reality like for instance today we flew into Atlanta driving 14 hours from Atlanta to Wisconsin, snowing for part of it, it was raining for part of it. You get your good and you meet, there’s things on the road you never expect and I think its true of everyone you want to try and plan your life as much as you can but you know a lot of times stuff happens and it maybe the best thing that ever happened and you just have to be flexible and move forward and stay close to the people around you that’s something especially for us that we realized how important people are in your life no matter what’s happening around or to you that those people are really the whole part. Kind of been the point on another track of this CD that’s called “Subway song” that Megan wrote and that really incaps that for me. Yeah we’re having such a great time. Thank you for having me on by the way this is great talking to you.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely again your music fast want to ask you one more question and we’ll play another track from the record.

Jessica: Yeah Sure.

Dr. Kent: About your instrumental ability the three of you, How did that develop?

Jessica: You know we started playing classical violin and piano when we were younger little like maybe 6 years old. Music has always been a hobby for us. So all three of us started on violin and piano we played in symphonies and quartets. We still; we still love classical music although we aren’t as involved in it as we were starting out. Then we heard bluegrass music for the first time, that’s when Megan started playing the dobro and Rebecca started playing the mandolin. We were really proud of Rebecca, she become the first woman and youngest contestant ever to win the Merlefest International Mandolin competition. I think just being able to play and there’s more and more girl pickers out there we’re meeting. I think that’s really great. There’s a lot of women in the music industry just great role models for the girls getting started like Alison Kraus to the Dixie Chicks. There’s a lot of great singer/songwriter instrumentalists that are great role models. Yeah we’ve been playing bluegrass for I guess 5 or 6 years. So that’s how long we’ve been playing the current instruments. It’s a good time and the band we have is great.

Dr. Kent: Cool. You must be pretty good at it because you sure didn’t sound like you were playing your second gig on Garrison Keillor. Ever since then this is a beautiful album. It has the sound of the Dixie Chicks they play their own instruments and you guy do the same thing. You’ve definitely developed some serious talents there. I love this new album. Tell me about this track “Take One Moment” and we’ll listen to that.

Jessica: Sure “Take One Moment” I love that track. That was written its kid of funning talking about being on the road and off the road. It was written by Megan and Rebecca. We been on the road for at least a week and had 24 hours at home. As so as we were in the house, all of a sudden the girls were gone didn’t know where they were. They disappeared and breakfast came and breakfast went still no girls and they came back downstairs, they had written this song and recorded demo that’s how heard it. Rebecca has a little studio in her room its like a one Mic and a tool rig. She really enjoys recording things and kind of experimenting and this is one of the things that came out of Rebecca’s room. So I hope people will enjoy it I really love this track.

Dr. Kent: Thank You so much for chatting with me. We’re going to listen to this track and we’re going to say Good Bye for this week. I can’t wait to talk to you again sometime and I’ll definitely keep up with what you’re doing.

Jessica: Wonderful Thank You so much.

Dr. Kent: And we can go to lovellsistersband.com and there’s a whole bunch of information about their tour, which is going on all over the place right now. We’ll talk to you again soon.

Jessica: Thank You.

Dr. Kent: We’re going to play a track called “Take One Moment” and this is from the upcoming album from the Lovell Sisters “Time to Grow.”

Music Playing

Dr. Kent: That was a beautiful tune called “Take One Moment” from the Lovell Sisters album “Time to Grow.” Check out their CD when it comes out later this year, it their second release. An amazing group of sensitive vocals and incredible instrumental skills.

Wells its been my honor today to have three authors and one musician on the show. Of course I chatted with James Bond Anthology author Raymond Benson at the beginning that was a blast. Paul Doyle who was narcotics agent and chatted with us about his book. That is already doing very well and also Jeremy Robinson, who is the author of Antarktos Rising and talked to him special worlds in fiction. And take it easy this week and pick up a good book and we’ll see you the next time.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, TRANSCRIPTS, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Janet Paschal, Famous Singer & Author of Treasures of the Snow

June 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. It’s my pleasure to have on the show the musician and author Janet Paschal. Welcome to the show.

Janet Paschal: Thank you very much, nice to talk with you.

