Showing posts with label recordings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recordings. Show all posts
Friday, September 11, 2015
I Shall Be Released
Long lapse in blogging but small seeds, planted long ago, and close to sprouting.
The wonderful Jen Foster is back, after taking a year or so off to recharge, and she is releasing all her Los Angeles recordings from the last few years. She ran a successful PledgeMusic campaign and the CDs will be out later this year. Including "Parentheses" with my lyrics.
Also, Michael Ronstadt, the insanely gifted cello player and all-around musician, is putting the finishing touches on five "art songs" we wrote. We will release these songs as a digital EP (working title is "Quiet Revels") -- also in the coming months.
And Rick Denzien might be releasing a CD with "Green Sky" on it.
So watch this space and I'll have more to say when the songs are available to you!
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Every Girl You Meet
I pretty much have to write this post backwards, because while there’s a long and winding backstory, there’s a more exciting ending. “Parentheses,” a song I cowrote with Jen Foster, was featured in an instrumental on the online series “Venice,” and is now available on Jen’s website for download. And frankly, I could stop typing right there and that would be blogworthy.
“Venice” is a spinoff-that-isn’t-a-spinoff from the cancelled soap THE GUIDING LIGHT. But even if you’re not a soap fan, the circuitous new-media route “Venice” has taken is an object lesson on how the television business is changing before our eyes.
THE GUIDING LIGHT featured a budding romance between two female characters, Olivia (played by Chrystal Chapell) and Natalia (played by Jessica Leccia). Neither character was identified as gay (as a matter of fact, they were in love with the same man). But the producers decided to bring them together, on a very long arc, so that their relationship grew naturally, over time. They never quite got to being a couple on GL, as it was cancelled two years ago.
However, Olivia and Natalia had a huge fan base (google “Otalia” and you’ll see what I mean). There were a lot of women, gay and otherwise, who watched in amazement as a mainstream soap showed a realistic incipient romance between two women, that wasn’t portrayed as sensationalistic or unhealthy. Fans wanted to know that “Otalia” finally got together.
So actress Crystal Chapell and writer Kim Turissi decided to “put on a show.” They created a web-only series taking place in Venice Beach, CA, with the two actresses from GUIDING LIGHT playing two totally new characters (Gina, an artist, and Ani, a photographer). In this series, both characters are gay, and have a history, but as the series starts they are breaking apart.
“Venice” was done on a shoestring, with actors and technicians donating their services for a while, just to get it done, with the hopes it would become a viable entertainment in time, finding its way to cable or even network. The first season had short (ten minute or so) episodes, filmed in peoples’ homes.
Season 3 is now started; the production values are way up and the storylines are coming into focus, Music plays a big part in “Venice” and the fans follow every artist whose music is featured, including my friend Coles Whalen. The show is supported in part by selling subscriptions to the series – you need to pay for access, but it’s only $10 for the whole season.
But the main musical voice belongs to Jen Foster, whose song “Venice Beach” was chosen to be the theme song. Jen’s music appears often on “Venice” and when she performs, the fans come out to hear her. (Jen deserves – and will eventually get – a blog post of her own. )
So in Episode 2, which was posted tonight, Gina and Ani have a big scene on the beach, where Gina discovers that Ani’s current lover may have hit her. The music underscoring the entire scene is the arrangement for“Parentheses” featuring my lyric and Jen’s music (with some collaborative overlap). The music fit the scene like a glove, and the lyric (which wasn’t used on screen) could be their theme song.
It’s wonderful to watch the song finally see the light of day. Available now at jenfoster.com!
“Venice” is a spinoff-that-isn’t-a-spinoff from the cancelled soap THE GUIDING LIGHT. But even if you’re not a soap fan, the circuitous new-media route “Venice” has taken is an object lesson on how the television business is changing before our eyes.
THE GUIDING LIGHT featured a budding romance between two female characters, Olivia (played by Chrystal Chapell) and Natalia (played by Jessica Leccia). Neither character was identified as gay (as a matter of fact, they were in love with the same man). But the producers decided to bring them together, on a very long arc, so that their relationship grew naturally, over time. They never quite got to being a couple on GL, as it was cancelled two years ago.
