Wrapping Us In Sonic Velvet: Tracy Blackman's "Could I Be"

Music is something that wraps us in a velvet cloak of melody and words, surrounding us in its warmth and comfort, the sense of familiarity apparent even on the first experience of something new. 

Sometimes a songwriter has the ability to make us hear things that we already know deeply and understand profoundly, even if the music is not like anything else we have ever heard. It takes a songwriter of talent and grace that creates this for us, as she knows and understands our hearts and minds like no one else.

Hailing from Marin County, California, singer & songwriter Tracy Blackman has this ability.  Through both her songwriting and her multi-instrumental musicianship, Tracy’s newest album Could I Be takes us on an aural journey of comfort and familiarity of what we know is inside us all.  Could I Be, takes on themes of love, loss and the spirit of life like many songwriters do, but she does so in a way that rocks and rolls with jazzy/bluesy sass and a truth that is never trite or angled toward “angry girl music”. She shares many intimate aspects of herself through stories in the form of songs.

Diary Of A Groupie: My Les Paul Tribute

I will be honest right off the bat, I have never been a Groupie to Les Paul, but I feel that I knew him intimately and deeply because of his invention of the Hard Bodied Electric Guitar. That man changed my world and I never even got the opportunity to meet him or see him play live, but I have been a lover a million-and-one times to the Ingenious Guitars that he made famous among the Shredding Elite of the music world for 70 years.

Ah, Les, I bow down to you and your Electric Guitar! Thank you so much for this great gift to Musicians everywhere! The squeals, the shrieks, the yelps and the howls that came out of your invention were like nothing the world had ever heard before. You made an innocent and simple wood and stringed instrument into something of a deeply sensual and excitable lady that loved to be rocked hard and played harder. Gone were the days of simple strumming of a quiet six-string and enter into the days of loud, amplified and exquisite SHRED! 

Les Paul Guitar painted by Neal Barbosa

As a young girl, the power and energy of the Electric Guitar came into my realm via Peter Frampton, Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd while playing with my romper-stompers in the basement while my brother played his records. Later, as my Music Awareness broadened and I opened my ears more, the Electric Guitar played well into my emotive teen years with the sweeping and cascading moans and squeals of Prince and the straight-road hard-rock driving of Def Leppard. 

Les Paul Guitar painted by Neal Barbosa

Now, as a woman of some years, I still hold the Electric Guitar as my primary Love Interest as it expresses emotion and feeling in the most precious and profound way to me. As George Harrison explains beautifully, "While my guitar gently weeps..."

Les Paul, your passing a few years back made my heart weep, but your Life Force will continue to live on the magic fingers of James Hetfield, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and my Favorite Shredder Of All Shredders, Buckethead. Your legacy will continue to Rock and Roll forever and always!

SIDE NOTE: I so love a man with MacGyver Qualities*, someone who can make something amazing out of nothing amazing, and Les Paul’s MacGyver Qualities were through the roof! I love a man who can make an amplifier (which had not been in existence as of yet in that early acoustic world) out of a radio speaker, a telephone, a cinder block and a broom. Yeah, he did that…fricking genius!

*MacGyver Qualities: From the 80’s TV show “MacGyver”, in which the main character was so innovative that he could make a parachute out of latex gloves, dental floss and a Bic Pen.

Thanks to Live Painter for the extra visual. You rock dude!

http://www.nealbarbosa.com

The Walk Of Life With Peck, The Town Crier

Photo by Moonmama

Life is but a journey… We all begin somewhere and end up some place else, the pit stops, segues and adventures along the way form who we are and how we choose to live. We learn something new with each step of this journey.  This particular journey takes place on a gorgeously sunny Sunday afternoon in Marin County as music maker Chris Peck, AKA Peck The Town Crier, and yours truly wander the streets of our small hamlet chatting about everything under the sun. Chris Peck is a gifted song writer pumping out self-produced albums of intelligently quirky tunes and then there’s me, a struggling Rock n’ Roll Writer trying to make a name for herself through creative passions for all things music. It seems a fitting outing for two creative, kindred souls hanging out for a day of conversation.