Dr. Kent: Well, I sure would like to listen to a couple tunes, I’ve got a couple in the queue. But let’s talk for just one second before I do that. Tell me a little about your latest record.

Janet Paschal: Well, I’ve been doing what I do for a number of years, and over the years people have remembered songs from as far back as 30 years ago, and I’ve still continued to get mail and email about some of those older songs, so for this record project we went back and recaptured 12 of those most requested songs from as far back as 30 years ago and re-recorded them. We kept the same, original arrangements and just updated the music and the technology of course, and we called it Treasure.

Dr. Kent: I’d love to listen to a track from that, I’ve got the song Hide Me, Sweet Rock of Ages in the queue, so let’s listen to that.

Janet Paschal: Okay.

Dr. Kent: Actually, why don’t you tell me a little bit about that song before we listen.

Janet Paschal: Ok, that song I recorded for the first time when I was singing with my first professional group. I was 18 years old, I lived in North Carolina, I wanted to sing Christian music, and they were coming through my area, and they were looking for a soprano, and I auditioned and they hired me. We recorded this song a couple years later, so it’s special to me for a number of reasons. Because it’s a fun song, and because it was with my original group, but also, you know, a lot of times music and songs will take you back to a certain place in your life, and that’s just been another rewarding aspect of doing this CD, it recaptures those old tunes, and it reminds us of some of the places we were, and some of the experiences we had through those years.

Dr. Kent: Wonderful. So let’s listen to this song that will take us all the way back to the beginning, Hide Me, Sweet Rock of Ages. Here it is.

(music)

Dr. Kent: Wow, what a tune.

(laughter) It’s a fun song, it really is.

Dr. Kent: It’s got to be fun, doing this kind of music.

Janet Paschal: It really, really is, because it is feel good music. It’s buoyant, and it lifts your spirits, and it has a positive message. It’s really a lot of fun, especially when you have a little history with it.

Dr. Kent: You’ve been onstage for a lot of people in a lot of countries. Tell us a little about that.

Janet Paschal: Well, I have sung in almost every country. Not every country, but certainly the majority of them, and it just astounds me that music seems to cross over language barriers, and facial expressions, and the actual chords and progressions of chords. They translate in different languages, and I have always just sung in English, and many times the audience didn’t speak English, the majority of them. But somehow they seem to have been communicated to, so it works.

Dr. Kent: You are a unique musician on the show because you’re also an author. So you’re a sound author and a sound author. And your book is called Treasures of the Snow, and it looks very similar actually to the album Treasure, which is kind of neat. But tell us about the importance of this book in your life.

Janet Paschal: Well, it’s actually my second book, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, and plowed through a year, about a year and a half of treatment. I chronicled that journey, and of course I did newsletters and blogs and so many people requested that they get a copy of that, and was I going to publish it. So finally I was due for a new book. So what I did is I worked this out so that the book is in three sections, and the first section deals with breast cancer, my plowing through that. And then the other two sections are other stories from the road. But the idea, and we did release the CD and book together, that’s the similar covers and the similar titles, but the idea is when Job was explaining to God about how faithful he had been, and explaining some of his (inaudible) to God, God just turned on him and asked where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth, and can you tell all the waters of the beaches, how far to come and no further? Do you know when a mountain gives birth? In other words he made Job realize how small he was. But one of the things he asked him which intrigued me was, have you seen the treasures of the snow? And I had ton know on that a little bit, I didn’t quite understand it. And then it occurred to me that snowflakes from a distance all look the same, but when you examine them closely, they’re very different, and they’re very unique. So for me, that spoke to me in that the situations, the things that I will have to plow through, like breast cancer, you know, some of the rough places in life, if we just gnaw on those things and try to swallow them a little bit and understand what it means in the larger scheme of things, then there are real treasures to be had, there are wonderful life lessons to be learned, and great takeaways from those things.

