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Sylvia Hutton
Nature
Child - A Dreamer’s Journey
released recently by Sylvia Hutton, better known to music fans all over
the world as the American Country Music Award, Billboard’s # 1 Country
Music Female Artist and Grammy nominated singer Sylvia, is one of the
most beautiful collections of story songs you will hear this year. With
numerous # 1 and top ten hits to her credit, the former RCA artist, who
has for many years recorded as an independent artist, once again
collaborated with longtime friend John Mock (Dolly Parton, The Chicks,
James Taylor, Kathy Mattea). Other co-writers includes Verlon Thompson,
Craig Brickhardt and Thom Schuyler.
The opening song for the album “Avalon,” transports the listener to
Camelot and the days of King Arthur. Sylvia and Verlon Thompson wrote
“Avalon,” a beautifully orchestrated song with lush vocals by Sylvia.
For any child, any teenager, any adult whoever wished you could close
your eyes and open them to find yourself in a magical place, Sylvia
invites you to take her hand to travel to a place where the walls are
made of freedom and every tear becomes a shining star.
Normally, we would not credit so many musicians, but they earned their due on “Avalon,” guitars, both electric and acoustic by John Mock, as well as mandolin and percussion. Matt McGee played bass, Skip Cleavinger played the Uilleann pipes, oboe by Somerlie Pasquale, Emily Bowland on clarinet, trumpet (Jeff Bailey), French horn (Jennifer Kummer), violins by Conni Ellisor and Mary Kathryn Van Osdale, viola (Betsy Lamb) and cellist Nicholas Gold.
About the musicians, |
Rain Perry - A White Album
A
White Album,
by American singer and songwriter Rain Perry, which will be released on
April 15 (2022) is a lot of things, a collection of songs with an
activist theme, some original and some covers from music icons, it is
heartfelt, and it is sincere, but what is most of all is very, very
good. It was our pleasure to sit down with Rain Perry recently to
discuss her new record and why these songs are so special to her. She says, “It is definitely a concept album. It
is somewhat of a sequel to my album Cinderblock Bookshelves, and
it was a memoir in music about me growing up as a hippie kid raised by
my dad. This record, A White Album, is me looking back at my same
life and my same family, but through the lens of race. It is called A
White Album, because it is me telling my story. I think most larger
topics are best addressed through people and it is my way of wading into
a fraught conversation and to talk about some issues that we seem to be
having a hard time talking about right now.” Although the
common thread is raising awareness of societal issues, the songs on the
album do not come across as preachy or even protestation, but instead
seem to be asking the question, why are we still here after all these
years, far removed from the civil rights movement of the 1960s and yet
in many ways the needle seems to have barely moved. “Thank you, that
is what I was shooting for. I think the best way to empathize is getting
to know somebody and to see the way they are trying to solve the
problems we are all trying to solve, how to be happy, to be
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Beatrix Löw-Beer
While
on her way from Munich, Germany to play a gig in Frankfurt,
uber-talented saxophonist
Beatrix Löw-Beer,
whose performances have taken her to England, the United States, the
Netherlands, Spain, Ibiza, Mallorca, Italy, Luxemburg, France, Austria,
Switzerland, numerous other European countries, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon,
Dubai and some parts of Asia, took time to talk to Riveting Riffs
Magazine about her career and her life. The very congenial Beatrix
Löw-Beer, while setting a high standard for herself, is as nice a
musician as you will meet. She has been compared to her contemporaries,
celebrity violinists such as Vanessa-Mae from England via Singapore and
American violinist Lindsey Stirling. Beatrix Löw-Beer has performed with
such stars as Rod Stewart, Dutch singer Caro Emerald, award winning Pop
singer Sarah Connor, the first German performer to ever have four
consecutive #1 hits on the German charts. Beatrix Löw-Beer’s music
ranges from Classical to Rock to House, Pop, Jazz and everything in
between.
Artists such as
Beatrix Löw-Beer
are the reason why people are discovering the saxophone for the first
time. When you watch her concert performances or videos to promotional
videos everything from her movement to her attitude and her costumes
exhibits an exuberance for performing music. One is never left with the
impression that you are watching someone playing an instrument, because
her saxophone becomes an extension of her persona.
Take us back to where this all began.