We stroll languidly past high-end boutiques and Latin super markets, we saunter under maple and oak trees that hold leaves still hanging with the remnant touches of fall color and through small city parks and over dirty sidewalks, we walk. We talk about the weather, we touch upon conspiracy theories, we get, as one Chris Peck song suggest, “coffee, muthafuckin’ coffee” and we talk about my writing. But mainly, we talk about his music.  As that is why we are chatting away on this blindingly bright California spring day. The purpose of this stroll is for me to get a better understanding and find out more about this gangly, white boy rapper-beat-poet dude named Chris Peck, who’s songs inspire goofiness, big ideas, awareness of the soul and a bit of bump-n-grind to boot.



Beginning at the tender age of 10, Chris Peck took to music like a fly to honey. Guitar was number one and was followed by drums at 11.  As he grew older, his musical passions continued onto bass and a deeper connection to percussion. “I got way into Cuban music, Salsa and Rhumba, and learned some rudiments of Conga drums in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba when I was 17 and 18. I saw people go into trance at ceremonies, danced with ladies in the nightclubs, and drummed for 6 hours a day with an older gentleman named Roberto.”

Songwriting and musical arrangement began at 11 with a tune called “The Irishman”.    

“I’ve written pretty steadily and it has always involved a toggling between lyrics and music. A good amount of my material is instrumental. I like to make little home versions on a multi-tracker, or hash things out on the musical staff or make a graphic representation of the music to help me figure out the form and arrangement.”

Fused within Chris is a lifelong love affair with creativity through songwriting and wordplay. Honing his poetic chops in a weekly gritty-streets-fueled Poetry Slam in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, he is known for tossing words with other poets amid the insanity of a busy neighborhood known for it’s deep politics. “Thursday nights, I go out to 16th & Mission in SF, where about 100 people gather and perform for each other outside at the Bart Train Plaza. There’s no microphone, and it’s a noisy street corner, so it really focuses you on the power of your performance, and some way to grab people’s eyes and keep them. I feel like a different person when I’m there, its like bullfighting. You can get mad glory or embarrassment at 16th & Mission.”

Chris left The Bay Area in 1998 to study music at New York University only to return in 2003. His main influences have always been other musical artists including but not limited to Weather Report, Kraftwerk, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Laurie Anderson, Claude Debussy, Terry Riley, Deerhoof, the Wu Tang Clan, Arthur Russell, Yusef Lateef.  When it comes to hip-hop for Peck, the crème de la crème is the great New Orleans mc Mystikal.   “Some musical fascinations lose their luster for me, but not Mystikal. I keep feeling more impressed by him whenever I come back to his music.  It’s all about his voice, the characters he inhabits, his story telling, and for God’s sake, his rhythm. There’s a song called “Shine”, dedicated to his sister’s memory, that is so dang soulful and rhythmically complex.”

With 1 EP’s and soon to be 5 Full-length albums under his belt, Home Phone- (2010), Le Chronique (2009) Groundhog's Day (2008) and The Garden Sings (2005), Chris is anything but shy about promoting his own music. Whether standing tall alone as Peck The Town Crier, the multi-instrumentalist genius, or with a band of rotating musical friends called The Crysmuscles, Chris does all he can to enhance his quirky sound and songs. Fusing White Boy Poetic Rap with anything form Rocking to Ethereal tunes, you may find a lot of similarities to the artist Beck. “My first album is called “Your Tape Machine’s Not Broken”. I made it on an old 4-track reel to reel, and it’s really funky-sounding and blown out. Most of it happened in the summer of ’97, when I had just got back from my first two weeks in Havana. I made an altar on my ceiling, dedicated to Elegua, the Santeria deity who gives and takes life. I remember the feeling of making that music, I was way overjoyed and had all these instruments and cables out in my room, eating lots of apples. I felt kind of possessed, like people talk about with automatic writing. Because of the purity of that experience, I still think that album is the most sacred to me. At some point this year, I’m going to re-release it.”

