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Rachael Sage and The Sequins

Rachael Sage Interview 2025 Front Page Photo Rachael Sage’s current album Canopy creates a welcoming vibe for the listener, and the singer songwriter musician has a way with her musical canvass of creating a big tent that says come on in, everybody is welcome. This collection of songs creates an intimate setting in which she seems comfortable combined with an orchestral sound (more on that later).  

“That is always what we are striving for. When I hear you say that it is almost like you might be picking up on this concerted intention to have this be more of a band type of a project and even though I have been playing for many years with most of the folks on this record there was definitely something different, in knowing before I rolled my sleeves up that I wanted this to be a Rachael Sage and the Sequins record.

I had already worked a couple of times before with my engineer Mikhail Pivovarov. He has been very graciously coming up to where I live in the Hudson Valley and doing a lot of the recording with me in my actual home space. We did maybe fifty percent of it up here and the other half with bass, drums and piano in Connecticut at the Carriage House (Carriage House Studios). Maybe that is what you are hearing.

I have recorded with bands frequently. I don’t always do things separately and in piecemeal. We have gone in as a trio or even more to record live. As a project I really wanted the sensibilities of the songs which are about inclusivity and acceptance and safety and to use your word with a certain degree of comfort. It comes from all of those things, which we need in the world, and especially now. I wanted the record and the dynamic between us as friends and peer musicians to come through the music. I was very conscious of that and I think I was maybe less control freakish about my pre-existing concepts and vision as a musician. I was a little bit more open to the ideas in terms of arrangements. I still have a very strong production sensibility, but I wanted to make sure everybody had a chance to shine on this record,” says Rachael Sage.

As for achieving an orchestral sound, without having an actual orchestra, she says, “I do have a wonderful violinist Read More

 

 

 

Adrian Sutherland Book Interview

Adrian Sutherland 2025 Interview Front Page PhotoThe book The Work Of Our Hands:  A Cree Meditation on the Real World, authored by singer, songwriter and musician Adrian Sutherland is a book every adult should read.  It was written from his home in Attawapiskat First Nation on the shores of James Bay, approximately 1,050 kilometers or 650 miles north of Toronto, Canada (by air). This may be Sutherland’s first book, but anyone familiar with his music has come to appreciate the way he brushes his lyrics and music against a canvas of nature and life, painting pictures that come to life for the listener. Those qualities have stood him in good stead as a first-time author, as this book although at times provides a narrative to struggles with alcoholism (earlier in life), to being of mixed ethnic heritage and trying to find his place and other subjects that we will leave for the book, gives the reader a sense of being in the midst of it all. This was the second time that this writer sat down with Adrian Sutherland for a conversation and it is very easy to appreciate his warmth (sorry Adrian, I know it is not warm up there right now!), his humble and grateful attitude. This is not a book that was written to puff out his chest to say look what I have accomplished. This is a story about one man’s journey; no let’s correct that this is a book about his life and the support of his wife Judy and their family. It is about polar bears in the house. It is about train trips to rehab. He takes us inside the Cree community and how closely knit that community is.  

“I wouldn’t say it came naturally to me, but I knew I had to learn how to express some of those things I was writing about. I spent a lot of time trying to paint that picture, to express that and to describe what it was like. I remember those things as a young person going to rehab, struggling with alcoholism and the people you would meet along the way as you travelled through the small communities from Timmins to Sudbury, all the way up to Blind River. 

It was a very memorable time for me because it was a life changing time. Trying to express and describe those memories was really important to me and to try to put the reader there in those moments. I am glad I did, because that is the kind of writer Read More

 

 

Electronic Firefly

Electronic Firefly cello 

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Free Whenever from NYC

Free Whenever Front Page PhotoFree Whenever comprised of bassist Trevor LaVecchia, Neil Gulieria and drummer and percussionist Brendan Steuart plays a style of music more defined by their name than any specific genre as improvisation is the most significant element. For this listener it is as though Moby and the legendary Rock band Cream got together to jam and Enya were her ethereal music dropped by and joined in. Recently, New York City natives, Gulieria and LaVecchia sat down for a Zoom conversation with Riveting Riffs Magazine.  

Referring to our characterization of their music, LaVecchia says, “I think that is a pretty good description. We like to use the words psychedelic groove. It is an umbrella term and what we do is very eclectic. We just love music.

We definitely have the psych Rock influence for sure but sprinkled in with many different textures and moods that we are trying to evoke. We want it to be a journey, so dynamics are very important to us.”