However, Olivia and Natalia had a huge fan base (google “Otalia” and you’ll see what I mean). There were a lot of women, gay and otherwise, who watched in amazement as a mainstream soap showed a realistic incipient romance between two women, that wasn’t portrayed as sensationalistic or unhealthy. Fans wanted to know that “Otalia” finally got together.
So actress Crystal Chapell and writer Kim Turissi decided to “put on a show.” They created a web-only series taking place in Venice Beach, CA, with the two actresses from GUIDING LIGHT playing two totally new characters (Gina, an artist, and Ani, a photographer). In this series, both characters are gay, and have a history, but as the series starts they are breaking apart.
“Venice” was done on a shoestring, with actors and technicians donating their services for a while, just to get it done, with the hopes it would become a viable entertainment in time, finding its way to cable or even network. The first season had short (ten minute or so) episodes, filmed in peoples’ homes.
Season 3 is now started; the production values are way up and the storylines are coming into focus, Music plays a big part in “Venice” and the fans follow every artist whose music is featured, including my friend Coles Whalen. The show is supported in part by selling subscriptions to the series – you need to pay for access, but it’s only $10 for the whole season.
But the main musical voice belongs to Jen Foster, whose song “Venice Beach” was chosen to be the theme song. Jen’s music appears often on “Venice” and when she performs, the fans come out to hear her. (Jen deserves – and will eventually get – a blog post of her own. )
So in Episode 2, which was posted tonight, Gina and Ani have a big scene on the beach, where Gina discovers that Ani’s current lover may have hit her. The music underscoring the entire scene is the arrangement for“Parentheses” featuring my lyric and Jen’s music (with some collaborative overlap). The music fit the scene like a glove, and the lyric (which wasn’t used on screen) could be their theme song.
It’s wonderful to watch the song finally see the light of day. Available now at jenfoster.com!
Friday, March 4, 2011
The Next Right Thing
Watching an artist’s trajectory can be thrilling. While with some artists, the question is how will their talent develop, with others the question is what will they do with all that freaking talent.
Seth Glier has innate songwriting instincts that put some experienced songwriters to shame. He understands structure and how to develop ideas from component to component. He has an agility, and facilty, with rhyme, and doesn’t overuse it; knowing when to surprise the ear with internal rhymes, and knowing when to smooth the edges with near rhymes. He finds and weaves images that catch the ear and engage the inner eye.
Besides the writing ability, he is an accomplished composer and pianist, and has a gorgeous tenor voice complete with a daring falsetto. See him in performance sometime. He is the real deal, the complete package, the cat’s meow *and* pajamas.
So after traveling the country back and forth, doing his early experimentation on self-produced CDs, developing a fan base and settling into a performance style, finally getting a real label-produced CD out into the world......what does he do next?
He does The Next Right Thing.
There is a lot of say about Seth’s second MPress-produced album and not all of it can fit in this blog post. You hear him reaching for new points of view, yearning for the life experience to give him more to write about; trying different metaphorical languages, willing to let himself fail, and far more often succeeding.
The first striking thing about the CD is how stylistically different the opening title track is from the rest of the album. ‘The Next Right Thing” (which often opens his show) is a high vocal over a Native American drumbeat, an a capella two-verse rumination on religion. The first verse describes a huge multi-cultural religious gathering, lamenting and praying and condemning; the second verse describes a woman dying on her bed, praying for a favorable judgement. With the chorus “People need a miracle/To do the Next Right Thing.”
The rest of the album has ballads of all sorts (even uptempo ones like “Lauralee”) and after the first track you think you may have wandered into the wrong playlist; but listening, and sinking deeper into each song, you begin to realize Seth has written an album about faith. And hope. And wondering what, if anything, to believe in.
