“When we recorded, I wasn’t thinking about other people. I didn’t have anybody to really look to, because it wasn’t a genre back then,” recalls Trinere, reflecting on her recording sessions in South Florida penning what would become some of the most well known songs of the freestyle musical style. “I came from the jazz world. He [referring to “Pretty Tony” Butler who she would partner with in music and romantically] was doing his own style. I wasn’t gonna allow him to give me just any type of simple track. I wanted a bridge, I wanted a chorus. I wanted to sing! And that’s where we gelled.” Trinere Farrington, known simply b ...
"I think I have a desert soul. I was inspired by that my whole life - a lonely highway and a neon sign and a derelict shopping mall. Sort of those castaway places." So explains Loviet, referring to the imagery for her new record, 777, which has several photos taken in the United States' southwestern desert area, despite the musician hailing from Canada's Nova Scotia province. "I kinda relate to the desert. Even in my hometown there's a desolate vibe. I kinda relate to the middle of nowhere." While she now resides in Toronto, she talks about her lyrics stemming from imaginative sources - "I wish I ...
"Nevada City is just such a beautiful sweet town and a very idyllic place," says Alela Diane reflecting on the town at the confluence of the foothills and mountains in the Sierra Nevada where she grew up. The musician and multi-instrumentalist, who has lived in Portland, Oregon since 2006, creates a woodsy ethereal folk sound that fluently joins inspirations of her landscapes and geographies both personal and physical, and it's clear to pick up on how the forested winding roads and surreal daydreamy Yuba River of those Sierra mountains can be heard throughout her earlier recordings. While the quaint town lies mostly off the map, sitting alo ...
"I went to junior high with Tony from the Adolescents. Before punk rock even happened, we were listening to Rolling Stones records, and then the Ramones record came out, and we're like, 'What's this?!!'" Greg Kuehn has made a life crafting the sounds that you've probably heard without giving much thought to where it came from. CNN, Ford, Amazon, Verizon, Vans and music from the Barack Obama campaign represent just a handful of entities that Kuehn has worked with. With his company, Peligro Music, Greg Kuehn has partnered with, and created music and sound design for international brands and companies but you wouldn't know this from speaking wi ...
"It's hard for me to separate myself from music. I feel like creativity is so important to me that when I have writer's block or a lapse in creativity, I feel like a stranger in my own body," explains Luna Shadows, a writer and producer, talking about music being her passion and primary creative outlet. "I feel like creativity is part of my personality, but I think a lot of time I really struggle to feel confident in my own ideas or in my creation. But I think the thing about that is I'm used to that feeling. I'm used to feeling uncomfortable." As a performer who admits to experiencing stage fright and who says she's not a natural when it ...
The poor treatment and commodification of recording artists and creators by the mainstream record industry is well known. "The record industry went through an era of just hand over fist cash. But they made a few mistakes along the way," says Steve Knopper, author of the book Appetite For Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, discussing the traditional system of an up-and-coming artist with no financial leverage basically having no choice but to sign a recording contract with terms heavily favoring the record companies. Though as a writer who penned articles under a freelance basis before taking a ...
"It can be super overwhelming! I've been doing it all myself for six years," laughs Limbo, a producer who has a knack for creating dreamy bedroom pop anthems that can take a kaleidoscope of emotions and lyrics written with humorous double-meanings, and distill them into a collection of sounds with the end result being deceivingly simplistic and catchy songs. The singer, having taken the name from an age in her life when physical and emotional limits struck her as being in a fluid state of limbo, as well as a childhood skill she had growing up around two musical brothers, has taken the DIY ethic and model seemingly to an extreme. "I've been ...
In the late 90's, a power pop trio called Co-Ed made an instant impression upon first seeing them at a local show. Based out of the Claremont, California area, the group had such an immediately radiant feel to their performances, often joking back and forth between songs, all smiles, and playing with an upbeat catchiness that far betrayed some of their lyrics of uncertain relationships (although they also sang about the at-the-time staple X-Files TV show). I remember seeing them play often in Orange County at venues like Koo's Cafe and Public Storage/Chain Reaction, and they put out an album (Sometimes, Always, Maybe, Never), a 7" (the Sof ...
'Who's Aberdeen?' she asked, scrolling through my music. Outside the car, Spanish moss hung over the sidewalks, lending an eerie texture to the dense Southern night. The streets were quiet, and we sat inside the car just steps from the front of her house, though neither of us really wanted her to go home... yet. I have this theory that writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald aren't actually all that good, they just happen to be the Stephen King or Danielle Steele of their era; remembered less because of their boundary-pushing innovation and more because they happened to be the ones who fit the formula for mass ...
