From The Darkness and Fear: Volary Moves "Out Of Shadows"

Volary: Noun. 1) A flight or a flock of birds.  2) the cage you keep them in.

Seldom in life do we pause to think about tomorrow, to think about whether or not we will still be alive to love, eat, breathe and create. We often take for granted our day-to-day existence and seldom do we stop for a moment and think, ‘What if I die tomorrow? What sort of legacy do I want to leave behind?’

Enter Volary, an Australian born singer/songwriter now making her home in San Francisco.  Volary has just recently begun to ask her self those questions.  She has cancer.  As most of us know, cancer sucks in a really big way and will inevitably change your life and perspective of it right before your eyes, regardless of whether or not you want it to.  A deeper sense of your own mortality can make you want to live your life even more.

In Volary’s new album, Out Of Shadows, the lyrics and songs were already written before “cancer” became a common, daily word for Volary. The darkness of the mood of her music and the positive hope that she tries to convey within her songs are present and accountable in this breathtaking first effort from a woman who knows how to survive everything from self- doubt to lost love.

“I was actually diagnosed just before we were due to start in the studio. My producer and I had already been doing preproduction for months, I’d booked the studio dates, we’d lined up the musicians’ schedules, I was super excited to finally be making my debut CD...and then the bottom fell out of my world,” states Volary of her brand new reality. “The songs were all written before my diagnosis, but the title and dedication of the album were definitely reflective of my situation. At the time I didn’t realize how far the shadow of cancer can stretch, and I would say that I’m still struggling to get out of those shadows (for example, I’m still not strong enough to play a full length set), but the hope is that I will be out of those shadows sometime soon.”

The album covers a wide spectrum of emotional ideas within the music. Her power-pop vocals are set against a moody backdrop of layered arrangements, both thick and sparse with instrumentation that guides the listener deeper into the dark lyrics. Viola, horns, clarinet, organs, cello, oboe and sax all add their rich sounds to guitar, bass, drums and voice.

“I didn’t want to make the typical singer/songwriter or rock band album. I definitely wanted to try for a sound that was not your typical vocals-guitar-bass-drums,” says Volary of her decision of adding less typical instruments and arrangements to her album. “I’m a sucker for music that’s really layered and moody. I love listening to albums where you can discover more and more on each listen. Sometimes stuff will be buried so deep in the mix that it’s barely there, but the sum of it all adds up to some aural goodness.”

The opening track of “Die A Little” starts us out on the journey of looking deeper into our own darkness of the soul in words like “Too many years of sadness/ I’m stretched so thin/Standing with my back to the wall trying not to scream/ I wanna cut the demons out/from underneath my skin.”

Tapping into all things intense and tumultuous, Volary’s lyrics speak of a woman taken to extremes of her emotional life. She gives in to self-doubt and lack of confidence in the powerful “That Girl”.  All of us have been there; all of us have at one time of another wanted to be someone aside from ourselves. “Yes, it’s true, I’m insecure/sometimes…. I wanna be That Girl.”

The gorgeous piano arrangement in “One Good Reason” sends the emotion of lost love into my heart within Volary’s soothing vocals as I ask myself ‘How many times have I been in relationship that was not good for me but I refused to let it go?’  “I’m standing up and I’m refusing to play/You are lost to me/Your love has not left me unscarred”

From pop to rock, from tribal drums to simple acoustic guitar and gypsy string, the songs on Out Of Shadows move from light to dark, uplifting to heartbreaking. The songs are never simpleminded and are always intense in fullness of sound, each layer comes forth with more meaning upon each listen.

“I don’t know if I would express songwriting as being my therapy. It’s more like a necessity. Sometimes it really feels like my soul needs to give birth to something and then it’s like an itch I can’t scratch until a song comes out. It’s also very often like banging my head into a brick wall.”

Although her diagnoses of cancer did not make it into her lyrics, it has made a major impact on her life. “As to how {the cancer} has changed my view point on life; well, it’s definitely changed that forever. The spectrum of a possible recurrence is always going to be there, especially since I was diagnosed at a young age and statistically the cancers that occur in younger people are more aggressive than those that occur in older people. I’ve had to face my mortality at an age where other people are in the full bloom of life, and that’s something that leaves its mark forever. One thing that I will be doing when I get to play shows again is to do some benefits. There are two organizations in particular that have been helpful to me along my cancer journey – the Bay Area Young Survivors (BAYS) support group, and the Commonweal Cancer Help Program.”