Dr. Kent: Well, and that’s such a hard thing to do when you’re going in and out of emergency rooms or clinics or hospitals, because those places have a horrible feel to them in some ways, and your family’s being dragged into it, and they’re all emotional, and…

Janet Paschal: You know what was the strangest thing for me was following the signs to oncology for the first time. I was treated at Duke Medical Center, and my husband and I were looking up at the ceiling following the signs to oncology, and it was just, it was so surreal, because my family didn’t have any history of cancer, and that was sort of a tough day for me, just following those signs.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, and you are a very spiritual person no doubt. Job is such a heavy book in the Bible that a lot of people like to skip over. But when you’re going through times like that, it’s pretty brave to go into Job. Talk about the book of Job.

Janet Paschal: Well, you know what I love about Job, a lot of times I go there and he does my venting for me. Because a lot of times I’ll read in Job when he was saying, “Oh, God, why do the wicked prosper?” and a lot of times I sit and I read that and I go, “Yeah, yeah, I want to know the answer to that, too.” And so it helps me just to sort of process whatever it is that I’m plowing through. But you know, in the larger scheme of things we’re all creatures of this earth, and we’ll all have great days, and we’ll all have very painful days, and good times and bad times. And so I think the crux of the matter is how we take the tough things in life, how we juggle those and balance them and how we incorporate all of that into our joys and our pleasures, and hopefully when we’ve figured it out, when it’s all said and done, then we have made good decisions and we have left the world a better place.

Dr. Kent: Well absolutely. And certainly you have quite a list of accomplishments, and you’ve inspired a lot of people. You’ve put out a ton of CD’s and probably all the way back to records. Did you put out a record at the beginning, or was it a tape?

Janet Paschal: Yes, absolutely. My first solo project was an LP, and I still have people come up to me at concerts and want me to sign it. (laughter)

Dr. Kent: Well, I’ve got to say, I’m an iPod user, and an iPod lover, but there’s something about LP’s, the pictures on them, they’re so big and so tangible, and you put the needle down on them, there’s something about it.

Janet Paschal: That’s exactly, and you know, the sound is sweeter too, I think.

Dr. Kent: So you still have an LP player?

Janet Paschal: Yes, I absolutely do.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been such a pleasure speaking with Janet Paschal, she’s got a book Treasures of the Snow, and it’s really just a wonderful book to pick up, and such an inspiration to people, and for all of those like me who look at the book of Job with a little bit of fear, this is a good entrance into that. And the album that goes with it called Treasure is really a great album, full of great energy. So tell us where we can find out more about you.

Janet Paschal: You can visit my website janetpaschal.com, or you can Google me, so Google will definitely get you there.

Dr. Kent: Exactly. Well, Janet Paschal has done so many wonderful things with her life. Thank you so much for being on the show, and for helping so many people.

Janet Paschal: It’s a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

Dr. Kent: Actually, before you leave, why don’t you say a couple words. We’re going to go out with the tune We Shall Wear a Robe and Crown. Do you have anything to say about that one?

Janet Paschal: Ok, this is again, I recorded it back probably 30 years ago, but it was one of our, the group that I was in at the time, it was our big hit, so, and you know, it still is, it’s been recorded by 150 different people, but it is still a great song.

Dr. Kent: Well thank you so much, and have a wonderful day.

Janet Paschal: Thank you. Bye.

Dr. Kent: Now this song is from the album Treasure, and it’s called We Shall Wear a Robe and Crown. Listen to this.

(music)

Dr. Kent: And that was the tune We Shall Wear a Robe and Crown by Janet Paschal, off of her newest album Treasure. Thank you so much to all my guests on the show today. I had Mark David Gerson, I had Janet Paschal, I had Mark K. Updegrove, and at the beginning the wonderful children’s author Kathy Lasky, who wrote that wonderful biography of Charles Darwin. Everybody have a safe week and pick up a great book. I’ll talk to you on the flip side.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Gospel, Pop, Religion, Inspiration, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Interview with Musician Susan Oetgen of Likeness to Lily

June 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr Kent: What a great tune, False Hopes, from the album Farewell, Recruit, and the band is called Likeness to Lily. Welcome to the show, Susan, I’m going to say your name incorrectly. Why don’t you tell me how to say it.

Susan Oetgen: Thank you, my last name is pronounced “Oetgen.”

Dr Kent: “Oetgen,” oh great. I slaughtered it earlier. Well, what an incredible track. There’s a little bit of out music in there, there’s some classical, there’s some jazz. Tell me about this.

