Maggie Szabo ups her game at the Hotel Cafe by Patrick O’Heffernan

 

With her brilliant smile, athletic body  and mischievous eyes, the diminutive Maggie Szabo put on a show Friday night at LA’s premier showcase club this Friday that topped even her high-energy performance  record.  Nobody sat still as she rocked  through  11 songs – mostly new material including the new, soon-to-be-a-hit “Paralyze”,  along with favorites like “Sweetest  Heartache” and the solid pop-anthem, “Slow Fire”.

Having seen her live four times,  I  could tell that there has been both a creative burst and a lot of hard work in her career since I started following her about a year ago. New songs  blended smoothly with her audience’s established favorites, making the evening  seem like a  party  with old  friends;  there were no dissonant  notes, no “where is Maggie going?”, questions.  It  just all worked.  Even when she took to the old  upright piano in far stage left and shifted mood for “Touch the Ground” and “Take Your Time”,  she was  on  target both as a singer and as  a performer. Plus she gave a preview of some of  the new songs on an EP  she is now wrapping up a new EP, Truth.

It was the performer side of Maggie  that really seems  to have grown.  A consummate  relationship builder online, with tens of thousands of Facebook and twitter  followers, Maggie has always been able to transfer that likeability to her performances – a skill I marveled at last February  when I attended her album release  party on the same stage.  But this Friday night she brought a  new confidence and a new capacity to connect personally with individual  fans  – the way Bill  Clinton does  in a crowd.  She was singing to you, personally.

A Canadian-born,  Nashville-trained soul-pop singer with ferocious energy packed into a compact, constantly moving frame, Maggie  has moved from an online hit wonder to full-blown top writing, signing and touring performer.  In the short time she has been in LA, I have watched her tighten her song-writing, elevate her command of the stage, and pull her current band – Steven Shook, Sam Campbell, Frank Grande, Sonny Kennelly, Aaron Aiken, Chantel McCrary together into a well-oiled and joyfully focused machine.

Stepping up to her trademark pink mic stand and microphone, dressed in formal short black dress with a bare  midriff that let the rhinestone in her belly button flash as she moved, Maggie was  confident and energized.  She kicked off the evening with a new song, “Tragedy”, telling  the song’s recipient of her attitude, Cuz I’d be the one who would make you feel/Like a million dollars every day of the week while letting us know she would make us feel  like a million dollars that night.

 

And she did,  introducing us to the new song, “Paralyze” and then  upshifting even more to her full-tilt dance cut,  “Slow Fire”.  The room bounced  and swayed as she told us Baby, we can burn all night-  and we were ready to do just that.  As she moved through the set list, including the two  songs with her at the piano and back to the band with “One Sided”,   her command of the performance and the audience expanded, like the lens on  a spotlight opening up to illuminate a growing circle.  When she gave the band a downbeat and launched into the pop-constructed “Sweetest Heartache” with  its ultimately singable hooks, people  in the back of the room couldn’t  restrain themselves and started dancing, clearing a tiny  space  in the standing crowd.

“Relapse” and “Forgive and forget”  kept  the energy up.  Maggie finished on the highest note  in reparatory, her  hit single “Tidal  Waves and Hurricanes”.  It was over too soon.

Early on in the performance Maggie told us that the Hotel  Café is her favorite venue in LA and she rocks it wonderfully. But  I would love to see her in a larger space, either solo or opening for a national  act where she could bring in her legions of fans and give them room to dance. Her pop  constructions can easily cross from iPod Playlists sand Pandora  downloads to into  room-filling anthem/dance music  A larger space as a solo or big tour warm up act would also give her the freedom to lengthen her songs from radio-ready 2 to 3 minutes to concert length, 5 – 7  minute cuts.  She has the energy and the material – “Slow Fire” and “Tidal Waves and Hurricanes”, for instance – and her current band  could easily kick it up even more with drum and guitar solos.  But  most importantly, Maggie has  the authority on stage to translate to a larger venue  and a growing audience. She deserves it and so do we.