Gulieria picks up the conversation at this point, “I tend to gravitate towards the psychedelic thing too, because it is not a genre and for us it is more of a mission statement. It is evoking those types of experiences for the listener, the people in the audience. It has less to do with genre and more to do with the attitude you have towards making music.”

Both men acknowledge that a challenge for them was learning how to take that free flowing improvisational style and giving it some more structure for the studio recording, while not losing their love for improvising.

“We are very much players who like to improvise and to see where that takes us. We don’t like to cut that process short. Naturally that is what Trevor and I gravitate towards. When Trevor and I first started making music that was all happening as part of our recording process. It wasn’t necessarily us as that live band that we are today sitting and doing an improve. Read More

 

Triple Threat From Belgium

Onno van Gelder Jr Interview Photo Front PageWe sat down recently with director, actor and author Onno van Gelder Jr, speaking to us from his home in Belgium. With Christmas quickly approaching perhaps a good place to begin would be with one of his five authored books, De Kerst Slaper (The Christmas Sleeper), a book that is also available in English.  

Onno (for sake of ease we will use Onno van Gelder Jr.’s first name throughout), explains the story (no pun intended) behind the book, “I have got five books until now. I have two collections of short stories, I have two novellas, and I have one Christmas story. He repeats the title in Dutch, De Kerst Slaper and in English it is The Christmas Sleeper. It is based upon an old legend. It is from Veurne which is a city in which I tend to work a lot during these past ten years. They have this old legend about the inhabitants of the city which are called Sleepers from Veurne.  During the middle ages the city was very wealthy and prosperous. They made a certain type of cloth during that time. They had a lot of merchants and a lot of workers. There was a depression during that period and all the trade went to other cities. Those who were rich had nothing to do and slept longer in the morning. Those who worked, didn’t have work, so what would they do but sleep. That is why they were called Sleepers It was a nickname for all of the inhabitants of Veurne. They were all sleeping.

A little over four years ago, Veurne asked me to revive the legend with a story, based upon the legend. I did not have to tell the legend, but there had to be links to the legend. I created the Christmas story about a character and his name is a French name Firmin Dorbien and his last name in English means Sleep Well. I called him Firmin Sleep Well.

It is a Christmas story and most people think it is a story for children, but no it is also for older people.

I received a very nice comment for that book. Someone said it was very much like a story by Charles Dickens. It is without copying and without being exactly Read More

 
Dar Williams - Prolific Songwriter

Dar Williams Interview Photo Front PageKen Rich (who also was the sound engineer and mixer), Dar Williams and her accompanying musicians have created an exquisite collection of songs for her album Hummingbird Highway with a release date of September 12 (2025). It does not take long to realize, while speaking with Dar Williams that you are engaging with a thoughtful, deep thinking, beautifully creative and highly intelligent individual, who cares passionately about the world in which she lives. At the midpoint of the record, there is a brief tonal shift that caught this writer by surprise. David Chalfant co-produced “Put the Coins,” and “What Bird Did You See?” at Grand Street Recording and Norfolk Studios at Northampton, Massachusetts.   

We open our conversation with Dar Williams inviting her to talk about one of the prettiest songs you will hear in 2025, “Tu Sais Le Printemps.”

“The best way to go about writing a song and if you feel something coming on, is to do your best to feel curious about it. This seemed light, breezy, spring like and romantic. I thought well let’s just keep on going. I pulled out (she laughs lightly) all the pictures of France, pictures of spring, of gardens and bridges and then I looked at them to see where the story (was going). My favorite part is the dog standing outside of the restaurant (she chuckles – referring to the music video). It is a French bulldog and then the aerial views of France and the cherry blossoms. The song is left open and evocative for people. You can’t help to find your way back to love or to love in that kind of setting.

I had this interesting melody that kept on being the best setting for a return to romance, as aided by the spring. When I wrote the line, “And of maddening times, we will laugh and say that’s how it goes…,”  I actually had a really emotional understanding of how much Read More

 

 

Maia Sharp - Tomboy

Maia Sharp Interview 2025 Front Page PhotoAfter getting to know our friend, singer, songwriter and musician Maia Sharp for several years, we are not surprised that her new album coming out September 12 (2025) is called Tomboy. It describes her perfectly when she was growing up and nods to whom she is today. We suppose she could have called it “Cheeks,” as one of her friends has aptly nicknamed her for her smile to use an old cliché lights up a room or in this case a Zoom call and conversation.

This collection of songs is beautiful and the album overall is elegant, both lyrically and musically.