Everyone who has a passion or job in a creative field understands the amount of work it takes to begin seeing recognition in your art. It often takes years, if not decades of effort, of networking, and of struggling in order to gain an audience for your work. Arrested Development, a rap group from Georgia fronted by lead DJ Speech and turntablist Headliner, were fortunate enough to experience the lightning-strike odds of their debut record, 1992’s “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…” (the title is a reference to the length of time the group was grinding it out before being signed to a record deal) immediately hitting the mainstream ...
Growing up in a pre-internet age, the punk scene in my area was great at creating its own hype, fostering a network of touring bands, and encouraging a culture of passing around cassettes since there was little hope of any mainstream music outlets broadcasting the bands. Cut to a generation later and the internet has presented what basement shows and low cost 7" records had existed for: for those passionate enough to create music and be heard without radio play. Music became accessible over an endless range, rather than being confined to local scenes. While college stations in my area never really had the numbers or range to compete w ...
From swirling electronic melodies to earworm stream-of-consciousness raps to climactic beats – all layered over booming house bass sequences, producer LP Giobbi – nee Leah Chisholm – has fused her upbringing in a musical household and background in jazz study to her EDM songwriting, creating a sound appropriately described as Pianohouse. LP Giobbi performs at SnowGlobe Music Festival, December 2018. photo: Shaun Astor With a high-energy live performance which has taken her around the globe, one may very likely be surprised to learn that the producer jumping atop the decks and whipping the crowd into a sweaty mass-movement frenzy ove ...
The year is 1998… The internet, which is beginning to become commonplace in American households, is beginning to change the landscape of music. Up until this point, music was listened to primarily on full length albums or singles played on the radio and exchanged through trading cassettes with friends. Compilation CD’s and traveling festival-style shows like Warped Tour and Lollapalooza were just emerging as the dominant method of music fans having the chance to check out bands and performers from different genres. In short, depending on where you lived it was a lot harder to hear music outside of the popular styles and a hell of a lot ...
“…It’s not just about being on stage. This industry is so male-dominated. We need more women in the music industry, behind the scenes: producers, mixers!” Cristal Ramirez handles the lead vocals and plays guitar for The Aces, a 4 piece power pop band made up of four friends who grew up in the outskirts of Provo, Utah. The band, rounded out by Ramirez’s sister Alisa, and two best friends – one of whom has also been in the band since the beginning - played their first show at Cristal’s 11th birthday party. They’re currently in the studio working on their second album, the follow up to 2018’s When My Heart Felt Volcanic. Th ...
Punk Rock Bowling Festival 2019. Pictures from the annual beer-soaked festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. With over 50 bands on the festival's two stages, along with nearly two dozen late night club shows taking place in bars and venues throughout downtown Vegas over the weekend, Punk Rock Bowling mixes music, pool parties, a poker tournament and bowling tournament to create a scene in Las Vegas reminiscent of the dystopian scenes from every 80's after school movie where the punks take over and civil society is at their mercy. 2019's headliners included Rancid, Descendents and The Specials. Here are a few pictures from this year's festivities... ...
For all of its reputation for being a paradise of palm trees lining beachfront real estate, beautiful people driving down sun-soaked iconic streets and glamorous displays of wealth parading through global pop culture screens and pages, Keith Morris has spent his life furiously writing about the manic depravity, the cankerous potholes underlying the façade, the stains that lie in the shadowy alleyways between pastel offices buildings and designer grocery stores. “There’s construction going on right outside my window. Can you hear it? At least we’re not having this conversation on a Wednesday when the leaf blowers are out,” he says to me ...
“The Beatles created a world I wanted to belong to…” says Colin Hay while he prepares to embark on a West Coast tour of the United States. While the singer names Bob Dylan and Booker T. & the M.G.’s as being amongst the performers who made him want to play music, he explains that the Beatles and his parents owning a music shop and the constant presence of music around him growing up that really influenced him. Cut to the present; Colin Hay has 13 solo records and continues to write and tour constantly. He is subject of a documentary film. His wife, Latin singer, Cecilia Noël, is a part of his touring band, along with ...
