I’m so happy. I got my fifth consecutive positive review of What Living’s All About, this time in Blues Revue (“The World’s Blues Magazine”) January 2008 issue, written by Tom Hyslop in the “Blues Bites” section. I just posted it on the What Living’s All About review page.

You can get your own copy of What Living’s All About from CD Baby, on iTunes, or from this site (I’ll sign it for you).  You can download free the one cut no reviewer has been able to ignore, America the Blues, here.

Tags: music jazz wlaa aliciabaylaurel blues cdbaby itunes americatheblues bluesrevue

On February 27, 2008 I met my friends Gwendolyn and Brandon at Tangier Restaurant in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles to hear them and their friends play in two bands. I’m the second from the left. On my right is Shereen Khan, fiancee of Douglas Lee, whose band would perform first, and back-up singer in Brandon’s band Quazar and the Bamboozled, which played last. The alien princess on the right is Gwendolyn, wife of Brandon Jay (aka Quazar), and a star singer/songwriter/guitarist in her own right. She was substituting for another back-up singer who was not feeling well that night.

Tangier has loads of ambiance, including a patio wall imported from the city of Tangier in Morocco.

I turned on the flash so I could see the details of the wall.

Warming up for the bands, a lovely young singer/songwriter/guitarist. The bar crowd listened and cheered.

Douglas Lee plays the glass harmonica, an arrangement of crystal goblets in a wooden box; the goblets are pitched by adding specific amounts of water.

Inside the glass harmonica. Douglas told me he keeps his hands extremely clean to play this instrument. I’ve owned and loved a classical recording called Music For Glass Harmonica since the 1970s. Previous to hearing Douglas in Gwendolyn’s band at the release party of her Celtic psychedelic folk CD Lower Mill Road at the Bordello Bar last August, I’d never heard a glass harmonica played live before.

Imagine my surprise when Douglas played an entire set of jazz standards (plus one bluesy original), starting with “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” and “Caravan.”

His instrument gave an otherworldly cadence to these tunes, even as he was surrounded by a jazz instrumentation of upright bass (Robert Petersen), piano (Scott Doherty), drums (Brandon Jay)...

...and saxophone/flute/clarinet (Paul Pate).

Brandon’s drum kit was no ordinary drum kit, but a melange of “found percussion” along with a floor tomtom, a timbale, and a set of bongos.

In the midst of the set, Douglas switched to musical saw, played with a violin bow, from which he produced “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” and “In the Still of the Night.”

Douglas also played a set of jaw harps on a couple of other tunes, beautifully. I don’t think I’d ever heard that instrument in a jazz setting, either.

When Brandon returned to the stage to front his ‘60s rock band Quazar and the Bamboozled, he had donned a frilly formal shirt, a stovepipe hat, and sparkly silver platform shoes! Even his piano had sparkling mirror tiles on it. He sang and played all original songs, in the vein of Elton John, Dr. John the Night Tripper, the Rolling Stones, and Leon Russell. Considering that he and the rest of the band were BORN at the end of the ‘70s and in the early ‘80s, it was astonishing how they captured the sound of ‘60s rock, and made it even more fun and funny.

Gwendolyn, now a go-go dancer from Mars decked out in white platform boots, eight ponytails, space alien facepaint, hot pants, rainbow serape, and multi-megawatt personality, blazed in the stagelights. Hiding in the shadows behind the singers, playing crunchy rhythm guitar, is art dealer Matt Chait.

Paul Pate turned up the volume on his saxophone next to the screaming back up singers Gwendolyn, Shereen Khan, and Jonathan Underle.

Rocket-propelling Quazar and the Bamboozled, the rhythm section: Robert Petersen (this time on electric bass), Dusty Rocherolle on drums, and Spidey on lead guitar. Too much fun!