Susan Oetgen: Well, that’s a piece that I co-wrote actually with the pianist in my band, Tony Malone, who trained, really as like a jazz pianist, and one of the reasons that I’ve loved writing this tune with him is because he really sort of brought that improvisatory and kind of off the rails sensibility of the jazz and improvisations you have, and we invited Peter Huff to play the clarinet, and Franz Nicolai who is on that track playing the accordian. He’s also, I think maybe if you know the band, the whole study, Franz (inaudible) is the whole study, and they’re kind of old friends of all of ours from jazz circles and old circles in New York. It was just kind of a tune that we wanted to get pretty free form and let everybody have their way with.

Dr Kent: Well, it’s so cool. How did you all find each other in the first place?

Susan Oetgen: The band? Likeness to Lily?

Dr Kent: Yes.

Susan Oetgen: Well, I started the band in 2003, and at the time I gathered together a group of musicians that I had worked with on different projects, and piano-based drums and guitar at the very beginning. Ian Riggs and I are actually the only two originals who sort of started with the band. But after a period of time, we were looking for a different drummer, and Ian suggested Evan Pasner, who he knew from lots of different projects around Brooklyn. Then Tony Malone went to, I guess Ian and Tony met each other when they went at Oberlin, so he came on board a little while after that, and that’s been the quartet for the last two years, two and a half years.

Dr Kent: When you’re writing a tune like this, with a great piano player like he obviously is, and this crazy arrangement, what do you do? Do you start with some words? Do you fish out a little tune here and a little tune there? What’s your process?

Susan Oetgen: Well actually I think one of the things that makes Likeness to Lily a unique, and sort of have the unique sound that it has is that it’s a very collaborative setup, the four of us are really good collaborators. But every song that we’ve written so far…

Dr Kent: You still there? I think I might have lost Susan, but hopefully we’ll try and get her back. Are you back? I lost her again. Their website is likenesstolilymusic.com, and it’s really inspiring music, incredible lyrics, and I’m pretty amazed by their whole sound, and it’s a mix of classical, jazz, and this and that. I’m going to play another song from it, and in the meantime we’re going to get Susan back on the line, she’s the lead singer from Likeness to Lily. So I’m going to play a track from their album called Farewell, Recruit, and we’ll talk to her about it right after the little pause here.

(music)

Dr Kent: And what a beautiful tune that is. That was called Farewell, Recruit, by Likeness to Lily. And we’ve had some technical difficulties today, talking with Susan, but she’s going to be calling in here in a minute, and we’ll talk to her live on the show. In the meantime, the band Likeness to Lily is four members, she’s Susan Oetgen, and there’s Tony Malone on piano, Ian Riggs on bass and Evan Pasner on drums. And I think I have you live on the air again, Susan.

Susan Oetgen: Hi.

Dr. Kent: How are you doing?

Susan Oetgen: I’m good, I’m good.

Dr. Kent: We lost you for a minute there, but we’re now back. That was a beautiful tune, my goodness, tell me about some of the other tunes from the album, including the one we just listened to, which is called Farewell, Recruit.

Susan Oetgen: Oh, sure. Well, the record has six songs on it, there are twelve songs in total, but six of the songs on the record come from a piece that I was commissioned to write by the Brooklyn Philharmonic last year, where I was invited to bring Likeness to Lily and combine Likeness to Lily with chamber musicians, violin, cello and flute, and create a piece for a series that the Brooklyn Philharmonic does at the Brooklyn Museum, which involves collections, like the paintings or images in the museum’s collection. And the program that I was invited to write this commission for was based on the Islamic Art Collection at the Brooklyn Museum. So I had been working really with material related to the Marine Corp and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and somehow it kind of all came together when I went to the museum to research the actual paintings, and saw these really beautiful works of art that told the story of two lovers called Leila and Maglilan, which is sort of like the Romeo and Juliet of Islamic literature. So I created a piece with six songs that told the story of Leila and Maglilan in a kind of updated version of a United States Marine and a woman who meet and fall in love and then are separated because he’s deployed, which roughly follows the same story line as the two lovers Leila and Maglilan, who are separated for various reasons. So the song Farewell, Recruit, I think really sets the stage of that story and kind of introduces the rest of the record as like a sort of story that incorporates contemporary ideas as well as a more poetic and ancient one, too.

