Your Custom Text Here
On June 30th, New Jersey pop/rock artist Mistine will be releasing her debut EP, “Fade”, on all streaming platforms. Having toured with such pop acts as Conan Gray, WizTheMC, and Zeph, Mistine is ready to share her new nostalgia-inspired tunes with the world. She’s already released two singles from her EP (“Temporary Feeling” and “Everett Park”), both of which have over 24,000 plays on Spotify…
Read moreBy Sonia Schnee | Posted Thursday, April 14, 2022
Stanhope, NJ band The City Limit is cooking up new music for 2022, drawing on a diverse range of influences, from blues to pop, rock, funk, jazz, and folk. I interviewed bandmates Scott Lewis, Anthony Ambrosio, Sean Farrelly, and Mike Casson twice last year to ask them about their future music plans. Just a little over a month ago, they teased on Instagram part of a new single, which we may get to hear on April 22nd when they perform at Newton, NJ's Greek's Bar. Then, on Saturday, May 14th, The City Limit will be traveling down south, performing for the first time in North Carolina at Wampus Cat Music Festival.
In our interview, bandmates Scott, Anthony, Sean, and Mike reflected on the good parts of 2020/2021, plans for their new EP, what it’s like getting messages from international fans, and they gave some shout-outs to some very influential family members. Catch it all by watching our interview above or reading the transcript below.
(Video and transcript have been edited for time and clarity.)
SCOTT LEWIS: I'm Scott.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: My name is Anthony. I play bass guitar.
SEAN FARRELLY: My name's Sean. I play drums.
MIKE CASSON: My name is Mike, and I play keyboards.
SCOTT LEWIS: And we are The City Limit.
SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah! We recorded the music video for our last single "Wake Up Your Mind” [see above].
SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, so he's a childhood friend of Anthony's.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Yeah, me and him were in bands together, grew up together playing music, and he went on the path of film. He worked in L.A., doing all sorts of odd jobs working in the industry. He really needed something for his portfolio, so he came out and basically did it for free. We had to pay for whatever expenses, but we didn't have to pay him anything. The video turned out awesome.
SCOTT LEWIS: He did such an amazing job with it.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: For no budget.
SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, and it looks fantastic when you watch the video.
SCOTT LEWIS: That was all to Steve [Stephen Joseph Craig] -- the director's -- credit.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Yeah, he set up everything.
SCOTT LEWIS: He sent me to Lowe's and I was like, "Get a bunch of lights." I'm like, "Alright" so I got a bunch of lights and then we strung 'em up and the rest was just his talent.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It was all in my garage, too. It worked out great.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: You know what, we didn't notice the pandemic, per se. It was a little harder booking gigs that pay and stuff, but in terms of playing gigs, there were a lot of gigs out there to grab.
SCOTT LEWIS: They take a little bit more legwork to find now. It's a little bit more like you have to actively hunt them out, whereas before the pandemic, places were playing tug-of-war, like, "We want you to play." "No, we want you to play." "No, we want you to play." Now, it's a little bit more you searching them out. As he mentioned, they don't have as much money to play with anymore. Obviously, a lot of restaurants closed down during the lockdowns during the pandemic, so everyone's kind of financially struggling, so they just don't have as much money to play with. So, those things make being a performer or a gigging musician a little bit more difficult, but we just love playing together. We love playing on stage and playing our songs for people. So, despite the pay cut, we have not been deterred whatsoever. We're just as happy as ever to get on stage and play for people.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: The upstate New York shows were definitely some of the better ones. There were festivals, a lot of people. A lot of fun.
SCOTT LEWIS: That one in Barryville.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Kenny's Cosmic Campout. That was good. And then, The Grateful Daze. Same area.
SCOTT LEWIS: So, we're hugely influenced by The Grateful Dead. We're all obsessed with The Grateful Dead. In upstate New York is this whole community of Deadheads up there that throw these great music festivals, and we got to be a part of two of them this year and one of them last year. Those are some of the most fun shows you ever played. Everybody's there for the same reason, which is just to play and listen to great music, and it's a very communal vibe. We were outsiders coming into it, and they were so welcoming to us. We're going to be back there again in 2022 at all those shows, so love upstate New York, love the whole Deadhead culture up there. It's a really, really great place to play music.
SEAN FARRELLY: We have some other potential gigs coming up that could be cool, too, that aren't just in the area, like down in North Carolina.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: In North Carolina, we have a gig set.
SEAN FARRELLY: Wampus Cat Music Festival. We got selected to play in North Carolina at this festival, so we're going to be taking a road trip out there, and we have a couple of other gigs that we're working out in the Louisiana area and Virginia. So, we're trying to move southward with our music. That's something that we intended to do in 2020, but then, obviously, the carpet got pulled out from under everyone, so now we're excited to pick it back up.
SCOTT LEWIS: The Wampus Cat's going to be in late-May, and then we're going to try to be in the Louisiana area in mid-summer, sometime around there. One thing that we're learning as we go along in the years of being a band is plan your summers and stuff way in advance. In the past year, we were scrambled, like "Oh my God, summer's here. Let's find shows."
SCOTT LEWIS: By the way, if you see me popping up and sitting back down, I have a pot of gumbo I've been making since 2 o'clock in the afternoon over there, so I just keep running over to it and tending to it to make sure it doesn't get out of hand.
SEAN FARRELLY: Scott likes to cook for us.
SCOTT LEWIS: I need to feed my boys.
SEAN FARRELLY: It's one of his favorite pastimes.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It's the only way he's going to get us over his house, basically.
SCOTT LEWIS: They're growing boys. I've gotta keep them nurtured.
SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, we've been trying to build our online following a little bit.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: That's a hard thing to do.
SCOTT LEWIS: It is.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Emails and playlists and whatnot and curators. It takes a lot of work.
[Keyboard player Mike Casson joins the interview.]
SCOTT LEWIS: Here is our piano prodigy extraordinaire.
MIKE CASSON: How's it going?
MIKE CASSON: Yeah, there were a bunch. What was it, Riverfest?
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: That was a couple of years ago, but still. We were saying The Grateful Daze and Kenny's Cosmic Campout.
MIKE CASSON: Oh yeah, The Grateful Daze was really cool. We played at a brewery recently, too, that was really cool.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Yeah, Fort Nonsense Brewing Company had a grand re-opening. That was a Halloween show, too.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Pretty similar sound and feel. We try to change it up, but we've got some songs in the works. Nothing ready to put on record yet, but we did record a single over this past summer that's ready to be released probably within the next month or so.
SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, me and Anthony are kind of approaching the end of the writing process for this next record that we're going to start doing in 2022. I'm really excited about it because I feel like this next record, just based on the raw form of the songs we have now, it's going to be kind of like the final realization of what we've been trying to do with this band. Look at the last record, and it kind of has elements of the first record in it. This next one is going to be, I think, a total breaking new ground type of thing where it's going to be something completely fresh. It's going to be the four of us working like lockstep with each other as one cohesive unit. We're all going to be putting our creativity together in one, and that's going to be really fun to see.
Clockwise: Mike Casson, Scott Lews, Sean Farrelly and Anthony Ambrosio recording at Backroom Studios in Rockaway, NJ.
SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, he's like our George Martin, you know what I mean?
MIKE CASSON: He's really good.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: He works well with us. He knows us.
MIKE CASSON: He's been doing it for a while with the band.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: And he's very easy to work with. You say anything and he'll do it. Like, "Oh yeah, let's do it! Let's try it," you know?
SCOTT LEWIS: This will be our fourth session with him, and I just feel like now we have a bit of a shorthand and we have a rapport with him where we don't have to overexplain anything. He just kind of intuitively knows what to do for our band and our sound and our songs.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: People just started coming back out, especially when it got nice out. A lot of the stuff was outside. During the winter Scott and I were doing some acoustic stuff, or Mike and Scott were doing some acoustic stuff, and people just loved it. People were just trying to get out and live their lives again.
SCOTT LEWIS: I almost feel like now people are more grateful than ever for live music, you know what I mean? People went through a period of time when they were all locked in their houses streaming Netflix, and so now when they're at a place with live music, they appreciate it. It's Like, "Wow, life would be bleak without this." So there is that little thing. I think people are more excited for live music now than ever before.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Even for us, guys, we're guys who go to concerts all the time. We hadn't gone to any shows, but luckily all four of us together got to go see Hall & Oates this summer.
SCOTT LEWIS: That was amazing!
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It was down at PNC Bank Arts Center.
MIKE CASSON: That was a great night.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: A great little outing. It was the first concert of the last couple of years, sort of thing.
SCOTT LEWIS: We're all into so many different kinds of music, but we all love pop music so much. To see one of the greatest pop music writing duos, to see them on stage, and they sounded as good as ever, it was really, really inspiring and cool.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It was.
MIKE CASSON: Daryl was getting mad at the sound guys, though. He kept on getting feedback.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We're sorry about that, Daryl.
SCOTT LEWIS: The sound sucks at PNC, and I'm so happy that Daryl held their feet to the fire on that one.
MIKE CASSON: He was getting mad, but they killed it, though.
SCOTT LEWIS: I was getting mad.
SEAN FARRELLY: I didn't even mind spending the $14 on the beer.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: That's our biggest goal, to get some new music. We want to be back in the studio at some point, hopefully real soon.
SCOTT LEWIS: Yeah, we pretty much have like the next EP written out, and I'm personally so excited about it because I think that some of the songs on this next record are going to be our best ones yet. Just this new single alone that we recorded, we showed it to a few close friends and they were like, "This is better than anything from the last two records." In my mind, I'm like, "Well, wait 'til you see what else is on the next EP. It's going to be even better than this." So, I think that we're just keeping that upwards trajectory going, of getting better and better with the songs. I'm really excited.
SCOTT LEWIS: The last record, we worked with two amazing musicians named Earl Maneeine and Jennifer Devore who are members of... It's actually a funny story. So Earl is an amazing violinist, and his wife, Jennifer, is an amazing cellist. They're part of this quartet called The Vitamin String Quartet. They do these amazing tributes to great songwriters like Elliott Smith and Fiona Apple and all these great songwriters who we admire. So I'd been listening to them since I was in high school, and then one day we were talking to Kevin [Antressian], like "We need strings" and he was like, "Oh, I have some string players I could hook you up with." He gave us the contact info, we started talking, we added each other on Facebook, and like a week after we added each other on Facebook, I was bored and I was looking at their Facebook and it says "Violinist and cellist at Vitamin String Quartet." I was like, "Wait, WHAT?" I didn't even know these guys who I had been talking to about the project and working on our songs were from this quartet I had been listening to for like 10-12 years and who I loved so much. That was a really cool, full-circle moment. So, that was on the last record.
We don't really know who we're going to work with on this next one. We're a very tight-knit group when it comes to recording. Like, we usually don't let anybody in the studio other than us, but as we get to a song and we say, "Oh, this needs this instrument, this needs that instrument..." For the first record, we hired a saxophone player. So we kind of play by ear and see what the song needs, and then we kind of hunt out someone to play the part.
Our first drummer on our first record was a good friend of ours — and is still a close friend of the band — Sean Meyers. He has this great project called Gates to the Morning. On the first record on our song "Wreckage", track 3 on our first EP, there's this is a line where it says "Every time it rains so hard, a little bit of us weathers away" and when I say the word "rain", Sean did a rain stick, so “Every time it rains” it goes "tshhhh." We forced Kevin to take that recording of the rain stick.
SEAN FARRELLY: Yeah, take the rain stick and put it in every other release.
SCOTT LEWIS: Every single release we ever do, like 40 years from now, we're going to be using the rain stick.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It's in the new single. You'll hear it.
MIKE CASSON: It's subtle.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It's very subtle.
MIKE CASSON: But it's nice.
SCOTT LEWIS: Basically, we want, 40 years from now, to still have Sean have a credit on our record and he hasn't talked to us in like 30 years but we just want him to be there, just so he opens the record and he's like, "These idiots." So, we're looking forward to seeing how we can utilize the rain stick.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: This new EP, I am pretty sure on one track there is going to be some sort of instrument. Something. We don't know what yet, but something will be there, just for fun, you know? Horns or something.
MIKE CASSON: I personally think it's cool to collab with people that you like in the local scene.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Oh yeah, definitely.
MIKE CASSON: Because there's so many talented people that we know that, you know, a lot of people, sometimes we get caught up in being a band and just focusing on what the band should sound like, but at the end of the day, we're just trying to get our music out there to as many people as possible, and sometimes a collab can just take a good song and make it something special. I definitely am open to that.
SCOTT LEWIS: Me, too.
MIKE CASSON: If we know the people that would fit, you know?
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: It's not planned. It just kind of gets figured out as the process is happening.
SCOTT LEWIS: We got a really lovely review from a music blog in Mexico, and we had to use Google Translate to understand what they were saying. It said something to the effect of, "This is a great blend of pop, funk, blues, disco" and I was like, "I guess there is disco in there." They were like, "You've gotta have this in your music library." As we're reading out the Google Translate, we were like, "These guys are so nice." So there's been little instances of that. We're going to try to have that same outreach with the next single.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We've been working with a radio promotion company called Twin Vision, and they were the ones that were helping us spread it around. We're going to be working with them with this new single as well. So hopefully we get the same kind of feedback with people reaching out.
SEAN FARRELLY: We're hoping they remember us from the last one, so they see that we released a new one and will be like, "Oh yeah, I remember these guys. We'll check it out."
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: They're based out in Brooklyn. They work with everyone all over the country, but their main offices are in Brooklyn. They found us. We played at Rockwood Music Hall two years ago. They searched the website and found us through the website, listened to our music, and reached out to us about helping us promote shit, but we didn't have anything out at the time, so we used them last year and we reached out again this year for the new single. So, hopefully, it works out.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: I’d like to give a shout-out to "the two Jim’s." Sean's father and Mike's father, Jim Casson and Jim Farrelly. They come to every show we play.
SEAN FARRELLY: Every show. No matter where it is.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: They just show up.
SCOTT LEWIS: Jim squared.
MIKE CASSON: They're a good duo.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Excellent duo..
SCOTT LEWIS: We've had this pipe dream of a photoshoot where we dress up our dads as us.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: And they're the band, they just wear outfits we happen to wear. Sweater vests and beards and stuff.
SCOTT LEWIS: Me in like a beer-stained shirt. Anthony in a snap-on jacket. Mike in a Nintendo T-shirt with a beanie on.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Man bun.
MIKE CASSON: I’ll wear something ridiculous, like tigers…
SCOTT LEWIS: Like a muscle shirt covered in watermelons.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Jim's gotta start working out to do this.
SCOTT LEWIS: Didn't we have an idea where, for some reason, we were going to be in the background? Like, you know in a cartoon when a bunch of characters poke their heads around a corner and their heads are stacked? It's gonna be us looking around the corner at our dads as us.
MIKE CASSON: It’s a good idea for a cover.
SCOTT LEWIS: We were really high when we came up with this idea, but it sounded great at the time.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We can't help that we're geniuses.
SCOTT LEWIS: If you saw that album cover, wouldn't you go, "I vaguely want to take a listen to this"?
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: You'd shut it off after the first 20 seconds.
SCOTT LEWIS: But at least you started it!
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Even if they didn't have their shirts on. Actually, our dads are almost in better shape than us.
SCOTT LEWIS: Our dads are in way better shape than us.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: My dad's actually a drummer, almost like a casual hobby. When I was a kid, he'd put on Journey CDs and just play along to them. So that's kind of what got me into it. I started jamming on drums. He got me a guitar and a bass and whatnot. But other than that, not really.
SCOTT LEWIS: My dad learned "Badge" by Cream on the bass when he was, like, 25 and then never did anything else musical again.
SEAN FARRELLY: My dad kind of knows how to play drums because I've shown him a couple of things in recent past years. I think he just needs to get over the confidence part.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: He is a black belt, though.
SEAN FARRELLY: Yeah. He needs to get out and just play in front of people. He is a black belt, though. I know that's not really a musical instrument.
MIKE CASSON: My dad did choir when he was younger and he'll sing, kind of. He's not into music really, but he's always had a great taste in music. I owe him a lot for all the insane catalogs of different genres, of all the classics that he had showed me growing up, that has just seeped into your subconscious and then you grow up and it’s kind of influences you.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Same with me. My dad introduced me to so much music. Never was a huge musician, but he was just a huge music fan.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: Oh yeah. Other than that, everyone else can suck it, I would have to say, right?
A shout-out to our friend, Nicole. She helped us a lot.
SCOTT LEWIS: Oh yeah. Let's give a shout-out to Nicole! She's always there for us, even when we are not there for ourselves. We really appreciate that.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: She helps us with a lot of things. She's gotten us gigs. She's taken pictures.
MIKE CASSON: Helped us book.
SCOTT LEWIS: She's a jack-of-all-trades.
MIKE CASSON: Yeah, she's great.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: She's a good friend.
MIKE CASSON: Shout-out to Nicole. Nicole's cool. She's a good friend.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We've been waiting for the gumbo for hours.
SCOTT LEWIS: That's not true, it's ready. Don't listen to him! We should do this once a year. This is fun. This is nice.
MIKE CASSON: We should make a Patreon.
SCOTT LEWIS: We should.
MIKE CASSON: We should.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: I was thinking an OnlyFans.
MIKE CASSON: We could do an OnlyFans.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: They think it's nudes and they click on it and it's one of our shitty songs. “We paid for this shit?!”
SCOTT LEWIS: They think it's nudes but they click on it and it's just me making gumbo for 11 hours straight.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: And me yelling at him. "Where's dinner? Where's my dinner?!"
SCOTT LEWIS: I’d pay for that. I’d watch that.
SCOTT LEWIS: It’s Scott stirring gumbo.
SEAN FARRELLY: I love that idea!
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: We'll give you royalties.
MIKE CASSON: Livestreaming on Twitch.tv.
ANTHONY AMBROSIO: With a City Limits track on repeat in the background.
SCOTT LEWIS: We'll give you a producer's credit, Sonia.
By Sonia Schnee | Posted Friday, March 18, 2022
South Amboy singer/songwriter, alt-pop recording artist Jackie June just dropped a brand new single, “Falling Apart”, today. Written and recorded in collaboration with artists April Rose Gabrielli and Kulick, “Falling Apart” marks a sonic departure from Jackie’s previous music, while still being true to her penchant for deep, meaningful lyrics. As Jackie explains in her interview (Part 1 was filmed in March 2021, Part 2 in March of this year), while the subject matter of her songs may be serious, she likes to couple them with an upbeat, driving pop melody while also eliciting joy through refreshing and — as we’ll see with “Falling Apart” — playful music videos. Listening to Jackie June’s music, audiences are reminded to stop, reflect, and appreciate the beauty of the things and people around them.
Be sure to follow Jackie June on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) for up-to-date announcements about new music and show dates, and check out her YouTube channel to catch the official music video for “Falling Apart” which will premiere later this month.
To learn more about Jackie and the inspiration behind her music, watch our interview above or read the transcript below.
(Video and transcript have been edited for time and clarity.)
JACKIE JUNE: I think that my music is generally like pop-rock. I think sometimes people hear a little bit of a country influence depending on what the song is. I don't know where it comes from, but I do love country music. My influences tend to be a lot of pop artists and singer-songwriter-type artists.
Yes. So I grew up in Toms River, but now I live in South Amboy, so Middlesex County.
So we filmed the performance scenes up at Debonaire Music Hall in Teaneck. So shout out to David over there who's amazing and allowed us to use his space. The beach scenes in the video were over at Sandy Hook. So we went during sunset and got really lucky in capturing the most beautiful sunset, which we were really hoping for.
It was literally pure luck. The filmmaker/director was Bart Lentini, and he had the idea to go to Sandy Hook. He's like, "I'm telling you, if it's a really good night, we're going to get really good shots" and I was like, "I trust you", and he nailed it. It was really perfect.
So, probably a little over a year ago, I released a song called "On the Move", and at the time I was considering doing a music video for it. I wasn't really sure, and I had seen some work that I really liked. Taylor Tote had a video called "Heart's a Boomerang", and I had reached out to her and I said, "Hey, who did your video?" and she referred me to the woman who did her video. I reached out to her, and she introduced me to Bart. We talked a little bit. COVID happened, so no video, but as the year went on, I remembered that I loved his work and I reached back out to him and said, "Hey, how can we do a really cool COVID-safe music video?" We worked really well together. He was awesome to work with.
So, I actually borrowed people from a bunch of different bands. So on the bass is Jamie McClanahan of The Victory Drive. On the guitar is Chris Laurie, and he's in the band Triple Addiction -- these are all Jersey bands -- and on the drums is Jimmy Meyer of The Dives. Fun fact: Jimmy Meyer is also the co-writer of the song, so we wrote it last summer [2020] via Zoom during COVID and all that good stuff.
We somehow connected on Facebook because I guess we had heard each other's music. We had never met. We talked about a potential collaboration at some point and obviously, COVID happened, but we were like, "You know what? Even though we've never met and it's the middle of COVID, let's write something." So we actually wrote the song before we ever even met in person, which was kind of crazy.
So that was recorded up an Audio Pilot Studio by Rob Freeman of the band Hidden in Plain View. They're a really awesome band, and he's such an incredible producer and just musician and person in general.
Thank you, I felt really proud of these lyrics, and I think there are a lot of things that sometimes can get easily missed, or maybe my inflection, or the way I sing something. It happens all the time with music. There's misunderstood lyrics and stuff. So I was like, "You know what? I'm going to put these lyrics in the bottom." There's a lyric video, but I didn't do anything crazy with that, so I figured I might as well include them.
That is literally one of my favorite lines in the song. I am a huge fan of Marilyn Monroe. I have pictures of her all over my music room in here. So when I was writing with Jimmy, I was kind of just looking around my room and I was looking at Marilyn and I'm like, "Oh man, I love her", blah blah blah, and I thought it would be interesting to incorporate her somehow in the song. Her birth name is Norma Jean Baker, for those who don't know, so the idea behind that line is, number one, the song is about kind of going a little crazy during -- I mean, for me personally, it's quarantine -- but it could be anything for anyone, where things are just raw and you just feel like you're going bonkers. I think that the imagery of having these two personalities in one person kind of combined, to me just seemed like a cool visual. I think it also shows that there's always going to be a little bit of two sides to how someone feels. I thought it was a good representation for feeling that way.
Yes, I do. Jes Hudak, she is my mentor and I love her to death. So quick back story about Jes. I started off as her vocal student a few years ago, and this is before I had even started even thinking about writing. We were working together and she said, "Try songwriting, I feel like there's this artist within you and I think you should do it" and I was like, "You're nuts, I can't write a song." She really motivated me, and we wrote my whole first EP together, my EP "Wildflower."
We kind of came back together early-2020, maybe even by the end of 2019, and we started writing "Can't Quit You" together. It kind of came about because I had been having such an emotional roller coaster about, "Do I want to keep doing music? Do I not want to keep doing it?" There's just always this constant battle as an artist about whether or not you should even try. So funny enough, the song comes off as a love song, but it's really my love song to music, about how it doesn't matter what's going on and how much sometimes it can hurt, being an artist and really trying to do this thing, I just can't quit it. So I always love writing with Jes. She's the reason I do this. She's awesome.
So, with a release during COVID and quarantine, there was really no opportunity to do any sort of music video. I thought, wouldn't it be really cute if "I can't quit you" kind of has like this double meaning? It's a love song, but for me personally, it means one thing. For someone else, it could mean something else. So I thought it would be a cool idea to reach out to people on social media -- friends, family, anyone who is interested -- to submit a really short clip of them showing me something that they could never quit, or something they just couldn't live without.
I got some really cool video submissions of people who like to run, so they're running, or there's people with their kids, and there's people with their girlfriends or their boyfriends, or eating chicken wings. I mean, just all these really cool ways that I feel like people were able to get creative. I just loved it and it came out really cool. I'm very proud of that video, so I'm really glad you liked it. It was really important to put out something that was really like a feel-good kind of thing. I think everybody has had some kind of loss, or hasn't been able to do the things that they can't quit, the things that they can't live without, and I like to think it was a nice little reminder for everyone to be like, "We still have these things. We're still going to be able to do them. Let's just have a little fun." Shout out to Ryan Hanratty of Frosted Green Productions for the editing. He did a great job.
So, this is cool. His name is Fulvio, and he is a filmmaker/documentarian. He's been interviewing musicians of all types and of all genres of people from the past and the present. Initially, I think it was going to be a movie documentary, but so many people wanted to be involved in it that I think he's going to make it more into a series now. Big shout out to Rory D'Lasnow, who's a singer/songwriter here in Jersey as well. He made the introduction. It was a really cool project and was excited to be a part of it, for sure. It's called The Jersey Sound, and I've been following them on Instagram and been following Fulvio. He's still out there and he's still meeting people and filming and interviewing. I'm excited to see when the videos start to come out.
Caroline Davidson opened up a beautiful art and music-type studio in Asbury Park called Ghost Harbor Creative. She has an adorable little stage in there, and obviously, with COVID, it was hard to make it a public event, so she had the idea of coming up with livestreams recorded from Ghost Harbor. So I met with Caroline, and we set something up for me and Rory to perform there, and we did kind of a back and forth set, like a mini songwriters round. It was a lot of fun. It's a great place, and people should definitely check out Ghost Harbor because they're really doing a great job supporting the art scene in Jersey.
My mother did a lot of theater growing up. My mom has a beautiful singing voice, but she didn't really pursue that. My father, he's a music fan, but not very musical. But my father's family is very musical. A lot of them live out in California and do a lot of singing and performing. My aunt's a belly dancer -- like a famous belly dancer. It's crazy. So she does all of that, and there are a lot of vocalists on that side of the family. Definitely artistic people.
I would say there are probably two really specific moments that stand out for me. No, three. I'm going to say three. The first one is playing a Sofar Sounds show in Atlanta last year, which first of all, it's so cool to play a Sofar show. I always heard really great things about how engaged the audience can be at a Sofar show, and they were not kidding -- very attentive and welcoming and just such a cool experience that I won't forget.
The second thing is there's an adorable little girl named Olivia who actually used my song "Chasing Nightmares" in her dance routine for her dance competitions. So that was really cool to see. I have the video up on my YouTube. She's so talented. So that was really cool.
The third thing that really stands out as being like a super highlight for me: I played a show last year -- again, this is right before COVID -- in Baltimore, and there was a little girl sitting with her parents, probably about 5-6 years old, she really little, and after the show, her father came up with her and said, "I just want you to know this little girl has been listening to 'Chasing Nightmares' over and over and over and over again. She found you on a playlist on Spotify, and we saw you were randomly coming to Baltimore, so we drove 45 minutes to come see you." I started bawling because I'm still such a small artist, you know? To even hear, number one, that anybody would even come that far to see me is crazy, and then people who I don't know, that's cool, too. To be completely out of New Jersey and have that happen with like... I think I cried for hours after that. I would say those are my highlights, for sure.
It's literally crazy. I've only been doing this for about three years, and I'm just a local artist here in New Jersey. So the fact that people want to hear it and it's not going on deaf ears, it's just one of those things that keeps you going.
Oh man, I wish I had the answers because I'm still working on it myself. I think, personally, what's helped me is I think I allow myself the time to take a break if I need to, instead of forcing it. So for me, specifically when it comes to being creative or trying to put this pressure on myself to write a new song that I think is great, I think sometimes it's OK to tell yourself, "You know what? I need a break right now. There's no pressure. The song will come when it comes," and I think that's with anything that anyone wants to do or create. Just let yourself off the hook a little bit and be kind to yourself because I definitely think it's hard when a lot of things in the world right now are out of our control. The only thing we can control right now is ourselves and how we handle it. For me, it's been working on being kinder to myself and not putting so much pressure on myself to create. Also, I've actually been journaling a lot. I find that it can be very therapeutic, especially in these times where, although we have social media and we have video chats and things like that, it still does feel lonely and disconnected sometimes. So I think it definitely helps to write things down and get it out.
I think it's important to think about supporting independent artists and independent music, but also local mom and pop businesses. I think right now they are the ones that are hurting the most. So my shout-out is to all those who have been pushing through when it's been a difficult time, when it's hard, and just a shout out to all the people who've been staying strong and pushing through and still creating. I know it's been hard, too, as a musician, with shows canceled and we're trying our best. So shout out to all the people that are struggling and doing their best.
That's a very good question because I feel like this song has been the longest journey of all my originals. During 2020, when we were obviously all in lockdown, I found myself not super inspired, but there was one day where I just got this melody and idea in my head for a song, and I would play it on the piano over and over again, and I knew that this would be a really catchy chorus. I had lyrics ready for it and everything, but no matter what I did, I couldn't finish the song. So I just kind of put it on the shelf, put it aside and was like, "Whatever, maybe I'll finish it another someday."
I had already been familiar with April Rose Gabrielli's music prior to all of this. She was in a bunch of different rock bands and we had connected a little bit on social media at some point. When I first started doing music in 2018-2019, I had always been a big fan of her writing and her music, and so she released her first solo single called "Do You" and as soon as I heard it, I was like, "You need to tell me who produced this. This is just incredible. I love it. I've been trying to figure out a way to take my music to a different... I don't want to say a "different level" because that sounds so cliché, but literally try and go a little bit more outside my comfort zone." She was like, "Oh, actually, I produced it, along with Kulick" and I was like, "Well, how do I work with you guys? I need to find a way to make this happen."
I brought them the chorus, the melody that I had, and the lyrics that I had, and I went out to see them for a week -- they live out in Pennsylvania -- and we just spent the weekend finishing the song, writing and producing and recording it. Everything was done in two days. I was just so proud of it, and it was just such a really good experience working with the two of them because I absolutely admire them as artists, but as writers as well. So I a lot of fun.
It definitely came from a personal experience. I'm trying to be to honest and more vulnerable when I talk about the stories behind my songs. Around that time, I had just been diagnosed with an eating disorder, and I felt very confused. I had been doing a lot of reflecting about how it took me this long to kind of figure out what was going on and how hard the work was and the healing process was. So the idea behind the song was that, yeah, sometimes you have to fall apart and you have to break and you have to do all these really hard things in order to get to a better place and to be, whether it be in recovery or whatever it might be, that your struggle is, right? Sometimes you just have to pull out that splinter. It's going to hurt, but afterward it's going to be a lot better. So one of the things I wanted to do with this song was show that it's OK to feel vulnerable. It's okay that we have to suffer and struggle and all of those things. But I wanted it to be uplifting and empowering, that it's worth it.
That makes me so happy to hear that you hear that because I feel like that's something I've been working on for myself. I think I've always been very good at just being like, "OK, I don't need to feel sad. I need to find something to make me feel better, or what is the point of feeling this feeling," right? I feel like I have been working really hard to embrace that. Embrace those feelings, allow yourself to feel them. It's OK. We don't have to sit in them forever, but there's nothing wrong with having them. A lot of times, I write these songs as my own sort of therapy to remind myself, "OK, you know, Jackie, it's OK if you're crying right now. It's OK if you're having a tough time right now because you know what? It will get better. This is all part of life and you're going to be OK." My music, I feel like there are these very serious topics, but I tend to make the music and production... I like it to be fun and uplifting. There is that pop element. This song, it's just such a serious topic, but I have made it very playful, which you'll see in the video. I took a very emotional, serious topic for myself, but things can be serious but you can still laugh and you can still be playful regardless of that, you know? Hopefully, that will come across in the video.
So his name is Tom Flynn, and he is amazing. He was actually a referral from April Rose Gabrielli and Kulik. They both have worked with him for some of their different music videos, and when I saw the work that he had done, I was like, "Oh my God, I have to work with this guy!" We had a call about the song, he listened to the song, I sent him lyrics, gave him some understanding about what my intentions were behind the song and what it meant for me, and he was like, "I have this crazy idea. You're either going to love it or you're going to hate it." He kind of gave me the idea, and then we worked together to flesh it out a little bit more. But yeah, it was mostly Tom. I just thought it was great because it kind of has that whimsical feeling, that kind of vibe that I go for.
The people that were in this video were all friends of mine. Some are other musicians in the Jersey music scene. They were really good sports. It was a very cold day. It was late fall or early winter. I want to say like November or December. So yeah, it was very cold. I felt terrible. But they're all good friends.
Yeah, actually it's in my neighborhood, in South Amboy.
Oh my gosh, no. We bought it online.
So, he is going to create a reveal video that I will post on social media so you can see who it is. He's an amazing guy and really knocked it out of the park. To be able to do any sort of acting while wearing a head like that, it just shows he did a great job.
They are like the dynamic duo. I swear, they make magic when they work together. They're both touring musicians. April's actually in Kulick's band. She plays the keys and backup vocals. She also has her solo project, which is going incredible. Her song "Do You", which was her first single, was charting on Billboard Hot A/C [Adult Contemporary] Charts and things like that. They're both just amazing, and I feel so incredibly blessed and lucky to have had the opportunity to work with them, but also to now say they're my friends. They're just really great people.
When we went to write this song together, when I went out to Pennsylvania, it was maybe October. I honestly was really forcing myself to do it. I had not been very inspired. I had not really done much with my music in a while. I released some covers last year, but for the most part, I hadn't released anything original in about a year. I was like, "I'm going to do this. You're going to work with new people. You're going to. It's going to be good. It's going to be good." I left that weekend feeling so re-inspired and feeling like, "OK, I still love this, thank God!"
With them. They co-wrote with me, produced, mixed, mastered -- all of the above. They're very multitalented people. They have a home studio, and it's amazing and beautiful. It was just such a great experience, and it was a very comfortable experience, too. I think sometimes when you're in these more formal big studios, it can be very intimidating -- at least for me. I felt very comfortable being there with them, and it was just really nice. They have this adorable dog named Ellie who made it even more fun. It was really a great experience.
It's funny, I feel like in the past -- because I started doing this whole music thing so late in life -- I felt like I was rushing everything and having to get the next song out and the next one, and this and that. I feel like I'm at a point now where I'm like, "You know what? That's exhausting." If I get a bunch of song ideas in my head and I decide to record and release them, great, I will do that. But for now... I mean, I definitely have a phone filled with melody, ideas, and concepts and things, but nothing fleshed out. Everything is really just in lots of little pieces, and hopefully they'll turn into something kind of like "Falling Apart" did, where it just kind of started with a little piece of a couple of things and then it came to life when I found the right collaborators. So, we will see.
The music business, whether it be on a local level or a global level, moves very quickly and people can forget about you very quickly and people want to hear the next thing right away. But you know what? Putting the pressure on yourself to keep up with that just takes a lot of the joy out of what you're doing. For me, I do this because I love it, and if people listen to it, that's a bonus. If people want to play it, and when it comes to a show, that's a bonus. But I just don't I don't want to feel that pressure, you know?
I have to give a huge shout-out to April and Kulick. You guys need to check them out! April Rose Gabrielli and Kulick. They are both incredible artists that are releasing just such great music, and they're also really wonderful people to support and they have been so supportive of me. They've really changed my way of thinking with a lot of stuff in music that can sometimes make you feel a little bad or make you feel a little bit knocked down. They are just so uplifting, talented, wonderful human beings. So, everyone, check them out! They're great.
I actually just saw a family friend last night and her daughter was like, "I told my friends that I know a singer." The little kids are just too cute. She was telling me, she's like, "I love your song 'Wildflower.'" I think she's 8 years old. Just hearing that, especially from little girls, I just wish I had someone like that in my life, especially with music, growing up as a kid.
Oh, you're going to make me cry now.
Thank you. I'm definitely very proud of myself. I never thought I would be able to do any of this, let alone write originals, record them, and share them with people. So it's just... To me, I'm just very proud of myself.
Me, too! When you listen, you're going to know it's Jackie June song, but it's definitely taking it to a different place, which I'm really excited about.
By Gregory Burrus | Posted Friday, March 11, 2022
Today on Interviews by Gregory Burrus Productions, we encountered a truly fabulous, soulful multidimensional singer. As you may know, a live music career is a business that requires the performer to stay relevant in the audience’s mind. The performer in order to be successful must be committed to ensure long-term relevance. Dara Tucker has found many ways to stay in the minds of fans using multiple platforms and, as her bio proclaims, singer/songwriter Dara Tucker is no stranger to producing “composition as commentary.”
“Dreams of Waking (album) refers to the hope that our society will develop an awareness of the inequities that still exist,” Tucker said. “It’s the dream that we will become fully conscious and attuned to the hopes, dreams and needs of every human being.”
Happily for us, we were able to book Dara Tucker for a Jazz973 event at Clements Place Jazz. Having done some preliminary research, we wanted to catch up with Dara and understand more about her upcoming event and get to know a little more about this multidimensional person. Take a listen.
Dara Starr Tucker Interviewed by Lynette Sheard for Gregory Burrus Productions.
Dara Tucker has an extensive singing career with many successful awards and accomplishments. She began songwriting while living in Switzerland in 2003 and moved to Nashville in 2004 to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter. She recorded the first of her albums, "All Right Now" in 2009. It featured mostly Great American Songbook standards. Her second album, Soul Said Yes (2011), was a blend of R&B, jazz and Gospel and it made Amazon.com's top 10 R&B chart within a few weeks of its release. Tucker's third release, The Sun Season (2014), was recorded in Astoria, Queens, New York. It reached number 62 on the JazzWeek charts on September 22, 2014.
In 2015, Dara was interviewed by Tavis Smiley for his PBS television show, where she performed an original song she wrote with her sister, Diamond Tucker, entitled, "Giants" from The Sun Season. In 2016, she opened for Gregory Porter in Nashville at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. That year, Dara Tucker was a finalist in the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival's vocal competition. In 2017, she won the silver medal at the "American Traditions" vocal competition in Savannah, which requires singers to perform in 9 separate genres.
Dara has produced a docu-series on Nashville musicians called, "Music City Select" through her production company, GoldenTime Films. She is a contributor to the Huffington Post where she writes essays on her personal experiences as a minority and a woman in the entertainment business. Her article, "Here's to the Ladies Who Cuss" was featured on The Huffington Post Voices homepage. In my research, I found this comment:
“In the coming year, I will be more loving, and I will be kinder. I will also stake a claim in my own life. I am compelled to make room for myself. I will not always be pleasing or appropriate, but I will blossom. If something is deemed inappropriate for my life, let it be me who does the deeming. I will scream when I need to scream. I will shout and be heard. And I will cuss when I feel like cussing.”
This definitely leads us to the other Dara, who produces “composition as commentary.”
The great part about these interviews is the advanced research we do, and on this one our interviewer Lynette Sherd was way ahead of me. While I saw music, Lynette alerted me to the massively active and successful TikTok-er, Dara Starr Tucker.
Now, for those that think TikTok is just dance and jokes, you should know that the Economic Times reported that: “The rankings show that TikTok knocked Google off the top spot in February, March and June this year, and has held the number one position since August. San Francisco: Popular short video-sharing platform TikTok has surpassed tech giant Google as the most popular website of the year, says a report. Dec 25, 2021.” Well, being in the top ten is huge; knocking off number one is phenomenal.
Dara, as a social commentary person, definitely delivers on the statement that I love, which is producing “composition as commentary.” This is evident when you jump on the other Dara Starr Tucker channels. With 17K followers on Instagram, her individual videos have received in some cases over 12K comments. Meanwhile, her social commentary on TikTok has 687 thousand followers, with individual videos garnering 1.6K comments. The engagement she has is truly amazing.
More recently, we had the pleasure of listening to Dara Tucker when she was a guest performer at the James Moody Scholars event. The event was special for us as Linda Moody wanted to honor the James Moody Scholarship Scholars with a live music concert during her time here as the first lady of the TD Moody Jazz Festival. There has been a recipient each year of the scholarship and now there were enough of them to have a band with a rhythm section. You can read more here as the James Moody Jazz Scholars Honored His Legacy In South Orange NJ.
This is where we first heard her wonderful voice and we encourage all of you to come on out and listen to her sing. It's a treat you don’t want to miss.
Dara Starr Tucker is making her mark in the world of music and activism as a singer, satirist and social commentator. Her latest album, Dreams of Waking: Music For A Better World (2021), was featured on Grammy.com and in American Songwriter Magazine. On the album, Tucker embraces the urgent, topical works of songwriters of the protest era, along with her own compositions, as vessels for justice awareness, instruction and healing. Last summer, the album reached #7 on the Jazzweek National Radio Charts and reached #6 on the ITUNES jazz chart.
Additionally, Dara Starr Tucker is the co-writer of "Oklahoma," the title song on Keb Mo's 2020 Grammy-winning "Best Americana Album." Tucker's justice and musical commentary on social media has been featured with HBO and Yahoo News. She has toured as a member of master guitarist Charlie Hunter's trio, appeared on NPR's Jazz Night in America and made her national television debut on PBS. Most recently, Dara has performed at Central Jersey Jazz Festival, Newark Museum of Art Jazz Series, Birdland (VocalMania), Smoke Jazz Club and Minton's.
Join Us: March 23, 7 - 10PM, Clements Place Jazz. 15 Washington Street, Newark, NJ.
Click to learn more: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jazz973-presents-dara-tucker-and-her-band-at-clements-place-jazz-tickets-295322667047
Gregory Burrus is a local live music ambassador, producer, promoter, event planner, and community partner. He combines his extensive corporate business and technology expertise with his love of live music and being a strong community advocate.
I love writing about it all. My mission is to help community groups, live music bands, and local nonprofits, reach their goals and accomplish their missions while enjoying the day-to-day process of life.
https://www.jerseyindie.com/ji-blogger-gregory-burrus
https://patch.com/users/gregburrus
By Sonia Schnee | Posted Wednesday, February 9, 2022
NJ’s Chelsea Carlson has been keeping busy during the pandemic as a multi-genre singer/songwriter, member of the Renaissance Faire-inspired trio Bardy Pardy, and as a music teacher giving virtual and in-person lessons to students K-12.
On Friday, February 11, you can also see her perform live as she opens for the band The Wag at The Coffee House in Edison, NJ.
Chelsea has a ton of new music coming out later this year, as both a solo artist and through Bardy Pardy. So how has she been able to juggle all these creative endeavors while remaining so upbeat? Find out by watching our interview above, or by reading the transcript below.
(Video and transcript have been edited for time and clarity.)
CHELSEA CARLSON: It’s nice to see you, too.
My name is Chelsea Carlson. I am originally from Mount Olive, NJ, but right now I live in Brick, NJ. So, I'm enjoying the shore. I've been playing music forever, but I've been doing the whole singer/songwriter thing for about 12 years now, which is crazy to me. I also am in a folk trio called Bardy Pardy, so I've got some music going on there as well. I'm also a music teacher and a cat mom.
I don't like to box myself into a genre because I listen to almost everything and so I kind of write almost everything, too. My music that's already out there is very much classic rock-inspired. So if you were to go online today and look me up, a lot of the stuff you'll find is very rock. My new music that I've been working on is a little bit more in the singer-songwriter/pop realm, kind of like Sara Bareilles/Adele style. I have a little bit of everything going on.
Well, I've been doing the solo thing for a long time. I've been in a number of different bands. I love being in bands, it's a lot of fun, but it can also be very hard with scheduling and stuff like that. So, sort of all along the way, when I've been in bands I've also done solo stuff. At some point, around 2013 or so, I just decided, you know what? I'm mostly going to do solo stuff, and that is mostly what I've done.
My trio Bardy Pardy (I know, it's a fun name), we actually met while we were on the cast of the New Jersey Renaissance Faire in 2017. We were just assigned to work with each other to put together a show for the Faire that year, but we ended up gelling so well that we were like, "We should just be a band." So we have been since then, and we actually just finished up in November recording our first album, so we're hoping to release that this spring.
Stephanie Krause and Hannah Ward. They're actually both from Pennsylvania, so we're an interstate band.
I've been bursting to tell people. I've kept it secret long enough, I feel like. I originally was going to record a new album, and I have recorded enough songs to make an album, but I think I'm probably going to release them as singles instead. So you're going to get a ton of singles over the next few months to a year. So there are 10 new songs. About half of them, I'd say, were written during the pandemic. So they're fairly new. So pretty much unless you've watched one of my livestream shows, you really haven't heard those songs, so that's pretty cool. And then some of them are a little bit older. I've got some what I would call "fan favorite" songs on there, including — this is the weirdest song I've ever written — "The Ballad of the Sausage King."
You'll definitely recognize some songs if you've listen to my music before, but I've got some new stuff as well, and kind of a lot of different genres. We're really playing around with different sounds and things. I have one song that I've put in the '90s rock Alanis Morissette zone, and then I have other ones that are very pretty singer-songwriter-y, and then "The Ballad of the Sausage King" is like a blues song. I have one song that's going to be very much more electronic that's called "No Superhero" which is really cool.
Content-wise, I try to not be too same-y with the topics I cover in my songs, so we've got a lot of different things going on. I have songs that are more story songs. I have songs that are definitely about the way the pandemic affected my mental health, and I'm sure a lot of other people's as well, and then everything in between. No breakup songs, though! I didn't write any breakup songs.
It really depends on the song. In the past, I tended to write music first, or more or less do both at the same time and then just fine-tune it after the fact. A lot of my more recent songs, I found myself writing lyrics first, which is funny because it's something I have never, ever done in my entire life. So I was like, "Oh, this is new," and it seems to continue to happen.
There is one song that I wrote, and I actually released a demo of it in 2020, called "The Same Old Mind." I came up with the piano part and then months later wrote lyrics separately, not even thinking about that, and then was like, "Hey, I wonder if those will go together" and they did. So it really depends on the song for order of how I write things.
In terms of inspiration, pretty much always my songs are about myself or somebody close to me. Usually myself. I do have two songs on this new project I've been working on that are straight-up story songs that I got from other places, like "The Ballad of the Sausage King" of course is not a personal story. That's a story inspired by a True Crime documentary I watched. I have another song called "Oppy," which is about a Mars Rover. So those are not about me, but pretty much the rest of them are about me.
Yeah, the pandemic definitely was hard on musicians because there were no shows. For 2020, especially, I had a lot of really exciting things lined up that when the cancelation started rolling in, it was very sad for myself and I know for a lot of other people. So at the beginning of the pandemic, I was very disappointed about a lot of things, but then I kind of settled in and was like, "Wow, I have a lot of time." Like back in the day, I spent so much time in my car because I was living half the week with my parents, half the week with my fiancee and I just never had time for myself.
When it was like, "Well, I'm working at home, I have no commitments," I just found myself becoming more creative, actually having time to be like, "Hey, let me write some songs and actually spend time on it and let me be creative about other aspects of my music career. Let me take new photos. Let me do all these things" because I actually had time. So in a way, it was kind of nice to not have a crazy schedule because it allowed me to focus more on my artistry.
The state of the world definitely found its way into my songs. One in particular, which I've been calling "Promise Me", I would have just called it "The 2020 Song." It kind of covers everything that happened, my feelings about it. It's definitely going to be the most rock and roll of my next 10 songs because that's just the feeling that was behind it.
The pandemic, I think, really forced a lot of people to think outside the box in how they could continue on their paths or maybe change their paths. So my advice for anyone who's still trying to find their way is just take it as an opportunity to reinvent yourself and find new places to do things and new avenues because there actually was a lot of opportunity for that over the past two years. Now that things are opening up again, I feel like I actually have a better sense of myself as an artist and where I want to go than I did before all of this happened.
I've been recording with my producer, Tommy Strazza, who I've played a lot of gigs with, like duo gigs and stuff. We've recorded at Volume IV Studios in New Brunswick, the majority of the stuff. Some of it we've done at home. It's been a really fun process getting to work with him. I've also been working with Joshua Van Ness, who played drums. It was just really nice because as a soloist I've heard my songs by myself with piano and guitar and nothing else, and so kind of hearing all of these other instruments bring my songs to life has just been really cool and they got my vision right away. So it's been really fun.
I haven't recorded in a studio for many, many years. My entire last album was done in a home studio. All the stuff I've recorded myself, obviously, was in a home studio. So actually going to like a real music studio again has been cool. It feels very official.
As for Bardy Pardy's album, we've been recording with Dave Pirrocco, who produced my debut album. His studio is JackedCat Productions. That's been a really fun experience, too, because this is actually the first time I've recorded with a band that wasn't just playing my music but we all collaborated on, so that was a lot of fun, too.
This is going to be the craziest year for me that I've had in a long time, and I feel like that's compounded by the fact that I haven't done anything for two years. But in my personal life, I'm getting married, so I'm very much looking forward to that. Of course, I have so much new music coming out. I'm just putting the finishing touches on my original music. I have some music video ideas lined up, so I'm very much looking forward to filming those and getting my own original music out.
I'm really, really looking forward to Bardy Pardy's album coming out because we did a Kickstarter to fund that album in December 2019 and then the pandemic happened, so it's been a long time coming, and I'm just excited that the world will finally get to hear it.
I have a lot of really exciting shows of my own coming up. My next gig is going to be at The Coffee House in Edison. I'm opening up for The Wag. It's going to be a lot of fun. That's on February 11th.
Bardy Pardy, we're mostly a Renaissance Faire act, so we're going to be playing at a lot of different Renaissance Faires. One really exciting one, which I'm not allowed to say yet because we haven't signed all of the paperwork, but we're going to be traveling quite far for one, so I'm very excited.
My fiance, Eric, started a nonprofit called the Artist Collective Troupe. We're based in Ocean and Monmouth County. It's to support the arts communities within our area, putting on theatrical shows, offering educational opportunities and different things, open mics. Our next show is going to be a musical revue, which is going to be on April 23rd. We're holding auditions, and I'm going to be Music Directing it. It's going to be all songs from your favorite animated movies. So I've got a lot of things happening that I'm very excited about.
We're still in the process of becoming official, but we are a nonprofit organization. We had an open mic that we ran in October, and then we did Christmas caroling at several different things during the holidays to raise money for the Ashley Lauren Foundation, which is "Hope and help for children with cancer." So, our goal really is we want to support artists and children and teens who want to get into the arts in various different ways, but then use the events and things that we do to raise money for other local nonprofits. So we're hoping to have our next one go to Make-A-Wish. We're again in the paperwork for that, but we got a lot of good stuff going on.
There's so many things, right? Well, you can find me on all of the social media — Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. The easiest way to get to it would be through my website, which is ChelseaCarlsonMusic.com.
You can also find us on all the social media for Barty Pardy as well. Our website is BardyPardy.com. As we were founded at a Renaissance Faire playing peasants you can't read, Bardy Pardy is misspelled, so "Pardy" is spelled with a "d", not a "t."
The Artist Collective Troupe, you can find at ArtistCollectiveTroupe.org.
Oh, there's so many people. I don't know how many I'm allowed to give shout-outs to.
Well, of course, shout-out to Tommy Strazza, who's producing my album. He has a bunch of his own music and he's in a couple of different bands, so check him out.
Joshua Van Ness, who played drums on my album. He's also in The Wag.
I want to give a shout-out to two of my former students who have been releasing music. I've been teaching lessons for over a decade and two of my students who were with me for several years, they're now both in college, just released new music. One is Lauren Onufryk. She just released her debut single "Haircut" on Spotify a couple of weeks ago. Her stage name is Ren. Another one of my former students, Isabelle Tarran, just released her debut EP a few months ago on Spotify and everything, so check them out.
And then just two people that I love to listen to who are local New Jersey girls are Sof, who just released her debut album, "Dawn", and Gina Royal, who has just released a ton of fantastic music over the past year. So check them out.
Oh yeah, so much. One of my students, who's now a freshman in college, texted me last week a YouTube video of a benefit concert that she was in at her college, doing a song that I taught her in lessons like three years ago, and I literally was holding back tears. I was like, "Oh, my baby's all grown up!" because I taught her since she was 11, you know?
My longest-running student that I have now started in 2012, and she's now a junior, I think, in high school, so it's just like... Oh, no, she's a senior! Oh my God, she's a senior in high school! I started teaching her when she was in third grade.
Classroom teachers, you get them for 10 months. I get you for 10 years. Like, I really get to know you by the time we're done.
I've been lucky. I know a lot of people have not been as lucky as I have over the past year. Even at the height of nobody going out and everything, I was able to continue teaching my lessons on the internet, and I feel like I got to see people as a result of that. Like I saw 30 people a week from teaching. So I was lucky that even though my life kind of came home, it didn't stop. But, yes, it's been a ride, hasn't it? The hardest times, sometimes we come back even better and stronger than before.
CHELSEA CARLSON
Website: http://www.chelseacarlsonmusic.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cecmusic
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/chelseacarlsonmusic
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/chelseacarlsonmusic
Bandcamp: http://www.chelseacarlsonmusic.bandcamp.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2rW3khB2vAwULlvPfABAXS?si=wK5SyPGsTwimk4G3-_kZpw
"The Seed" - Aurora cover
"Belong" - Original song
BARDY PARDY
Website: http://www.bardypardy.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bardypardy
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/bardypardmusic
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF8YJjhf24yoktd0iwjF91w
Bandcamp: http://www.bardypardy.bandcamp.com
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5cdFIJ6rLKRUmluZMiI38S?si=aYDKzWryQ5WraEU2wMPlVQ
Bardy Pardy - “The Parting Glass”
Bardy Pardy - “Like Ships Need the Sea”
ARTIST COLLECTIVE TROUPE
Website: http://www.artistcollectivetroupe.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/artistcollectivetroupe
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/artistcollectivetroupe
MUSIC LESSONS
Website: http://www.chelseacarlsonmusiclessons.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/chelseacarlsonmusiclessons
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/cecmusiclessons
Left to right: Nancy Cook, Thea Kearney, and Kristy Ranieri of Megasparkle. Photo by Sophie White.
By Sonia Schnee | Posted Saturday, December 18, 2021
Megasparkle, the kickass all-female band from Maplewood, NJ, hasn’t let the pandemic slow them down. Delivering a mix of indie, post-punk, pop-rock deliciousness, Thea Kearney (lead guitar, vocals), Nancy Cook (guitar, vocals), Kristy Ranieri (bass), and CJ Jeiven (Drums) released their first 5-song E.P, “Swirling Glitter”, back in February 2021. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with Thea and Nancy about their pandemic-related musical adventures in our interview below.
NANCY COOK: I’m Nancy Cook and I live in Maplewood, N.J. I grew up in Glen Ridge next to Montclair about 20 minutes away from here.
I’ve always been creative. Right now, I am mainly making art, music and selling vintage clothing. I started my business, Crash Doll Vintage, in 2020. I make textile art, installation art and sew & knit. I sometimes paint and use pastels.
Before the pandemic, I was working for Parcel in Montclair and a co-op in town called Maplewood Mercantile. I was also their event planner and planned pop ups, music shows, art shows, tastings etc. I still continue to put on music shows.
THEA KEARNEY: Well, she's a really amazing seamstress. Amazing. Really, like a ninja on the sewing machine. I always see her posting pictures like, "Oh, I just whipped up this dress last night." I'm like, "Oh my God! I can sew a pillow, that's about it.”
NANCY COOK: Yes! I sew dresses and clothes! I had a children’s clothing line for several years called Wool and Violets. Nowadays, I mostly make knitwear under that name and recently created a capsule collection for Hearth Co. in Australia
I’m very much into tactile things. Guitar fits right in. I play guitar and sing as well. I also play bass guitar which I just picked up last year. As a child I played piano and flute. I picked up the guitar in 2018 at the same time as joining a band with Thea. She was like…‘Let’s start a band’ and I said ‘OK’ and so I started taking lessons. I had always wanted to play guitar!
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah! I mean, you're a multi-tasker.
Left to right: Thea Kearney, Nancy Cook, and Kristy Ranieri of Megasparkle. Photo by Sophie White.
THEA KEARNEY: I'm not originally from New Jersey. I'm actually from Brooklyn, although I was born in Washington, D.C. I moved to Brooklyn when I was six months old. I identify with New York City. I'm pretty much a New York City person. Although, it's funny. My mother is from New Jersey and kind of a funny story because she always tried so hard to get out of New Jersey. She's a writer and went to college and all that. She spent so much time getting away from the suburban provincial... She always kind of was like (scoffs) "Oh, New Jersey." We would only go back to visit the relatives, and so I was such a city person, I was like, "I am never moving to New Jersey, over my dead body."
NANCY COOK: I said I was never moving back to the suburbs either!
THEA KEARNEY: It's so funny because all my relatives moved to other parts of the country, then I discovered New Jersey again. I looked at places in Rockland County, in upstate New York, and they were really expensive and not that nice, and there was a big highway that was always in everyone's backyard. Then I found out about Maplewood. I went and I fell instantly in love with it. I was like, "These beautiful houses and nature! This is New Jersey?!" and one thing led to another, and I moved here with my husband. I've been living in New Jersey for about 12 years now with my family.
Left to right: Kristy Ranieri, Thea Kearney, and Nancy Cook of Megasparkle. Photo by Sophie White.
THEA KEARNEY: I'm like Nancy. I do way too many things. Not so much with the sewing, but I have a background in graphic design. I have two college degrees in art, visual arts, a Bachelor's of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts. I went to the School of Visual Arts and was one of the first people to ever learn about computer graphics. I would say it was like the Stone Ages just because it was a lot harder to do stuff than it is now. Now you just press two buttons and it's done, whereas you had to follow like a logbook of steps to get anything accomplished with the graphics back in the day. I had done that for a long time. Website design. I used to design CDs, logos, and then I got kind of tired of that, so I started a face painting business called Fifi’s Face Painting, but the pandemic kind of put an end to that and I just sold the business this year.
I've been doing music my whole life, since I was really young, playing various instruments -- violin, piano, drums, guitar -- but I decided when I was a teenager that I would just basically stick with the guitar, so that's my main instrument. Then I started singing as well as songwriting, and that's what we've been doing in Megasparkle.
Left to right: Thea Kearney, Kristy Ranieri, and Nancy Cook of Megasparkle. Photo by Sophie White.
NANCY COOK: As far as music, there’s not really anyone in my immediate family that’s musically inclined though one of my Uncles played guitar.
My Dad instilled a love of classical music in me. He used to take me to classical concerts as a child. That and learning to play the piano. My Aunt Lillian used to take me to NYC to see Mostly Mozart. She sang in a trio in the 1940’s on the radio. I guess you could say I’m a trailblazer in my family. At 12 I declared, I wanted to be a singer and my Dad said ‘No, absolutely not, you’re not good enough’ so ha, I am got to do that and I have songs now. He also told me I couldn’t do art and fashion and I’m doing that as well. So, I guess I burst his bubble! Ha!
THEA KEARNEY: So have you played Megasparkle for him?
NANCY COOK: I did play one or two songs for him, but he hasn't heard all of them yet. I should have my family sit down and listen to Megasparkle. Maybe next time we have a holiday gathering and we can all be together, I can play Megasparkle for everybody.
THEA KEARNEY: That would be cool. I'd like to hear what they have to say.
My mother was a jazz singer. She's more of a poet and an award-winning published author of more than 18 books, but she's also written a few songs. My father played the flute for a while and the recorder, but he's one of those people who has the radio on 24/7, so since I was a little kid, he would have the classical music station on all the time, so I was listening to that since I came out of the womb, basically. Even though I'm a rocker, I still kind of love classical music, too.
NANCY COOK: Wow. We never actually knew that about each other!
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah! We don't talk about all these things. My mom sings, and she also had a harp that she used to play. She's also a very creative person. She's done all kinds of stuff, too. I have some cousins who play music, but nobody famous or professional, as far as I know.
It's funny, actually, when Nancy said that about her dad, I was like, "My mom does not like the kind of music that I like," and I feel like there's a little rebelliousness going on here with, "Well, this is what WE like." You know?
NANCY COOK: My parents never liked the music I listened to. My Dad hated certain bands and songs and if he didn’t like it, I would sometimes play it louder like The Smiths, The Cure, Sex Pistols, The Clash etc. He hated hardcore the most. I would play it so loud the chandelier would be shaking downstairs. I still like it really loud. I get into trouble now for playing the music too loud in the car when I pull in and out of the driveway.
THEA KEARNEY: It's funny because we have kids now, and I don't know if this is what happens with you, Nancy, but our kids are like, "We don't want to listen to that loud rock music, turn it down!" They want to hear this weird electronic stuff. Some of it I actually like, but some of it is like, well, there's no melody. There's no real instruments. I'm just so used to... I think Nancy would probably say the same thing. We just grew up listening to live musicians playing live instruments, so that's what we tend to gravitate towards.
NANCY COOK: That’s a really hard question because I have so many musical heroes and people I look up to, but I think with this project, in particular, I think we were kind of going for... Sonia mentioned earlier about the 70s, that we kind of have a 70s influence. I kind of think that we were kind of thinking, or at least maybe I was thinking, about The Runaways and Blondie and just kind of like that old school beginning, powerful female sound and rock and roll, but with kind of a punk and indie aspect to it. A little bit less pop-y than Blondie and Joan.
I also really love punk and a lot of the ‘90s bands, so I was probably thinking about that. A lot of the music that came out of Washington D.C. like Slant 6 and bands from Olympia and NY…
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah, we're both like punk rockers, right?
NANCY COOK: Yeah! I mean, I love all the punk rock. I love Agnostic Front. Thea and I were like, "We should write a song that kind of sounds a little like an Agnostic Front song” and we could totally do that, but I wasn’t looking to make a sound that came from men. I was thinking more about women in this project.
THEA KEARNEY: I'm actually glad you went first because I completely forgot where my inspiration was in the beginning for this whole idea of starting a band that would be an all-female band.
I guess part of it was the desire to... because I've been in other bands before, and I was in a local Maplewood band called Dollar Store Riot with all guys that I played in for about six years, and then I decided that it was just time for me to close that chapter of my life, and so I'd always wanted to have an all-female band.
I'd had a couple of false starts in the past when I was still living in the city, and I have a friend that I went to high school with, actually, which you may have heard of, Sindi B.. She was in this band called The Lunachicks. We hung out in the NYHC, the New York hardcore scene when it first started in about ‘81-84. Our misspent youth was spent doing that and we both bought our first electric guitars at the same time. I was the goody-two-shoes. I went off to college and just did what was expected of me and she didn't. She quit, dropped out of college, and formed this band. I always wanted to do the same thing, and so I was just like,"Well, Nancy, why don't we just try starting an all-female band? I've always wanted to have an all-female band. Let's just have a go for fun."
At the beginning, it was just the two of us, and then we started writing together, and then eventually we found the drummer, CJ, and then we found Kristy.
It was just all those influences from The Donnas, The Ramones, all the punk rock I listened to, DISCHORD, all of that stuff. The Flex Your Head album, I still have. That was on permanent rotation when I was a teenager. All of that. Then all the newer stuff, too, became an influence. One of the songs has kind of a My Bloody Valentine influence.
I feel like every song on this album is a little different. We didn't really set out to have a particular sound on every one. It was just like, "Let's write a song." One song was a Ramones kind of idea that I had that we put lyrics to, and then another one was like, "Let's just write a shoegaze song." So we kind of just went in that direction.
NANCY COOK: One has kind of like a Juliana Hatfield feel. It's got a totally different vibe, too. They all have a different vibe.
We still haven't covered all our bases. We could just keep going, with all the different sounds that we like. We actually have on our Spotify a mixtape of bands that we like and the influences.
We also worked on some covers and things that we liked, like the White Stripes was one of them that we liked, and we were working on a cover of that song, and who else were we covering?
THEA KEARNEY: Social Distortion and Ex Hex.
NANCY COOK: Oh yeah, I love Mary Timony. I just watched her live performance at St. Marks. It was amazing. She's so talented. She's definitely an influence for me, for sure.
NANCY COOK: For "Pretty Dresses," I had a lot of the melody written, and then I wrote the lyrics, Thea added more lyrics and arrangements, and then we put it together. All the songs have their own story.
"Everybody Wants to Be a Rock Star" started with the answering machine message that starts the song. It comes from a Village Voice ad that someone answered when Thea was looking for musicians, and so that was the starting point for that song.
"Iridescent Sparks" is about text messaging. That's such a big part of our culture now and just how people communicate mostly.
The other one, the shoegaze one, "Swirling Rose Hips Tea," My Bloody Valentine was the influence for that.
The last one, "Piece of Cake," is sort of, everyone wants to get a piece of cake and eat it, too. It's like, “I want to have it all. Why can't I have it all? Let's try to have it all!” You know? So, the surprise inside is like the Mardi Gras cake that you break up and there's supposed to be a little toy in the cake. It's like, "Ooh, a little surprise!"
THEA KEARNEY: You know, it's funny, it wasn't supposed to be about cake. That became the metaphor because we were writing it right around Mardi Gras time, and we were talking about how we should really write a song, like a hardcore song, like Agnostic Front or something, and it didn't really come out like that in the end, but it came out to be something different, but it started from this discussion. We would just sit down and brainstorm this idea and write all these ideas down and then condense it into a song, because, as you know, you can't put everything in one song.
NANCY COOK: Yeah. Some of our notes for our songs are really amusing. We should dig those up! They were really funny.
Listen to Megasparkle’s debut EP “Swirling Glitter” on Bandcamp, Spotify, and other streaming services. Released on Sea Dragon Records.
THEA KEARNEY: Originally, we were getting ready to play a show in June (2020), a live show. We had been practicing. We had a bunch of covers and originals. At that point, we had enough to do a show, and so we were like, “Yeah, let's just play a little local show” because Nancy likes to book a lot of local bands, and so we were getting ready for that, and it's supposed to be in June, and this was like February of 2020 and then, obviously, the pandemic put a lid on that, and then we were like, "Oh, what are we going to do?" and so I suggested, "Instead of doing a show, why don't we make an EP?"
I thought, "We'll just find a studio, we'll go and get somebody to do that." I called a few places and they're like, "Well, I don't know if we can help you, but maybe, but we’re not sure what's going to happen" because it was literally a couple of weeks before they declared it a global pandemic and everything just was like dominoes falling. It's like, everything is closing and then that's it, and so then I was like, "Oh, OK, what are we going to do?"
In all my years of doing music, I had dabbled in mixing before. I had done Pro Tools and recording. I was a little rusty, but I was like, "Well, you know, I think I can figure it out." We didn't have anybody to help us. We didn't really have a lot of money to be forking out either, and everything was closed, so what are we going to do? So, I was like, "We'll just record from home, and we can figure out what equipment we need."
I spoke to Kristy (Ranieri), and we originally thought we were going to use electronic drums because CJ had some electronic drums at home. So, we tried with that. We were recording the guitars and the vocals, and it was going pretty well, but then we got to the point where we figured out how to do the electronic drums and she sent us the recording and we were like, "No, the symbols just sound... It just didn't sound good." It was like, "No, this isn't going to work."
So, we have a local person that we work with, Laughing Boys Recording's Tom Lucas. He's really great. A lot of people record with him. We didn't think he was open, but then we said, "Well, what if it was just CJ?" CJ went in with a mask and they sanitized everything, and she just went in by herself to do the drums. At first, she was kind of nervous about the whole idea, but then she said she would do it, and so she went in and recorded. I prepared all the tracks for her and sent them to Tom, and then she went in.
We thought it was going to take, like, two days or something. She was just so amazing, she did all five songs in one day. I was like, "Wow!" Then Tom Lucas sent me the tracks and then we just continued on from there. We did a back and forth with GarageBand and Logic. Kristy and Nancy bought an interface so that they could literally record on their iPhones, so they actually recorded the songs on their iPhones.
NANCY COOK: Yeah, Kristy and I recorded on our iPhones. It’s remarkable and we should be really proud of it!
THEA KEARNEY: It was pretty amazing. I would send them the tracks through iCloud, put the tracks in GarageBand, give them a track to record to, and then they would record to that, send it back to me, and then I would combine everything in Logic and record my parts in there, line it all up, and then mix it. It was pretty daunting. I actually got somebody else to help us a little bit -- a guy out in California, Mike from MooseCat Recording. They have a virtual studio, and they were just getting started with that because of the pandemic. I guess they used to do everything in-person but because they're out in Los Angeles and they needed to keep things running, they started offering virtual services. So I was like, "Oh, great!" So they helped with some of the mixing on a couple of the songs, but most of them I did all the mixing on, so I learned a lot this year -- a whole lot. I think we all learned a lot.
NANCY COOK: She worked very hard!
THEA KEARNEY: I mean, it was pretty daunting, but, oh my God, we did it! We all figured it out. Nancy and Kristy were like, "I don't know how to record on my phone," but with my help, they figured it out and they did it.
“A year ago today we sent our first single ‘Pretty Dresses’ off to CD baby. Here Nancy and Thea are after practice in the garage hugging their guitars to stay warm after a bitterly cold band practice in the garage in November 2019.” — Megasparkle Facebook page
NANCY COOK: Yeah, and Thea went in her closet to sing vocals, and I went in my garage. I actually have a vocal booth in my garage. So I went into my garage, and it was kind of fun. I got a little kid lawn chair, my microphone, and sang away, too.
THEA KEARNEY: Whatever it takes, right? I mean, we had to really be creative.
NANCY COOK: I've always liked the DIY approach. I'm always DIY.
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah, me too. It's to a fault, though, because sometimes it's exhausting doing everything yourself.
NANCY COOK: Well, Thea just cut her hair very well. DIY haircut.
THEA KEARNEY: Yeah, that's another story. Ha!
There's a lot to be said for doing things yourself. You learn so much from doing things yourself. Like I learned a lot about haircutting, cutting my own hair. So yeah, it's amazing.
NANCY COOK: I think we should give a shout-out to Michelle from Bone Pool Radio, who is one of our friends. She has a radio station in town. She would be an amazing person for you to interview. She's awesome. She always wanted a radio station, and I don't know exactly what year it started, I want to say it was 2018, and she and a few other partners started it. A lot of the people in town including Thea's husband DJ for it, and they pre-record their shows and she broadcasts them. There's a bunch of DJs in town and it was bought by iHeartRadio, and yeah, it's been a really amazing ride for her. So that's my shout-out.
THEA KEARNEY: That’s good that you did that because I was going to shout-out one of the DJs, Donny Levit, because he was the first one to premiere a Megasparkle song on the radio. So I want to shout out to him and, obviously, all the other DJs on Bone Pool Radio. I don't know if they've played our music, but I'll give a shout-out to them as well!
NANCY COOK: Paul played "Pretty Dresses." Donny played a couple of them.
THEA KEARNEY: Also, Tom Lucas from Laughing Boys Recording. He really gave us a lot of helpful feedback and guidance, especially with recording the drum parts and how to get that done, so shout-out to him.
And then shout-out to MooseCat Recording.
NANCY COOK: And our bandmates who aren't here!
THEA KEARNEY: Of course our bandmates, for being willing to do all this from home, being willing to try that out and do that.
NANCY COOK: We have a lot of great local businesses to shout-out.
THEA KEARNEY: All the local businesses. There's been so many great supportive local places, like Rent Party. We never got to play Rent Party, but they've always been really supportive of local musicians. They do a lot of help for the community. They used to put on live shows with local bands and also international traveling acts and raise money for food-insecure families. So they're a really great organization here. And then The Woodland, they have a lot of shows.
NANCY COOK: The Woodland and Wyoming Club.
I used to do a lot of shows at Maplewood Mercantile when I worked there and was the Event Planner, so we can shout-out them because they're really very supportive of the music community.
THEA KEARNEY: All the teachers that ever taught me how to play, helped me play guitar, and my vocal teacher, Tim Welch. I'll give a shout-out to him. He's an excellent vocal teacher. He's got a local studio here in Maplewood. I think he's got franchises now. He's a really, really excellent teacher. Who else can we shout-out?
NANCY COOK: We could shout-out you, Thea, for doing all that hard work mixing! Let's give credit where credit's due, right?
THEA KEARNEY: Thank you to everybody.
NANCY COOK: Thank you to all of our supporters and our friends.
THEA KEARNEY: Thank you to everyone I've ever met or ever known in my entire life.
NANCY COOK: Ha!
THEA KEARNEY: And Mom and Dad, of course.
THEA KEARNEY: We're available on all streaming platforms -- Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora. We have a Spotify playlist. Plus, we have a website. It's megasparkleband.com. Bandcamp, Instagram, Facebook. We also have some T-shirts for sale on Bandcamp.
NANCY COOK: We also had a poster that showcases our band at i19gallery.com.
It was an online gallery. They started doing art shows when the pandemic hit, and we decided that we would pass around this old red phone of mine that I've had for years. It was a promo for "Everybody Wants to Be a Rock Star" because that's the starting point, with the answering machine message. We all took pictures of us with the phone -- they look like they're in slides -- and then the red telephone cord just slashes through the whole collage, which is kind of like the pandemic interfering with our lives. Actually, I really love it. I think it came out really good.
THEA KEARNEY: It was cool because we kind of combined... It was like a multipurpose thing because Nancy and I, we originally met because we both have backgrounds in multiple artistic areas, like visual arts and music. There was a call for art made during COVID, by the organization Good Crowd Events. I was like, hey, we were already doing the phone idea for what was going to be the cover for "Everybody Wants to Be a Rock Star." We designed all of the song covers. We did all those ourselves back and forth. I did a couple of the covers, Nancy designed a couple of those, and one of them was this idea that Nancy actually had the phone and she said, "Well, why don’t we take pictures with this?" and I was like, "Well, why don't we enter it in this art show and it will serve two purposes? It'll be for the cover and it'll be for this collage."
It was during the pandemic, and so we had to clean the phone off and then drop it at one person's house, and then they would clean it off and take photos and then drop it at the next person's house, and that's how we got all the photographs. It was like, you know, this is how we communicate during a pandemic — passing the phone around, and also we can only communicate on the phone. So, it was like the whole concept of that just kind of came together really well.
“Call Me!” Featured in www.i19gallery.com’s online art exhibition, ARTdemic.
Art Concept: Nancy Cook, Thea Kearney
Photography: Nancy Cook, CJ Jeiven, Thea Kearney, Kristy Ranieri
Photo Editing: Thea Kearney
By Gregory Burrus | Posted Saturday, June 19, 2021
With outstanding shopping, restaurants, services and entertainment & events, not to mention our beautiful parks and waterways, Cranford offers authentic experiences for everyone.
According to Wikipedia, Cranford, NJ has a nickname of "The Venice of New Jersey'' and a motto "Friendship and Progress." This small town has shaped up to be one highly desirable place to be and live in. In both 2018 and 2019, The Star-Ledger named Cranford the best downtown in New Jersey after an online vote, calling it "adorable [and] snowglobe-like.” New Jersey Monthly magazine ranked Cranford as its 34th best place to live in its 2010 rankings of the "Best Places To Live.” Cranford is part of the New York City metropolitan area.
Cranford is home to more than 24,000 people who enjoy its many parks, recreational facilities, shopping areas and outstanding schools. Strategically located in the heart of Union County, the Township is served by the NJ Transit bus and Raritan Valley train line, making it desirable for outbound and inbound commuters. Established in 1871, Cranford is 4.8 square miles of wonderful neighborhoods and historic homes along the Rahway River, some dating back to the late 1800s. Township residents and visitors, young and old, can enjoy the many programs at the Community Center, Public Library, parks, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor pools or canoeing on the river. These are just some of the reasons Cranford is routinely rated in the Top 50 Best Places to Live in NJ and to raise a family.
https://downtowncranford.org/
The town has a strong commercial base. Downtown Cranford is well known for its many restaurants, unique specialty shops and has seen tremendous investment and growth in recent years with several Transit-Oriented Development projects. Smaller neighborhood shopping areas, like Centennial Village, are also revitalized with new restaurants and businesses. The Cranford Business Park, with easy access to the Garden State Parkway, major roads and Newark Airport, is home to several well-known national corporations.
https://downtowncranford.org/
Also, the Downtown Cranford Special Improvement District (SID) led by Executive Director Caren Demyan is dedicated to ensuring a vibrant downtown. Downtown Cranford is a Township department whose objective is to promote, brand, beautify, maintain, attract, and grow business. The Office of Downtown Business & Economic Development is part of the Township government and represents all properties, businesses and residents within the SID regardless of size, location or use and is the official advocate for property and business owners. You can learn more about Downtown Cranford and how they can support your objectives right here.
Alex Desrivieres / Harmonic Convergence 2020
The Downtown Cranford office announced that there is music at Eastman Plaza throughout the summer 2021! Starting in June, there will be music performances at Eastman Plaza on Thursdays from 6-8pm by a number of local musicians.
As you can see, we have an extensive and diverse list of music genres and performers for everyone's listening pleasure, with some returning favorites and some brand new first-timers. We have crossed the spectrum with pop, rock, R&B, jazz, country, Latin, cabaret and, of course, some blues to make you tap your feet, shake your head and dance in your seat. Just come on out and have a good time enjoying the sounds of Downtown Cranford live music.
All are invited to come on out and enjoy this wonderful live music location, to enjoy Downtown Cranford stores and restaurants and the Downtown Cranford Summer Sounds Series. Here's a few landmarks to pique your curiosity, and hopefully you will stop in and enjoy this wonderful environment.
At this very busy traffic intersection right off the NJ Transit train station there is this idyllic park in the middle of the hustle and bustle:
Inside it is this wonderful grassy location, along with some natural seating, what's known locally as the Eastman Clock location.
And what's really cool is there is a built-in amphitheater-type seating all the way around and out to the grass and the adjacent stores. This is a very cool place to be where you are able to sit, relax and enjoy the summer sounds of live music.
Gregory Burrus is a Photojournalist, Live Music Ambassador, Arts and Entertainment Writer, Blogger, Business Reviewer, and Community Events Reporter. He is a supporter of local businesses and community events, with a passion for live music. Gregory reviews and writes about local live music programs while booking, promoting and curating many regional live music events around the greater New York/New Jersey area. Greg promotes events through social media marketing, writing articles, blogging and photojournalism. Having fun, living life, while helping others. https://gregoryburrusproductions.com
By Gregory Burrus | Posted Friday, June 18, 2021
I want to thank everyone for their participation and support of the 4th Annual 24 Hours of Music Jamboree. While I still wished we could have performed, in person outside as usual, the Coronavirus Pandemic changed all that. As the pandemic went into full effect for us during the last week of March and lockdown started in April 2020, we pivoted and started thinking about what else we could do to keep the music alive.
We couldn't go outside so we adapted and continued our commitment to the live music community and launched a new virtual approach that addressed our new social distancing world. We asked folks to submit live performances specifically for this event, a truly sweet past performance, or we scheduled them into a live performance slot on the day of the 24 Hours of Music Jamboree event. The musicians responded overwhelmingly positively and it was great to see folks volunteer their time/energy along with their dynamic and amazing musical talents in making this first time move to a Virtual 24 Hours of Music Jamboree a big success. The following is a recap of what happened throughout the Jamboree.
Out of this pivot to online, we discovered the wonderful and very energetic Lynette Sheard. In person she was also dynamic and her turn to the virtual world was no less stellar. We ended up selecting Lynette Sheard of Lynette Sheard Entertainment as our official welcome spokesperson because even through the very negative environment we were in, Lynette was a bright beam of enthusiasm and hope. Thank you, Lynette.
We opened the 24 Hours of Music Jamboree at 11:30 AM with a tribute to our recently departed long-term South Orange resident and live music advocate Lee Boz May, may she RIP. We also said goodbye to another wonderful local performer, Holi Ross who also sang with The Royal Bopsters.
As we usually have our South Orange Gazebo dressed up physically in balloons, this year we adapted and developed a virtual balloon backdrop. We then listened to the song “Candy” converted to "I need my 24 Hours of Music" by vocalist Jacqueline Harmon Johnson, a.k.a. The Balloon Lady.
We then were officially kicked off by the Rutgers University Clements Place Institute of Jazz Studies Executive Director Wayne Winborne. His now very "prophetic message" was to enjoy the wide range of music that was being presented and that “while science and medicine will get us out of this pandemic […] it’s art, especially music, that will get us through it.”
We then moved to a message from the Jazz Exchange Relief Fund Founders Candice Reyes and Abel Mireles, who are supporting local North Jersey and NYC full-time and part-time jazz artists with The Jazz Exchange Relief Fund! This was especially important because artists were immediately affected by this pandemic, as all of their performances, tours, teaching gigs, lessons and more were cancelled overnight. The Jazz Exchange came on to help us raise funds to provide emergency and preventative resources to those at financial risk
It was a stellar lineup of some truly wonderful musicians who all volunteered their time and efforts to this 4th Annual 24 Hours of Music Jamboree.
2020 event lineup
We kicked off the Virtual 4th Annual 24 Hours Of Music Jamboree at noon Saturay, May 30th with the Pop, R&B, Soul sessions headlined by South Orange-based Alicia Taiping and Dan Pieraccini of the popular local band Forget the Whale. We were then treated to some wonderful performances by Dunia Best Live, Howlin Poets, Positive Note, Rhonda Denet, Flip da Skrip, our official spokesperson Lynette Sheard, Acute Inflections, Tasha R. Williams with budding new star Aaliyah Arroyo, Sounds of A and R, and local favorite Ricky Persaud, Jr.
Our Latin sessions contained some sweet music produced by Carlos Frias and Circulo Social Band and a few wonderful Yardbird Entertainment-produced sessions by the Rudy Vidal Latin Jazz Quartet.
The evening and overnight Jazz Sessions were kicked off live by the wonderful and engaging Mike Lee Jazz Family, which all members were very talented while socially distancing together. Overnight performers included Kristina Koller, Abel & Candice, Reyes, Arcoiris Sandoval Live, DC Fusion Darry Clark, Peter Lin, Mamiko Watanabe, Richard Reiter, Sue Maskaleris, Winard Harper – Jeli Posse, Kemp and Reyvolation from Buffalo NY, James Austin, Jr. and Friends, Mauricio de Sousa, Joel Cotton with Matt Niedbalski, Jarrett Walser and Campblicated, Marshall McDonald from Fukuoka, Japan, Seyeon Chang from South Korea, Kumiko Tanaka from Tokyo, our normally 3 AM to 6 AM crew, the Alex De Lazzari Duo with Caelan Cardello, then Flip Peters and Friends ending overnight with Candice Reyes.
Rounding out the early morning hours, we had songs from the American Songbook by vocalist Patricia Walton and Barbara Hassenfeld, then Blues Rocker Debra Devi, Hal Keshner from the beautiful hills and desert of Arizona with some truly gorgeous sun scenes, and finally closing us out by sitting on the dock of the San Francisco Bay was Blues Man Mr. Coo Mo Gee.
2020 24 Hours of Music Volunteers with Teresa Ware and Donna Siedman
The major difference this year was we literally broadcast the entire 24 Hour of Music Jamboree event. We broadcasted on 5 virtual venues simultaneously. Listeners had a choice of watching and listening on Facebook pages, or my Gregory Burrus profile, Youtube, Twitch, or Periscope.tv channels. Thanks to our Audience Development Director, Chelsea B., who conducted selected Instagram broadcasts throughout the 24 hours. We also broadcasted to non-social media channels at 24hoursofmusicjamboree.tv.
Our regular volunteers Jon McGriff, Teresa Ware, Donna Siedman, Chelsea Burrus, Greg2B, and Roxanne Burrus, all supported us for 24 hours while we missed out steadfast volunteer Lee Boz May. We also give thanks to our official photographer Albert Clarke. Please visit his Instagram, as he captured some beautiful shots for us virtually, and our other giveaway supporter Designs by Aron.
2020 4th Annual 24 Hours of Music Jamboree Broadcast Studio Operations
Needless to say, we had some interesting challenges broadcasting nonstop for the full 24 Hours of Music Jamboree, especially when Facebook says you can only do 8 hours at a time and it stops, and we have to start again. Other networks did not have this problem but had other internet-related situations that had to be dealt with, and lets’s not forget being up more than 24 hours.
Overall initial numbers are over 604 YouTube views, 100+ Facebook views, unknown Instagram/Twitch views and over 100 Periscope views which, interestingly, are mostly from Australia and Great Britain. Comments from many local and other worldwide attendees were that “the music was a much-needed respite from the challenges plaguing our society today.”
And another thanks to our g2bpro motion graphics video engineer — we have a new logo:
Again, I thank all that participated. We will showcase your work.
The 24 Hours of Music Jamboree is normally an outdoor festival held in the town of South Orange, NJ at multiple venues with live music bands voluntarily performing for 24-hours non stop. Due to the 2020 COVID Pandemic, we went online. You can review past events at the following links:
2020 4th Annual 24 Hours of Music Jamboree May 30 -31, 2020
2019 3rd Annual 24 Hours Of Music Jamboree Sep 7 - 8, 2019
2018 2nd Annual 24 Hours Of Music Jamboree May 5 - 6, 2018
2017 1st Annual 24 Hours Of Music Jamboree May 6 -7, 2017
Now, a year has passed and hopefully COVID KEEPS DECLINING. For 2021, the idea is to get back outside with live bands and live audiences, meanwhile adding an online virtual performance component.
Anyone can participate, so open call is on.
Contact us to join us with your band, solo, duo, trio or whatever configuration you have. Let us know what you do and how you want to do it. We will find a spot for you in and around South Orange, NJ or online.
Volunteer here for the 5th Annual 24 Hours of Music Jamboree at this link https://bit.ly/3vXJJja .
Gregory Burrus books bands, produces, promotes, captures and records live music events along with various community and private activities.
My mission is to help my customers, which are community groups, live music bands and local nonprofits reach their goals and accomplish their missions while enjoying the day-to-day process of life.
Learn more https://24hoursofmusicjamboree.com
By Gregory Burrus | Posted Thursday, April 29, 2021
There is no doubt that the Coronavirus Pandemic wreaked havoc on the live music industry, not just around South Orange but all over the world. Musicians went from traveling and performing 2-3 times a day to zilch, nada, zero performances, as large music halls and small restaurants with a single stage, all had to shut down. After all, what is live music but a communal and social interaction experience, but the virus pointed us all in the exact opposite direction. We entered into the world of necessary and forced social distancing in order to live and to survive.
The Summer of 2020 saw us all cautiously returning to a new normal life while committing to all the preventive and precautionary measures required to survive. This, for some, meant not coming out and for others it meant wearing masks, social distancing, no hugs and no hand shakes. For the return of live music, we added in six feet apart circles on the ground at our events and sitting far apart from each other, and we also learned elbow greetings along with never ending hand washing.
Since 2010, we usually start our Downtown After Sundown live music season during the last week of May and usually at two locations in the evening. With the pandemic, that was not happening, but in July 2020 we came together and scrambled back outside. Part of the mission was to help businesses that were shuttered for months survive. We put together a live music season based on that and decided to progress by watching the COVID numbers on a week to week basis.
We found some truly cool bands with fans, found a new stage located with the businesses, and a very large parking lot so folks could space out as much as they wanted. Since we couldn't all be together because of the COVID Pandemic, spreading out was the name of the game. For our daytime events, we also added a component to place the music around town in what amounted to live music pods adjacent to our businesses located all around South Orange. Then we started booking bands on a week to week basis, identified as Making Live Music Around South Orange, NJ While Adjusting for the COVID-19 Pandemic. And guess what? It worked out very well, as many folks came out, stayed safe, and enjoyed the music.
Well, we are now announcing a new 2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays born out of last year's learnings. This year, we are starting our season almost a month earlier, extending it a month later, and formally using our new outdoor restaurant patio as our stage. In addition, we identified almost 14 locations for live music all around South Orange, NJ. For our performances, we charged up the lineup as 50% of the bands are new to our performance lineup. Check it out here: SOVillageCenter.org.
The 2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays Live Music season will feature blues, jazz, rock, latin, pop, country and more all around our town.
Highly requested returning favorites are MPAC Band, Los Trafficanos, Andy Lackow and Mess Around, Harmonic Conversion, Lynette Sheard Entertainment, Organist Radam Schwartz, Gene Ghee, NXSTAGE Music, Carlos Frias & Circulo Social, Mama D and Vexations, Stuff Bros, Dwight West and Spirit of Life Ensemble.
New to the Main Stage, as of this writing, for 2021: Meant To Be Jazz Quartet, Mike Lee Jazz and his Jazz Jam, the fabulous Big Train Band, Forget The Whale will finally grace the main stage, Alan Paul's Big In China, Jacqueline Harmon Johnson Jazz & Jam, pop rocker David Easton, Rafiki led by Norman Man, Sir G. Earl Grice and the truly awesome 19-piece Maplewood Community Music Big Band which is too big for the stage so they will be sharing the parking lot with us.
In addition, around town we’ll also have some of your favorites returning, like Hal Keshner’s Piano Lounge, Bossio Ukulele, Leonieke Scheuble Trio, Alex DeLazzari Jazz, The Zoos, Howlin Poets, Kyle Younger Jazz Group, Charlie Apicella, Mike Choi, New Jersey DJ Services, Laredo the Band, Joel Cotton and, yes, even Opera in the Park if we can work it out, and a number of other events that we will bring onboard throughout the summer.
As you know, due to COVID, most celebrations of life were canceled or postponed, but we remember. Hence, lest we forget, not everyone made it through the 2020 year. We had tributes during the 2020 Live Music Season and into 2021, where some of our musical friends left us while others fell victim to COVID, such as Lee Boswell May, Darryl Clark, Holli Ross and many, many more. All of our memories, our live music season, and a few musical tributes are listed below.
Thank you musician Caylen Bryant for performing at Reflecting Together: South Orange, Maplewood to Remember Lives Lost to COVID-19, March 21. My thoughts during this SOMA Ceremony - Tribute to Darryl Clark Holli Ross and Lee Boswell May and Many More and their families.
March 6, 2021, the Township of South Orange named a street in Lee Boz May’s name, called “Boz Way.” I reported on that here: A Tribute to Lee "Boz" May -- Live Music Advocate Making South Orange, NJ Black History and Women's History. Long live “Boz Way.”
We celebrated with a ceremony. Thank you to our musicians for your tributes to our fallen live music advocate, jazz lover, wife, family lover, community lover and more, Lee Boswell May.
We hope to do more to honor them as COVID restrictions loosen up.
As we try and move forward, all of us here in town feel a sense of joyful anticipation about the 2021 South Orange Summer Saturdays season. We will once again make music for our devoted audience members. It promises to be a season to be remembered and cherish. Please join us.
Gregory Burrus is writing about his first love, the creative people, towns and events all around South Orange NJ, Essex County and Beyond. Gregory continually observes, participates in, reports and writes on local community news, live music and the arts and entertainment scene of the JerseyNYC landscape, right here on Jersey Indie as JI blogger Gregory Burrus. Contact Gregory Burrus to promote your business or nonprofit across various social media and blogging platforms. http://gregoryburrus.me
By Sonia Schnee | Posted Friday, January 22, 2021
If you’re craving that old school, boy group sound of Boyz II Men, New Edition, and *NSYNC, then look no further than South Jersey’s own #Elevated, who just released their newest single, “Paradise,” on YouTube, Spotify, and other audio outlets. Check out our interview with the talented quintet, below, as they discuss how they’re “bringing back old school vibes with a modern twist.”
For some of us it is interpreted in different ways. One interpretation is "the beach and perfection." What we could do for a significant other is living a life that feels like a dream and live a life where we are content. Another interpretation is last year, we were struck with hardships such as the pandemic. We want to eventually reach that small spec of light at the end of the tunnel we call 'Paradise.’ This song is a soothing and uplifting song to help us go through our inner struggles that we have experienced during these hard times!
The winter feeling is always soothing, so we wanted to create a song that explores that feeling of calmness and joy.
We recorded at Vince's (one of the #Elevated members) house. We self-produced everything and hired a mix engineer to mix and master!
#Elevated is a 5 member guy group from South Jersey!
Kevin (baritone), Josh (tenor), Vince (baritone/countertenor), Will (bass/tenor), and Donovan (bass).
This group consists of two of Vince's friend groups: Will and Donovan were in Vince's high school choir and often sung together, and Kevin and Josh were in Vince's university and often jam and sing together in the piano room.
The group started with Kevin, Vince and Josh who performed for an event at Rutgers University. We decided to become a group right after. We later added Will and Donovan to make a 5 member group! Our music is old school with a modern twist. We grew up listening to old school R&B and pop such as Earth, Wind and Fire, Boyz II Men, Brian McKnight, New Edition, Michael Jackson, etc. We also enjoy some of the modern artists as well such as Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, Ne-Yo, Ed Sheeran, Charlie Puth, Bruno Mars, etc. We miss boy bands or singing groups that can sing acapella like Boyz II Men, *NSYNC, etc., so we want to bring that sound back.
We're looking forward to more opportunities and to a better year overall.
Follow us on Instagram: @hashtagelevated
Subscribe to us on YouTube: http://youtube.com/hashtagelevated
Check out our latest single, “Paradise”:
The song is available on all audio platforms!
Here is also a link tree to see our other content: https://linktr.ee/hashtagelevated
We have been growing a small fan base on YouTube through various contents such as reaction videos (2k subscribers).
By Deaglan Howlett | Posted Wednesday, January 1, 2019
Magic Ghrelin is a four piece, punk/power pop group based out of Asbury Park, New Jersey. The group consists of Matt "Tank" Bergman (drums), Guy Pollioni, (guitar /vocals), Justin Lombardo (guitar/vocals) and Luke Henderiks (bass/vocals). Their debut EP Die a Rockstar is an energetic, punk masterpiece. This record is unapologetically honest yet incredibly catchy, tackling heavy subjects with soaring guitars. The tracks allow for every member to shine through in their unique playing and songwriting style, absolutely nobody sounds like them. I reached out to Magic Ghrelin and they were sweet enough to answer some questions about the origins of the band!
Tank: Magic Ghrelin formed about a year ago and the word “Ghrelin” is the hunger hormone that communicates to your brain that you are hungry. Throw magic in front of that and boom, the hunger to make magic.
Luke: Personally I would say Big Star, Grandaddy, Nada Surf, Knapsack, The Get Up Kids and Teenage Fanclub! We aspire to be a power-pop band with heavy emo and shoegaze influence.
Luke: Our overall message as a band is to respect and love what you do and to not be ashamed of who you are. We write songs about being unique and having issues with our mental health that we work on with the help of the people we love around us.
Luke: Guy usually comes up with a guitar part with Tank drumming with him at practice, then it gets presented to Justin and I. We usually end up deciding if it works based on how we play the song together. If we feel the magic when we create, we keep it; if we aren’t with it, we don’t. It’s a pretty simple process. We all come up with lyrics together and review them.
Justin: I like “Enemy” the most because I think it's really catchy and it's a true pump up banger that touches upon some honest feelings lyrically.
By Deaglan Howlett | Posted September 17, 2019
Good Ol Boys is the latest release from indie rockers Molly Ringworm. Based out of Atlantic County, NJ, this is their second EP since the release of Tape 1, back in September, 2017. Good Ol Boys is the culmination of a year's worth of work in the studio and writing for the group. Singer and guitarist, Sarah Holt, was kind enough to talk about the band’s history and what went into this phenomenal release. Thanks again, Sarah!
Molly Ringworm started as a solo project in high school in 2015. I put out my first two singles, "561" and "All The Time," in 2016. I would grab anyone that would play with me for a live show as a duo, a trio or solo. Niko has been there from the beginning, originally playing bass. This past year, the lineup finally solidified into a four piece.
Guitarist Johnny Zappas and I are cousins. We have been playing in bands together for ten years now. We both went to a performing arts high school where we met and became friends with bassist Andrew Simpson and drummer Niko Berardo. We've been playing together in all different projects ever since!
Liz Phair and Joni Mitchell are who made me pick up a guitar and start writing. Phair, Mitchell, Stephen Malkmus, Elliott Smith and Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz, Sad13) are who I look up to for lyric writing and guitar playing. The Beatles have also been important to me from a young age. They are masters in melody, harmony, songwriting structure and attitude.
I think the main way Ringworm’s music has evolved is its shift from a solo project to a group effort. I’m still writing all of the songs, but I also have the input and contributions of parts from my talented friends. All of our creative brains together make songs better than I ever thought they could be written alone in my room.
With the singles and the previous EP, Tape 1, everything was recorded in a matter of days. Recording and mixing Good Ol Boys was spaced out over the course of this year. We recorded and re-recorded and had to find time here and there with our busy schedules. We also really took our time mixing, which with the passing of time we have learned more about since previous releases (thank you Andrew for leading that brigade).
The guys' favorite is "Timmy." There's this sort of dynamic explosion in the chorus that Niko described best as a release of tension. There's a lot of energy to it, especially when we are playing it live. My favorite is "No Matter What" because the subject matter is so important to me. The song is addressing misogyny in the music scene in forms of condescension, exclusion, harassment and complacency of peers and friends. It's a call for men who claim to be feminists to recognize misogyny when they see it, and to speak out when their female friends are silenced.
Saturday, October 5 - 7:00pm
Molly Ringworm @ The Whitechapel Projects
15 2nd Ave.
Long Branch, NJ 07740
w/ Ornamental & Format War
Friday, October 18 - 7:00pm
Molly Ringworm @ The Clubhouse
Inside The Downtown Shops @ 53 Main
53 N Main St.
Toms River, NJ 08753
w/ Dolly Spartans & Heartsigh
Live Music Video screenshots by Kris Khunachak; Headshots by Elizabeth Kaminski.
Guy Battaglia - Voice and lyrics (Idle Wave)
David Ross Lawn - Piano arrangement
Produced by Idle Wave and Connor Hanson
Engineered/Mixed/Mastered by Connor Hanson
Directed, filmed and edited by Kris Khunachak Media
By Sonia Schnee | Posted by Sunday, September 15, 2019
TODAY marks the premiere of Idle Wave’s new music video, a live recorded studio session of their song “Heaven Knows.” Watch their music video (above) as well as take a listen on Spotify.
Idle Wave is a pop-punk/alternative band hailing from Asbury Park, NJ. We were fortunate to be able to interview Idle Wave’s Guy Battaglia (Voice/Lyrics) to learn more about the inspiration behind this song and the music video. For more information about Idle Wave, visit their official website, grab some merch, and of course, there’s nothing like a live and in-person performance, so follow Idle Wave on social media to find out where they’ll be performing next.
GUY BATTAGLIA: My good friend David Ross Lawn (who is responsible for a good chunk of our press photos) has a YouTube channel where he covers Emo/Pop Punk bands such as The Wonder Years, Tigers Jaw, and Real Friends on piano. Once I saw his Wonder Years cover I immediately messaged him and it was a resounding “yes!” on his behalf. I’ve always wanted to do a music video for each song on the EP so this also helped fulfill that goal as well. Many if not all of the Idle Wave songs are written with the intention of first sounding good and full with just an acoustic guitar and vocals. Nothing captured the vibe better for Heaven Knows than when I ran through it in a voice lesson with Bryan Haring (Ernest). Bryan played piano to help provide a background to focus in on my vocals and it felt beautiful and natural. This version is also set to provide a nice glimpse into the future for the current Idle Wave fans.
I picked up my acoustic guitar in my living room one day and started playing open chords in E major. Once I honed in on a chord progression I began mumbling some odd melodies to fit over it. I want to say the melody came first but normally the melody and lyrics arrive simultaneously. The song is about the feeling of wanting to do more for someone you care about. It was one of the first complete songs I was able to write after my grandfather passed away. The juxtaposition of major and minor chords took me back to moments in the hospital waiting room and watching other families anxiously await updates regarding their loved ones. It’s difficult dealing with someone that like being out of your control, and I feel I succeeded in honing that emotion through the music and melodies of this song.
I am far from classically trained! I covered rock and screaming songs out of my range all through high school until I joined choir towards the end, and I earned a place in the bass section to hear my actual voice for the first time. I joined choir in college as well as took private voice lessons as much as I could to work on my form and longevity. After college I taught at private music academies where I was giving voice lessons to middle schoolers, and I have to say running through warmups with them and helping them perfect dynamics and form really helped me view myself as a vocalist better. Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) provided a good foundation for me growing up; he has a voice that sings fluently with character, that is just so easy on the ears. I took a lot of influence in my approach from that. Also, Soupy from the Wonder Years roars with emotion in every lyric and is one of the best lyricists in my opinion; so I learned a lot from singers in that genre on how to execute balancing lyrics and control. I’d actually love to collab with writer Danny Brown one day, despite him being an opposite of mine musically, I love every song he has ever created. He finds these drug-induced beats and is able to come up with the most perfect delivery to every line. I feel like he would help me step out of my comfort zone and look at music from a different perspective.
Kris Khunachak! He has done the majority of music video for this EP (“Calm”, “Smoke”) and we are actually working on some new content as well. We filmed this video in Lakehouse Recording Studios (Asbury Park, NJ) with the help of engineer Connor Hanson (Cloud Hands, Ella Ross) and David Ross Lawn in a 2-hour session. I described this team of people as “the avengers” because everything was so natural and productive. We did cut five or six live takes of one-shot video and audio and then we chose the best take as they matched up. Connor mixed and mastered the audio while Kris color corrected and cleaned up the shot, and the final product was done in barely a week’s time.
David Ross Lawn is a renaissance man who composes, teaches voice and piano, takes beautiful photographs and much more. He’s one of the sweetest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, and he is well loved by much of Asbury Park as well. I sent David the song and he immediately provided a brilliant, natural rendition complete with dynamics and unique chord voicings. His playing perfectly accompanied the raw emotion and attitude of my vocal performance.
I have mostly with myself playing acoustic guitar. It is not the same as David’s piano playing, but it gets the job done in situations where it is needed, and I have to say it is a crowd favorite most if not all of the time.
Ideally, I hope it helps someone through their day. Belting along to other songs in this genre helped me deal with many of the stresses of being an anxious teenager transitioning into adulthood.
Find what you love and do it. Don’t be afraid to do something out of your comfort zone despite what everyone tells you. Any path you take will bring you obstacles and reward so find the reward that suits you best and is all you think about.
Fans can connect the MOST with us through our official website at idlewaveband.com.
We HIGHLY encourage you to check out our website and join our mailing list; you’ll receive exclusive access to sneak peaks, downloadable content, release dates, personal messages, casting opportunities, and giveaways.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music. @idlewavenj
By Sonia Schnee | Posted Friday, May 17, 2019
In 2013, Bergen County singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Joe Mifsud released his sophomore album, Stay Calm And Carry On. Drawing from a variety of influences, his music has a decidedly alternative/rock/pop bent with new folk/lo-fi elements via his side project, Here for Now. (On top of that, Joe is also a standup comedian. Check out his Facebook page for upcoming performance dates.)
Now in 2019, Joe is ready to jump back into the scene, writing new songs, playing shows, and meeting/collaborating with like-minded creatives and music lovers. Before you listen to his new work, be sure to check out some of his past gems, as well as our interview below to find out more about his personal journey and hopes for the future.
My name is Joe Mifsud. I was born in New York, New York but grew up in Harrington Park, NJ in Bergen County. I currently reside in Harrington Park.
I've generally described my music as a cross pollination of several influences, but if I HAD to describe it to people I usually say my sound would be if The Beatles met The Foo Fighters. Or just very Foo Fighters-like in nature.
Musically, I play guitar, bass, drums, sing, write my own lyrics and music. I do enjoy a lot of different types of music. Growing up, my dad really enjoyed Motown music, Doo-Wop music and the Jazz and Soul Singers. My mom listened to all different types of Spanish Music and top radio hits of the 80's. My sister listened to a lot of jam bands like Phish & Dave Matthews Band along with early 90's Alternative Rock. My brother was listening to 80's Metal and Progressive Rock like Rush when we shared the room together when we were kids.
My childhood best friend Kevin and I listened to a lot of 90's Alternative Rock as we grew up as well as a lot of Classic Rock. We would raid his parents' Classic Rock collection. My influences are many to name but a short list would include The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Black Sabbath, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Foo Fighters. More importantly to me were the local influences, musical peers and my brother (who used to play guitar and bass in a band) and my dad (who used to sing in a barbershop group with his friends on the street corner).
The main inspiration behind my music is relationships.
Not always a romantic love relationship,
but it comes from a very literary sense.
Man and nature.
Man and woman.
Man and himself.
Man and society.
I appreciate the very therapeutic value of songwriting. I tend to write very autobiographically as a way of coping and understanding myself and the world around me. I have been fortunate to use music and songwriting as a way to develop my personal and artistic voice. I hope that people find a connection and comfort in what I bring to music. Music to celebrate the good times and good memories and bring people together. Music to find solace and comfort in during the hard times. I hope that people are able to connect with the music on some level that strikes them even if it is just the tone or sonic soundscape or the lyrics and message or all of it.
Ultimately, I would like to give back to music what it gave to me. Music gave me a sense of home, comfort and purpose.
My personal journey started when I was young. My earliest memories of music were listening to Spanish music in the living room and tapping out the rhythm on the conga drum with my dad. The first song that really struck a chord with me was The Beatles' “Lady Madonna” because of the ragtime-type groove and the cartoon-like vocal section that reminded me of a Looney Tunes song. I loved when there would be classical music in cartoons when the characters would have a play off of classical songs on piano. Queen's “Bohemian Rhapsody” is my favorite rock song of all time. Nothing quite captured my imagination in so many ways about the possibilities of Rock than “Bohemian Rhapsody”! As I got to be about ten or eleven years old, the first band that I was able to claim as my own was Nirvana. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and its accompanying music video blew me away! When I saw Dave Grohl playing the drums, I knew that I wanted to do that! Play Drums! Play Music for a living ! I felt empowered by Nirvana and their music because, similarly to The Beatles' effect, they were just normal people making great music. I felt like I could do it, too, and that it wasn't totally beyond me.
I discovered that I loved music very early on in my life and that it became a goal and a challenge that I accepted to be like my heroes. I wanted to learn to sing, write lyrics, play instruments and write my own original songs with a level of proficiency.
My goals as an artist are to have the music reach people and touch their lives in a positive way. By the end of the year, I would like to have accomplished jumpstarting a life in music and sharing music that I've written with as many people as possible and through multiple channels such as live shows, interviews, social media, streaming services, reviews and podcasts, personal connections, etc. I would like to reach people that genuinely love, support and appreciate music and the arts. I am open to meeting people that are creative, passionate and awesome! There are many artists, bands or producers that I'd love to collaborate with one day. At the top of my lists would be Rick Rubin for producer and Dave Grohl for Musician.
I do not have any shows coming up, but I am looking to plan shows for 2019 and beyond and will keep you updated!
Words of advice or encouragement that I would give to someone who wants to follow a similar passion or is maybe facing obstacles similar to what I've faced: Believe in yourself. Trust your voice. Trust the process and trust that an audience will be attracted to your vision. Always stay true to yourself and the original vision because when it's all said and done you have yourself to be accountable to.
DO! Don't let anxiety or insecurity or excuses counteract productivity. Your older self will thank your younger self.
Create, Create, Create! Hopefully you get a job where you have the time and income to fund and realize your art without interference.
It may take time but stick with it!
I will be your fan!
Official Music Website: https://www.mifmusic.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoeMifsudBand
Bandcamp: https://joemifsudband.bandcamp.com/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1l3m0OFBgPLMmgssBl3cBO
Instagram (Seldom Used but I should use it more): https://www.instagram.com/mif95/?hl=en
Twitter (Seldom Used but I should use it more): https://twitter.com/JoeMifsudBand
YouTube (Videos including live, promo and music videos that I've uploaded): https://www.youtube.com/user/davidbedert/videos
YouTube Official Music from the Albums:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyz5pd9_aSOU0ROmAMHGWlg
For the Streaming Music, the music is available on all streaming platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Amazon, Tidal, Google Play, etc.
My side acoustic/indie/folk project is called Here For Now. The album is called Letters Home.
Here For Now Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/herefornowband/
Here For Now Bandcamp : https://herefornowthereforlater.bandcamp.com/album/letters-home-there-for-later-edition
Also available on all streaming music platforms - Here For Now Letters Home
By Sean McCall | Posted Friday, August 10, 2018
Kay Roman is a singer/songwriter based out of Oakland, New Jersey. Her most recent EP is titled Teen Angst which was released in September of 2017. Kay wrote the whole EP herself, and it was mixed and mastered by Joey Papa. The record opens with a short, but catchy song titled “Mordecai” which introduces a minor-mood for the record. The song gradually layers more vocals and synth instrumentation as the “Mordecai, Mordecai” hook loops around. I love the way this song closes with an almost eerie noise after saying “I’m so insane, it’s not enough.”
The second song on the record, “Go Away," immediately switches the mood up with a happy-sounding progression and horns opening up the song. The chorus of this song is genuinely awesome. It’s simple and catchy and states “Go away, go away, I don’t need you here to mess with my heart today” with a beautiful melody. This one put me in my feels in the most uplifting way if that makes sense.
The third track on the record is called “See You in the Halls” and opens up with a line that says “went to the store and bought a GameCube controller” which immediately intrigued me! Turns out this song is another one that pulls at the heartstrings. The intro gives me a Julien Baker-vibe, and when it picks up the music reminds me of Tigers Jaw and The Hotelier, for a few comparisons. I really love the structure and dynamics of this song specifically. It’s one of the longer tracks but you don’t notice because there’s constant change in a seamless way.
The fourth song on the record is called “201” which brings back the singular acoustic guitar and vocals while sneaking in some melodramatic cello. I really like that the vocals follow the guitar melody in this song. There are also some very interesting chord choices in the transitions of this song that are super tasteful. This track seems to be talking about an old place that she used to call home but can no longer bring herself to do so. This is definitely another feeler.
“Give Me Attention” is the 5th track on this EP. The instrumental in the chorus of this song immediately reminded me of Tigers Jaw's self-titled EP. This is another track of dealing with the idea of “insanity” which is something that’s a common theme in a lot of people’s lives that is tough to speak up about. So far, Teen Angst is a record that talks about a lot of hardships that are difficult to talk about through simply speaking, but this EP takes those situations and turns them into something moving and relatable that you can always move your head to.
The record closes with a track titled “Blue Jay.” This is another emotional journey that’s done beautifully. It’s super soft for the majority of the song, but when the full band comes in around 3 quarters into the song, you just feel. There aren’t any more lyrics after that point in the song, and there doesn’t have to be. I think this song ended the record perfectly.
Overall, I was thoroughly moved by this record. I believe it talks about a lot of issues we can relate to. Even if it’s on a broad spectrum, and we of course don’t know the stories behind these songs, there’s something there that I can grasp onto personally. A lot of people say you should listen to happy music when you’re sad, but I lean more towards records like this one. It has a perfect combination of music that’s uplifting and almost joyful, and lyrics that may break your heart and hit home.
My personal favorite song was “Go Away” from Kay Roman's Teen Angst if you’re looking for somewhere to start.
By Deaglan Howlett | Posted Friday, July 13, 2018
For fans of: Oasis, Teenage Fanclub, Nick Lowe
Rob Jennings is a solo artist from Bloomfield, New Jersey. His latest release, “Keep Me In Mind," is a nod to 70’s power pop legends Big Star and perfectly encapsulates that sound we all love. When I first heard “Keep Me In Mind,” I immediately loved it. I was so happy to see an artist writing simple, melodic power pop songs. “Keep Me In Mind” is short and sweet and unbelievably catchy. It was a great pleasure to ask Jennings some questions about the song, and I really appreciate him taking the time to do so.
Rob Jennings: Sometimes when I have writer's block, I’ll go on YouTube and find some free-to-use isolated drum tracks to strum along to. Most of the time, nothing happens, but I clicked on a certain one and this song came out of me. I was just starting to get really into Big Star at the time, and they have a track on their 3rd album called “Kizza Me” that has a similar intro. It was an unconscious thing though, I wasn’t trying to rip it off.
The obvious ones have always been The Beatles and The Beach Boys. Brian Wilson was a huge influence on my album, The World Was On My Side. I just released that last year. I was obsessed with Pet Sounds and Smile for the longest time. I’ve been writing a lot of new songs in the same vein as Keep Me In Mind lately and most of them have been influenced by 90’s bands like Teenage Fanclub and Oasis. I never liked Oasis when I was younger, but I’ve been listening to them a lot lately, and I like their attitude about music... that it should be uplifting, fun and positive. I’ve written my fair share of sad songs, so I’d like to make something you could put on at a party this time around.
I recorded at Portrait Recording Studios in Pompton Plains, NJ. My friend Chris Badami owns it, and he’s a great guy.
In addition to being an engineer, Chris is also a great drummer, so he helped me out by playing on the track. I played the guitars and bass.
Hopefully soon. If I ever put out another full album, this song will be on it. I’d like to release one song at a time and then put it all together at the end. This way I won’t have to wait a year and a half for people to hear it. I also release DIY tracks all the time on my Bandcamp. I try to keep putting stuff out as consistently as possible as long as it’s good.
~
In the meantime, go back and listen to Rob Jennings' discography here and catch him live in a town or city near you!
Listen on Spotify.
By Deaglan Howlett | Posted Thursday, June 7, 2018
For fans of: Bon Jovi, Paramore, Bleachers
Dan Amato and the Sentimental Gentlemen is a lively group that blends pop and rock in a way that is both captivating yet familiar. While the music is high energy and original, I hear traces of hometown hero Bruce Springsteen, and relatively newer acts like Paramore. This makes for an infectious sound, and their latest release, The Big Picture, is no exception.
Lead singer and guitarist, Dan Amato, was kind enough to answer some questions for me. Thanks again, Dan!
As for the rest of influences [not listed previously], we made a playlist noting specific songs that had the biggest impact.
The interesting thing about this record in terms of stories is that I worked backward in a way. I had written 3 of the tracks scattered across the year that had all stemmed from a breakup. I figured I could do something more with them and make them more a part of a broader idea, in this case placing them into stages of a breakup: Shock, Anger, Spite, Sadness, Acceptance, and Hope.
We tracked, mixed & mastered one half of the album with Gintas Norvila at Grand Street Recording in Brooklyn, NY and the other half with Adam Vaccarelli at Retromedia Sound Studios in Red Bank, NJ.
I’m still slightly struggling to call myself a songwriter, so my process is pretty skewed. I’m super impatient, so I put everything into one song at a time -- whatever gets written gets recorded. It starts with a horribly sung voice memo on my phone, which then goes into a logic demo session, gets sent to the band, [we] practice it and sometimes play live first, straight to studio. For whatever reason, I’m only a perfectionist when it comes to writing because I’ve only written one song that has not been recorded.
I sing and play guitar (sometimes a little piano).
Nicole Govel does backup vocals.
JJ Fabricatore plays Saxophone.
Owen Flanagan plays Drums.
Jon Bass plays bass (funny enough).
We’ve got our release show this Friday night, June 8th, at the Orange Lantern in my hometown of Paramus, NJ. [We're] playing The Chubby Pickle in Highlands, NJ on July 6th, The Soulsational Festival in Bayville, NJ on July 28th, another show at the Orange Lantern on August 11th, and more to be announced. Show dates will be added to our Facebook, Instagram and Spotify pages!
~
Make sure you listen to Dan Amato and the Sentimental Gentlemen's latest release and see them live!
By Sonia Schnee | Posted Friday, April 13, 2018
NJ's Alexis Pellegrino, aka Lex Rex (Lex Rex and the Dragons), just release a new music video for her song, "Ain't Nothin," from her EP Tides (you can listen to Tides on Spotify, iTunes, Tidal, Google Play, and Amazon). Check out our interview with Lex, below, to learn about her style, musical influences, and the inspiration behind her new EP.
I am Alexis Pellegrino aka Lex Rex. I'm originally from Northern NJ. I am now based in Ocean County.
Last year, I released a Hip-Hop single. I don’t think people were expecting Tides to sound the way it does. I went from spitting bars to singing. It definitely put me out of my comfort zone for sure, but I’ve been writing pop music since I was in elementary school. I finally decided to go with it. I love writing melodies over some smooth synth or a nice beat.
I recorded Tides at Eight Sixteen/Traxx East Studio in South River, NJ. I absolutely love them there, they are like family.
My musical influences are pretty wide ranged (I’d like to think). Frank Ocean, MJ, Earth Wind and Fire, The Internet, Led Zeppelin, The Stones, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, The Weekend, Kanye West, The Stooges, Nirvana. Growing up my dad would play Disco/Motown/Jazz/R&B…. so I would like to think I started off on the right foot as a kid ;).
Directed by Christian Cordes.
Thank you! Because Tides has a throwback kind of feel, I’ve been figuring out ways to tie in retro design/film with modern day design/film. I love it, mostly because you learn a lot about how far we have come in design, technology, etc. from studying the past.
Honestly, the EP is about an Ex-lover. A friend told me that this is “The saddest happiest sounding EP they have ever heard.” The music is upbeat for the most part, but if you listen to the lyrics, they are rather deep/emotional/sad or coming from a place of hope for the future. I hope people connect with my music. I think there is a song for everyone on the EP, and I love how diverse it is. It was honestly very challenging but super rewarding to hear the finished product. I honestly wanted people to feel like there was hope for them even in a place of feeling worthless, low, and stuck in a bad place.
I started getting into doing live music through dance/theater. I fell in love at an early age. Started dancing at age 3, and then it just took off from there!
Current bands or artists I’d love to collaborate with would be Frank Ocean/SZA. Both of them together would be ideal. I am heavy on the R&B, always.
Keep doing YOU! NEVER give up and NEVER second guess yourself. Also, push yourself out of your comfort zone at least once a day, you’ll find you grow from stepping out of your own zone!
I will continue to release new music videos to go with the songs on the EP as well as some future live performance dates, TBA ;).
I am on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube!
Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexrexandthedragons/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LXRXNDTHDRGNS
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexrexandthedragons/?hl=en
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsNZq756vBPGmbwSVAHwGiw?view_as=subscriber