Tags: music losangeles jazz rockandroll singersongwriter nightclub jewsharp gwendolyn glassharmonica generationy brandonjay douglaslee tangierrestaurant musicalsaw jawharp

Marinated from birth in the world music, classical music, jazz and Broadway tunes my parents played on the hi-fi, I succeeded (after two years of begging) in starting piano lessons at age seven, mastered the Bumble Bee Boogie by age twelve, and was levitated into learning guitar and writing songs when I saw Bob Dylan play, shortly before I turned fourteen. A couple of years later, my cousin Jan Lebow married John Fahey, and one day I cornered him when he was bored at a family party and got him to teach me open tunings. That became my sound.

Most of my musician friends played rock and roll, so I was overjoyed when I first visited Hawaii in 1969 and discovered that open-tuned guitar picking was the national music. Between 1969 and 1974 I enjoyed a phenomenal career as a bestselling author, illustrator, book designer and media icon for hipdom and sustainability. My book Living on the Earth was the first paperback book ever on the New York Times Bestseller List, and it’s still in print in English, Japanese and Korean. I wrote, illustrated and designed eight more books, appeared on talk shows, and got written up in lots of magazines.

In 1974, I moved to Maui. There I learned to play slack key guitar and sing Hawaiian songs from some of the most soulful people I’d ever met anywhere. I learned to sing in Hawaiian from recording artist G-girl Keli’iho’omalu’s mother, legendary singer and choreographer Auntie Clara Kalalau Tolentino. I learned slack key guitar from Clara’s son-in-law Jerome Smith in Hana, and from Uncle Sol Kawaihoa in Wailuku. In the early ‘80’s, I began playing in restaurants and bars for the tourists. Over a period of twenty years I studied vocal technique with five teachers, including pop singer/songwriter Pamela Polland. (I STILL take vocal tech lessons!) My lifelong love of jazz (the first LP I bought at age 13 was Local Color by Mose Allison) led me to learn a repertoire of standards and the jazz chords I needed to accompany myself. In the late ‘80’s I started playing at weddings and learned love songs of many genres. From 1988 to 1999 I owned a wedding business that put on 3000 weddings, and I sang at hundreds of them, sometimes accompanying a troop of hula dancers.

In 2000, Random House released the thirtieth anniversary edition of Living on the Earth. I sold the wedding business and went on tour for eight months with an original one-woman show of comedy stories from my life and folk songs I wrote during the time I created the book. I self-produced Music From Living on the Earth, a solo CD of these songs, to sell while on the book tour, and, to my astonishment, it was not only reviewed but selected as an album pick on All Music Guide. Then a psychedelic folk radio show in Belgium started playing it. Then a Japanese record company released it.

When I returned to Hawaii from the tour, I self-produced Living in Hawaii Style, a CD of original and historic Hawaiian songs, mostly slack key guitar and tropical jazz. The CD features Sam Ahia, arguably the best jazz guitarist/vocalist in the islands, and Lei’ohu Ryder, a reknowned spiritualist and chanter with a string of fantastic CDs of her own. This CD got airplay both in Hawaii and on the legendary Ports of Paradise radio show in California, was released in Japan, and, in July 2002, I was the only woman headlining at the Big Island Slack Key Guitar Festival. I toured in Hawaii and California to promote this CD with a new one-woman story and music show.

I’ve spent a lot of time around avant-garde improvisational musicians in my life. I lived with Ramon Sender, one of the founding composers of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early ‘60’s, and co-designer of the Buchla Box, the first synthesizer built on the west coast. In the early ‘70’s, we co-authored a book, Being of the Sun, containing information about drones, modes and open tunings. In the late ‘90’s, I began partnering with Joe Gallivan, one of the pillars of the jazz fusion scene in New York and in Europe, who was the first to play a Moog drum in concert, who played in the Gil Evans Orchestra for two years and in a quartet with Larry Young for three years, and about whom an entire section is devoted in the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD.

These men have been mentors to me, and, while Ramon’s influence is in my first CD, Joe’s influence is most evident in my newest release, What Living’s All About. Good luck in real estate afforded me the luxury of a great LA recording studio with Scott Fraser (audio engineer and producer for the Kronos Quartet) at the controls and a fabulous line-up of session players, notably avant-garde/rock/jazz guitar legend Nels Cline (best known as the guitarist with Wilco, and who I met when his band opened for Joe Gallivan’s band at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival in New York City in June 2000), and John B. Williams, bassist for Nancy Wilson, the Manhattan Transfer, the Tonight Show Big Band and the Arsenio Hall Show Band. I co-produced the CD with Ron Grant, an Academy Award winning film composer, who arranged and conducted some of the material, but I also relied heavily upon the improvisational skills of my great players, and they surpassed my expectations.

