Cherie Currie - Rock Legend

In 1975 when Cherie Currie was fifteen years old and sitting in the Sugar Shack, a popular Los Angeles nightclub for those twenty-one years of age and younger she was approached by sixteen year old guitarist, singer and songwriter Joan Jett and her producer / manager Kim Fowley, about being the lead singer in a band that would later become known as The Runaways. The band also featured the late Sandy West on drums, guitarist Lita Ford and bassist Jackie Fox (during Currie’s time with The Runaways). The fifteen year old Cherie Currie, a native of Encino in the San Fernando Valley had already built a reputation with her classmates as being edgy and having a chip on her shoulder. For the next two years of her life she would tour the world as the lead singer of an aggressive all-girl Rock band whose signature song “Cherry Bomb,” as well as “Queens of Noise,” and “California Paradise,” would capture the imagination of teenagers worldwide. Some of the bands that opened for The Runaways included Cheap Trick and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Recently, Cherie Currie from her home in California took time out from her busy schedule, which includes a soon to be released new album and her chainsaw art business, as well as being mom to her twenty-two year old son, producer, musician and singer-songwriter Jake Hays, to talk to Riveting Riffs Magazine. In recent years, there has been somewhat of a renaissance, a renewal of interest in The Runaways and the role that they played in terms of paving the way for women musicians who would follow them. The  Read More

Detroit's Carolyn Striho

"I love music and I love performing. It is communication. It is immediate and you feel that from the audience and when people like your music, just the reaction makes you feel alive. Part of being alive is creating and communicating. It is very important to me,” says Detroit singer, songwriter and musician Carolyn Striho.

The Detroit native has been the recipient of several Detroit Music Awards including the one that she covets most, her 2010 win for Best Rock Album of the Year acknowledging her musical excellence for the album Honesty.  The title song provides an accurate snapshot of Striho’s eclectic career as the tune opens with a languid slide guitar, turns very Punk like and at a couple of junctures slows down to a pretty Pop vocal.

“In some of the originals that we do (for live performances) I use pieces, like in the middle of “Honesty,” we throw in Patti Smith’s “Gloria,” (written and also recorded by Van Morrison) and it familiarizes people (with our music). I don’t know how this all started to happen, but it is pretty cool. Doing other people’s music in the middle of an original is really fun to do and it invites people in. I like to do “Gimme Shelter,” (Rolling Stones) in the middle of a big organ breakdown or “All Along The Watchtower,” (Jimi Hendrix) and people like that,” she says, providing further evidence of the eclectic nature of her music.

Carolyn Striho who has been nominated for more than thirty Detroit Music Awards since 2006 demonstrates her diverse nature on the album Honesty with the song “Sing It To Me,” a tune that has Latin overtones and features some beautiful guitar Read More

Ricky Z Interview

He was listening to Beck, Bogert & Appice (Jeff Beck – The Yard Birds; Tim Bogert – Vanilla Fudge and Cactus; Carmine Appice – Vanilla Fudge and Cactus) when he was in grade school and he performed at the White House with Gloria Estefan as an adult.  Ricky Z born Ricky Zahariades, in Phoenix, Arizona, but a native of California from the time he was three years old and his family moved to, in his words “a small dusty town” called Fontana (San Benardino County). He has also worked with artists such as, The Sweet (also known simply as Sweet), Michael Buble, Lauryn Hill, Josh Groban and Jessica Simpson.  Ricky Z sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine to discuss his new album The Long And Dusty Road, which features all original songs, his career and his musical journey.

Discussing his childhood in Fontana he says, “It was a great place to grow up and there was all of this music around, so that was kind of cool. I had older brothers and I started getting access to their great music and I was soaking it up.”

