“Interior Person” album, written by Inara George (The
Bird and The Bee), Barbara Gruska (Belle Brigade), Alex Lilly (Beck, Lorde),
out now.
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Samantha
Sidley as photographed by Logan White
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Samantha
Sidley’s debut album Interior
Person was co-written and produced by her wife, Barbara Gruska, also a musician known as one half of the duo The Belle Brigade. A painting in Gruska’s mother’s house inspired one of
the album’s most intriguing and humorous songs.
As Gruska
explains, “In 1974, my grandmother gave my grandfather a large painting of a
naked woman. That painting got passed down to my mom when I was a teenager, and
then a few years ago to Sam and me.
We went over to my mom’s house to pick it up, and I noticed that there was a
long piece of paper at the bottom of it, covering something up. I asked my mom
about it and she said, ‘Oh yeah, apparently there’s a lewd sentence on the
painting that got covered up.’ When I unscrewed the bottom corners of the frame,
and pulled the paper out, Sam and I
giddily read the sentence together aloud: ‘I have a butterfly in my ass.’
Jackpot! It’s been hanging over the couch in our living room ever since.”
About the
resulting song, Gruska says, “When
Alex (Lilly) and I decided to write
a song for Sam with the ‘dreaded
lewd sentence’ as the title, we had to ask ourselves what it meant to ‘have a
butterfly’ in one’s ass, and we realized it’s the opposite of having a stick up
your ass. So, the song had to be funny because of the title, but it’s also
about overcoming difficult situations, old ways of thinking that hold us back,
holding on to the past, etc. I guess it’s another way of saying, this too shall
pass, and the light at the end of the tunnel, is a butterfly in your ass!”
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Samantha
Sidley | Live
10/25/2019: Los Angeles, CA @ Hotel Café | Tickets
available now
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Samantha Sidley
| In The Press
“Samantha
Sidley turns ‘Singing In The Rain’
into a pro-lesbian anthem. It’s her take on the black and white era of catchy
songs from movie musicals but updated to be inclusive and reflect her take on
the world.” — Refinery29
“Feels like a breath of fresh air. But it is also its
meticulously crafted sound, which blends vintage jazz with more modern pop
elements, that makes it such an outstanding debut.” — JAZZIZ
“It takes us back to the speakeasies of the 20s, with
flirtatious saxophones and crisp, expressive vocals. The song (‘I Like Girls’) is a sophisticated and
delicious ice-breaker, serving anthemic lyrical content for an evolving
culture.” — Grimy Goods
“Sidley’s
voice in ‘I Like Girls’ is playful
and velvety, a perfect mood-setter for a cocktail hour. This song does not
disappoint.” — AfterEllen
“Puts plenty of pop into the jazz world’s ears...
Offering a shot in the arm to the genre, the song (‘I Like Girls’) will be in your head for days after just hearing it
once.” — Closed Captioned
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See the video for “I Like Girls” and read an interview
with Samantha Sidley at Refinery29
or check out the song
at Grimy
Goods or the links below!
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Samantha Sidley
Interior
Person
Out Now
(Release Me Records)
Track Listing:
01. I Like Girls (STREAM | MP3 | VIDEO)
02. Only You Can Break My Heart
03. Naked To Love
04. Butterfly In My Ass (STREAM)
05. I Can’t Listen
06. Listen!! (STREAM | MP3)
07. Rose Without Thorns
08. Busy Doin’ Nothin’ (STREAM |
MP3)
09. Easy To Be True
10. Interior Person
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Samantha Sidley | About
Samantha
Sidley is a jazz vocalist,
born-and-raised in Los Angeles, and she likes girls.
The words “I like girls” are the first thing you’ll
hear when Sidley’s debut album Interior
Person (Out Now, Release Me Records) opens. The song is
an unassuming anthem, a future standard for an evolving culture. It’s also a
fun and funny ice-breaker that you’ll sing along with.
“I Like
Girls” is a peek into what plays out
as a meticulously crafted debut album featuring Sidley’s beautifully trained voice taking confident ownership of
songs written for her to sing by some of the most important women in her life.
These other “girls” include fellow musicians Inara George, Alex Lilly, and Sidley’s
“Top One” favorite musician of all-time, her wife, Barbara Gruska.
“Inara and Alex and Barbara wrote songs that are all very personal to my story – they
literally are my story – and from my lesbian perspective, which I appreciate so
much,” Sidley says. In addition to
co-writing many of the songs here, and playing drums (masterfully) on many of
the tracks, Gruska also produced Interior
Person in a studio constructed in Sidley’s
childhood bedroom.
“My whole life was a song,” Sidley says of her childhood. “If I looked at a tree, it was a
song. If I felt happy, sad, joy, it was a song. When I first heard Judy Garland in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ I remember thinking: ‘I understand.’ I’ve
always considered myself an interpreter, which is sort of and undervalued art
form. I like to take a song and make the story true for me.”
Sidley soon discovered Aretha
Franklin, Billie Holiday, soul
music in general, and her own personal “soulfulness” itself. You know, like all
seven-year-olds do. Later, considering how annoyed 11-year-old Sidley was when her vocal instructor
wouldn’t allow her to sing Holiday’s
“Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be)” at
her first recital, it all made perfect sense.
A decade later, Sidley
got to sing whatever she wanted, performing at NYC’s legendary Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, where she lived in Dorothy Parker’s room, listened to a lot of Anita O’Day and Ella
Fitzgerald, and landed a rave review in The New York Times.
“She knows exactly how I express myself and what my
intentions are,” Sidley says of her
working relationship with Gruska. “Collaborating
on this record has actually been a much longer collaboration of us getting to
know each other.”
Interior Person, the debut album from Samantha
Sidley is out now featuring the single “I Like Girls”. Samantha Sidley is available for
interviews. Contact Josh Bloom
at Fanatic for more information.
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Samantha Sidley | Links
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic
Promotion | Contact
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