In Performing Songwriter Magazine’s May 2007 Issue, “What Living’s All About” is one of the Editor’s 12 Top DIY Picks, and in June 2007, the first track, “Floozy Tune,” placed in the Top 20 Finalists in the Jazz Category of the Unisong International Songwriting Contest. Raves reviews of the CD appeared in eJazz News in London (written by John Stevenson, the editor), and in Feminist Review in New York City. The second track, “America The Blues” was a featured download on indieguitarists.com in August 2007.

In the summer of 2006, songs from “What Living’s All About” got airplay in Europe and in the USA, and in October 2006, I did eight concerts in four weeks in Japan. In February 2007 I did three concerts in Phoenix, where the CD has gotten a lot of play on Radio Free Phoenix, and in May and June 2007, I toured Japan again, this time performing 15 concerts, including two festivals, in seven weeks, and appearing as the subject of a TV documentary on Asahi Broadcasting Station. In May 2008 I return to Japan for another tour, including a concert at the opening of a gallery show of my art in Tokyo. I’m currently based in Los Angeles, working on creating an animated children’s television series that features my drawings, stories and music.

Tags: music acidfolk hawaii jazz wlaa nelscline aliciabaylaurel ramonsender johnfahey gospel blues johnbwilliams psychfolk mflote lihs hawaiianmusic slackkeyguitar leiohuryder joegallivan samahia bobdylan moseallison pamelapolland rongrant

7/9/2007 4:38:10 PM
“Floozy Tune”
Status: Selected
Congratulations, you have been selected as a Top 20 Finalist in the Jazz Category of the 11th Annual Unisong International Song contest. Results are at http://www.unisong.com/Winners11.aspx.

This year featured the highest overall quality of songs, lyrics, and writers ever submitted by far, with the most diverse and varied entries from a multitude of countries representing every continent on Earth except Antarctica (and songwriting penguins out there).

The judging therefore was extremely competitive and to be singled out anywhere in the top 15% of all songs submitted was no easy feat.

NOTE: "Floozy Tune" is the opening track of What Living's All About: Jazz, Blues, and Other Moist Situations. 

Tags: music jazz wlaa aliciabaylaurel floozytune unisong songcontest

If one photograph could convey the jazz scene in New York City in the late 1950’s, this would be it.

Around ten one morning in the summer of 1958, 57 musicians representing three generations of jazz history showed up at 126th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem to be photographed by Art Kane, a freelance photographer working for Esquire magazine. The photo was eventually published in the January, 1959 issue. This photo also became the basis of a documentary film produced by veteran radio producer, Jean Bach of New York. The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1994.  It's now available on DVD.

Tags: music jazz agreatdayinharlem bebop charlesmingus theloniusmonk marylouwilliams newyork countbasie marianmcpartland artblakey artfarmer dizzygillespie colemanhawkins genekrupa gerrymulligan oscarpettiford sonnyrollins horacesilver stuffsmith maxinesullivan lesteryoung royeldridge jazzphotography artkane jeanbach

On Saturday, January 27th, 2007. I played two hours of my music at the Paisley Violin, a supremely hip small eatery on Grand Avenue in the downtown arts district of Phoenix, functioning as a second living room for the boho denizens of the neighborhood. Musician Chris Warmuth, who lent me a PA system which he gallantly carried from house to car to club to car to house for me, ran into half a dozen friends while we were there. My new friend Sarah Curtis came to this show, too, to sell stuff from my table while I was playing.

This being a CD release party for my most recent recording, I played and sang ten jazz, blues and gospel songs and two jazz standards from What Living’s All About, accompanied by a version of the final mix from the CD that excluded my recorded vocal and guitar parts.