Along with all despair and intensity in life, there is hope and dreams of something better. Volary takes the good, the bad and the ugly and makes music that can resonate with us all. Whether it is dark or light moods, fear or doubt, creativity can make a difference in setting our paths to the correct direction we are meant to be heading. Faith in that path, whether we understand or not where we are going, is not always open for us to question. But we can know there IS something better...we can start out with ideas in our minds as we think “I’m reaching out but I’m grabbing air/and I freefall through my life” (from “Touched”) and end with the mantra of  “No, I don’t wanna believe/that there’s nothing more than this/Nothing more, nothing more, nothing more than this/So I just gotta believe/that there’s something more than this, something more, something more, something more than this.” (from “Blackbird”).


All Volary photos by Alexander Kieselstein

Moonmama says: HI!

 

A Dollop Of Sunshine with Brindl's SHINE!

Photo by Trevalyan Markle. 

Music is the great song of existence and it conjures forth complex visuals. One could view listening to music as taking a little journey to a psychedelic plane, without the drugs and the subsequent nasty come down. Consider music a good clean high, activating parts of the brain where pretty pictures accommodate the sounds that enter the ears.

I slipped Brindl’s second fabulous CD, Shine, into my stereo, adjusted my earphones to achieve a maximum flow of sound and I pressed play. As the sound flooded my ears and fueled my imagination I found myself transported to a sunny hillside in the middle of the time of year where Spring is transforming into Summer. The sky is blue, the clouds are wispy and I could see rabbits and dragons curling their ears and tails against the meadowy backdrop as the spirit of song gently wafted towards my from the inner recesses of my blissed-out psyche.

Shine is a languid river of beauty trickling past as you sit on this hillside. Shine is a warm breeze flowing over your sun kissed face. Shine is the sun, warm and stunning, bright and vibrant, opening you up to the possibility that someone understands your heart as much as you do and can put into lyrics exactly how you feel when you open your heart to loving yourself, fully and deeply.

Trevalyan Markle, Tenetphoto.com

Brindl’s powerful and heartfelt lyrics are showcased in this disk; the lyrics bring forth her excellent musicianship on the piano and guitar throughout all of Shine. Adding Steve Gardner on Violin (Cullen’s Hounds), guitarist Adam Roach (Jon Keigwin band) and bassist David Solari gives Shine an added depth of jazz and blues undertones that allows Brindl’s smoky-smooth voice to seduce you with a sound that is nothing but pure joy to behold.

“Mercy” open the disk with piano and violin, two instruments that seem innocent enough but when fueled by Brindl’s passionate blues/jazz vocals brings into focus the darker aspects of a relationship. “I am here” and “Rose and a Smile” shed a little joy on the lighter side of relationship.

Simplicity is the key to Brindl’s Shine. But within that simplicity comes a profound understanding of the heart. The simplicity of stark and simple music leaves us open to understand the music how we need to understand it. Brindl leaves the music open for us to determine how it should affect our lives, as all good songwriters can do with their words. Brindl’s voice brings to life the words she wants to convey. Her lilting and uplifting vocals dance and sway and take you on a ride into the clouds, to be stirred and tossed with soft femininity.

Trevalyan Markle, Tenetphoto.com

Recorded locally at A Room With a Vu studio in San Anselmo, California throughout most of 2010, Brindl has taken the words and truths that live in her heart and manifested them into a beautiful album. She bares her soul and tells you her experiences in her life, telling stories of her heart so we can all learn from her mistakes and her personal lessons on love.

The ending track of Shine is “Resolution Year”. A track that I took to mean that with determination and focus on oneself, things can only be amazing. “Resolution year, dissolution of all fear….and I can hear you now…loud and clear….”

Moonmama Tells It Like It Is!

Thanks again to the Fabo-Rama Daniel Rauck for taking my words and making them clean and pretty. OXOXOX

Cover Letter For A Job From A Rock & Roll Writer Chick

Dear Editor, Greetings to you.

I am writing to you today in order to let you know that I want to be a writer, that I am a writer. I guess that means I also wish to have a career in writing. What the heck, I may as well apply for a career in something I think I am very good at. Writing. So here I am.

I must let you know that I flunked out of college and therefore have found my own voice without the aid of institutionalized institutions. I write outside the box, as it were. I write with emotion and feeling, plus I can write about anything and make it sound professional and/or pretty. You name it, food, cars, clouds, garbage cans, and shoes, all of it I can make into words to inspire people to read about it.

