Monday, September 28, 2020

Sibling duo Charlie Belle were just teens when they broke through with two EPs of Brit-flavored perfect pop; Then they went to school.

Now Jendayi and Gyasi are back, telling a musical story as Black artists who don’t necessarily make the kind of music that society expects.
 
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Charlie Belle (L-R): Gyasi Bonds, Jendayi Bonds. Photo by Kees2Life.

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“Makes melodic indie-pop feel like a viable option for the first time in eons.” — The Guardian (UK)
 
“Now more than ever there’s a spotlight on Black artists, and what Black artists have to bring to the table in all genres of music,” Jendayi says. “We’ve been a band for 12 years and Black our whole lives. There’s a sort of reckoning right now for what Black artists can bring to the table.”
 
Gyasi is blunt: “People always assume I’m a rapper, I tell them I make music or that I’m an artist and the first question I receive is, ‘Are you a rapper?’ We are put in a box by our skin that people have deemed ‘Black music,’ but all music is Black music.”
 
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Charlie Belle | In The Press
 
“Definitely a band you want to know.” — AfroPunk
 
“Wanna feel good? Press play.” — Vice
 
“Easygoing yet innovative vibes.” — NYLON
 
“The most infectious kind of power-pop.” — Wired
 
“Outstanding... an infectious Brit-flavored indie-pop confection.” — NPR
 
“Yup, she rocks.” — Austin Chronicle
 
“Everybody is getting to know Charlie Belle.” — MTV

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[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/CharlieBelle-LookingForMagic
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEWV8zccZMM
 
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Charlie Belle | “Looking For Magic”
 
Check out “Looking For Magic,” the new video from Charlie Belle over at Glide Magazine, which says it “captures the close chemistry between brother and sister, and the fun that they can have together making music. There is a smoothness... that is conveyed both in the laid back groove and in Jendayi’s effortlessly cool vocals that linger in your mind long after listening.”
 
Gyasi weighs in about the video, too, saying, “This music video is the first and purest piece of art that isn’t our music that we created as us, as ourselves, as Charlie Belle. Even down to the collaboration, to have had our friend Ben Root edit our music video, being that we’ve known him since we were kids, it feels like it’s meant to be. We’ve had so much help from friends and that feels good.”
 
Jendayi clues us in about the song's origins: “I wrote this song during my senior year of high school. Around then, Charlie Belle had already released a couple of EPs and we thought it was time to release an album. I’d never written a whole album before and was still in shock from all of the attention the first EPs got, so that whole senior year I was kinda worried, like ‘am I gonna be able to write a good song?’ So, that’s what the lyrics are about. It’s like I was given a black top hat, and I’ve got no choice; I’m really bad at magic shows, but I’ll put one on, and maybe we can hear a song.”
 
Jendayi and Gyasi Bonds of Charlie Belle are available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.
 
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Charlie Belle | About
 
When national attention came to the sibling duo Charlie Belle in 2014, Jendayi and Gyasi Bonds were literally just kids.
 
Sixteen and fourteen-years-old at the time, they were both already veterans of the Austin music scene when their debut EP “Get To Know” blew up. Press came from NPR, Nylon, MTV, Vice, Wired and others, and Jendayi and Gyasi appeared together on the cover of their local paper, the Austin Chronicle.
 
“It was weird and exciting and interesting and fun and flattering to say the least, that randomly by chance, our debut EP really hit it out of the park, right?,” Jendayi says of that crazy time. “Man was it cool!”
 
She continues, “Nothing in my life until that moment showed me that perhaps I could truly pursue this. Maybe I had a perspective that other people might want to hear. Maybe I could make an impact on people with my music in the same way that bands like Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, and Local Natives made an impact on me.”
 
“I’ve been the drummer in Charlie Belle for 12 years,” Gyasi says, now a 19-year-old college student.
 
Jendayi has graduated college, she’s 22 now, and while the pair took time away from schooling us with pop tunes too damn accomplished for teenagers, it was the right thing to do. They were always plotting a return, and now they are educated, wiser, and ready to present new music to a world that is much different from the one they played for just six years ago. The new tunes are clearly by two independent, self-actualized artists, who know exactly what they’re doing.
 
“He went off and became his own human,” Jendayi says of her brother, “I went off and did that too, and I jumped into my songwriting. We were supposed to move and grow like this, so we could tell our story with intention.”
 