I grew up in Augsburg, which is one hour from Munich, which is the
capital of Bavaria. It is in the south of Germany, very close to
Austria. Augsburg is the third largest city in Bavaria and I think it
has 300,000 residents. There are two rivers in my city, the Lech and
Wertach, (which flow into
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Evie Sands
Evie
Sands started her music career (writer puts hand over mouth and
mumbles, as it is never polite to discuss a woman’s age) that many
years ago, but you would never know it from her new album, her vocals
are crisp, the music more imaginative than many of today’s artists, and
that is not a slam on today’s musicians and songwriters, but rather a
nod to Sands. If you were not aware of all that Evie Sands has already
accomplished during her career, you might think she was just starting
out, because of her unbridled enthusiasm.
We wondered how she has managed
to stay on top of her game and with such a contagious, positive and fun
attitude.
“I trust in the music and then I let it go. I think it is probably a
combination of things. It is my ongoing and will be forever, my insane
passion for music, about making it, listening to it and breaking it
down. I enjoy it, but I like to figure out what is that stuff sonically,
what is going on and it is the enjoyment part of it. It is just ongoing.
It is just like I was born, and I started listening. I just get excited.
Then there is the striving to continually get better and all the skills
that are involved, whether it is continuing to be a better singer, a
better songwriter, better composer, a better musician, a better producer
and engineer. It drives who I am. |
Charlie Faye & The Fanimals
On
July 21 st one of the most fun and danceable family albums will be
released. Although, billed as a children’s album Charlie Faye & The
Fanimals is really a record that the whole family can enjoy from a
toddler to a grandparent who may reminisce about dancing to The
Temptations, The Spinners, Martha and the Vandellas, The Marvelettes,
Sam & Dave, Booker T. & the M.G.s and Carla and Rufus Thomas. Charlie
Faye’s vocals add Soul and R & B to lyrics that kids can relate to and
the musical arrangements, the groove the vibe is something that will not
leave mom and dad or mom or dad or mom and mom or dad and dad sitting on
their sofas for long.
The album opens with the fun “7 Days of Fun,”
Charlie Faye talks about what inspired these songs, “Usually they were
things that just came to me as a parent and I would just think oh write
a song about snack time. They all come from different places. “Seven
Days of Fun,” I wrote, because Edie (Charlie’s daughter) and I had been
talking about the days of the week. I used to sing a song in Charlie
Faye & the Fayettes called “Seven Nights to Rock,” and in “Seven Nights
to Rock,” which I learned from a Nick Lowe recording. In (that song) you
get to yell out all the days of the week “(She mock yells out) Monday,
Tuesday…” I thought it would be great to have a song like that for kids
and Edie could learn the names of the days of the week. Guess what? It
worked. “Snack Time,” was obvious. Kids love snack time and everybody
loves songs about snack time. It is a time that already is generally
fun. I felt it was also important to write a song about bath time,
because when my daughter was younger, she didn’t love bath time, so I
thought okay let’s write a song about being in a bath. That turned into
“Puppy in the Bath” and we have a dog. Edie likes to sing “Puppy In the
Bath,” when we are
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Madeleine Davis - One of a Kind!
If
we told you that Madeleine Davis has lived a life full of adventure some
might easily argue that is an understatement. She grew up the daughter
of a Gospel singing mother, and a pharmacist father in Columbus,
Georgia, near the Chattahoochee River, with one sibling, a brother at
home and a sister eighteen years older, who had pretty much left home by
the time Madeleine appeared on the scene. Madeleine Davis had a lengthy career with Boney M (By the Rivers of Babylon, Rasputin) and a small sample of her work in the studio and / or live performances includes artists such as Precious Wilson, Hoyt Axton, Peggy March, Terence Trent D'Arby, Rick Astley, Klaus Doldinger, La Bionda and Amanda Lear. She was in demand by producers such as, Ralph Siegel, Tony Monn, Michael Kunze, Sylvester Levay, Giorgio Moroder and Frank Farian. She sang in church as a young child, acted on stage as a teenager (there is a motorcycle story we will get to in a minute) and she was a soloist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, while still in university.
“My father was a lot older than my mother. He was fifty-nine when I was
born and he was seventy-five when I was eighteen.
I grew up with a father who was in World War I. He had so much
information for me when I went to school. When he was a paperboy the
Titanic sank,
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