~ Patrick O’Heffernan. Host, MusicFridayLive!

 

Maggie Szabo

Allaboutmaggie.com

https://twitter.com/allaboutmaggie

Hotel Café, Hollywood CA

11/7/14

Kat McDowell’s USA debut Rise Above is a winner from the first note by Patrick O’Heffernan

The thing about Kat McDowell is that she is just plain fun to listen to. And remarkably, she is fun to listen to in two languages, English and Japanese.  And that’s not an easy thing to accomplish, given the difference between the two languages. But  Kat McDowell does it so well that in any language her music can make you sit up and take notice, or just let you happily tap your feet. Either way, she is a musical force on a fast track.

 

Born in Japan, raised mostly in New Zealand, with many parts of both cultures inside her, she combines pop, J-Pop, calypso, rock and a positive musical attitude in a mixture that is like sunshine to listen to.  She built a successful career in Japan and now is in the USA, Los Angeles to be geographically exact, enjoying its surf (she is avid surfer), its plethora of recording assets and a world  class population of collaborating artists.  The first fruits of that relocation, the album Rise Above,  is due out in two weeks  and it is a winner from the first note.

Rise Above is a substantial work;  10 songs, one in Japanese and English, the others in English, each one  distinctive,  but still well within the upbeat universe that Kat constructs even from the most somber of contests.  The album’s breakout single, “Human” is  her musical follow up to a very nasty argument that moves from Just one of those days when I don’t want to get out of bed to  Surely we can be human. Framed with a ukulele, light guitar  strum and drum brushes, it makes you smile and tap your feet as you think about – why can’t we all just get along and be human.  You know you are in Kat’s World and you love it.

“Still Learning How To Start” picks up the pace with heavier guitars and a  solid pop beat, but it is still Kat McDowell Sunshine,  even as she sings of  promises made  under the stars at night.. The chorus Here we are, you still have my heart” and here we are and we’re still learning how to start  is a first class earworm hook, tailor-made for top  40 radio and a crush of fans singing and  waving their arms and cellphones at a concert (I’ll be there).

“Lovely Day” is exactly what you want to wake up to…bright shiny pop notes and lyrics that tell you no matter how bad you feel, it is  a beautiful day.  There’s always some kind of crises, she reminds us and tells us to put a smile back on our face and be the change we want in our life. And she says she will help you carry on – and she does. Not profound, but it works and is especially welcome in a rock universe with so much music that makes you want to stay in bed.

My favorite song on the Album is “Goodbye”, which introduces a more Caribbean feel, and is little  more serious, although Kat’s trademark cheery voice and the upbeat arrangement is well within sunshine land.  You’ve had to say goodbye so many times, You can’t remember why you even bother sings the woman who played at 1000 gigs on three continents and is now living in her third country. This is not about her, but it is very intriguing…makes you wonder  while you tap your feet.

The remaining 6 songs on the album are all musically addictive and emotionally thoughtful as they venture into shadows as well as sunshine. Standouts include  “Walkaway”, a quiet poetic story performed with a guitar and no happy ending as she walks away from a relationship, “Dianna”  moved along with an EDM-style beat and syncopated keyboards and electric guitar in a classically–assembled pop arrangement with a twist, and the pop ballad  “Final Win”  with a 80’s rock feel in which she reminds you that you have never heard my roar (we will). And finally, the Japanese version of  “Still Learning How to Start” which shows how she elevates her voice to a higher key and enunciates the Japanese lyrics a little faster  than the English.

This is an album you can put on in the background as you go about your day,  or on your earbuds with your eyes closed while you lie on the beach and think about life, hers and yours.  It is a perfect introduction for Kat McDowell into the US market and should carve out a space for  her that she can build on, and she certainly will. Above all, Rise Above  is pure musical sunshine.