Part of that story is of being Black artists who don’t necessarily make the kind of music that society thinks they would be, or should be, making.
 
Look, Jendayi and Gyasi just want people to know that they are creative, multifaceted artists, who happen to be a brother and sister who grew up gigging around town in Austin. But they also want people to know that as Black artists, their lives and experiences are just as rich and nuanced as everyone else’s.
 
“I want more of our stories to be told,” Jendayi says.
 
It’s important to the band that their sociopolitical stance and their personal cultural awareness co-exist in harmony alongside their pop sensibilities. Those blown away by the catchiness and thoughtfulness of Charlie Belle’s debut can look forward to new songs by young adults who have now been doing this for half their lives.
 
What was already great is even better: Fun, upbeat, buoyant, while also keenly aware of the moment in a way that only Jendayi and Gyasi can speak to.
 
Two new singles by sister-brother duo Charlie Belle arrive this fall. “Looking For Magic” is out now, with “What About Me” following on Oct. 9th.
 
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Charlie Belle | Links
 
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : YOUTUBE : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Christopher the Conquered courts controversy with “Pick Up Your Telephone” video about unnamed rock star, starring Carole Baskin.

Clip from just-released “I Am Christopher” opus also features not-controversial subject matter, Garfield, in both drummer, telephone form.
 
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Christopher Ford of Christopher the Conquered as photographed by Josh Terzino.
 
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Christopher the Conquered | In The Press
 
 
“Impressive.” — Consequence of Sound
 
“Raw, emotional.” — Alternative Press
 
“Reminiscent of a young Elton John.” — Yahoo! Music
 
“His winning charm is subtle.” — Paste
 
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[STREAM]: https://soundcloud.com/fanaticpro/christopher-the-conquered-pick-up-your-telephone
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzN3Psxjlik
 
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About | “Pick Up Your Telephone” by Christopher the Conquered
 
“You know Garfield, he’s a cartoon cat, you got a telephone in the shape of his body yeah, but you don’t pick it up! Why don’t you pick it up? Pick it up!” – Christopher the Conquered
 
15 minutes of fame is supposed to happen to everybody. It’s happening right now to Carole Baskin of “Tiger King” and it happened to Christopher Ford of Christopher the Conquered. Nice that they would spend some of their post-15 time together in the new video for Ford’s song on the subject: “Pick Up Your Telephone.” The tune is the opening cut on Christopher the Conquered’s self-focused new album, I Am Christopher (Grand Phony, Out Now).
 
A stunning irony surrounding Ford’s story is that the way he got his quarter-hour is now something that can’t really be referred to anymore. It’s just one of those things: A copy of a previous Christopher the Conquered album ended up in the hands of a very popular indie musician. He dug it, he posted about it on his socials. Blammo! Ford hit the front page of Reddit, sold a few hundred copies of his album with a quickness, and calls came in from NYC and LA. Even Consequence of Sound (which is now called Consequence?) noticed.
 
“Now I had a whole legion of fans who were Reddit people,” Ford says, going on to admit that he was unfamiliar with Reddit before all of this. “The most notable fan being John at Grand Phony, who signed me to his label. John wouldn’t know my music if it wasn’t for that Reddit post!”
 
As Ford was being contacted by industry types looking to tie him closer to the artist that discovered him, he realized that he probably wouldn’t even appeal to that artist’s fans.
 
“The next tour I did proved that intuition right, but now I was getting management and label interest, who were all trying to tie me closer to the artist in question, and I’m like ‘I DO NOT KNOW HIM,’ but I would send him messages at their insistence anyway and it just made me feel desperate and stupid. Because, of course, he didn’t respond to my messages!”
 
But, lemonade, y’all, lemonade!
 
“Pick Up Your Telephone” is now a fine Christopher the Conquered song and video.
 
“Obviously, the original inspiration was the whole experience with this particular rock star, who loves cats, which is why Garfield is a focal point of the song,” Ford says. “The song is mostly about the desperation of being a nobody artist with ego problems and insecurity, and how lame it is that after the nice things this person said about me, I would want more. And now his spotlight has dimmed, just like Carole’s will, and she also loves cats, so ‘Voila!,’ there she is.”
 
“I do think the whole brush with success made me a much better person,” Ford concludes. “Before, I was prideful, I think. Not getting everything I want really humbled me, which I would say is what this entire new album is founded on.”
 