Ask anyone who was around in punk’s early days – the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when the music was raw, intentionally against the grain, and subversive by its very nature – and they’ll tell you that shows had the potential to erupt into violence, sometimes against the police, sometimes against each other. “People used to tape razor blades to their combat boots and swing around these chains. And the circle pit was just insane,” John Feldmann, recalls. “I got knocked out at a Suicidal Tendencies show. This guy had these steel toe combat boots and did a backflip off the stage and just knocked me out. I was laying there unconscious for l ...
Growing up a basketball fan in Southern California in the late 80's, not only was I always aware of Paula Abdul as a powerhouse pop singer who put out Forever Your Girl, a well-loved record that I still play often to this day, but I also knew of her background as a Lakers Girl cheerleader. On her most recent tour, I got to speak to her about her background in cheer, dance and singing, and was absolutely blown away by her story of how she made the Lakers squad to begin with, and how everything unfolded from there. The conversation still feels surreal to me, but here it is: my interview with Paula Abdul... “I was yo ...
Above anything else, what has always stuck out to me the most about Pearl Charles' music is her honeycrisp voice. That it hovers atop a vintage Americana sound that touches on a pop clarity, but can border on the psychedelic or nearly eerie is the recipe for repeated plays as the dusk turns to night. Such was the case as I drove across rural Florida, that strange belt of the not-quite-South, where the music of her Sleepless Dreamer album and the tropical and Spanish moss-kissed two-lane highways combined to create a feeling of the surreal. It was with these echoes of her storytelling crooning through car speakers on backroads that lit up aft ...
October, 2018 - about a week before Halloween - and soundtrack composer, Alan Howarth, announces "I'll bet you know this one" to the sold out crowd inside Portland, Oregon's Hollywood Theatre. This appearance is four years after after his last time playing inside this theatre. Both sets followed movies that he helped create the soundtracks for (Halloween III: Season Of The Witch in 2014, and Prince Of Darkness this year), only this show is in support of his first live album. Recorded at that 2014 show, boutique small-run vinyl record label, Wyrd War, packaged and released the album - Alan Howarth - Live At Hollywood Theatre - som ...
Throwing her hands up in the shape of a heart, CloZee stands in front of a cheering, sweaty, sold out crowd at The Bluebird on Reno’s 4th Street. The show was just one of the French producer’s sold out appearances on her first headlining tour across the US, and her music, an electronic amalgamation of melodic glitch-hop and organic ambiance, had the room dancing in the glow of laser light visuals for the entire set. CloZee, nee Chloe Herry, is touring to promote her album, Evasion, which dropped on October 5th. A veteran of performing at festivals around the world, she explains that this travel makes up a large pa ...
It was a response to an era when I had realized I was getting too comfortable - at that point I had lived up and down the West Coast, I had travelled almost constantly for several years, and even the trips when everything went wrong, I realized that everything too easily worked itself out. I wanted to push my boundaries again. I wanted the feelings that came from being completely outside of my comfort zone. This is always where I had felt that I learned the most, the situations that always resulted in the memories that shaped me and came up in conversation years later. I decided I wanted to move ...
“I think we are that animal,” says Matt Muirhead, trumpet player and producer for the New York three-piece band Too Many Zooz. Muirhead is talking about the group’s use of imagery on record covers and t shirts – even the band name itself – depicting wild and unconventional animals. “Myself and Leo [Pelligrino, the group’s baritone sax player] both went to the Manhattan School of Music. A lot of what we did was just frowned upon; the music we liked and played, and who we were as people. At a certain point, once we were playing in the subway, it kinda gave us the confidence to say, ‘Fuck that’. I t ...
Sneaking into the Go Go's! The Go Go's have the honor of being the band who I've snuck into see on more occasions than any other band. Owing it to the band being one of my favorite groups of any era, coupled with their tour circuit of medium sized venues lacking in serious security in their waning years, at the time of their breakup, the running total was me: 5, venue security: 0... The second time I saw them play was in Reno at the Silver Legacy casino theater in 2011. After having hitchhiked from Oregon to Nevada - with a break in hitching in order to float in a sporting goods store inflatable raft along the Sacramento River b ...
Before his appearance at The Saint in Reno's Midtown District on August 18th, I had a chance to speak with Dave Wakeling, who, along with Ranking Roger, was the primary songwriter behind the bands The English Beat and General Public. The band was en route to 2018 KAABOO Del Mar Festival in Southern California. Dave shared stories and lessons he's learned from his years of writing and touring, but most interestingly, he reflected on changes he's made to his lifestyle following those years on the road. Below is an interview with Dave Wakeling, along with pictures of The English Beat playing at The Saint in Reno, Nevada on August 18th, 2018. &nb ...