Well, all but one song. Nature Boy was recorded rubato (outside of a time signature), improvised in the studio by me, upright bassist John B. Williams, and percussionist Enzo Tedesco, all of us playing at the same time. In order to perform the song with the recording minus my voice, I would have had to memorize the entire improvisation and duplicate exactly what I sang on the recording. That kind of misses the whole point of doing an improvisation, which is to spontaneously create music together that has never existed before. So, Nature Boy was relegated to being played (as a finished recording) during one of my breaks.

I played on an elevated stage surrounded by wonderful nature photographs by Greg Lansing, whose show lasted the month of January. After my second set, Chris, Sarah and I had a delicious meal at the bar. Check out their fabulous menu.

I brought a full panoply of my wares, and Gina, the manager at the Paisley Violin, offered to keep the table set up and sell the goods on it during the week to help publicize my second show at the Paisley, next Friday, February 2nd, from 7 to 8 PM on the evening of the First Friday monthly open gallery art walk.

Tags: music jazz wlaa aliciabaylaurel gospel blues johnbwilliams phoenix paisleyviolin artsdistrict natureboy edenahbez musicalimprovisation firstfridayartwalk

Friday, January 26, 2007. I visit Andy Olson and Cheryl Sweet at Radio Free Phoenix, their home-based local and internet radio station, for an interview.

Andy Olson is a veteran DJ of the early 1970’s FM radio revolution, which, he told me, played a big part in creating the singer/songwriter phenomenon of those days. The commercial stations on AM wouldn’t play the thoughtful, political and psychedelic music that was born of the consciousness boom of the late 1960’s, but a bunch of maverick DJs used the unwanted FM bandwiths of the time to promote these songs. After they proved there was a large listening audience for the new singer/songwriters, the big labels began to pick them up and the commercial stations began to play them.

Andy and Cheryl in the recording studio of Radio Free Phoenix.

However, now that a few media megaliths own the great bulk of the radio stations and play only whatever the big record companies are promoting, a similar revolution is taking place on the Internet radio.  Maverick DJs are playing "indie" music,  that is, self-produced recordings by singer/songwriters that do not conform to the commercial norm.  That's me.  Thanks to artist Tracy Dove for giving a copy of What Living's All About to Cheryl Sweet last summer, and to DJs Andy Olson, Cheryl Sweet, Liz Boyle and Miss Holly King for playing four cuts from the CD ever since.

Andy told me that, since many commercial stations simply computerize their programs and no live DJ actually chooses or comments upon the music, in-studio radio interviews with musicians rarely air. But on non-commercial station programming and on Internet radio, the DJs and hosts welcome all kinds of content, including live interviews.

Considering the service that independent stations render to the community, they ought to be well-funded. However, most are running on scarce donations and volunteer work. Cheryl works nights as a cardiac nurse in a local emergency room, in addition to hosting her own radio show and, with Andy, raising four children. The station owes its continuation to her efforts.  Andy predicts that with the expansion of "wi-fi" (wireless internet connection) to cover entire cities, Internet radio will one day be as ubiquitous as conventional radio.

I loved being interviewed by Andy Olson and I hope you’ll enjoy listening to us. Click here to pick up a podcast of it.

Tags: podcast jazz aliciabaylaurel gospel blues singersongwriter indiemusic livingontheearth psychfolk radiofreephoenix internetradio noncommercialradio interview hawaiianslackkeyguitar leiohuryder

Friday night, January 26, 2007, I played an all-acoustic set at Fiddler’s Dream, a small night club at the back of the parking lot of the Friend’s Church of Phoenix, on Glendale Avenue and 17th Street in north Phoenix.

Staffed by volunteers and strict in its rules against electronic or amplified instruments, Fiddler’s Dream demands that its patrons maintain perfect silence during the performances, something rarely seen in the United States outside of classical music venues. In Europe, it’s not unusual at all. Audiences for all kinds of music actually stop talking and listen to live music.