Christopher Ford of Christopher the Conquered is available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.
 
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Christopher the Conquered
I Am Christopher
Out Now
(Grand Phony Music)
 
Streaming Link:
STREAM FULL LP
  

Track Listing:
01. Pick Up Your Telephone (STREAM | VIDEO)
02. Put It On Your Credit Card (STREAM | VIDEO)
03. Try Again
04. This Is Not Love
05. You Can’t Rush the Rain
06. Love Is Not Something You Find
07. Slowest Girl In the World (STREAM | VIDEO)
08. Ordinary Person
09. The Old Record Store Down By the Sea
10. Paper Man [BONUS TRACK]
11. Too Many Teardrops (Toby Wright’s Magic Barn Mix) [BONUS TRACK]
12. Try Your Best [BONUS TRACK]
 
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[STREAM]: https://fanatic.lnk.to/ChristopherTheConquered-PutItOnYourCreditCard 

[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHYxgb-Q5vo
 
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About | “Put It On Your Credit Card” by Christopher the Conquered | Listen at Bad Copy or watch at The Big Takeover!
 
 ‘Put It On Your Credit Card’ is directly inspired by the number of times I had to take on debt to stay on the road, to record the next song, etc.,” says Christopher Ford aka Christopher the Conquered. “I half fear money and half don’t think it’s even real. Barely making a living as a singer-songwriter definitely gave me a thick skin around risk, so I’m kinda serious when I’m telling people to ‘put it on your credit card!’ It’s not like we have debtor’s prisons anymore, and once you die, it’s all gone anyway (as long as you don’t get married... I think!)”
 
As for the song’s music video, Ford comments, “One of the reasons I chose this song to do a video for is because it’s short, which made doing the video a hell of a lot easier, and it’s silly, so I could do whatever I wanted, and it kinda made sense. Most of the creative decisions made in this video were determined by what John Young (the owner of my label Grand Phony) had around his house in Pennsylvania. I was bumming around his house and digging through his basement. Turns out a guy with three daughters has a ton of fun toys and costumes around, and he’s got a hot tub, so that had to be in the video, too. It was really just a fun afternoon of filming a bunch of stuff we thought would work, and then throwing it together. Probably the easiest music video I’ve ever made.”
 
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Christopher the Conquered | Links
 
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : SPOTIFY : GRAND PHONY
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Blesson Roy follows-up twin EPs with “Think Like Spring;” Debut album melds sounds of California’s Beach Boys sun with London’s 4AD fog.

“‘Undertow’ took on a darker, lusher soundscape than originally imagined, having written it as a Leonard Cohen or Nick Drake-influenced song.”
 
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Terry Borden of Blesson Roy as photographed by Ankhurr Chawaak
 
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Blesson Roy | “Undertow”
 
[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/BlessonRoy-Undertow
 
Terry Borden of Blesson Roy says, “‘Undertow’ took on a darker and lusher soundscape than I had originally imagined, having written that one as a Leonard Cohen or Nick Drake-influenced acoustic guitar song. As the recording unfolded, however, I realized that the song needed a dark ambient soundscape rather than a stripped-down acoustic production. I had the time and intention to be open to following songs in one direction, and then going in the opposite musical direction, until it seemed that the song had found its way home in the recording.”
 
Listen to “Undertow” by Blesson Roy now via Spill Magazine here or at the link above.
  
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“Undertow” is the first single from Think Like Spring by Blesson Roy, out Nov. 27th on Slow Start Records. Pre-order Think Like Spring as a deluxe-package 180gm white vinyl edition at Bandcamp here.
 
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Blesson Roy | In The Press
 
“A new sound in a new decade.” — PopMatters
 
“Allows the listener to feel a deep connection.” — Ghettoblaster
 
“Dreamy and earthy. — The Big Takeover
 
“Sunny, Beach Boys-esque.” — Glide Magazine
 
The Beach Boys with Big Star’s vibrant melodies.” — Beats Per Minute
 
“Will expand your mind.” — BTRtoday
 
“If The Beach Boys did a new wave album.” — Higher Plain Music
 
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Blesson Roy
Think Like Spring
Nov. 27th, 2020
(Slow Start Records)
  

 Track Listing:
 
01. Soothe (STREAM)
02. Fingerprints Of Love
03. Undertow (STREAM)
04. Should've Known Better
05. Ana Left Spain
06. Stays With You
07. The Loving Sea
08. Waterfall Drops
09. Maria Rain
10. Thousand
11. Near
12. I Can See You
13. Falling
14. The Gaps
 
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Blesson Roy | About
 
Blesson Roy – Think Like Spring – Slow Start Records – Nov. 27th, 2020
 
Think Like Spring is the upcoming debut album from life-long “music lover and music doer,” Terry Borden, the man behind Blesson Roy, and follows-up Borden’s twin 2020 EPs Time Is A Crime” and “Time Is A Crime (Almost Acoustic).”
 