My main focus and passion is writing about music and my local music scene in Marin County. In my two years as a Loud Voice for my music community, I have befriended over 200 bands and a couple of hundred musicians and industry people of all ranks. I have attended hundreds of local music gigs and taken probably well over 10,000 photos and posted them online on my 6 main blogs, on my Facebook Profile Page and Facebook “Moonmamasmusicalmusings” Fan Page. I have written dozens of reviews and stories on locals bands or their CD’s as well as their live gigs. Plus I am getting airplay for 12 Bay Area bands on a weekly radio show in Brisbane, Australia all because of two boxes of Organic Pop Tarts. I am kind of a mover and a shaker and I am working this business as a writer and photographer in order to fulfill a dream I have had to be a part of the music for well over 20 years.

Writing for me has been a way to find my voice, quell my inner demons and bring my sanity to the forefront of my being. I love writing more than any other talent I have (and that does include making jam and baking cookies). I wish to make a living on this talent of mine, and I wish to work for you. Hence this long and drawn out story on my self-made writing career.

I am sending you 3 links to recent stories I have written on various music oriented shindigs. The first is a profile story on Jeff Pehrson, a lovely friend and also a backup singer for the band Further. The second link is my personal story on how Organic Pop Tarts have made me somewhat of an International Music Promoter in Australia. The third is a profile story on the Sonoma based band Luvplanet (I also did a review of their new disk Luvolution). I will gladly send you the text in WORD format if you wish, but the links to the stories all have photos embedded into them that I myself have taken to give you an idea of my photography skills as well.

1) http://moonmamasrocks.blogspot.com/2010/10/jeff-pehrson-fall-risk.html

2) http://moonmamarocks.blogspot.com/2010/10/operation-pop-tart-cds-to-aussieland.html

3) http://moonmamarocks.blogspot.com/2011/03/note-on-peace-through-music-luvplanet.html

 Thanks for reading me and I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely, Carolyn McCoy AKA MOONMAMA!

Diary Of A Groupie: Love Bites and Other Ideas Of Love Songs

“And love, love, love is a dangerous drug.".... Annie Lennox

FLASHBACK! It’s 1984, I am 14 and in the 8th Grade. I am inside the Evergreen Junior High School gymnasium. My adolescent hormones are running wild. I glance to my right and I see the Cute Boy I have a crush on sitting with his friends on the bleachers.

The darkened room, the streamers, the balloons, as well as the the nervous smell of unharnessed adolescent sexuality all point to the epitome of a classic school dance. As Judas Priest’s “You Got Another Thing Coming” ends its hypnotic chant, the DJ drops onto his turntable the one and only power-ballad super group Foreigner, and he brings on a slow dance. Mick Jones croons to me that he really “wants to know what love is" and he wants ME to show him…! WOW, thanks Mick! But I really just want the Cute Boy in the bleachers to let me show him what love is. But alas, I am in an awkward phase of my life. I feel ugly and I hate my body. I am insecure and I feel like no one will ever love me. But I do have Mick Jones' sweetly soaring voice, and he has no qualms about letting me know that someday I, too will be able to show someone what love is. And what a lucky person that will be.

The Love Song. Yes, the Love Song. Powerful, emotionally profound and sometimes super cheesy. It is often hated and mocked by those who are lacking Love, often cherished and sung by those who have Love. How you look at it and respond to it all really depends on you & only you and whether or not your heart has been smashed to bloody pieces in any recent period of time.

As I have grown older and experienced Love in many of it’s infinite forms, I now think that the word LOVE has a far greater definition than just the romantic aspect of that emotion. When I think of Love Songs nowadays, I seem to encompass the idea that all songs are love songs. Whether it a song of "Lost Love" (Thomas Dolby’s “Europa”); songs of "Unrequited Love" (Muddy Water’s “Got My Mojo Working”), "Breakups" (Duh! Every other love song); "Dysfunctional Love" (Dramarama’s “Anything Anything” and Nine Inch Nails' "I Want To Fuck You Like An Animal") and "Deep, Red, Passionate Love" (Prince’s “When Doves Cry”), are all embracing the same theme as the ubiquitous songs about the I’ll-Love-You-Forever Love. Love can fuck you up and make you higher than a kite.

With that statistical idea in mind, that would mean that about 85% (give or take a few percentages) of all songs in recent musical history, quite possibly ancient history, are LOVE SONGS, (the rest probably being spiritual or political songs, and even then, within those 2 seemingly unrelated themes, there will be songs about your Love Of Your Deity or your Love/Hate Of Your Country).