Whenever his brothers would bring a new record home he recalls, “I would just sit there. I loved Keith Emerson, Zeppelin, (Black) Sabbath, Peter Frampton, the Stones and The Yard Birds. I was a music aficionado by the sixth grade. It encompassed my whole world and I hadn’t even thought about playing it. The summer before the eighth grade my brother’s best friend brought over a guitar with a little Silvertone amp and he left it there all summer. If I played it, nobody knew, so I just ran and in there and started making noise. I played it whatever way it was tuned and only the three big Read More

Bobby Whitlock Interview

Whitlock had a humble beginning to his life, born in Memphis, Tennessee, the song of a Southern Baptist fire and brimstone hellfire preacher (Whitlock’s description) who, “drug us from pillar to post and every hog waller there was in Arkansas, that you can imagine. When I was nine, we lived in Diaz, Arkansas right on a railroad track in a little community of 175 people that was surrounded by thousands of acres of cotton and beans. I toted water, sharpened hoes, picked cotton and beans until I was in my teens.”

Whitlock had a humble beginning to his life, born in Memphis, Tennessee, the song of a Southern Baptist fire and brimstone hellfire preacher (Whitlock’s description) who, “drug us from pillar to post and every hog waller there was in Arkansas, that you can imagine. When I was nine, we lived in Diaz, Arkansas right on a railroad track in a little community of 175 people that was surrounded by thousands of acres of cotton and beans. I toted water, sharpened hoes, picked cotton and beans until I was in my teens.”

Bobby Whitlock’s interest in music was nurtured by his grandmother “Big Mama” King who, “would sit me on her lap and put that dobro in front of me. I could barely reach over the top of it. It’s funny that I was ever that small. I would try to hold onto it, while she was sitting with me in her lap. When I was about fifteen, she gave it to me.”

That dobro became the instrument on which Read More

8mm Exclusive Interview

This is the story of a talented and highly respected producer and sound engineer from Cleveland, Ohio, who has worked with artists such as, Nine Inch Nails, No Doubt, Slayer, Kill Hannah, MOTH, P.O.D. and others, who was working a concert with Nine Inch Nails in New Orleans one night when he spotted a Louisiana girl. The girl is pretty and the boy does not know it yet, but she also has a killer set of vocals waiting to be sprung on unsuspecting music fans worldwide. Their names are Juliette and Sean Beavan, who have been married for many years now and eight years ago formed the band 8mm (pronounced millimeter like the film). In October (2012) they released a fabulous new album Between The Devil & Two Black Hearts, also the name of the title track and it may be their best record yet.

“We met in a bar in New Orleans, of course it was a bar. Where else do you meet?” says Juliette.

Sean picks up the story from there, “It was awfully romantic. We were at this small club called Jimmy’s in New Orleans and Nine Inch Nails was doing a surprise show that was announced on the radio that morning. Only about two hundred people fit into the place.”

You soon realize the ease at which Juliette and Sean Beavan seamlessly segue into each other’s conversation and finish each other’s sentences, as they complement each other so well.  Read More

Roger McLachlan Interview

Roger McLachlan toured with Godspell, was a founding member of Little River Band (which later had four # 10 hits on the American charts), is the current electric bass player for the Australian band Late For Breakfast and age 57 he debuted a solo album of original songs, Roger This Roger That and he is considered to be one of Australia’s top session players.  Although, he has lived most of his life in Melbourne, Australia, Roger McLachlan is a proud New Zealander, the son of Bill and Alison McLachlan, born and raised in the little fishing village of Riverton (today’s population 1,900) on the South Island, near Invercargill.

“I was born into a musical family and so my earliest memories are of music and musicians. I remember my mother and father playing the piano and I remember them dancing. My father was a stride piano player, who loved Count Bassie, but he also loved the Boggie Woogie. He would play the waltzes, the gay gordons (a dance), the quick step and the two-step. A lot of them were war songs that everybody wanted to hear. My father’s bass player was an Englishman who played the banjo ukulele and he taught my older sister and I George Formby songs, on my first instrument the ukulele when I was seven or eight years old. I would play songs like, if I can just get my ukulele out. (He laughs) See I just happen to have my ukulele handy. (He plays) I learned George Formby songs like “Big John McGee,” (He sings a line). They are English ditties. I branched out into things like “You Don’t Have To Be A Baby To Cry,” and “Get Along Home Cindy, Cindy,” (He sings a verse), that corny stuff.  Read More