The album is the 14-song dreamy pop reflection of a child of 1970’s California whose early love of AM radio and his brother’s record collection led to membership in slowcore pioneers Idaho and Pete Yorn’s band Dirty Bird. Living in the UK during the explosion of subculture labels 4AD, Creation, Factory, and Rough Trade has also heavily influenced the Blesson Roy sound.
 
Think Like Spring was recorded during the COVID-19 lockdown.
 
“I was alone in the studio adjacent to my home and had no distractions other than the feeling of being truly alone in the recording space, for days and weeks on end,” Borden explains. “The positive effect of the pandemic isolation in the studio was the time and ability to focus on the musical details in the songs, and extend the searches for the right chemical reactions that manifested in each track.”
 
Think Like Spring is a suggestion for a train of thought, which is focused on positivity and renewal,” Borden continues, discussing the album’s overall concept. “This is an especially important time for all of us to embrace the new positive and negative paradigm shifts with a sense of creativity and invention.”
 
About the album’s upcoming singles, Borden says, “‘Undertow’ took on a darker and lusher soundscape than I had originally imagined, having written that one as a Leonard Cohen or Nick Drake-influenced acoustic guitar song. As the recording unfolded, however, I realized that ‘Undertow’ needed a dark ambient soundscape rather than a stripped-down acoustic production.”
 
Borden explains that “Stays With You” was “a journey into dynamics with the chorus exploding out of the verses. It was a lot of fun and very satisfying to create the verse and chorus as almost two different bits of music that tied together emotionally but remained separate dynamically.”
 
“I ventured into some new areas musically,” he says of ‘Thousand,’ which “became more of an emotional, anthemic recording; a bit of a departure. It was thrilling to construct ‘Thousand’ and draw on unbridled emotion for that one.”
 
“I am pleased that a song with the characteristics of ‘Undertow’ sits next to an indie rocker like ‘Should’ve Known Better,’ Borden says of the album’s final planned single. “I have always loved records that have different types of songs with a fearless approach to production that serves the song not the style of music. The Beatles‘White Album’ is the pinnacle of this type of approach.”
 
Ultimately, Borden says that he tried to give each song a separate identity with a unique personality.
 
“I can’t say if I succeeded in this, but it was the way I recorded and structured the sound of each track. Writing and recording Think Like Spring was pure joy with patches of frustration that happen in any creative process. The songs and the creation of the recordings felt like a warm place in a cold and dangerous world.”
 
 Think Like Spring by Blesson Roy arrives Nov. 27th, 2020 via Slow Start Records. Terry Borden is available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.
 
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Blesson Roy | Links
 
ASSETS : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : YOUTUBE : BANDCAMP
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : YOUTUBE : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Samantha Sidley shares “Quarantine Edition” video for title track from “Interior Person,” named one of Los Angeles Times “Best Albums of 2019.”

Lesbian jazz vocalist’s LGBTQ anthem “I Like Girls” from “sweet, funny, tastefully arranged vocal-jazz disc about same-sex romance,” also out now.
 
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Samantha Sidley as photographed by Logan White
 
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Samantha Sidley | “Interior Person”

Samantha Sidley Was an ‘Interior Person’ Before This Whole Thing Happened” Los Angeleno

The girls who gathered for Samantha Sidley’s iconic “I Like Girls” video have all gone home, and now Sidley is all alone in the “Quarantine Edition” music video for the title track from her debut album Interior Person, named one of the Los Angeles Times“Best Albums of 2019.”
 
“I honestly had no idea quite how poignant this song would become,” Sidley says. “It was written as a positive twist or response, if you will, to the isolation that accompanies depression. The song has taken up a new meaning during the pandemic, which has pushed all of us to be more isolated physically and emotionally.”
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zr-PvKBGyc
 
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Samantha Sidley
| “I Can’t Listen”
 
Samantha Sidley’s “I Can’t Listen,” written by Inara George, is about struggling with depression. But the Los Angeles-based jazz singer is positively ebullient about the black-and-white, noir-styled video.
 