Patrick O’Heffernan, Host Music FridayLive! radio

https://twitter.com/katmcdowell

 

Maggie Szabo rocks LA and then heads for New York (but she’ll be back) by Patrick O’Heffernan

 

Maggie Szabo left fans at the Silverlake Lounge with a lightning bolt of a parting shot before heading off to a recording session in New York Monday night.  A high energy, beat-driven eight-song set, finished off with her hit single “Tidal Waves and Hurricanes” kept the packed club moving and dancing.  Sparks and flames were practically flying out of Maggie and her band she was so on.

I have seen Maggie live three times, most recently at the Hotel Café in February, and she has grown and improved orders of magnitude – and she was top rated to start with.  Her band  Monday night–  regular drummer  Sam Campbell, the kick-ass Kyle Calvillo on lead guitar, Steven Shook on rhythm guitar and Sonny Kennelly on bass – were so tight they moved with Maggie without a nanometer between them.  They showed a Grammy-level of professionalism that was a joy to watch.

Maggie was among friends at the Lounge – part of her huge and constantly growing fan base – as she shouted out to various people in the audience by name  and told us mischievously about one song from a  night she spent that she was, well,  a bit embarrassed by.  We loved it,.  Maggie has always mined her Canada-Nashville-LA-New York travels for her lyrics, but Monday night she seemed ever more intimate, more open as she rocked, swayed, writhed, waved her arms in the air and in general gave us a show that could have read well in Staples Center. A tiny blonde solar chip in a black dress that exuded energy, she filled the venue with her presence.

 

Maggie  kicked off with new songs  “Tragedy” and “Paralyze” and then went to the familiar “Slow Fire”  from her Hear Me Out album, with its fast-rhythm guitar skip beat and addictive hooks.  The crowd was fully engaged, bouncing and shouting.  They loved it and they obviously loved Maggie. She shifted to new songs “Blame it on the Moonlight” and “One-sided”  and then returned to the Hear Me Out collection with “Love Sick”, a more popped-up  tune but with a kicked up energy not on the recording.

After delivering the new “Forgive and Forget” with a level of emotion that was surprising even for her, Maggie wrapped the show with her hit single “Tidal Waves and Hurricanes” to an ecstatic audience.  It seemed that everyone in the venue knew the words and were singing along.  For a few moments, Maggie created a single, singing,  living being in the Silverlake Lounge and it was so much fun to be part of it.

 

Maggie returns from New York at the end of August with her new EP in hand and has announced a release party in Hollywood on September 4 – watch her website and twitter feed for the place.  This little blonde chanteuse from a small town in Canada is emerging as one of LA’s signature talents and I for one am so happy she has put down roots in my hometown.  I fully expect to see her on the top of the Billboard charts and filling major venues on her own by this time next year.

 

Patrick O’Heffernan

Host, Music Friday Live!

 

Maggie Szabo

http://allaboutmaggie.com

https://twitter.com/allaboutmaggie

Oceansongs lights the afterburner on the Polaris Rose skyrocket. by Patrick O’Heffernan

Polaris Rose has been characterized as alt. rock, but I don’t call them that.  Maddie Elyse and Peter Anthony, better known as Polaris Rose, create music that I call The Polaris Rose Sound because there is nothing like it.   These two young singer/songwriters bring progressive rock, hot jazz, metal and pop together with male-female congruence and musical brilliance that creates a whole that is much larger than the sum of its parts. And they do it in the studio and on stage with equal ease. There new EP, Oceansongs, is a megadose of the flowing harmonies, metal guitar and high concept lyrics that has made this enormously talented pair a flaming comet in the star-crowded sky of LA music.

Opening with “Goddess”, a cut kicked off with a drum and guitar explosion like a fast-moving storm, it quickly slides into a dreamy waterscape woven with Peter’s voice and guitar and Maddie’s backup echo and bass. A call to a love-hate goddess, Peter chronicles his beautiful anguish and we feel it with the rise and fall of longing and anguish in the surge and backwash of guitar and vocals:

Goddess, you make me crumble to my knees/to worship you.
Beautiful, too much to take/ velvet eyes I cannot shake.

Goddess, you use your eyes like laser beams/to shoot straight through.