Dr. Kent: I’d like to talk about the words for a minute, before we get disconnected. We were kind of talking about that, whether you were talking about the process of how Likeness to Lily is special to you, and I was asking you about words first, music first.

Susan Oetgen: Yeah, sure. I think that the thing that makes Likeness to Lily unique is that really the songs start as poems or stories that I write and then set to a melody and then create for, and then bring to Tony and Evan and Ian, and as a group we arrange those melodies and create the songs that you hear on the record. I think that as we’ve developed as a band one thing has become really clear to us, and that is that the music is really, it’s very storytelling, not just in terms of the lyrics, which are always, you know, really most of the songs have a really narrative point of view, they’re about characters or portraits of characters, and that sort of thing, but the music itself also contributes to that storytelling, because I think that what we create I the moment, either listening to the songs on a record or live, is a way to kind of escape into another universe where as an audience you can kind of have a keyhole viewpoint on a different story or different people living out a different story line. So yeah, they always sort of start with the lyrics, that’s for sure.

Dr. Kent: And one thing I like about Farewell, Recruit is in the middle of the song you talk about September 11th, and it’s such a visual story. This guy goes to become a member of the Army, and it’s definitely from the woman’s perspective, and she says, “Was it really so brutal?” It’s an interesting part of the story that we don’t often hear about, but it’s kind of the result of all these, there’s so many military men that are committing suicide and this and that because their relationships are, you know, people just can’t understand.

Susan Oetgen: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: A really powerful story for these times. In what sense, how do you incorporate words? Are you like a poet that gets up every morning and does ten minutes of poetry? Or do you sort of explode with it?

Susan Oetgen: I think it sort of comes in little segments here and there. Sometimes just a phrase or a word will seem really interesting, and then all of a sudden it will sort of spin out into a lyric, kind of of its own energy. But I think it’s mostly just because, as a way of communicating, language is so natural. I trained as a classical singer, and I’ve been a singer more than I would say a musician for most of my life. So the medium of words and language is something that is really natural, and I’ve spend a lot of time studying. Like in classical singing you really study the words of an opera, or the words of an art song, because a lot of times they’re in foreign languages, and you really have to know what you’re singing about. So in a way, I think that you, yeah, I heard of, I think it was E. Ennie Poole, the author who in an interview said that she gets up every morning, and it’s like any other job, she just sits down at the desk, and for like 8 hours, what she does is she writes. I definitely am not like that. I wish I had that kind of discipline, but it’s more just like, you know, words and images, or like a story kind of comes to mind and then it’s like a little bit of work at it whenever it seems inspired, you know.

Dr. Kent: Well, very cool. I’m going to play one more track here, and I’ll say goodbye to you know, but it’s Helen the Blessed. Tell me a little about that one.

Susan Oetgen: Oh sure, yeah. That actually, that piece is based on a poem that was written by my aunt, my father’s younger sister. She wrote a poem, which I adapted slightly to make it into more of like a song format lyrically, but it’s a song about my great grandmother on my father’s side, and her three sons, so she was, she lost three of her four sons before she died, and the fourth son I think was a priest. So in a way it was like saying good bye to all four of her sons, and it’s just, I thought that was an inspiring story because it seems so different than the kind of modern stories that you hear, like in the time of war there really is this thing where people have sons and daughters that go away, more than one, and it really affects the family life. So I thought it was, even though it’s a song about a different place and a different time, it’s kind of topical to what we live today in our society today. But it is about my great grandmother, a true story, if you will.

Dr. Kent: Well, very cool. Thank you so much for chatting with me. I’ve been speaking with Susan, the lead singer of Likeness to Lily, and their website is likenesstolilymusic.com.

Susan Oetgen: Thanks so much.

Dr. Kent: I’m going to play a track from Likeness to Lily, from their last album, and that’s called Farewell, Recruit, of course named after that gorgeous song we just listened to, and this song is called Helen the Blessed. Let’s listen to that.