Not only in explicitly religious songs like “Down With The Ship” with the iconography and discussion of belief systems, or “I Don’t Need You” in which the singer needs hope and faith and something to believe. But in “Book of Matches” where a family’s house burns down and the singer (and the family) think more of the love and future they still have. And in “What The Others Have Done,” in which a woman considers the latest in a string of men, hoping this one will finally be the one. Or in the two back-to-back songs about driving long distances to see a girl (“Walk Katy Home” and “Lauralee”), in which a journey is taken with the hope of love and redemption at the end. Belief and faith and hope come up again and again in these songs.
What’s most exciting is to hear Seth deliberating changing the narrative voice. It’s very easy to fall into writing “I/You” songs -- where the singer “I” is discussing his relationship with the girl (“You”), and certainly those songs are in here -- good ones, too. But there are songs about other characters (“Down With The Ship, “What The Others Have Done”, “Book of Matches”), even female characters, as well as a straight narration song like “The Next Right Thing.” Even “I Don’t Need You,” though it clearly is an “I/You” song, is more about what the singer *does* need, other than someone to love.
This is a lovely album and worth several, or numerous, or myriad listens. And as always, Seth’d beautiful voice, piano and writing, and supported and shaped by Ryan Hommel’s (producer/sideman/BFF) guitar and production.
Seth Glier has innate songwriting instincts that put some experienced songwriters to shame. He understands structure and how to develop ideas from component to component. He has an agility, and facilty, with rhyme, and doesn’t overuse it; knowing when to surprise the ear with internal rhymes, and knowing when to smooth the edges with near rhymes. He finds and weaves images that catch the ear and engage the inner eye.
Besides the writing ability, he is an accomplished composer and pianist, and has a gorgeous tenor voice complete with a daring falsetto. See him in performance sometime. He is the real deal, the complete package, the cat’s meow *and* pajamas.
So after traveling the country back and forth, doing his early experimentation on self-produced CDs, developing a fan base and settling into a performance style, finally getting a real label-produced CD out into the world......what does he do next?
He does The Next Right Thing.
There is a lot of say about Seth’s second MPress-produced album and not all of it can fit in this blog post. You hear him reaching for new points of view, yearning for the life experience to give him more to write about; trying different metaphorical languages, willing to let himself fail, and far more often succeeding.
The first striking thing about the CD is how stylistically different the opening title track is from the rest of the album. ‘The Next Right Thing” (which often opens his show) is a high vocal over a Native American drumbeat, an a capella two-verse rumination on religion. The first verse describes a huge multi-cultural religious gathering, lamenting and praying and condemning; the second verse describes a woman dying on her bed, praying for a favorable judgement. With the chorus “People need a miracle/To do the Next Right Thing.”
The rest of the album has ballads of all sorts (even uptempo ones like “Lauralee”) and after the first track you think you may have wandered into the wrong playlist; but listening, and sinking deeper into each song, you begin to realize Seth has written an album about faith. And hope. And wondering what, if anything, to believe in.
Not only in explicitly religious songs like “Down With The Ship” with the iconography and discussion of belief systems, or “I Don’t Need You” in which the singer needs hope and faith and something to believe. But in “Book of Matches” where a family’s house burns down and the singer (and the family) think more of the love and future they still have. And in “What The Others Have Done,” in which a woman considers the latest in a string of men, hoping this one will finally be the one. Or in the two back-to-back songs about driving long distances to see a girl (“Walk Katy Home” and “Lauralee”), in which a journey is taken with the hope of love and redemption at the end. Belief and faith and hope come up again and again in these songs.
What’s most exciting is to hear Seth deliberating changing the narrative voice. It’s very easy to fall into writing “I/You” songs -- where the singer “I” is discussing his relationship with the girl (“You”), and certainly those songs are in here -- good ones, too. But there are songs about other characters (“Down With The Ship, “What The Others Have Done”, “Book of Matches”), even female characters, as well as a straight narration song like “The Next Right Thing.” Even “I Don’t Need You,” though it clearly is an “I/You” song, is more about what the singer *does* need, other than someone to love.
This is a lovely album and worth several, or numerous, or myriad listens. And as always, Seth’d beautiful voice, piano and writing, and supported and shaped by Ryan Hommel’s (producer/sideman/BFF) guitar and production.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
My Life as a Record Producer....