The first of the two acts was Hans York, a German singer/songwriter/guitarist living in Seattle who had booked himself on a three month solo tour of various churches, house concerts, and other small venues, not unlike what I did in 2000 for eight months. I was enthralled with his guitar playing and his singing, and appreciated the gentleness and nature images in his lyrics.

What I noticed after I uploaded this photo to my computer is that Fiddler’s Dream actually does have sound reinforcement! See the two microphones on the ceiling on either side of the stage lights?

Hans and I each set out displays of our wares below the Fiddler’s Dream t-shirt rack.

Having an attentive audience turned on the comedienne in me. I just let her rip. Sarah Curtis, a lovely young friend of Tracy Dove’s, took the photos of me.

I performed songs from all three of my CDs, and I had fun playing with guitar the songs from What Living’s All About that I had recorded without guitar, so that people could hear how they sounded when I wrote them.

Tags: music jazz wlaa blues indiemusic psychfolk slackkeyguitar folkmusic fiddlersdream hansyork acousticmusic comedy

Alice Coltrane, a jazz performer and composer and wife of the late saxophone legend John Coltrane, has died. She was 69. Coltrane died Friday [January 12 2007] of respiratory failure at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center near Los Angeles, said her sister, Marilyn McLeod.

For nearly 40 years, Coltrane managed the archive and estate of her husband, a pivotal figure in the history of jazz. He died of liver disease in 1967 at age 40.

A pianist and organist, Alice Coltrane was noted for her astral compositions and for bringing the harp onto the jazz bandstand. Born Alice McLeod in Detroit on Aug. 27, 1937, she began learning classical piano at age 7. She studied jazz piano briefly in Paris before moving to New York, where she met her future husband in 1963.

At that time, she was playing with bandleader Terry Gibbs, who has often taken credit for introducing the two. John Coltrane “saw something in her that was beautiful,” Gibbs told the Los Angeles Times.

She left Gibbs’ band to marry Coltrane and began performing with his band in the mid-1960s. “John not only taught me how to explore but to play thoroughly and completely,” Alice Coltrane said in comments published in “The Black Giants.”

Read more.

Tags: music jazz alicecoltrane johncoltrane terrygibbs

Tonight at Yukotopia, we blissed out to four acts, including mine. Doing the What Living’s All About show two nights in a row freed me to take new risks, especially with my choreography. I am having the time of my life.

In an ultimate act of courtesy, the club posted signs requesting that patrons not smoke until after I had finished my set. I didn’t ask for this; it’s a perk from Sandy Rothman’s residence, since he requested this on the nights he played.

First up: Catch and Release, a very large group (nine people this time, but Yuko says the personnel varies from show to show, as the group has an open policy about friends sitting in. Yes, that’s a digiridoo player on the left.) The overriding feeling was Family; the woman singing up front also works at Yukotopia tending bar, and her parents play in the group. They played trance music, that is to say, mostly, instead of songs, they improvised over one and two chord drones, although they also performed the Grateful Dead classic “Uncle John’s Band.”

I was next. With a sizeable contingent of the audience comprised of the members of the other three bands, the support, if possible, was even more enthusiastic than the night before. God bless the deadheads of Tokyo; they do enjoy their musicians, and the musicians appreciate each other’s work.

After me came Strange Taste, which, like me, is a singer/songwriter driven act whose songs sizzle with political outrage, humor, sex and love. Wonderful blues, reggae, singing, instrumental solos. Good fun, altogether.

Last up was Pineapple Tom, another large trance band (seven players), but this group is all about focus and sophistication, with lots of cleverly arranged musical figures, at the same time as an almost free jazz quality to the improvisation. I say “almost” because the rhythm section churned forth danceable beats, of which the audience took advantage. Good free jazz will blow your brains, but only a modern dance troupe would dance to it.

On both nights some of the deadheads brought their kids, who danced, played, and generally enjoyed themselves in the night bar scene. These two kids danced plenty, and the baby came up to me and held my hand and laughed. Yuko and Roku have three kids, and I could tell they enjoy having little ones in the club. I sure did.

Tags: music jazz wlaa trancemusic japan protestsong yukotopia tokyo deadhead freejazz children