(music)

Dr. Kent: That was a beautiful tune from Likeness to Lily, and that one’s called Helen the Blessed from their latest record called Farewell, Recruit. Well, it’s been a great show this week, thank you so much for tuning in. This is Dr. Kent, and I’m tuning out. I hope you have a safe one, and I hope you crack a book, and I hope you go to Likeness to Lily’s website and check out their music, what incredible sounds. So be well, enjoy the new spring we’ve got and have a great weekend.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Experimental, Folk, Classical, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, Jazz, PODCAST

Mariam Adam of the Imani Winds

May 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is a musician, of course. On the fourth part of every show we feature authors of sound and we’ve got the Imani Winds up ahead. I’m going to play a little piece by them, by Ravel, this is Le Tombeau De Couperin, I’m not very good at French. It’s by Ravel, beautiful piece by Imani Winds. We’re going to listen to that, and then we’re going to talk to the clarinetist.

(music)

Dr. Kent: What a gorgeous rendition of that. And it’s my honor now to speak to a member of the Imani Winds. I’m speaking with Mariam Adam. Are you there?

Mariam Adam: Yes, I’m here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: What a gorgeous sound. Tell me first about that Ravel piece.

Mariam Adam: Well, it’s a piece that was originally for piano and then rearranged by Ravel himself for the orchestra, and that’s probably on of the more well known versions of the Le Tombeau De Couperin, and it was a piece that was actually dedicated to his friend that had fallen in the first World War. But then it was transcribed for the wind quintet by a horn player actually. And it’s one of the few pieces that has transcribed well for the wind quintet, and is written in such a lush way that you don’t often get to hear these five instruments. So I think for that reason alone it has an appeal to every type of listener, classical, contemporary, and even some people hear a little bit of the jazz element in the movements.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, that’s a fascinating thing about your music is that it’s got a real edge to it of, it’s got the jazz in it. We’re going to listen to some piet solo later, and you’ve got a whole bunch of different elements coming together in all of your music.

Mariam Adam: Yep, that’s our M.O. (laughter) Have to put in a little bit of everything.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about the group. Where do you guys play? You’ve got all these things going on, and of course something that’s very fascinating about the group is you’re all African American players. Talk about all of that.

Maiam Adam: Yeah. Imani Winds is a group that definitely looks the way that we do for a reason. Valerie the flutist had the name of a group before she even had the members of the group about 11 years ago and I knew her from summer festival out at Aspen. We moved to New York at the same time to go to grad school, got this group started, had no idea where it was going to go, although she always says that she did, and I believe it. But the group started out as African American, Latino musicians in classical music, one, to give the composers a similar background of voice. Another reason to give younger players that look like us role models that we feel we didn’t necessarily have growing up on our instruments. And also to really give a new direction to chamber music, and maybe a little bit of evolution of what chamber music is coming to. You know, we’ll always have the classic pieces like Ravel, and for us classic pieces also mean Milton and Carter and things from the 1940’s and 50’s. That’s about as recent as we get for the great works. But that led Imani Winds to take a path that was, one, educational, as well as slightly groundbreaking just for the reason that there weren’t many wind quartets out there doing what we do, and having two composers in the group, and think that is really the unique trump card that we have. That we have two composers who don’t just transcribe things, they write original works, and they’ve had us as their guinea pigs for many years, so they’ve gotten quite good at it. It has allowed us to expand into many different genres and bring it to our audiences. And there’s always a little bit of something for everybody on our program. And the places that we end up playing.

Dr. Kent: And on your website, imaniwinds.com, that’s i-m-a-n-i winds.com, there’s some incredible information about your group. And the bio page is just an incredible collection of folks. A number of awards, the degrees like you said, the composers, the incredible jazz and classical performers. What’s it like to play in such a small group with so many fantastic people?