Somehow I've taken my first little steps into "production" -- inevitable, I guess, but when I turn my head I'm not sure how I got here.
I’ve written six songs with Ian Ferrin. He’s a good guy and the songs are quite unlike any others I’ve written – these are pop ballads, a couple of which have a spiritual element to them (especially “World of Wonder”). Ian has moved on from pop songwriting, to other projects, but we have these songs and it would be nice to be able to send them out, or place them in other media. Give them some life beyond my website.
Ian and I agree that to market these songs we could use a stronger vocal to replace his own, and I’ve had it as a back burner project for a while. I’ve been looking into sending them to a studio in Nashville and hiring a demo pro, though that will be quite expensive (Nashville is a “top of the line” market). But it occurred to me that Philly has plenty of studios, and I should be able to find a good singer locally.
I do know someone with a studio that has quite reasonable rates (maybe 2/3 or less of Nashville prices). But finding the right singer is elusive. Of the six songs, some need a modern ‘pop’ sound, but some need a clearer voice, country or even theatre. “World of Wonder” is almost a Family Channel song, and “Crossing the Threshold” could work in a country market. I’m looking for a vocalist that can hit all the notes and all the styles.
I’ve put up a Craigslist ad, and gotten many responses, of all kinds. I’m trying to manage the process as best I can, giving a quick listen now, and saving the e-mails and clips to evaluate carefully over the weekend. I’ve responded to all people who have e-mailed in, letting them know I’ll get back to them one way or another.
After I listen to all the entrants, I still have the option of holding off on this, or going to Nashville and spending lots more money. I’m still hoping, though.
I’ve written six songs with Ian Ferrin. He’s a good guy and the songs are quite unlike any others I’ve written – these are pop ballads, a couple of which have a spiritual element to them (especially “World of Wonder”). Ian has moved on from pop songwriting, to other projects, but we have these songs and it would be nice to be able to send them out, or place them in other media. Give them some life beyond my website.
Ian and I agree that to market these songs we could use a stronger vocal to replace his own, and I’ve had it as a back burner project for a while. I’ve been looking into sending them to a studio in Nashville and hiring a demo pro, though that will be quite expensive (Nashville is a “top of the line” market). But it occurred to me that Philly has plenty of studios, and I should be able to find a good singer locally.
I do know someone with a studio that has quite reasonable rates (maybe 2/3 or less of Nashville prices). But finding the right singer is elusive. Of the six songs, some need a modern ‘pop’ sound, but some need a clearer voice, country or even theatre. “World of Wonder” is almost a Family Channel song, and “Crossing the Threshold” could work in a country market. I’m looking for a vocalist that can hit all the notes and all the styles.
I’ve put up a Craigslist ad, and gotten many responses, of all kinds. I’m trying to manage the process as best I can, giving a quick listen now, and saving the e-mails and clips to evaluate carefully over the weekend. I’ve responded to all people who have e-mailed in, letting them know I’ll get back to them one way or another.
After I listen to all the entrants, I still have the option of holding off on this, or going to Nashville and spending lots more money. I’m still hoping, though.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
The Captain's Daughter
A new song, or at least a new song clip, has been posted on my website. It is a clip of "The Captain's Daughter," a very naughty sea shanty.
As I've noted before, I respond well to specific assignments and challenges, and count as one of my talents the ability to write in different voices. So when a Renaissance Faire act(e) asked if I would create a speciality lyric for them, I was eager to give it a try.
"The Interpreters" are two women -- one of them Italian, the other one blonde -- who interpret the more incomprehensible speeches of the other. It is a tavern act, and is very, very, *VERY* heavy on the sexual innuendo. Renn Faires are as much about the sex and ale as they are about the costumes and crafts. So throwing all my politically correct thoughts out the window, I wrote a traditional-sounding sea shanty about a captain's daughter that takes her responsibilities to keep the crew happy *very* seriously. I even included a terribly archaic reference to the orient and a chinese ship, that led to a modern pun I hadn't heard before.
The ladies are currently performing the song at the Maryland Renaissance Faire, until October. The CD is available there, and will eventually be sold on CDBaby.
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