Oh, I need you to love me for who I am…/If you can

 

The EP then moves to “Hurricanes” which changes tempo and shifts voice to Maddie, whose vocals are hurricane strong but delicate, as if she distilled her voice down to its feminine essence and then unleashed it.  Maddie told me on Music FridayLive! that she first recorded it as a belt, but it didn’t seem right.  It works now, shifting from a delicate female voice in lines like Those OceanSongs, they were hurricanes/ and they dashed us on the rocks./It’s so cruel, but I’ll just capture myself a fool tostrong and determined in the refrain, Bury you beneath the waves/just the way you want it, darling/Treat you like a memory/just the way you want it, darling, bolstered with Peter’s metallic guitar riffs , fiery drums and Maddie’s forward-leaning bass notes.  Brilliant.

The mood shifts  lighter in “Ocean Ending” with a solid drum welcoming the blended voices of Maddie and Peter extolling the pleasure of the beach.  Life feels good they sing, as the drumbeat mimics the slap of waves and a keyboard and guitar carry the song relentlessly forward.  As  Peter takes the  solo, the sound of waves answer his vocals:  yeah its ok because the ocean loves me. It certainly does, and so do I.

 

Two other songs round out the EP, neither of them ocean-themed but a perfect fit with the center of the work.  “Orchards” a marvelous melody of Maddie’s, moving her voice up and down the register as Peter’s guitar riffs and background voice ads depth and dimension to images of walking and exploring the land. “Bluejean worry”, is a soft rocker built on Peter’s high concept but down to earth lyrics and wonderfully detailed guitar work  and Maddie’s bass line weaving in and out of the renowned Kyle Feher’s drumming. It all fits into a whole that they plan to expand out with a full length album.  I can hardly wait. Polaris Rose is a skyrocket gathering momentum and Oceansongs just lit the afterburner.

By Patrick O’Heffernan

Host,  Music FridayLive!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PolarisRose

 

 

“Love You Anyway”: Karen Dezelle’s Valentine gift. Review by Patrick O’Heffernan

“Love You Anyway”: Karen Dezelle’s Valentine gift

Patrick O’Heffernan

I just like listening to Karen Dezelle.  Everything she does, every song she writes and records is a glowing jewel.  Karen knows how to deftly stimulate the pleasure centers of my brain through my ears.  Some songs are happy, some are sad, all are personal, all are universal.  When one of her songs comes up in my playlist, I often have to squeeze my eyes closed for a few seconds and just let her wash over me.

Karen’s voice is that color you can only get just after the sun sinks below the ocean on a clear day.  Warm, red-yellow and blue, soft and moving slowly to moonlit silver.  Her songwriting lavishes in the same pallet – delicate, intense, painted with the red of her heart blood and the blue of  life’s oxygen.  The combination of her poetry and her singing brings the gift of tears, cries both of joy and of sadness. The words to the title song from her EP, Lost and Found have remained with me since I first heard them

May you run til your heart is fearless./May you roar when your love is fierce.
May you sing when your heart’s content./May you rest easy. /May you rest easy./ Let us rest easy. 

Lost and Found is a smooth, penetrating, solitary journey through her soul, birthed with lavish vocals and deceptively simple orchestration that ranges across the emotional landscape. In “Susie’s Song“ she’s happy and she makes you happy singing along with her as she “just can’t wait for the next part”. In “Fearlessly”, a deep thrumming guitar is the ocean her voice floats on and frames the painfully honest lyrics in soft, steely gold. “You and Me” is hypnotic, a song to put on repeat and listen as she celebrates a love that moved beyond the chemistry of two people to the merging of two souls. “Quitter”, is  pure soulful pop, but Dezelle offers  it in her own way as she tells her lover she is leaving, Maybe it’s all just a matter of will./No I’m walking, no I’m walking, no I’m walking out still. 