Mariam Adam: Well, it’s wonderful. It really is wonderful. I think because we get along. People see that, and it comes through in our music, and I think that is also a rare thing that people say in chambers, in the groups, is that we have fun on stage, we have fun with the music. Everybody is really kick butt on their instruments. It’s a technical term. So we have a lot of freedom because of that, and not a lot of restrictions. Also, when it comes to our proper on stage, and we have stage etiquette, but also we speak to the audience and we allow them to respond to us, and we try to break down that wall that has been the stigma of classical music concerts. So we’re at Carnegie Hall and Alice Kelly, and all the big halls of New York, and all the big venues across the state. But we definitely want to celebrate the joy that we have in music and bring that infectious energy to other people. And that’s not something you get to see all the time, and I think that’s why we’ve had the longevity that we’ve had, because we love doing what we’re doing, we know we’re very lucky, to be a full time touring wind quintet. But we also work very, very hard with it, and that includes getting up at 8:00 in the morning, 7:00 in the morning, to go play for little kids in schools in every city that we visit, to bring this love of music to them.

Dr. Kent: It really is extraordinary also, for me, I have a background as a composer, and I went to Stonybrook, which I know you’re horn player did. You have a specifically, a commissioning project that’s aiming for people that wouldn’t necessarily be writing this kind of music, and featuring, well talk about that a little bit.

Mariam Adam: Yeah, the Legacy Commissioning Project started out as a commissioning project to celebrate being ten years together, same people. And it’s really evolved into a mission and a movement to get new music into the chamber music repoirtoire, especially for the woodwind quintet, because there’s a lot of woodwind quintet pieces out there, but they’re not all very good. And because people don’t have a group to write for a lot of the time, and to experiment with, they tend to write in a very similar style. So we’re getting composers like Jason Moran who is an incredibly, eclectic avant gardi and yet contemporary and down home swinging jazz pianos. And then you have Stephan Harris, who is also just multi talented. Percussionist, vibrafonist, composer, band leader, and Tanya Leone. Simoncho Hin is a ute player from Palestinian background. And these are all people who come from completely different angles but we’re forcing them, essentially, to write for us. But with the idea that they get to collaborate and we get to come back to them and say look, this is an amazing idea, why don’t you expand on this. Or, guess what, this doesn’t work. So we have feedback with the piece, and that is also to ensure that the piece is going to have legs beyond the premiere, and beyond this first world premiere that would happen. Because a lot of times that’s what would happen with commission pieces and then you never hear about them again. And we want to make sure these pieces stick around, so that they’re written well and that the person who’s writing kind of outside of their norm, ends up feeling comfortable in it, and successful.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. I encourage everybody to go check out imaniwinds.com. I love your last album, and we’re going to play a track from that coming up ahead, Liver Tango from Master Piazzolo, which is a very brave piece to play, and it’s an incredible version of it. Are you working on any new recording projects?

Mariam Adam: Absolutely. We always have a couple in the pipeline, but one of them right now is going to be the Legacy Commissioning project pieces. We have one by Alvan Singleton. We have the piece by Jason Ran, we have a piece by Stephan Harris coming up soon. We also have a great piece that was part of the commissioning project by Roberto Sierra that’s written for string quartet, plus wind quintet, which I think is going to be a new genre. I’m so excited about it. I love the sound, I love the power that we get with these two groups together. And Valerie Coleman, our flutist, also wrote a piece to go with the concerts, with this collaboration of the string quartet. So we’re going to be recording that. We have a wonderful piece by Bucky (inaudible) who wrote (inaudible) for us called (inaudible) over Havana, and we might be putting out things in singles. But we also have a couple albums that we’ll put together from these Legacy Commissioning project pieces. And there’s always something new on the horizon, so yes, please get into our website and check out Alejandro. So we’ll probably be near somewhere near somebody soon. We’re all over the place.

Dr. Kent: Well I love it, incredible music. I hope to talk to you again after some of these CDs come out. It’s great stuff, and keep doing it.

Mariam Adam: Absolutely, and make sure you check out the Christmas album that we had, that’s the one that keeps giving back every year.

Dr. Kent: Oh, Ill bet, I’ll beat it does, yeah.

Mariam Adam: It’s great fun.

Dr. Kent: No Christmas songs here, but I want to play the song from their last Grammy nominated album, and this one’s called Libra Tango from Aster Piazzolo. Thank you so much for chatting with me, Mariam Adam.

Mariam Adam: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Kent: And the website again is imaniwinds.com. Go check out their music. It’s amazing stuff. So we’re going to listen to the whole track called Libra Tango from Aster Piazzoli, by the Imani Winds.