Dang! That’s a lot of songs about one theme! But, it just goes to show you how strong of an experience Love is, especially when you include all the varying forms of love into your reality. It’s all about the ups and down of the human heart and somehow that inspires us to create profoundly.

Since my ideas of love are quite expansive, I find that I get kind of bored with Love Songs strictly about that whole “True Love Forever & You’re My One & Only” concept. The love songs about lost love, songs about the hard and angry feelings after a breakup and the songs of deep passion & drama are the ones I seem to identify with the most, mainly because I think those style of love songs speak to me truthfully of what Love is all about.


Love is painful; it’s heart opening; it ends and it begins again. We Love many times, we sometimes never get over people we Love. Love & relationships, all relationships, take A LOT of work and Love sometimes ends badly, sometimes really badly. But it always seems to be worth it to endure over and over as there is always a lesson to be learned by the experience of the Love Song and it’s impact on our experience with Love itself.

The creative intent of any given Love Song is solely because the artist needed to express deep feelings about an experience of Love. We take the words and the sentiment of that song and transfer it to our own lives, our own issues and to our own relationship’s joys and dramas, and we begin to understand a little more, with each lyric and harmonic soar of sound, what Love is all about.


Moonmama says, "LOVE! YES!"

Diary Of A Groupie: The First Musician

In my last day’s of college before flunking out, I took the liberty of practicing what is commonly called a “California Stop”, that's where you don't stop but only slow down at a stop sign. I got a traffic ticket, not surprising. I blame myself and only myself. My displeased parents gave me 2 options: I could either have higher insurance rates or they would send me to traffic school, my choice. So one fabulous, early-summer weekend, I spent 8 hours holed up in a local community center to pay my debt to society.

But with that seemingly sad fate of a restless young woman, I found my destiny. I guess I have to thank “The Lettuce Amuse You Laugh and Learn Traffic School” for setting me up with my very first-ever date with a musician, he was 38, I was 19, hence setting me up for a life-long love affair with dating, romancing and surrounding myself with musicians.

I first noticed this super-cute blue-eyed & blond Music Man smiling at me when I got the fabulous opportunity to play Vanna White in the "Wheel of Traffic" game we played in order to make us all the wiser of the California State driving laws. He invited me to lunch and I found out he played bass, guitar & drums and was a session player for the likes of Carlos Santana, Chris Isaak & Joe Satriani as well as performing in many bands he formed himself. I forgot what his traffic violation was but I guess that doesn’t matter.

I had a boyfriend at the time but I thought nothing about the implications of cheating, for I was thoroughly smitten once I found out he had recorded on some of the most amazing rock albums of the 70’s and 80’s. I didn’t really understand the Groupie Phenomenon back then, but something in my heart KNEW this was a big opportunity, he was an honest to goodness rocker and I wanted to play his game.

We talked on the phone for a few days, getting into some great conversations about his life as a musician. The thrill of the stage, the piles of cocaine, the addictions, the groupies, the hard life that the road truly represents. It was all so completely foreign to a little, naïve girl such as myself, but I was hooked on his stories and the idea of the Desperate & Tumultuous Music Romance I wanted with him that played in my head.

Alas, I didn’t get the desperate romance as I had hoped, for after a few dates and phone calls, a few make-out sessions on his couch (and a decline from me to go further) I knew this man was not for me. I didn’t know what I wanted, I still had a boyfriend and the age difference freaked me out a bit. I wasn’t ready for this yet, but it planted the seed for the latent Groupie-ness that would soon spring forth from this budding young lady.

But I do remember that after meeting him, even though it was a short-lived romance, I changed incredibly. After hearing his stories & sharing my passion for music with him, I opened. With talking deeply with him about how music can be so ingrained in us it becomes an obsession to contain it or let it explode in us, I began to hear things differently.

I started to listen to recordings he played on, old and new records where he may have been on only one or two tracks. I started to pick apart the music and challenge myself to hear beyond the notes and riffs. I started to listen to a song over and over trying to piece together all the different parts and how they all fit together to make THIS SONG that sounded like no other song ever played, heard or recorded.

My world blew apart after meeting this man. My understanding of music was hugely enlightened because of his influence, and all he really did was make me Rice-A-Roni and tell me I was good kisser.


Moonmama says, "ROCK ON!"