 

All of this went through my mind when I received her latest single, “Love You Anyway” released last week at Hollywood’s Hotel Café.  The lovely, vulnerable voice is there with the LA-based singer/songwriter’s trademark sundown warmth and the rising tone of silver blue.  The lyrics are personal, honest and intense as they unfold  a story of the last day of a love, of learning to love from a distance, of forgiveness and acceptance, of self-reflection and determination.  It’s time to walk away/But I will love you anyway. As with every song she writes, “Love You Anyway”  triggers an emotional response because it is an experience we all have had.  As we listen to “Love You Anyway , it tugs out tears of sadness and  resignation, but  from eyes open to the future.

Like the EP Lost and Found,  Karen Dezelle’s new single, “Love You Anyway”,  is a jewel glowing with soft, internal fire – a gift  to her fans and her soon- to- be fans everywhere. I can only hope that she presents us with many, many more such gifts.

~ Patrick O’Heffernan

Host Music Friday Live

“Love You Anyway” by Karen Dezelle

Available at https://soundcloud.com/mt-press/karen-dezelle-love-you-anyway

Lost and Found EP is available on iTunes.

www.karendezelle.com

5/5

Wild Tones debut album by Junk Parlor. “Wild” is the right word. by Patrick O’Heffernan

Wild Tones debut album by Junk Parlor.  “Wild” is the right word.

Review by Patrick O’Heffernan, host, Music FridayLive!

Junk Parlor’s debut album Wild Tones is like taking a drug – a big rush, continuing high, then addiction, often accompanied by dancing.

Gypsy junk rock and roll.  Sounds dangerous, but it’s actually really fun. Whether you are dancing or head-bobbing in your chair at a club, or bopping with your ear buds in, the music of Junk Parlor is like taking a drug – a big rush, continuing high, then addiction, often accompanied by dancing.   Founder Jason Vanderford has incorporated his ramblings, both physical and mental, into a unique music form that I just can’t get out of my head without the help of a psychiatrist.  And who would want to anyway?

Seriously, whether he is singing in a shuffle beat about “how we became you and me” in a kind of not-quite-love song, or trying breathlessly to keep up with a frantic guitar riff while he extols escape from suburbia by becoming a vampire,  there is nothing Jason Vanderford and his band of incredibly talented can’t do, or won’t do. They are truly music geniuses and so, so much fun to listen to.

 

Their debut album, Wild Tones,  produced by Jonathan Burnside at Faultline Studios in San Francisco, is a rich mixture of  gypsy, Cajun, funk, pop, jazz and rock with stories and themes that are deliciously evil and  music that is just plain delicious.  The nine songs on the album start with the hooky, funky tale of woe, ”Strange Man”, and end with a rollicking banjo-led instrumental, the Croatian tune, “Cojek Majstore”.

The title song , “Wild Tones” wails about sex and anguish with fast-paced acoustic groves. We “Vampires Never Die”,  a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the chance to escape from Suburbia by becoming a vampire – just pure fun while you rock out on the dance floor, jumping to the “hut!”, “hut!” “hut!”  in the middle of the song.  “My Kind of Pain” tells  a pop-grove infused story of a smitten boy used by a female friend for sex.

 

Oh how I know how convenient I must be/To wash away your pain with my love

I kiss you and I hold you and I wipe away the tears/How long will it be, before you feel…

My… love… for You….

 

Oh, the delicious pain.

“Pocketful of Dreams” is about sex, plain and simple.  Vanderford told me on my radio show that the song started with a woman asking him to write a song about sex and another older woman telling him the first draft was not sexy enough.  You decide…while you grin and tap your fingers.

The remainder of the album explores sex and love from various angles with various arrangements reflecting the gypsy rock roots of Junk Parlor with Vanderford’s growl/howl of a voice coursing throughout  except on the two  banjo-led instrumentals.