(music)

Dr. Kent: What a beautiful piece. I’m going to cut it off right there, but if you want to listen to more go to imaniwinds.com. That’s a piece called Libra Tango by Aster Piazzola, as performed by the Imani Winds. Check them out. It was such an honor chatting with Mariam Adam about her group, and her performances on the clarinet. And earlier in the show today we talked to Paul Austin. I could have talked to him for several hours about his riveting stories from the ER. And before that we talked to John Gilmore about his memories of Marilyn Monroe. And at the very beginning of the show, of course, was the incredible, inspirational story of Missy Jenkins, who not only survived a school shooting, but she’s starting to really get her story out there into the world, and she changes so many people’s lives with it. Well, have a great week, today is the first day of spring, and I hope you have a great one, and pick up a good book in the meantime.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Experimental, Classical, Jazz, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Sarah Watkins | Nickel Creek Singer & New Solo Record

April 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Sarah Watkins | Nickel Creek Singer & Fiddler [21:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I loved speaking with Sarah Watkins about her brand new solo career, tour and record, after so many successful years with Nickel Creek. Check out the tunes and conversation in this interview! More about Sarah’s new album from her MySpace page:

In 1989, Watkins, barely out of her childhood, started playing in a nascent version of Nickel Creek at the seemingly unlikely venue of That Pizza Place in Carlsbad, California, along with her guitarist brother Sean and mandolinist friend Chris Thile (and chaperoned, of course, by her bluegrass-playing parents). The prodigious young trio built a reputation in bluegrass, folk, and country circles, then catapulted to mainstream prominence in 2000 after releasing an album produced by Alison Krauss. When not on the road or in the studio with Nickel Creek, Watkins guest-starred as fiddler and/or harmony vocalist on albums by Bela Fleck, the Chieftains, Ben Lee, Dan Wilson, Richard Thompson, and Ray La Montagne, among others. In addition, Watkins and brother Sean established an informal get-up-and-jam residency called the Watkins Family Hour at L.A. club Largo, “an uber-cool but cozy music and comedy club in Hollywood,” as Sean has put it. Watkins brings the spirit of the long-running Watkins Family Hour to her debut. It was there, in fact, that she developed and fine-tuned the repertoire for the album: “I had lived with a lot of this material for a while. It was tested and tweaked through the years playing at Largo. Songs would come and go; these are the songs that have stuck. Some are newer than others—’Lord Won’t You Help Me’ was a deliberate choice for the record. Some I had done for years, like Jon’s ‘Same Mistakes.’ ‘Too Much’ is a David Garza song, and I always loved it.”

John Paul Jones, who’d briefly toured during 2004 with Nickel Creek and Toad the Wet Sprocket lead singer Glenn Phillips in an ad hoc group called Mutual Admiration Society, had long encouraged Watkins to make a record of her own, offering his services well before she was ready to hit the studio. As Watkins recalls, laughing, “A couple of years ago we saw John Paul Jones at the Cambridge folk festival. He came up after our performance and said that if I didn’t let him produce my record he would never speak to me again. I was thrilled that he was that excited about it. He actually stayed with it and kept in touch. At that point, in Cambridge, I believe we had already talked about winding down the Nickel Creek touring, so it was a really convenient time and it helped me stay focused. It was a perfect moment to start transferring over the creative energy.”

Jones kept a familial atmosphere, and maintained an unobtrusive presence, in the studio, says Watkins: “I think he was allowing the band to be a band and play for each other, rather than have us play through a song, then look to see if that’s what he was or wasn’t looking for. Eventually, John would give us his feedback and directions to guide us in. I think that has a lot to do with the sound of the record being band-oriented, especially considering there were a lot of different musicians coming in.” Cutting John Hartford’s “Long Hot Summer Day” was especially inspired—with Rawlings playing “caveman drums,” Welch strapping on an electric guitar, and Watkins revving up everyone with her fiddle playing. The compellingly straightforward arrangements she and Jones devised allow Watkins’ personality to come through, illustrating both her sensitivity and her strength. Theses sessions had been a long time coming, but it’s clear that Watkins has only just begun.

—Michael Hill

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, Pop, Folk, Jazz, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST