In the beginning …

We start as simple templates of mind and soul ready to begin our continuous journey to become better and better human beings.  From learning who we are to learning how to live with others either in the casually murky soup of society or the deeper, more tricky currents of love, this sojourn is what the Australian group Geppetto (composed of “pop cabaret princess, Emma Dean, and Green Room Award winner, Jake Diefenbach“) are using the fairy-tale cipher of Hansel and Gretel to explore the themes of learning how to navigate reality through a lush dreamscape in their new, provocative mini-rock opera/concert piece An End To Dreaming.

As they approach the stage in the darkness of existential doubt they move in a way that is not haphazard, but deliberate and somewhat mystical in nature.  We see a Hansel-and-Gretel-esque pair draped in capes, faces and hair a gothy white with stylized markings.  They test their paths as they go carefully forward, eventually reaching the points where they can begin to cast their spell.  They begin their ritual by gently touching the instruments of their art;  Emma Dean beginning on the synthesizer and Jake Diefenbach on the piano – telling us the story of how they began, in a darkness so complete that they forgot who they were before, and strove to find an identity as well as a path to bring them forth again into the light.

The key difference between this rendition of the Hansel and Gretel story is that this is about fighting a foe much harder to face than a witch or neglectful parents. Their chief opponent is themselves and their understanding of how they can find purpose in the world. The story of this journey is broken into different chapters with a prelude to each concept before each piece bookended by songs that show the beginning and end of their journey through each movement.  These “preludes” are beautiful spoken word pieces that really connect  you to the heart of their struggle. This is truly an existential coming of age story that goes far beyond the original text in scope.

The first movement is The Darkness (with the songs Black  and The Devil you Know ) where they explore the realization of how much they do not know in the world, and how they might begin to figure out how to escape that blindness.  The next section The Awakening (Is Anybody Out There? (see clip above) and Tomorrow) deals with the joy and fear that happen when you realize there can be different choices in life.  They learn to move beyond their inner instincts to be afraid, to want obsessively, and to dream.  The third section, The Reckoning ( This Is Where The Trouble Starts and Forged in Flames) they face who they have found themselves to be and confront that mirror vision of what they most fear as well as hope for in the future.  The fourth movement is The Healing (It’s All Fun And Games and Stuck In The Mud )  is  ”about pain..Not the blind pain of suffering, but ..one that is sexual and fragile.”  A pain that is like a new skin you are just learning to wear.  The finale of the show is The  Light  (Won This Game Before and An End To Dreaming [see below])  where they emerge into the edge of the future which is now.  They still have  new challenges to face, but they are all new journeys to reach for expectantly instead of fearfully.  The bravery of Won This Game Before and the strengthening Affirmation to go forth into the world that is  the song An End to Dreaming  are powerful transmissions to be received from these two prophets of self -rediscovery, that this alone is a reason  you make it to one of their last two performances.

Their journey is very subtle and esoteric… poignant and meaningful…helpful  as well as persuasive to take a chance.  Written directed and performed by Emma Dean and Jake Diefenbach, with brilliant lighting and sound by Ben Stuart, we see not just that these two are great musicians , but amazing at theatre as well.   Catch one of the last two shows this week if you can.  You definitely won’t regret this once in your lifetime opportunity.

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It’s that time of year loyal lovers of theater dread. Shows that have been struggling to make it, will be closing. The light at the end of the tunnel, as is always the case with Broadway, is that new, and some are quite exciting, shows will be taking their place.

The musical Ghost, based on the 1990 smash film, gave up the ghost Saturday [August 17]. The End of the Rainbow, with [whether you believe the arc of the play to be factual or fiction] a commanding performance by Tracie Bennett, heads out to tour soon [and will be adapted for the screen] and, as of Sunday, there’s no Judy, Judy, Judy on Broadway. On August 29, the curtain rings down on glitzy Sister Act.

Closing it’s limited engagement on September 1 is the New York Shakespeare Festival’s revival of Sondheim’s Into the Woods, playing Central Park’s Delacorte Theatre [free admission], and starring Oscar winner Amy Adams and Tony winner Donna Murphy.

September 2 we must say cheerio to one of this season best entertainments, One Man, Two Guvnors, starring 2012 Best Actor, the incomparable James Corden. It’s a laugh riot and should be at the top of your Must See list. Also closing the same day is this year’s Best Play, Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park, also a Pulitzer Prize honoree and Olivier Award winner.
The acclaimed 2012 Tony-winning revival of George and Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess,starring Audra McDonald

Porgy and Bess (Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis | Photo by Michael J. Lutch)

[except August 21-23], Norm Lewis, and David Alan Grier, has posted September 23 for its final performance. Rumor has it heading to the big screen, directed by Spike Lee.

Off Broadway, you can catch the last performances of the popular farce, Potted Potter, which presents all seven Harry Potter books in 70 minutes.

Still holding strong Off Broadway is Nina Raine’s must-see family drama Tribes, one of the best plays of this or any recent season.

In previews or soon to open are the play Grace, co-starring Paul Rudd and Ed Asner; the musical Chaplin, based on the life of filmdom’s silent era king, the Tramp; one of Broadway’s biggest blockbusters, the Tony-winning Annie; Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and Rupert Holmes’ Tony-winning The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on Dickens’ incomplete last novel and co-starring legendary Broadway favorite Chita Rivera; and Chicago’s Steppenwolf’s revival of Edward Albee’s landmark play, the scorching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? 

Also in the good news department, a brand new edition of Gerard Alessandrini’s wickedly funny send-up Forbidden Broadway, Alive and Kicking! has arrived.

PBS Specials

PBS regularly airs performances of the Metropolitan Opera and a variety of the best in classical and pop concerts. Coming up is a superb example of the former.

Verdi’s La Traviata gets a contemporary design that’s both off-putting and provocative on August 23 at 9 P.M. and August 26 at Noon in Willy Decker’s production that might not satisfy loyalists but breathes new breath into a classic. Celebrated French soprano Natalie Dessay delivers a staggering portrayal of Violetta. Matthew Polenzani is Alfredo, with acclaimed Russian bass Dmitri Hvorostovsky’s magnificent portrayal of Giorgio. The Met’s Fabio Luisi conducts.

Upcoming: Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert, Great Performances, August 31, 9 P.M.; Paul McCartney, Live Kisses, September 7, 9 P.M.

On the Record

Tony winner and two-time Grammy nominee Betty Buckley’s new solo album, Ah, Men! The Boys of Broadway [Palmetto Records] features tunes from her acclaimed 2011 concert, “songs,” she says, “we gals never got to sing. It’s my take on some of the soaring melodies the men got to sing.” The 14 tracks include Irving Berlin’s “My Defenses Are Down,” Annie Get Your Gun; Bernstein/Sondheim’s “Maria,” West Side Story; Frank Loesser’s “Luck Be a Lady,” Guys and Dolls; and a suite from Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.

Raissa Katon Bennett, cabaret award winner and a later Christine in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart’s Phantom of the Opera, has released Another Kind of Light [LML Records]. The 15 tracks include Broadway, pop, and jazz. Among the highlights is “Ordinary Miracles” by Marvin Hamlisch and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Cole Porter’s “I Concentrate on You,” and the rarely-recorded “How Could I Not?” by Alan Menken and David Spencer from the musical adaptation of The
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Bennett  performs songs from the album August 21-25 at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency. To book, click here.

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If you haven’t heard Eden and John’s East River String Band yet, then you are in for a treat! Based in the East Village in NYC, Eden Brower and John Heneghan have been entertaining audiences in America, Canada, and Europe for the past several years with their versions of 1920s pre-war blues, jazz, pop, and country songs, recreating and reviving a new world of “Old Time” music.

Their unique sound and authentic vibe are a fresh breath of air in contemporary music. By bringing to light this world of old music, they bring us back to a time where the love of playing is as important as technical skill, as they share a catalog of old time songs infused with feeling, emotion, and energy.

Eden Brower and John Heneghan

Since 2006, the band has released four albums: Sweet East River, Some Cold Rainy Day, Be Kind To A Man When He’s Down, and Drunken Barrel House Blues.

While Eden Brower (vocals, ukulele, guitar & kazoo) and John Heneghan (vocals, guitar, mandolin & kazoo) make up the backbone of the band, the duo has guest musicians play with them at gigs and on recordings. They’ve played with some amazing musicians including Terri Waldo, Dom Flemons, Eli Smith, R. Crumb, and Pat Conte. Artwork by R. Crumb has graced their last several LP/CD covers, and their first album features cover art by Sophie Crumb. Their CDs and LPs are sold through Red Eye Distribution and on eBay. They are recording their fifth album, Take A Look At That Baby, which they plan on finishing in the South of France this summer.

Read on as I interview Eden Brower and John Heneghan, the dynamic duo behind Eden and John’s East River String Band!

Michelle Augello-Page: What was it like to discover a new world of old music? And then further on, to not only to discover, but to recreate and revive some of these songs?

JH: I found a reissue of a Charley Patton record by the company Yazoo in a used bin at a record store. The thing that struck me about it was that all the song titles had the word “blues” in it. By the bad photo on the cover, you couldn’t tell if the guy was white or black and the dates on it were from the 20′s. It hadn’t occurred to me that blues was being recorded that long ago. It was all brand new to me. My whole life I collected records but I wasn’t like a typical collector. I tried punk, jazz, classical, everything. Funny, I wasn’t even sure if I liked the music at first. It was so weird to me. So foreign. I had never heard anything like it. But after a few minutes of listening to these old records I knew immediately that I had found what I was looking for.

EB: Covering these old songs makes us feel like we are preserving a part of history. We tried to play note for note at first. There had been a long history in America of people passing these songs down from generation to generation. They would alter them and do their own thing with them. So, while they are covers, we do our own interpretation of them and are happy with the reception we have been getting lately. Not everyone knows what they are listening to – some think we wrote the songs or ask where we heard a song from. When we explain they are songs from the 20′s, people who have never heard that kind of music are surprised and interested in learning more.

Where do you draw your inspiration? What are some of your favorite pre-war musicians? How has this music have helped shape not only how you play, but your mindset as well?

EB: For old pre-war blues some of my favorites range from Memphis Minnie, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, and the Mississippi Sheiks, as well as some lesser known artists like Geeshie Wiley, Two Poor Boys, Robert Wilkins, and Hattie Hart. The list is endless really. There is simply nothing like this music in the world for me, in terms of the emotion, fun, and energy that comes with it.

JH: My favorite musicians right now tend to be of the rural tradition and genre. Charley Patton, Hayes Shepherd, Joseph and Cleoma Falcon. I also really like songsters and minstrel style musicians like Chubby Parker and Gus Cannon. My mindset right now towards music is to play these old songs that were passed down from generation to generation, and try to render them in a personal way, which was kind of the standard way that musicians played in this country up until the 1940′s and 50′s.

EB: This music sucked me in with it’s pure honesty and raw emotions. I can listen to a song John has on a scratchy old 78 and get chills from how much it moves me. Some songs have actually made me tear up and I will feel emotional and in a dream state for the rest of the day, just from being so deeply moved from something. Good music and art to me is anything that makes you deeply feel something. Even if it is sadness. Actually I prefer the sad songs myself. I like the depressing blues stuff – raw, pure emotion laid bare.

Many people are very interested in John’s 78 collection – I’m thinking that you pull a lot of your material from this collection? David Fricke observed that the band has “a natural flair that suggests loving study and a respect for the hard lives and fight for joy on the original records” What do you think it is about these sounds and original recordings that resonate with you, and continue to resonate with other people?

JH: As for my 78′s, there is something about this music that is just 100% sincere. People then were not manipulated by the media or marketing or image, and all the other things that seem to be what music is about today. Popular music today is solely determined by how much money can be made from it. Music from the period that we listen to existed for the sole purpose of entertainment and for people to tell personal stories. It really had very little to do with making money, compared to today.

We definitely pull much of the stuff we cover from my 78 collection. Other then a few reissued CD’s, everything we do comes from my collection. We were very pleased when Fricke reviewed us and chose us at a pick of the month in Rolling Stone. I think a lot of people like the music we are doing because maybe they haven’t heard this type of music before. They connect with the honesty and emotion of it – it’s genuine and not commercialized. There is just something real about it.

ERSB Eden and John with R. Crumb playing “So Sorry Dear” off the last album … recorded in their apartment live for WFMU.

Since 2006, you’ve released four albums and each one seems to be getting bigger. You’ve played with Terri Waldo, Dom Flemons, Eli Smith, Pat Conte, and R. Crumb. What was it like playing and recording with these musicians?

EB: When ERSB first started it was five musicians, then it became John and I and guest musicians sitting in from time to time. Pat Conte is an amazing player who played in the Otis Brothers and The Canebreak Rattlers – he also has art done by Crumb on one of his albums too and they are friends. Eli Smith is from the Dust Busters who performs and records with John Cohen and are doing really well. Terry has played with tons of people including Leon Redbone and Woody Allen’s jazz band. Dom is in The Carolina Chocolate Drops, who won a well deserved Grammy last year and are constantly on tour. Recording sessions are really just fun for us. John records it all live so if someone messes up we have to start over, so it’s a challenge, and when we are done we all go out and celebrate with dinner or something.

R. Crumb also did the cover art for most of your albums, besides playing on the last two. What was it like to collaborate artistically and musically with such an icon?

EB: Crumb has always loved and been very supportive of our music. When we first met Robert, it was really a great honor that he liked us because he is such an expert on old music. Crumb had been jamming with us just for fun and it sounded good and natural so it was an easy step to ask him to play on the albums … he is very modest and asked, “Are you sure you want me?” He plays left handed mandolin upside down and plays by ear. He has been playing for a long time and sounds amazing. We were like, “Uh, YES we want you to play! Are you nuts? You sound great!”

Now he’s just such a pal to us it’s just like playing with any other guy in our band. Him doing the artwork seemed a natural step. He has done the artwork for three so far starting with Some Cold Rainy Day and up to our last release Be Kind to a Man When He’s Down which is the album that he plays mandolin on. He is also going to play on the one we are recording right now which we plan to call Take A Look At That Baby.

Recording with Crumb was so much fun. We did it in France last year and had one day of practice and used the entire next day to do about 8 songs. We recorded in his drawing studio, closed the door and windows and just didn’t leave for hours, then we listened to some of Robert’s incredible collection of 78′s and talked about what we would record next time. The songs we like are just never ending and we kept coming up with more and more and saying, “DAMN! We forgot that one! We HAVE to do that one next time!”

This year we will be in Europe touring, so we will have over two months to practice with Crumb and will be able to take our time and really get some great tracks. So I expect when we go back in June the recording will be a fun, exciting project and our choices will change daily until we are all satisfied!

You play a lot of gigs and festivals, both in and out of the states. What were some of the unexpected reactions to your music outside of an American audience?

EB: In New York, We love playing at Jalopy Theater which is THE place for old timey music, and a wonderful space where they also repair and build instruments and have classes – all in the old time genre. They even have their own record label now.

Playing in Europe, like Italy or France, is so different from playing in the states! We played in Italy at blues fests a bunch of times and at the first time we did we were worried a little. The other bands booked spoke the language and were electric. You have to really not talk when we are playing as we don’t plug in. It’s very hard to hear us, even with mics, if there is a lot of talking going on. The crowd at this one festival in Italy were drunk and boisterous … Then as soon as John started picking, they went dead silent! We looked up after the song and they were applauding and going nuts.

They are just very polite and respectful in other countries towards artists and musicians. Even at airports when they see we are carrying instrument cases they flip and are so impressed we are traveling to play music. Security in Dublin wanted us to stay there and play shows one time when we got stuck there for a night! Here, if you are in a band or try to make a living playing, you are a bum. There, you are looked at with admiration and respect. I really liked that!

What are some questions or comments that you often hear from fans? Do you have any stories to share that made you realize how your music affects other people?

EB: Fans always ask about R Crumb of course … how we know him, how he came to play with us, can we pass along their etching so he can say if they are good or not … haha! We get that A LOT! But the nicest comments are when fans say we sounded “authentic” or that our cover of a particularly hard or well-loved song came out great.

We did “Last Kind Words” by Geeshie Wiley on one of our albums and that song is just so moving, it rips my heart out every time. Whenever we do it people react to it, “I have NEVER heard ANYONE do that song!” “I can’t believe you played that one!” They always say we did it justice which makes me happy. It is an intimidating song to cover – it is just such a wonderful masterpiece – in our minds and in so many others’ minds too!

Lately, we have been getting fan mail asking will we please com to their city, state, country to play. I love those too. We write back “Send along some places we can email with our press kit and we may come!” It’s so nice to be asked to play somewhere from a total stranger who emails out of nowhere saying they love our stuff.

How have you seen the reception to your music change over the past several years? How have you grown/changed as musicians? What have you learned?

EB: John’s playing is beyond great and he has grown a lot in terms of playing more loosely and gaining a better feel for the music. This music relies a lot on the feeling of the song, as well as the technical finger picking, which is very difficult on some songs we do. You have to get the hard stuff down while at the same time sounding loose and laid back.

As a singer, I have really grown to love being on stage and belting out these songs. Nothing makes me happier than playing a gig. I like when the audience is a challenge and you have to win them over. It’s really fun and challenging to pick out a song you want to do then go about interpreting it your own way while not losing the emotion and power it had to make you want to cover it in the first place.

We got asked to play the Chicago Blues Fest a few years ago. We were on the “Old Time” stage with Dom Flemons and our friend Blind Boy Paxton. Other stages had electric music while we didn’t. We had a big audience – hundreds of people came over to hear us. We decided to have fun and play round robin style. At the end we all played together and we were a huge hit.

I think each album we do gets better and better. They are all different from each other. The first one had piano. The second and third we added bones, fiddle and banjo. The new one will have our friend Ernesto Gomez on harmonica … He is a great, great player. I have moved on to trying to play guitar now, along with the uke and kazoo. We are maturing with each recording.

The reviews we’ve gotten are very flattering and many say what Rolling Stone said – that we sound “natural” and not “put on”, forcing the old time vibe out – that we just naturally have that vibe. That is truly the best compliment  – that we sound exactly like an old time string band. The fact that we are white and do a lot of old black blues and that we look weird, covered in tattoos while donning old time clothes for when we play and in everyday life, just adds to the character of our duo.

With Crumb playing with us, we get to play bigger shows than usual and the crowd we get in can be overwhelming. Robert does not like the spotlight and we try to play in mellow places where he will not be surrounded by crazed autograph hounds. I am the only person in the band who is thrilled to sign autographs!!! John is shy about that stuff but I enjoy it.

We are in the middle of recording Take A Look at that Baby, our new album, and will finish it up in France over the summer. We have shows booked in France where we will be playing with Crumb, and we also have booked some in Italy and in the surrounding countries. We will be in Europe for two and a half months starting June15th and we expect that more festivals will contact us to play as that always happens when we go to Europe. We book a show or two then someone asks us to play a festival in their village or at a cafe somewhere. It’s going to a be a fun and productive experience!

The thing that we have learned mainly over the years as we have gotten a bit more well known is just to keep making sure you have fun. And practice a lot! But always love what you are doing or what’s the point really?

~~~

For more about Eden and John’s East River String Band, check out their website and keep up with them via facebook!

More about Eden and John:

John Heneghan has an online show, Old Time Radio Show, which features music from his 78 collection. John also has a comp on Dust-to-Digital called Baby How can It B? Songs of Love, Lust and Discontent. It is a 3-cd disc set of songs from his 78 collection dealing with those topics, available on ebay and through the label Dust-to-Digital. He is currently working on a comp called Wait For Me, which will feature love themed songs from his 78 collection, and will be put out by East River Records. It will be at least a 2 disc cd set with lengthy liner notes explaining the history of each song.

***

Eden Brower has a blog (http://slumgoddess.blogspot.com/) where she writes about her life and her neighborhood (the East Village and LES). She is also an actor and enjoys doing sketch comedy. She loves writing and has had some interest from publishers about turning her blog into a book. From touring with the Grateful Dead  to squatting in the Lower East Side for almost 12 years, to hopping freight trains across country to being in an old time string band and playing music around the world, Eden has had many unique adventures and many a tale to tell!

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interview done by Karen + Stephen Tortora-Lee

Mike Milazzo – The Show from Mads Jeppesen on Vimeo.

If you’ve ever seen Mike Milazzo play the guitar then you already know what an amazing experience it is to watch him – his fingers fly effortlessly over the strings producing almost unbelievably complex sounds that are not only beautiful and powerful but raw and real.  As a songwriter Mike has the ability to find the core of what connects us all and finesse it into thoughtful words and haunting melodies.  As a singer, Mike’s voice is earnest and true; evocative and filled with emotion.  He takes you on a journey with every line he sings, and it’s not until he’s strummed his last note that you’re able to break the hypnotic spell which his music has cast over you. You only have to sit through one of Mike’s performances to know that he is one of the best musicians around.

For those not lucky enough to be able to see Mike perform in person, he’s working on getting a new album out called “The Show”.   Mike Milazzo took some time in between gigs to chat with us about what inspired him to write these songs, what the differences are between collaborating and going solo, and he finally solves the mystery of who, exactly, “Mr. Barry” is.  Read on …

You’ve got an album coming out called “The Show”. Tell us a little bit about the songs that you chose to be on that album. What do they mean to you?

MM: All these songs came out of the Manhattan experience of being at Under St. Marks and hanging out with the open mic crowd.  A lot of the songs were developed at Penny’s Open Mic.  A couple of the songs besides “The Show” (which is really the core of this album) that I like a lot are “Love is A Cage” and “Angels”.

“Angels” started out as a song about how friends of mine were having some problems and struggling with their singing voices, but how they could start finding their confidence. The rest of the song veered off into my own spirituality, and my spirituality, as if angels were singing to me, representing the angels in my life. But my songs are about a lot of different things, and mean different things to different people. I think songs should be like that.

The title of the album is very evocative … it can mean The Show as in “The performance”, or The Show as in … “the big reveal”. What does “The Show” mean to you?

It means a little of both. Yes a performance, but on another level Life itself  is The Big Show.  The most important message of the album is “just make it happen“.  It’s the lesson I’ve gotten from working at Penny’s – that if you have an idea you should start out with what you have and build on it … the more you work on it the better it becomes.

A lot of people ask me what some of the lyrics of “The Show” mean.  For instance, there is a line in”The Show” about Mr. Barry, that everyone ask me about.   “Mr. Barry” as a phrase just rolled off the tongue well. He’s really the composite of a lot of people in my life. So “Mr. Bary” is really whoever you want him to be. It originally was from Barry Manilow but “Mr. Manilow” just didn’t roll off the tongue as well. When people listen to the song I imagine them adding their own layers of meaning and experiences for their own versions – their own “Mr. Barry”s of what they see in the song.

How long has The Show been in the works?

I’ve been putting it together from a lot of pieces since the last album (The World Outside) came out.  So for a couple of years now.

The few songs that I’ve heard from that album are amazingly complex as well as deeply thoughtful. Where does your inspiration come from?

In general most of my songs are from my relationships, with women, girlfriends, but also relationships in general. Many of the new songs on this album came from me workshopping and performing in front of people. For example, the song “The Show” is about my experiences with those performing at Penny’s Open Mic. I like story songs, songs about characters and people, which helps me to get out of the relationship box. I tend to write about relationships, I just take a slice of life and tell a story about it and it’s those stories that people seem to be able to relate to.

You’ve got a solo career as well as a collaborative career. How do you find yourself working differently alone than with other people?

I get a lot out of working alone, I can definitely go deeper when I’m working on a solo project, but sometimes it’s hard examining your own emotions so intently all the time for months and months and months without taking a break. When I collaborate I can get out of myself and go in a different direction than I would on a single project. It keeps me from getting too self absorbed and keeps me fresh.  I have more breakthroughs while playing in my other bands (Broken Arrow, Cutleri, Kill The Band, The Boardlords, Anacoustic Mind) and come back to my own material refreshed.

With The Boardlords, I get to satisfy my lead guitar jones, playing lead guitar in a punk band. With Kill the Band, I get to express my comedic side, playing a character, and its more of a cabaret act. With Cutleri and Anacoustic Mind, I get to play mandolin, which is an instrument I don’t get to play a lot. I love using different instruments, and playing different styles of music.

I get a chance to do things I wouldn’t normally do all on my own. I can move into a direction musically which I wouldn’t move in by myself and so it helps expand my range as an artist. I feel like I began to be a part of a lot of bands because I’m inherently lazy, but I’ve discovered by balancing my collaborative work with my solo work its really helped me become more of a storytelling songwriter. Now I have a lot more range from all the work I do and it shows in the songs I write.

As far as collaboratively, I know you’re doing a lot of work with Killy Dwyer and Kill The Band. That’s got to be a lot of fun for you. Tell me about that experience.

Yeah, that experience really helped pull me into this whole scene.  Joe Yoga and I went from just being sort of backup for Killy to being a part of this comedic cabaret with Killy as this mock rock icon battling against the boardrooms of America.  It’s really a lot of fun, and Kill the Band has become one of my regular gigs.   My work with them has given me a lot of breakthroughs that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t been part of that experience.

You’ve got an IndieGoGo campaign going right now that’s got around a week left.  I know how important it is for a solo artist to gain support form the community. How can people learn more about you and support your upcoming album?

This campaign is something I learned from being part of this community of artists over the last few years.  It’s about not only making art, but making art the way you want to.  With so many people in this scene having the same sort of goal, it just seems like IndieGoGo or KickStarter is now the smart way of doing these sort of projects.  It becomes sort of a “pay it forward” sort of thing. Mads Jeppesen From Finland is using IndieGoGo for his film Somewhere In The Dark and it’s a great example of how these things can work to take artists’ concepts to a whole other level with this method of making projects happen on a bigger scale than they could have before things like KickStarter and IndiGoGo existed.

I felt it was really important to do it for myself, and also do it for my other friends. I’ve contributed to a lot of projects and being part of these communities it just make sense to pitch in a little where you can to make it happen or find people outside of the community and see if they can help.  Sometimes it just becomes a problem of finding a patron. Other times patrons are looking for people they want to support and IndieGoGo and other campaigns are a great way to build awareness with new people who might not have heard of us before.

Bonus Question! You can tell me anything you want. Tell me a joke, give me your favorite quote or lyrics … or recipe … promote a cause … tell me something else about The Show that I may have not asked … anything! The mic is yours …

Through Horse Trade Theater Group, Under St. Marks Theater, and Penny’s Open Mic, a community opened up that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I’d never have known them without them creating this space for artists to come together.

So many good groups of musicians and performers got their start at Under St. Marks Theater. It’s a great place for a lot of networking with supportive people. Right now, it is in risk because the building is for sale. There’s a campaign for Horse Trade to save the theater from being another venue destroyed in NYC. I Just wanted to get that message out again because it’s a really good thing that has really changed my life.

Mike!  Such a pleasure to learn more about the man behind the music.

For those of you who want to help this amazing man get his album realized you can go to his Indie GoGo page  … for a donation of just 25 bucks you can get a copy of his first album “The World Outside” and you’ll also get that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you helped the amazing Mike Milazzo get his next album out there for the world to enjoy.  In a world of Britneys couldn’t we all use a little more Mike Milazzo?  So go there now!

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• It’s Time For Mini-Fridge Elevenses With Kill The Band – Mock Bottom Mockumental CD Release Experience!
• Following The Path Of Yoga
• 2nd Season Mini Fridge – Tasty, Filling And Leaving Audience Wanting More! (Jun 28, 2012 – Jul 04, 2012 )
• Early Risers / Night Owls … Come With Me – Help Save UNDER St. Marks
• Last Looks At The Happiest Medium In 3-D – Pull Your Glasses Out

All I can ever be to you,

Is a darkness that we knew, And this regret I’ve grown accustom to.

– “Tears Dry On Their Own” / Amy Winehouse

There’s always a little bit of “what if” and “why didn’t someone” and “stop demonizing / vilifying / glorifying them now just because they’re dead” that goes on right after a controversial celebrity dies suddenly (although never quite unexpectedly).  And today is no different, as I watch my friends debate Amy Winehouse some saying  ”What a tragedy” and others saying “I’m surprised she lasted this long”.  Meanwhile, the ones who like to hear themselves talk, are gratuitously pointing out that she died as she lived and had no one to blame but herself.  Yes.  We’re all aware of who Amy Winehouse was publicly.  The talent.  The trainwreck.  And ultimately, the tragedy.

I’m not really here to ruminate on her death.  I’m just here to memorialize someone who broke my heart.

Ultimately, I think, the biggest shock is not that Amy Winehouse died, but that she didn’t rebound strong enough to have a comeback before she did.   We all hoped for it the way we hope Lindsey Lohan will  straighten up and have that Meryl Streepesque career we know she’s capable of (or at least a Reese Witherspoon one).  Aww, come on – isn’t there a small part of you that believes … truly believes – the way you still believe you may win the lottery every time you scratch that ticket – that Lindsey will be Parent-Trap great again?  And so it was with Winehouse.  I know I was waiting for Amy to get back on the ball and wow me again with another round of Back To Black-esque songs.  Who else was going to champion my dark side the way she did?  But more on that later.

The Entertainment Industry is reminiscent of  a New York club – with a Maximum Capacity sign posted right outside the door and a VIP rope (and some yellow caution tape) barring entrance.  The line outside the door is filled with – crammed with – talented people who all have their “something”, who all can sing, dance, act, make people laugh, make people cry, write plays, make films, sometimes all of the above. So when someone catches the eye of the guy holding the rope and they get to go through that sacred doorway into that hallowed Fame Room with its candy bowls overflowing with iPads, Lamborghinis  and (depends on whom you talk to) illegal substances we expect them to have the time of their lives in there.  We DON’T find it acceptable that they’re taking up room, and then instead of keeping up the talent that got them through the door, they slink to the side of the room and shoot it up, drink it down, or otherwise just fall apart.  That makes us mad.  That breaks our hearts.

ONE: because we would like to think they can do better. TWO: because we know if they’re not gonna bother to do better, they should come back out and free up some space for our guitar playing sister, our witty brother in law, our long-suffering selves.   Still – it’s not like Amy Winehouse didn’t contribute anything while she was in the hallowed room.

“Such a waste”

Well, yes and no. I mean – it’s more of a waste for those who have the same talent yet do absolutely nothing with it. To have at least gotten it out … shared it … changed moments in peoples lives … coated people’s memories with her music – that’s not a waste. To have it end at 27?  Others have died younger and their vibrations are still in our lives.

Personally, I loved Amy Winehouse. I loved her music, I loved her look, I loved her despair. I loved that when I was at the end of my rope and scraping bottom there was someone I could connect to musically who was taking loneliness, confusion, and hardcore jadedness and smearing it across the musical scales, unfiltered. She sang about men I had loved, affairs I had barely survived, empty days and lonely nights that were in my past and probably on my horizon.  She knew me.  I hated how well she knew me – but that didn’t change how much she did.

Both Sides Now

She was my behind-closed-doors persona. Because out in the world we all have to be put together, buttoned up, motivated, and actualizing our potential. But in the safe haven of our own four walls we get to fall apart a little – drink too much, smoke too much, cry too much, isolate, ruminate, stare into space and wonder over and over again when things will get better.

Truth of the matter is, we all have our demons, and we all have our Goliaths we’re struggling to slay.  When we see someone felled by them, it’s a victory for their dark side, and therefore a highlight of our own. And when our dark sides swallow up a fellow traveler, it makes us all feel that less safe.  You don’t have any demons you say?  Nothing you’re addicted to, obsessed with, or enslaved by?  Here’s a little illumination for you.  Everyone’s addicted to something – even if it’s the act of looking on the bright side or living clean or helping others.   Whether it’s meditating, baseball, or theatre, if you need it, you’re addicted to it.  Everyone has that one thing inside them they have to do every single day – publicly or privately – that makes them who they are.  And when we see someone succumb to the thing that gripped them because it turned too dark and too powerful, at that moment the ties that bind us together as a species are threatened.  Think your addiction isn’t as bad?  There’s a way to abuse anything if you’re self destructive enough.  Hobbies turn into passions, passions turn into obsessions, obsessions turn into destruction.  What seems benign to you – I guarantee you – may seem crazy and destructive to someone else.  Hell, Heidi Montag’s plastic surgeon was so addicted to Twitter that he careened off the road just so he could tweet something about his dog.  ANYTHING can kill you if you can’t stop doing it.  Give it time.

Can’t Call It A Comeback

But the real tragedy is – to get back to my point- that there will never be another Amy Winehouse album.  There won’t be a comeback.  There won’t be those forgiving fans, standing five deep, eager to pardon her and embracing the new, cleaned-up Amy who controlled her demons not completely – but just enough to come back to us.  And we wouldn’t have wanted her to control them completely, becuase they formed her, and in turn they formed our love for her.  But without a comeback there won’t be the endless tracks of Amy Winehouse songs to pick from in order to soundtrack the next break up, the next nosedive, the next speedbump of life.  There will just be the songs we know, the legacy she left, and the heartbreak  we feel.

He can only hold her for so long

The lights are on but no one’s home

She’s so vacant – her soul is taken

He thinks, “What’s she running from?”

How can he have her heart

When it got stole

So he tries to pacify her

Cause what’s inside her never dies

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Don’t forget, boys and girls, that there is so much fun to be had at A VERY YOGA CHRISTMAS (3rd annual) you may not want to keep going for REAL CHRISTMAS.  Does REAL CHRISTMAS have Coach (the greatest rock band in the world?)  Mine doesn’t!  Does REAL CHRISTMAS have comedy and music and dark weirdness?  Mine doesn’t!  Does REAL CHRISTMAS have A Holiday Man-Pain poem by Umberto MacDougal and a Steely Dan dance party from 8-9pm? MINE SURE DOESN’T!  What about FREE CUPCAKES? No?  Or Killy Dwyer’s world premier video Christmas Card “Getting Clean For Jesus’ Birthday”? No?  NO?? What kinda sad REAL CHRISTMAS is that?  Forget that!  Instead, just make sure to be around for A VERY YOGA CHRISTMAS (3rd annual) where you’ll get all this and MORE.

Just head on down to UNDER St. Mark’s Theater (94 St. Mark’s Place [between 1st and Ave A]) this Thursday, December 23 at 8:00pm – 11:00pm

What?  You don’t live in New York??? FIRST of all, there is NO hope for you.  NONE.  SECOND of all, there is a teensy tiny beam of YOGA CHRISTMAS HOPE for you – because A VERY YOGA CHRISTMAS (3rd annual) will be live-streamed on the Internet at www.neuralimprints.com.  So – I’ll either see you there, or you’ll see me there through the magic of the interwebs.  I’ll be the cute one having the time of my life. Click Here for more info.

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Joe Yoga (photo by Brooke McGowan)

Every now and then an artist comes into your life whose music is so dynamic, powerful and moving that you just have to know the stories behind the songs.  When you’re lucky enough to know this artist personally, and he’s someone that you’ve always had a great time hanging out with, you’ve got no choice but to sit down in a noisy bar, buy him a drink (Arbita Turbo Dog), and find out where all this gut punching, heart wrenching, hand wringing music comes from.

Meet Joe Yoga – bass player for Kill The Band but amazing solo artist in his own right who currently has two albums in circulation.  You can download (Free!  December Only!) his first album The Dreamless Sea which is a compilation of his favorite songs from his earlier days.  Life Out East is a full album of new songs that were written over a year and it’s currently available on iTunes.

Over the course of an evening Joe  Yoga tells me how he’s able to juggle two different musical personas, how Life Out East will take you on a journey from heartbreak to healing, and even tells me a pretty funny joke.  Eventually.

Photo by Cathryn Lynne

Joe Yoga! So excited to be here with you! You’ve got two albums in circulation right now – The Dreamless Sea which is a collection of your earlier music, and Life Out East. Tell me a little about those albums.
JY: The Dreamless Sea is more or less a “greatest hits” record. I had put out four records under the name Cognition Ignition Decision . . .

Was that just you?
(Laughing) Yeah, it was just me. And it was just stuff I was making on my 4 track. It spanned from 2002 to the end of 2007 and I’d put out 4 records but they were tape only, distributed to my friends, so I culled the best out of them and used that to make The Dreamless Sea.  Life Out East is a proper album.

How long has Life Out East been in the works?
Pretty much since I put out the last Cognition Ignition Decision record, I started thinking about Life Out East and started writing the material and laying down preliminary recordings for it. So – late ’08 through the end of this year. But the bulk was written in ’09 and early 2010.

Is there anything floating around out there that isn’t on an album right now?
Oh yeah I have tons and tons of songs that I’ve recorded that I’ve never finished or that were bad recordings. So I never made them into proper recordings. I’ve been writing songs for 10 years now so there’s a lot out there.

(Laughing) So since you were just a little kid.
I think I was bigger then, but you get the idea.

Your solo sound is very different than your Kill The Band sound. Are these just two sides of a very complex musician or do you have two completely different personas when you perform?
Well, yeah, I definitely put on a different persona with Kill The Band, because Kill The Band is Kelly [Dwyer]’s project and Kelly’s music. I have some input into arrangements, and what I’m doing but we’re basically there to fulfill Kelly’s vision. So nothing that I really do creatively enters into it – almost at all. Which is fine with me – because I’ve always been in bands anyway where I was just working on other people’s material and I enjoy it. Right now it’s really my only opportunity to play bass in a band and it’s my only opportunity to work with Kelly.  And I love working with Kelly.

How long have you known each other?
We met in ’08.

Wow!
When I started coming around to Penny’s Open Mic in March or April ’08.

It seems like you’ve know each other forever.
Well, she’s like my BFF, man! Kelly and I are very different people but we do have very similar artistic wavelengths and I really appreciate and love what she does and I’d be happy to work with any project she’s involved in.

So were you a core member of Kill The Band then? Was there a Kill The Band before you?
Kelly was writing her songs on Pro Tools or whatever, and performing them solo with backing tracks. And then she got into Frigid and wanted to do a live band show and got together with the people she was working together with at the open mic- me, [Mike] Milazzo, and Bamboo [Silva]. So she put it together and we all gelled really well. I worked with Mike on a bunch of different musical projects so it just seemed like a natural fit.

To get back to your stuff now – your songs on Life Out East are really mournful.
I agree.

It’s like the kind of album I’d put on to get over a breakup. Yet every time I hang out with you, you seem really happy. How’s that?
The material for the album was written and conceived and recorded while I went through a pretty protracted break up with this girl. It was brutal – you know how people are awful to each other – so the breakup is all over this album. How I felt about it is all over the songs, a lot of the songs are about the breakup, about the relationship, how I felt coming out of it. That would explain why the album’s really mournful because it was a sad time of my life. But I, at the same time, consider myself to be a happy person. And honestly a lot of that is because I’m no longer in the breakup anymore. (laughs)

I’m happily married but that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to get my heart stomped on. I had some really bad breakups and gosh, this album took me right back to that. It’s a very evocative album and it’s very soulful.
Relationships and breakups and interpersonal connections are really easy things to write songs about.

For you! Not for everybody . . .
Well, for a song writer. I guess my task is to present it in an interesting way that will make people relate to it.

And you’re both? You’re the lyricist and the composer – you’re everything?
For my stuff? Yeah. I wrote all the music, lyrics, played all the instruments on the album. I’ve recorded albums with bands before but I was definitely going for a certain aesthetic with this album where I wanted it to be solely me and my vision. Not necessarily my “vision” – you can have a vision and have other people execute it, like a playwright, but I really wanted this to be a presentation of mine, musically.

And The Dreamless Sea too?
Yeah, that’s all me. That’s how I’ve been writing and recording for the longest time. The stuff I do at home is always me.

And is it words first, music first, or whatever comes first, first?
Pretty much whatever comes first, first. Sometimes I’ll come up with a riff or a chord progression that I really like or I’ll be playing just 2 chords and come up with a melody I really like, or some times a word or a phase and want to build a song around that and then do it.

So it really varies from song to song. But usually it’s just me fucking around on guitar or in my notebook and thinking “Hey, that would make a good song, this is something I really enjoy, this is fun to play, this would sound really good.” So I develop it.

What if you wanted to add a sound and you didn’t play it? Would you ask another musician in? Or actually – is there an instrument you don’t play?
There’s tons of stuff I don’t play. If I had access to a studio and lots of money to pay an engineer to record, and could pay musicians to appear on the album then that’s something I’d do. It’s not something I’m opposed to. It’s just very hard to coordinate when you’re not paying people and when you don’t have the money set aside to reserve space in a studio. If I’m doing it in my apartment it’s a lot easier for me to just knock it out.

But if you met a really great harmonica player . . . or musical saw player . . .
I’m fortunate to know a lot of great musicians . . . and when I had the release party I had a couple of my friends come up – Mike Milazzo and BZ Douglas, and Michelle Leona, and Christen Napier from Cutleri and Mouth from Kill The Band, among others, and I had them come up and play on individual songs and they learn the parts and that was great fun. So it’s something I want to pursue. But it’s really hard to organize – everyone’s really busy including me, and resources are scarce. But in the future, definitely.

Let’s make a little footnote – hey everybody: if you’re interested in playing with Joe Yoga . . . get in touch!
Definitely! I would love to put a band together.

So who are your musical influences? I know it’s a cliche – but I want to know who helped you find your sound.
It really runs the gamut. I’m influenced by everything from Delta Blues to classical music. I started really writing songs when I got heavily into Velvet Underground. I really like Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, The Pixies, Neil Young and The Band and Mission of Burma and Steely Dan.

There’s a band out of Boston called Hallelujah The Hills that I really love. They’re kinda new, they’re trying to break out.  I’m big fans of theirs and just hearing a few of their albums, they really influenced my songwriting.

Really? Wow – that’s nice to hear . . .
Yeah . . .

It’s nice when new artists are influencing other artists.
I saw them randomly at some free show on Sound Fix. They put on, to this day, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen and I bought the album at their show and absolutely fell in love.

(Laughing) That’s terrific!
They’ve given me some advice. It’s nice to see a band that’s doing it – touring, has the record deal and is making it happen.

Well, you’re making it happen too! So, as far as your album, I have some favorites. Is it okay to have favorites?
I think it’s natural. . .

These are the ones I liked the best so these are the ones I wanted to know about on Life Out East which I’ve listened to a bunch now. I love “Bad Hero” and “Gone” and “Queen Bee” . . . “Small Hands” is just aching and “Tell The Wind” sounds like it has this amazing story behind it. Tell me about those songs – what are their stories?
“Bad Hero” was inspired by a book I was reading about an archetype – the old aging hero passing the torch on to the next generation of heroes, and the one young woman who’s conflicted about whether or not she wants to be the hero . . . whether or not she thought she’d make a good hero . . . this whole idea of: how do we become who we are, and how do we fit into other’s idea of ourselves? With the breakup coloring the whole album, it was very “well this person wants me to be a certain way and I can’t do that”.

“Gone” is another fairly standard breakup song about the distances between two people and how, after the breakup scene you see them and, where you would have left together before, you now go your separate ways. It talks about the distances between two people and how that’s kinda sad.

“Queen Bee” is a straight up love song, and I don’t think I write a lot of straight up love songs – but that was one where I was just inspired to.

“Small Hands” is a devastatingly personal song and deliberately cryptic about a friend of mine. I think the song speaks for itself.

Don’t tell me any more about it then, I understand.
And “Tell the Wind” is (I don’t know if it comes across) is very sarcastic. Someone who puffs out their chest and claims that they’ll do this and you kinda respond by saying “Tell the wind. Don’t tell me, just do it”. And that was inspired by a specific conversation I had with my girlfriend at the time. We had had this fight and I came home drunk at 2 in the morning and I picked up the guitar and wrote the song right there — and that doesn’t happen a lot for me. But I was really feeling it that night and it all came out in pretty much one shot.

You can really feel that – there’s only one word – Epic. It’s like this big epic story. There’s this huge emotion behind it.
Yeah – it’s something that doesn’t really happen for me. I was going over it “you say you might / you say it’s fine” . . . and I laid it down with the vocal that night. The next morning I re-recorded it.

I can’t wait to go back and listen to the song again! I love knowing this now!
There’s a line “so tell the wind” and that’s kinda my superficial and petty emotion but it totally worked for what I was going for.

And who is Cody in the final song? It sounds very personal. (My husband, Stephen, thinks Cody is a dog – like old Yeller. I do not think this).
It’s funny, I did another interview and they were like “I think Cody is a person” . But Cody is the city is Cody, Wyoming.

Oh, how funny! Well there you go.
I went out West, summer of ‘09. I’d been out to Oregon and Washington, but this was my first real trip to the high desert – the plains, Utah, Mormon country. The person I was with, she wanted to go to Cody because that was where she was born and spent the first 10 years of her life and she’d wanted to see how it had changed and so I’d gone along for the ride.

Here was this city of Cody which had found it’s niche as a tourist town, living off its history and it had stayed that way, contrasting with New York City which is just never the same city twice. There’s a famous quote – “New York City will be a great city if they ever finish it”. I hope they never stop building New York City. New York is not the kind of place that will find a thing and stick with it. It will always be changing and evolving and that’s the kind of place I want to live. It was also built out of this idea – to tie in to the break up, but also thematically to the album – this is about coming back to New York City and the idea that you don’t really see something fully without time and distance.

(Laughs) Yeah. Oh, yeah.
You have to be removed from it physically to see it from the out side. Because when you’re inside all you see is buildings. But when you’re out side you can see a skyline and you get perspective on it. With time, it gives you the sense to see it emotionally. You’re going to get a different view of a breakup emotionally. A year later you will see it completely differently.

You’re outside of it just the way you’re outside of a city coming home to it. And when you’re outside of a relationship, good or bad, you definitely have a different perspective on it. And it can make you re-think things you felt, you can learn about yourself and why you were feeling those things.

“I was so angry!” But a year later, now that I was thinking about if for so long, and being removed from it – now I know why I was so angry. Why I couldn’t articulate it at the time . . . that’s the theme that runs through the whole album: To see something unique you need time and distance to heal.

That’s really profound!
That’s why I put it last, because I feel like that sums up everything I’m agonizing about over the course of the album – I start off sorta sarcastic, then it’s fast songs, then I’m in it, then the second half it’s me stepping back and I’m sorting it out, then everything blew up and now I’m seeing where things land and by the end of the album I’m kinda out of it and I can see the tea leaves so to speak – I can read it much better.

I can’t wait to go back and listen to it again with all this new perspective! So then what’s the one song you love to perform – that makes you feel amazing every time you play it?
Definitely there’s a few – I love to perform Panic Attack especially if I’m in the mood for it. And when I nail that song I feel like I’ve done something right. Cheater is a great song because it’s a strong combo of something that’s really good for my voice and good for my playing style so I almost always nail that song when I play it.

Small Hands – I can always really get into – it seems like whenever I play that it always shuts the crowd up. And I always feel like that allows me to get really deep into it. The deeper I can get into a song, the more I can give the audience to listen to. And also No Wings. I love that chorus and I love the way I’ve arranged it when I play it live.

Speaking of you playing live – where can people come see you perform next?
I have 2 big shows, the first is A Very Yoga Christmas – at Under St. Marks which is my annual Christmas show (this is the 3rd annual). I’ll be playing with my band COACH . . . it’s me and my friend Andrea Tarka on drums, me playing bass. We call ourselves the greatest drum and bass band in the world. And the greatest rock and roll band of all time!

We play once a year because the world can’t handle it more than once a year. We play every year at Yoga Christmas. We’ve settled into a nice groove with that. That’s gonna be great – everyone’s gonna be there . . . Michelle Leona, Eric Clark, Ceili Clemens, The Odortones, John Murdock, Tim Warner, Jon Savoy, Jen Perney, Mr. Marbar, Mike Ogletree, The Sisters Rock, Penny Pollak, Natalie Underwood, and Umberto MacDougal.

It’s fun music and the 2nd half is the cream of the crop of solo performers of the downtown scene. That’s gonna be something really special.

Then I have a solo show which is Jan 11th at Sidewalk Cafe which is me for an hour, hopefully some special guests if I can wrangle them up. That’s at 9:00 pm.

Terrific! Okay, now my favorite part of the interview. Bonus question – you can tell me absolutely anything you want. Tell me a joke – give me your latest cause, recite some poetry . . . tell me what you want for your birthday. Or give me more information in case my questions weren’t thorough enough. The mic is yours!
I have a joke!

Photo by Cathryn Lynne

OH! Good good!
Why did the suicidal chicken stop in the middle of the road?

I don’t know . . .?
To get to the other side.

(dead silence) Um . . . (then uproarious laughter at the badness of the joke)
Get it? The other side?

Yes. I get it, I get it.
Get it? He’s suicidal? So he stops? So he gets hit by a car? To get to the other side?

(laughs) Oh . . . that’s ah . . . yeah yeah – wanna tell me another joke?
Wow . . . (recovers) A horse walks into a bar and the bartender says “Why the long face”?

Hahahahahahahahaha!
And the horse says “Because my alcoholism is destroying my family!”
(both dissolve in laughter)

BETTER! Much better! Well thank you Joe Yoga!

Thank you Karen!

~~~

So, if you’d like to catch Joe Yoga at his next Kill The Band gig, he’ll be at Alter Ego this Sunday the 19th, and then you can check out his solo shows mentioned above.  I’ll see you there!

Related Posts:

• Joe Yoga: Retrospective NYC Tour
• Mike Milazzo — Open Mike
• 2nd Season Mini Fridge – Tasty, Filling And Leaving Audience Wanting More! (Jun 28, 2012 – Jul 04, 2012 )
• It’s Time For Mini-Fridge Elevenses With Kill The Band – Mock Bottom Mockumental CD Release Experience!
• Early Risers / Night Owls … Come With Me – Help Save UNDER St. Marks

It has been a long 13 years since hiphop artist EMINEM burst onto the music scene and the charts with his first studio record, “The Slim Shady LP”.  An ecclectic and shocking album, 5 more equally shocking albums would follow, and be placed at number 1 on the American Billboard Charts for years to come.

It wasn’t until 2006 or so, that Eminem (aka Marshall Mathers) announced he would be retiring, and also seeking help for personal problems and rehablitation.  As a fan, and someone who never knew hiphop until I first heard Eminem when I was 13 years old, I was devastated.  This is an artist that came out–angry, loud, and full of energy and rhythm I had never heard–someone who exposed me to a kind of pain I was feeling–from the most unexpected source– the land of hip hop, and he was finished? Done? Over?

Flash forward to June 2010, and Eminem is back with a vengence with his latest album “Recovery”.  What a great, heartbreaking record.  Scattered with famous samples from old tunes, to rock to rap, to everything in between, the album is a personal diary . . . of an artist’s struggle with his career, the spotlight, drug abuse, and domestic abuse.  He has since left behind what made him famous– his constant dissing, and dropping of derogatory terms in a joking context, to something true, honest, and painfully detailed.  Never, in my opinion has an artist been able to bounce back, survive, and ultimately be so frank with his audience, maybe a true rock star. This is why I admire Eminem, Marshall Mathers, whatever the name, this person. The musical genius indeed.  His has stepped up to the table, lived through his war and decided to let the world know his personal story.  That is a real rock star.

Check out the video for his first single “Not Afraid”

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Today, in memory of Michael Jackson’s passing, we re-post a great tribute written by Michael’s friend and business associate, Howard Bloom, who shared his memories of Michael with me one year ago.

* * *

On the night of June 25th, when I was on my nightly mile-long 1 am walk that loops me up to Prospect Park then takes me back to my brownstone, I passed a pair of 18 year olds sitting on a stoop at this lonely hour when the streets and sidewalks are usually utterly devoid of human beings. The guy had long dark black curly hair and the girl had a short, blond haircut and was wearing shorts. The male said something to me as I passed. I walked back, took off my headphones, and asked him to repeat it. He said, “Michael Jackson is dead.”

I asked him why he said that to me. I wondered if he knew me from the Tea Lounge on Union Street, where I do my writing, or from the streets and if he knew my Michael Jackson connection. No, he didn’t. He was telling it to everyone. He wanted no one to ignore it.

He was particularly emphatic about making sure that no one over the age of 30 pass it by or dismiss it. Michael Jackson’s death, he felt, was a loss to all of us whether we realized it or not.

How did I get involved with Michael and his brothers?

It was Spring of 1983 and the Jacksons were getting together to go on the road for their Victory Tour. They were getting the whole family together for this tour, including their dad, who had originally managed the rise of the Jackson Five to the top. Their manager for the Victory Tour called me over and over again for four months, asking me to work with the Jacksons.  I kept saying no.  At this point I’d helped Amnesty International establish itself in North America, had worked with Simon and Garfunkel when they’d reunited for an audience of half a million  in a free concert in Central Park, then when they’d gone out on tour, and I had done Queen’s massive tour of 110,000 seat soccer stadiums in South America.

But I liked to do crusades–to fight for truths others didn’t see.  The Jackson’s tour didn’t feel like a challenge.  It already had it made. Michael had just sold 36 million copies of just one album–Thriller.  That’s nearly three times as many as the previous record holder, Peter Frampton. I didn’t feel The Jacksons needed me.  So I continued to turn them down. But I felt that if you’re going to say no to someone, at least you should have  the courage to say it to their face.  So when the Jacksons came into New York and asked me to meet with them at the Helmsley Palace hotel, I had to do it.  Even though the meeting was at midnight on a Saturday night, and I worked from 9 am until I dropped during the weekends.

The minute I walked into the suite the Jacksons had set up for meetings, two things were obvious. One … from the body language of these brothers you could tell that The Jacksons were some of the most honest, ethical, open people you would ever meet. Two: They were in very big trouble. They didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what it was. But what I did know was this: here was a challenge. There was a wrong to be righted.  An invisible wrong.  A wrong all of us could feel but none of us could name. I had to say yes.

My first meeting with Michael didn’t come until four months later.  I was with Michael’s brothers at Marlon’s pool house in Encino–a tiny two-story building  with one room per floor in the back yard next to Marlon’s pool.  By then I’d done my homework.  I’d read thousands of articles on Michael.  I’d compiled a dossier on the Jackson’s lives.  One thing all the articles agreed on was this:  Michael was not a normal human being.  The articles called him a bubble baby, described him as a person who would shrink from your touch.

But the fact is that neither Michael nor I had been raised in a conventionally normal childhood; neither of us had been raised among other kids.  So I didn’t know the common rituals of normal life.  I had to teach myself by watching other people as if they were specimens and I was a visitor from Mars.  One of the rituals I’d seen was the handshake between strangers.  You know, you see someone you’ve never met before but who others want you to meet.  You walk up to him or her, you stick out your hand, and you say, “Hello, my name is  ______.”  This was a ritual I’d almost never used.  But when Michael opened the pool house’s screen door, I walked up to him stuck out my hand and said “Hi I’m Howard.”

I knew what would happen.  The articles had explained it.  Michael would recoil from my touch.  But that’s not what occurred.  Michael put out his hand, shook mine, and replied “Hi I’m Michael.” It was as normal and as natural as could be. The media stories were false.  But thousands of press people had parroted them as truths.  Something strange was happening in Michael’s noosphere–in the sphere of press perception we are handed as reality.  Eventually those mistakes would kill him.  But that’s a story for another time.

A few minutes later Michael and I climbed the cramped stairs to the tiny room upstairs where Marlon kept his recording equipment. I’d written a press release and I wanted Michael’s approval.  We found places to sit on the stacks of amps and keyboards.  I read the press release out loud.  And as I did, Michael’s body softened.  “That’s beautiful,” he said when I was finished, “Did you write that?”  The fact was, I had. And the fact was that writing press releases was not just a hack job for me, it was an art. I’d edited a literary magazine that had won two National Academy of Poets prizes.  And in the decades since, the Washington Post has called the writing in my books “beautiful.”  But no one else had ever seen the art hidden in the craft and the creativity hidden in the ordinary.  Michael apparently had.

Once Michael had approved of the press release, we went back downstairs to the small single room on the first floor.  Against the walls and lining the room were arcade videogame machines, machines only amusement arcades could afford in those days. And in the center of the room, hogging up most of the space, was a billiard table.  The Jacksons were scheduled to have a meeting with an art director from CBS so the group could decide on the Victory Tour album cover.  They wanted me to be in on it.

When the art director arrived, she bore the portfolios of five artists, portfolios she stacked at one end of the pool table’s green felt playing surface.   These were not just the black vinyl portfolios most commercial artists use to display their work. Every one of these was a custom-made presentation case made of hand-tooled leather or rich cherry wood. And every one was from a legendary artist, an artist at the very top of his field.

We were all bunched together on the opposite side of the pool table from the art director.  Michael was in the center.  I stood next to him on his left.  And the brothers were crowded around us on either side. The CBS art director slid the first of the portfolios toward Michael.  He opened the first page, slowly … just enough to see perhaps an inch of the image. As he took in the artwork his knees began to buckle, his elbows bent, and all he could say was “oooohhhhh.” A soft, orgasmic “ooooh.” In that one syllable and in his body language, you could feel what he was seeing.

Do you know the poem by William Blake –

The intense ambition of that poem, the intense desire for wonder, was alive in Michael. More alive than anything of the sort I’d ever seen.  Michael saw the infinite in an inch.  As Michael opened the page further, inch by inch, his knees and elbows bent even more and his ”ooohs,” his sounds of aesthetic orgasm, grew even more intense.  Standing elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder with him, you could feel him discovering things in the brush and inkstrokes that even the artist never saw. By the time he’d opened the full page his body and voice expressed an ecstasy. An aesthetic epiphany.  I’d never encountered anything like it.  Michael felt the beauty of the page with every cell of his being.

I’ve worked with Prince, Bob Marley, Peter Gabriel, Billy Joel, and Bette Midler, some of the most talented people of our generation, and not one of them had the quality of wonder that came alive in Michael. He saw the wonder in everything. His quality of wonder was beyond anything most of us humans can conceive.

Look, above all other things I’m a scientist.  Science is my religion.  It’s been my religion since I was ten years old. The first two rules of science are 1) the truth at any price including the price of your life; and 2) Look at the things right under your nose as if you’ve never seen them before and then proceed from there. And that’s not just a rule of science.  It’s a rule of art.  And it’s a rule of life.  Very few people know it. Even fewer people live it. But Michael was it, he incarnated it in every follicle of his being.  Michael was the closest I’ve ever come to a secular angel. A secular saint.

Look, I’m an atheist, but Michael was not. He believed he was given a gift by God.  He believed he was given talents and wonders and astonishments seldom granted to us very fragile human beings. Because God had given him this enormous gift, he felt he owed the experience of wonder, astonishment, awe, and Blake’s infinities to his fellow human beings.  But unlike other generous humans–Bill and Melinda Gates, for example–with Michael giving to others was not just a part-time thing.  The need to give to others was alive in every breath he took every single day.

Michael Jackson’s entire life was receiving and giving and the whole purpose of receiving was so he could give. He worked with every cell in his body to give the gift of that amazement, that astonishment to his fellow human beings. Needing the adulation of crowds WAS Michael’s connection to others, his most profound connection, far more profound than family and friends (though those are indispensable), and far more healing. That act of giving keeps an iconic person, a person who never knows normalness, alive.

I’d love to tell you the stories of how Michael made these things clear.  But, again, those tales will have to wait for another day.

It seems strange to say this, but Michael will always be a part of me. No other superstar I worked with wound himself into the threads at my core the way he did.  Michael opened a window to a quality of wonder unlike anything I’d ever been exposed to in my life. For that gift, I felt I owed him. I felt we all owed him.  And we still do.  We owe him an honest view of who he was.  We will owe him that until we finally sweep away the crap of sensationalist headlines and clearly see why those who love him know more about him than any expert or journalist who claims to have probed his life.  Those journalists and experts do not know Michael Jackson.  But if you love him, there’s a good chance that you do.

~~~

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I am fascinated with driven entertainers who do more with their beautiful mug and talent than the average human. In saying this, no one fits this mold better than German sensation Soraya Garcia.  Born in Hannover to Spanish parents, Soraya has risen out of an array of fashion models and musicians to stand alone. She labels herself a “rebellious, liberal democrat” and as her career is about to explode, I figured I would sit down with her and grab a few quick thoughts from her creative mind, before I am having to wait in line like the rest of the Universe …

Would love to get a breakdown of your background, it’s so interesting? Where are you from? Your heritage? How has that shaped who you are today?

Thank you very much! My family is actually from Valladolid, a city close to Madrid in Spain. I was born and raised in Hannover, Germany though…which is quite interesting since I feel that both countries are so different from each other. In Spain, we are pretty passionate and we know how to enjoy life whilst Germans tend to be very driven by hard work and discipline… So…I often feel this cultural mix keeps me balanced and makes me more tolerant and understanding of other cultures.

How did you break into Fashion? Where do you see yourself going next? Acting wise, especially?

I got into this industry when I was around 19. Paul Mitchell was casting models for a hair show, I happened to more or less “run into” the casting agents and hair stylists from L.A., and got to do the whole runway thing with eight-inch heels and their latest hair-style creation on my head – which included about ten tons of hair-spray and more hair gel I ever thought existed. All in all a funny experience, that led to more and more shoots, including fashion,beauty and commercial print. Another big focus of mine is music though, my electronica band Excess-bition is just about to release our first cd “Intellectual Property”, I am more then exited to start dj-ing very soon too. I love creativity so much, and i just think all arts kind of flow together; that is why I would love to expand all my possibilities, and since modeling is a little bit of acting too, I would love to try that on a small scale as well. I just love to have the best of all ALL worlds, haha.

I know you are multi lingual. What languages do you speak and or study?

Well… I speak German, English and Spanish fluently, plus some basic French and Italian. I also studied Latin for six years, since my dad wanted me to become a lawyer or a doctor…well..not quite, haha.

I also know you are very well known for your constant voice in animal activism. What is your daily lifestyle/outlook like? Also, I know you support the German organization BUND-can you tell me more about this organization?

Sure! I have been a vegetarian since I was twelve years old, and a vegan since I turned nineteen, meaning I do not use any animal product at all. Animals are just so important to me; having two cats myself, I feel that an animal is more than a potential steak or sausage. I know people classify animals into categories, meaning e.g you can eat a cow but not a cat in our society, but I choose to not make this distinction. They say that a society is also characterized by the way it treats their animals…if so, we still have a lot to learn, I guess. I know that not everybody will stop eating meat or wearing fur just for the sake of it, but I wish people would realize that animals actually DO have feelings, they do feel pain, and that it is completely unnecessary to kill or exploit them in my opinion. Apart from other charities dedicated to animals, I support the German “BUND”, which helps to protect the environment and animals alike. Their latest campaigns are intended to save the whales, and to protect endangered animals. Please feel free to find out more at: www.bund.net.

***

There she is!  I’m delighted to introduce New York City to her. To listen to Soraya’s music on Reverb Nation, Go here.

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