Junk Parlor is led by founder Jason Vanderford, who also appears in two other bands – or “projects”- he has formed, the Americano Social Club and The Little Charlie Caravan. A former punk rocker,  Vanderford sings, writes songs, plays banjo and rhythm guitar.   Rt. Goodrich, formerly of Besso Negro,  masters the complex, layered drumming required by Vanderford’s songs.  Jimmy Grant, a former student of Romani gypsy jazz guitarist Angelo Debarre, puts that experience to work on electric guitar. Tim Bush backs on the fretless bass.  The album also features Jeff Mehl on keyboards and Justin Loyal  Tarbet on clarinet.

Junk Parlor’s debut album Wild Tones is like taking a drug – a big rush, continuing high, then addiction, often accompanied by dancing.

Patrick O’Heffernan

Host, Music Friday Live!

Wild Tones by Junk Parlor

Independently produced

Available at www.junkparlor.com, itunes, Amazon.com

5/5

Interview with Terese Taylor by Patrick O’Heffernan of MusicFriday Live!

Interview with Terese Taylor by Patrick O’Heffernan

Terese Taylor’s music describes a personal world – or maybe series of worlds – that is dark, stark and cynical.  Or perhaps, she is simply laying reality out in front of us as she sees it and letting us interpret her images through our own lens.  Or maybe both at once.  That is the genius of Terese Taylor, a song writer and musical artist who uses her lyrics to paint sharp, steel cut images of life that upon closer inspection can be  ambiguous. The same goes for her music.  Is it rock, folk, country, or punk…or something that is simply Terese Taylor, best enjoyed without analysis?

Music FridayLive!  interviewed Terese Taylor on 1/31/14.

 * * * * * * * 

Patrick: Welcome to Music Friday

Terese:  Hi Patrick. 

Patrick: Terese, you sent me four songs that I understand are slated for a new album to  be released in April.  April is only about 2 months away, so you must be closing in on having  it ready.  Can you gives us a status report – what is it and where does it stand?

Terese: It will be ready April 4. I am looking at the cover mockup today.  It will go into production.  It is all done, all mastered.  We went down to Ventura and Golden Recording to master it.  And it all depends on the factory at this point.,  When we shipped out the turnaround  rate for CDs is 8 days, and for LP’s – we are releasing an LP too – that is 7 – 8 weeks.  So by the end of the month I should have it in my hands.  But it will do online April 4.

Patrick: The title song,  “At your Mercy”  is pretty powerful stuff. he menacing violin sound, or maybe it’s a key board or modulated guitar, sets an ominous tone underscores the lines about a quarter in a hotel bed – an image we can all see.  what is going on there?  How did you do that?

Terese: That was an upright bass. James Whiten on the upright bass.  He played through a looper and a lot of effects.  He really embellished the album.  He was the lead bass player.

The line about the quarter in a hotel bed. – I was a little worried about that one.  I grew up near Niagara Fall Street in Buffalo .  It is honeymoon row and there are all these cheap motels with quarter beds – that makes the bed vibrate, you know sexy.

Patrick:  There is another li the lines about flying from San Francisco to Culver City – which is where our studios are – leading to  “at your mercy.”  is asking for help being at someone’s mercy, or is there a larger metaphor here?

Terese: It’s actually a circumstance.  I had a particularly horrendous tour – like one of those tours where you want to break the band up and draw pictures of how you are going to kill each other.  We were not very well prepared.  We took public buses from gig to gig and we looked at other on the bus and said this is really the “at your mercy” tour.  And we laughed about it…humor is really important on the road.  And I always had it in my head to finish this album with the kindness of strangers as an underlying theme.

Patrick:  I hope you met a lot of kindly strangers here – Los Angeles is a pretty friendly town.  But if there is a subtext to that song, it is rent a car.

Terese.  Yeah.

Patrick:  Another song that I have been listening to and thinking about is “briefcase”.  Especially the lines:

 Your see it your way, I see it mine/and if you want to know the truth/I think you are seeing blind…..

if I wanted to be true, I’m sure it wouldn’t be to you.

 That hurts.  Was there a specific individual involved that was the target of that, or is there are larger target than an individual there?