“I love that video,” Sidley gushes to Billboard. The clip was directed by Nigel DeFriez, a friend who also helmed the clip for “I Like Girls,” another track from Sidley’s debut album Interior Person. “It feels like a movie, an old French film, this woman riding in a car, gonna get the fuck out of town, she can’t look at herself anymore...”
 
“(DeFriez) said, ‘Can I just film you singing the song with a handheld camera?’ I said, ‘Sure, of course!’ We did it two days later. Barbara (Gruska, Sidley’s wife and album producer) did all the lighting, just switching things on and off. It was a real DIY thing, but I think it came off beautifully and it tells a really beautiful story.”
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi3v2hCnUc4
 
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Samantha Sidley | “I Like Girls”
 
“Best Albums of 2019” Los Angeles Times
 
See the video for “I Like Girls” and read an in-depth interview with the Los Angeles Times here.
 
Sidley’s quietly radical debut album, Interior Person, is premised on the idea that a listener in 2019 shouldn’t have to decode a love song to hear herself in it. Something you might not have realized you needed (though this L.A. native certainly knew she did): a sweet, funny, tastefully arranged vocal-jazz disc about same-sex romance.”
 
“A sophisticated and delicious ice-breaker, serving anthemic lyrical content for an evolving culture.” Grimy Goods
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glEdQNP13k
 
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Samantha Sidley | In The Press
 
Samantha Sidley turns ‘Singing In The Rain’ into a pro-lesbian anthem.” Refinery29
 
“Open and vulnerable, vivacious and calming.” — FORBES
 
“Startling... the proudly lesbian L.A. vocalist upends romantic jazz-pop tradition.” — LA Weekly
 
“A breath of fresh air.” JAZZIZ
 
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Samantha Sidley
Interior Person
Out Now
(Release Me Records)
 
Streaming Link:
STREAM FULL LP
  

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 (VIDEO)
06. Listen!! (STREAM | MP3)
07. Rose Without Thorns
08. Busy Doin’ Nothin’ (STREAM | MP3)
09. Easy To Be True
10. Interior Person (VIDEO)
 
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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
 
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : RELEASE ME RECORDS
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : YOUTUBE : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Vocalist Kathleen Grace survives life-altering, nearly career-ending accident; Releases new music video today that eerily foreshadows her fall.

“When I look at that part of the video, I have a lot of empathy for that girl, in that moment,” Grace shares. Watch stirring “Tie Me To You” now.
 
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Kathleen Grace as photographed by Emilia Pare
 
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Kathleen Grace | “Tie Me To You”

 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yh27w86xX0
 
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About | “Tie Me To You”
 
Early in the summer of 2020, amidst the throws of the pandemic, vocalist Kathleen Grace was involved in an accidental fall that resulted in a brain injury that she is still recovering from. Thankfully, miraculously, she has maintained an optimistic attitude about her situation, even while having to recovery in relative solitude. She will be okay.
 
To that end, Kathleen is now releasing the music video for the title track of her current album Tie Me To You, a collaborative record made with Larry Goldings, legendary keyboardist and decades-long sideman to James Taylor. It is astounding that the video, directed by Jacob Boll, contains a sequence depicting her falling, an eerie and somewhat shocking foreshadowing of her accident.
 
Kathleen addressed this in a voice memo, as she is still regaining her ability to type, stating, “When I look at that part of the sequence in the video, I want to reach out and help her. We’re all so fragile. I have a lot of empathy for that girl, in that moment. It’s this slow motion experience where you know the hit is coming, and you know it’s gonna be hard, and you don’t know what’s going to come after it.”
 
Please keep Kathleen in your thoughts, thank you.
 
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 Kathleen Grace | In The Press
 
“Genre-blurring dexterity...” — JazzTimes
 
“Echoes of Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.” — Downbeat
 
“Imaginative talent on the rise.” — Los Angeles Times
 
“Smart, alluring and evocative.” — The Washington Post
 
Simple beauty and subtle wisdom.” — LA Weekly
 
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Kathleen Grace
gives a track-by-track commentary to Jazziz about Tie Me To You, her new collaborative album with Larry Goldings. Check it out here and hear the full album at the link below!
 