With his amazing back stock of songs as well as his constant writing and creating of new songs, Chris is never at a loss for fodder for all his albums. “About 80% of each record is made of songs written in the interim since the last release. But I DO reach back and re-work old songs. Sometimes, even a tune that’s been released on a previous record will get re-recorded with a new arrangement, or I’ll poach material from within the song and incorporate it into a new setting.”

“I really hope my music will be, fresh, surprising, healing & real. If I can get those elements together, I’ll be making music I’m really consistently stoked about. I would love for my music to be heard by little pods of people all around the world; Like some little rare breed of bird, that convenes on an island once a year and celebrates their quirkiness together. When I’m an old man, I would love to meet young musicians and work with them. I love that continuum of music, and of human knowledge in general. I love my heroes and teachers so much, and I want to do MY thing with just as much fire and dedication as they did THEIRS.”

With his big dreams and constant ideas, Chris Peck wants to do it all. “Really, in my path as an artist now, I’m hoping to grow outside pure music making, into some kind of medium that involves musical skills on display but also some type of public interaction, storytelling and myth-making. It feels like this new medium will be more attuned to what we’re feeling as a people now a day.”

“I spend hours at coffee shops every week, trying to figure out what the hell that’s going to look like. Someday soon, I’m going to take action on all this yearning.”

Chris and I end the day as the Spring sun begins to wane in the late afternoon sky. We have come full circle with our journey, him with his story told and me filled to the brim with the experience of the day, off to mold the experience into his story, both of us collaborating on our desire to be heard by many.

www.peckthetowncrier.bandcamp.com

All other photos of Chris Peck are by Cat Rivera:
www.innerjungle.blogspot.com


Moonmama LOVES you!
Thanks again Dan Rauck for editing my words. ox

Mirror In The Bathroom: Is It All Vanity?

You may have noticed in the melodic musings of mine that I often post a picture of myself that I took in the bathroom at the back of some seedy bar, club or musical venue. Many people have asked me why I do that, so I feel a strong urge to explain myself to you, as posing in the bathroom mirror of bars and clubs all over the San Francisco Bay Area may seem a little strange to most normal folks. Not to mention posting them on the Internet for all to see, my mother would freak!

For some unknown reason, I am able to see the romanticism in the common bathroom. Yes, it’s a trait I carry with pride. Bathrooms are a place of deep intimacy, secrets and finality and they have been ingrained into the history of music as a room to be worshiped.

My bathroom Self Portraits all started at Peri’s Silver Dollar, the bar in Marin that has some of the most amazing décor in both the men’s and woman’s restrooms. As I was washing my hand like a good girl, I got a bud in my bean stock and felt the need to take a photo of myself in the mirror to send to a friend. It turned out pretty cool. As the door opened and the music came in, I got the idea of how bathrooms have a tendency of playing crucial roles in the history and legends of rock and roll music.

So, my excuse for my exhibitionistic photos? I write about music and I want you to know who I am, so I take photos in the bathroom. It’s all, like, interconnected, ya know?

While I am at it, why don’t I throw some interesting Bathroom and Rock History facts at you.

There are, of course, the folks who have died in the bathroom: Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley and Judy Garland. It seems like a hard-lived life destroyed all 3 of these talented performers while in the throes of being truly human.

Canadian rocker’s “Bare Naked Ladies” and blast-from-the-past Captain Beefheart are folks who have recorded songs or even whole albums in a bathroom, and my Web search tells me there is even a band called “The Bathroom Choir” that I feel I must now find out more info on. When I typed in “bathroom songs”, over 7 million entries came up. Also in my research I found all kinds of plans and tips for building your own personal recording studio in your bathroom, they do have amazing acoustics.

Dare I even go into the sordid, sinful and decadent treats that most musicians are offered in the bathrooms of clubs, bars and concert halls? I think Jimi Hendrix “met” one of his main groupies in the men’s bathroom stall after one of his early shows. Just what was she doing in the Men’s bathroom, I wonder…?

For me, bathrooms and Rock-n-Roll go hand and hand. They are dirty, grungy & sexy-in-bad-girl-way. The drama, the passion, the lies, the truth get expressed in song and tile.

Moonmama LOVES YOU!

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!