Terese:  Yeah, If there was, it has all become a blur. The power of denial and time taken their toll.  When I am writing and singing I will have a circumstance in mind and it will take on a space of its own.  I just let that voice come out.  I don’t have any vindictiveness about any particular individual with that song.

Patrick:  One of my listeners emailed that your music sounds dire but you sound really  upbeat.  Which is it?

Terese:  I let my music have whatever voice it has, I am actually really into comedy, especially old comics like Carol Burnett and Lilly Tomlin.  A lot of the directness I feel comes out through the music…that is my specialty.  I would say both.

Patrick: You were raised in Buffalo New York, and you now live in San Francisco.  I lived in san Francisco and Marin for 2 many years – up to three years ago, and always thought of it as a very beautiful, optimistic place, one of the nation’s best places to live, despite the Google buses and gentrification of Mission District.  can I gather from these songs and your past albums that you don’t agree.  or does the physical environment have nothing to with the emotional content of your music?

Terese:  Buffalo was pretty decent to grow up in, although I always wanted to get out, which I successfully di.  You learn to roll with the snow – tobogganing is a word that not many of my friends know, or how to creatively play in the snow. I can win in snowball fight because my friends from the South have no idea what to do.

I am going to carry Buffalo with me wherever I go.  There are four seasons in Buffalo and one long one in San Francisco.  So the optimism of San Francisco may come out in my songs in the future, but I guess I am still working it out.  Whatever the darkness of the winter are  is kind of a specialty for me …I can take sun and work it into an explosion, but I can take the happiest situation and everyone dies.  It is what my writing does now, I am trying to work with different voices, but that seems to be my most natural one.

Patrick:  These are spare songs, more like your  earlier ”Folsom Street” than like the richer “Goats for Daddy”.  is that where the new album is heading – stripped down, minimalist, spare?

Terese:  I think that did happen because I was moving into a place that was more complicated, working with Klaus Fluoride as a producer on this.  I thought this was going to be wham-bam in- and -out punk rock- let’s make this album with the songs as I had written them.  He really crafted it and took time and brought singular elements to it – he put my voice up front which hasn’t happened in any of my other albums.  He stripped down to the elements and made what he thinks my message is clearer, more streamlined, using his refined ears.

 

Patrick: Do you have a trained voice – you can control it precisely.

Terese: Mrs. Allen, my high school she was my teacher.  That’s it.  I have always loved to sing.  I do it to the radio, all the time.  That is my training.  But my violin teacher fired me.  I had cousins who played music and they would come over on holidays and play the guitar.   They had beards and long hair and I was intrigued.  I got my first guitar when I was 16,  an electric guitar, and I starting writing and playing.

Patrick: Speaking of guitar, I love the guitar work in your song “His Own”…you create such a perfect environment in that song with the guitar riffs, but I’d like to know what you mean with the line, he sings for me, of me, about me, but I know he sings his own?

 Terese:  Those who know me know I don’t love explaining the lyrics of my song, but like listening to how people interpret them so I would normally turn the question back to you.  But in this case I will tell you – it was written when I loved across from a local bar called Amnesia after a breakup.   I would sit out on the fire escape writing songs getting over my breakup and I could hear music coming out of the venue.  A lone voice and a guitar, I would just listen and feel that I was there, but I knew he was singing his own gig.

Patrick: What gigs to do you have coming up?

Terese:  I can’t say exactly where, but I am playing a house concert tomorrow – contact me through Facebook for the address.  And I will be at the Bottom of the Hill Club on April 24 with two other bands, with the bands We Are the Men and Port.   Stay tuned I am booking as a I wrap up the album, I do all that myself, but we will be back out there in full force in the Spring.

Patrick:  Looking forward to it, and to seeing you in SoCal.  Terese, thank you for being here today.

Terese:  Thank you .  This was fun.

  * * * * * * * 

Patrick O’Heffernan

Music FridayLive!

 

Information & Links for Terese Taylor

• Website: www.teresetaylor.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/TereseTaylorBand
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/teresetaylor
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/teresetaylor
• albums available on the website, iTunes and CD Baby