Listeners agree, Kathleen Grace’s Tie Me To You is a welcomed release and urgently needed balm to soothe us through these uncertain times. An illuminating and stunning pause in a world gone awry, the album serves as a reminder that there is peace in letting go. As Grace explains, “Making this album brought me a sense of calm and safety when I most needed it; it’s moving to hear that the music is allowing others to feel that same peace right now.”
 
[STREAM]: https://fanatic.lnk.to/KathleenGraceLarryGoldings-TieMeToYou
 
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 Kathleen Grace with Larry Goldings
Tie Me To You
(Monsoon Records)
Out Now
 
Streaming Link:
STREAM FULL LP
  

Track Listing:
 
01. Tie Me To You (Kathleen Grace & Larry Goldings) (VIDEO)
02. Where Or When (Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart) (STREAM | VIDEO)
03. Everywhere (Kathleen Grace) (STREAM)
04. John The Revelator (Traditional)
05. Berceuse (George Moustaki)
06. The Thrill Is Gone (Ray Henderson & Lew Brown)
07. Embarcadero (Kathleen Grace & Darek Oleszkiewicz)
08. Love For Sale (Cole Porter)
09. What’ll I Do (Irving Berlin) (VIDEO)
10. I’ll Follow The Sun (John Lennon & Paul McCartney)
 
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Hear the plaintive, beautiful ballad “Everywhere” by Kathleen Grace (with Larry Goldings) at American Songwriter or at the link below.
 
Grace tells American Songwriter: “Making an album with Larry was easy, so beautifully easy, we had the same goals and values. We just wanted to trust what happened live in the studio.”
 
[STREAM]: https://fanatic.lnk.to/KathleenGrace-Everywhere
 
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Kathleen Grace | About
 
Much like her music, Kathleen Grace’s career has expanded in recent years beyond its jazz and folk roots that saw her appearing at The Montreux Jazz Festival and The Kennedy Center for the Arts, with performances alongside rock band Portugal The Man at Coachella and throughout My Morning Jacket leader Jim James’ solo release, Uniform Distortion.
 
Kathleen Grace’s latest album, Tie Me To You, was born from a place of awakening, the kind that can only trigger massive change, great loss and also, hope. It is the product of finally seeing yourself fully for the first time and the price you pay to do so.
 
In her case, it cost her a marriage that had consumed her entire adult life. It also marked the birth of a new woman, one who would call a new man to her side — a man who, ultimately, could not stay.
 
Amidst this love and loss, Grace barely slept. Instead, she was flooded with music day and night — poems, songs, and melodies.  She imagined recording this new music freely, in the moment, with no big production or fixes; she envisioned simple songs broken down to their most basic parts.
 
Soon, she picked up the phone and called Larry Goldings, a legendary keyboardist who has worked with James Taylor, Norah Jones, John Mayer, Beck, Sia, Tracy Chapman, and others. She said simply, “Listen, I need to make a record. And you’re the only one in the world I can make it with. Can you call me back?”
 
He did.
 
And so it was that Grace found herself in the only place left that made any sense: a recording studio in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake, California. The pair recorded live in the low light of the wood-framed building, often producing songs in single takes. What emerged is a portrait of a woman exposed as she mourns what she must let go of in order to keep reaching for herself. The result is a new sound for Grace, one that is more vulnerable and bold, one that embraces her eclecticism without apology.
 
Grace explains, “I remember this time so clearly, the tastes, the colors, and the sounds. The feeling of sitting next to Larry on a piano bench without headphones and just singing. Singing songs only for me, most of which I’d never sung before. Singing to myself and also to the men I loved. It’s all there in the music. Forever. Trapped in a snow globe of emotion.”
 
Grace and Goldings invited masterful partners into their creation of Tie Me To You. Bass player David Piltch (KD Lang) appears throughout the album, and violinist Gabe Witcher (Punch Brothers) is a special guest appearing as both a soloist and string section.
 
The project was championed by Grammy®-winning engineer Sheldon Gomberg, who offered up his studio for the better part of a year. A song record at its core, Tie Me To You features original music by both Grace and Goldings as well as covers of pieces by French icon Francois Hardy, blues great Son House, and The Beatles, and standards by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Rodgers & Hart.
 
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Kathleen Grace | Links
 
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