“As most albums unfold for me, I am not necessarily sure that I am writing for my own album until I am one or two songs in. I am writing all of the time. Sometimes I am writing for other people and sometimes I am writing for me to pitch to other people. About every year I look back at what I have written and if I do that about one year after a record, I can have the next album out about two (more) years after that album. It takes me about a year to do the finishing out, choosing the songs, recording, mixing, mastering, marketing and all of that stuff. On all the odd years when I don’t have a record that is when I start looking at when the next one is going to be.

At that point after my last album Reckless Thoughts, I had Tomboy already. I had that song already written and I had a little bit of production fleshed out on it, before the Reckless Thoughts album. There was just something about it that just didn’t quite fit in with the rest of those songs. I had always loved it, but I just set it aside,” she explains.

Knowing Maia Sharp, not only as a regular guest at Riveting Riffs Magazine, but also as a friend, we were curious if the song “Tomboy,” is somewhat autobiographical. Read More 

 

Tawny Ellis - Edge Of The World

Tawny Ellis Interview Front Page PhotoTawny Ellis is a lot of things and that is the most understated statement you will ever hear anyone make. She is an accomplished actress, she is an excellent singer, songwriter and musician, she has fashioned jewelry, she is a critically acclaimed sculptor with her art appearing in galleries in numerous countries, she is a painter and that is her art on the front cover of her current album Edge Of The World.  She also works with her husband Gio Loria as the vice-president of his company Black Volt Amplification, which acts both as a luthier and builds amplifiers.  a We will stop there, because if we continue listing her other talents and accomplishments you may be in for an even longer read than you anticipated in this the first part of a two-part interview.  

It has been five years since Tawny Ellis released her last album and there can be many reasons why, especially with someone this busy.

She opens up, “Honestly, I think I got really gun shy. Something shut down on me, because I had worked on that album for quite some time. I released it in 2020 and I had signed up to go on tour in Europe and open for a really great artist over there. They shut down the whole world (due to the COVID pandemic). The day that I was supposed to get on the plane to go to the U.K.  to hook up and go on the tour and to play all of these shows they shut everything down and nobody could go anywhere. I felt like I had just flown a plane into the mountainside. It was horrible. We had packed everything and promoted and all the gigs were laid out. I am a really sensitive person and it was so hard.

You can’t really Read More  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creators of Angelina Ballerina

Katharine Holabird Interview Photo Front PageAuthor Katharine Holabird and illustrator Helen Craig started collaborating decades ago on Angelina Ballerina children’s books that now are on maybe their second or third generation of young readers, certainly their second generation of parents (sorry ladies we could not think of another way to convey the timeline). The books have been adapted to a musical stage presentation and also two television animated series, years apart. At the urging of their publisher Simon & Schuster they have begun creating chapter books based on the same characters. In recent days, Katharine Holabird has also embarked on a new adventure (we thought she would like that word!) as she collaborates with illustrator Sarah Warburton for the books based on the character of Twinkle, a fairy. Katharine Holabird sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine over Zoom for a conversation recently about her books and how she got started as a writer.

I started writing when I was a child, because I always liked to make up stories and right them down. I was the family storyteller. I grew up with three sisters and we were always acting out stories, making things up and dancing around the house. I just loved writing. I was writing about horses and princesses at that time. I was reading anything about animals. I think my favorite book as a child was Charlotte’s Web, because she could understand what the Read More  

Paul Rappaport - Behind the Curtain

Paul Rappaport Interview Photo Front Page by Mark SeligerFor thirty-three years Paul Rappaport promoted music icons and in the process he became an icon on the business side of music.  He started working for Columbia Records,  when he was in university and worked his way up through the ranks to eventually become Senior Vice-President of Rock Promotion. In April he will release his autobiography, Gliders Over Hollywood Airships, Airplay and the Art of Rock Promotion. Paul Rapport left Columbia Records in the early 2000s, but what is astounding about that is not how much time has passed in between then and his April release of the book (pre-order links at the bottom of this interview), but the clarity of his memory in terms of his personal memories and the events, circumstances and relationships that he experienced in the music business. The chapters of this book are not merely vague and scattered memories but rather play out like a streaming or television series where we are introduced to the colorful, creative and interesting artists and colleagues of Paul Rappaport.  

“That is what I was trying to do. This was a very magical time, and I wanted to share these stories and for the readers to have fun, like I had fun. I wanted them to have the experience that I had. Somehow, I was (blessed) with a photographic memory, because as you know from reading this book, I am talking to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Read More

Award Winning Actress Luz Nicolas

Luz Nicolas Interview Photo Front PageIt is not every day that you get to have a conversation with a star of the theater world on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, but recently Riveting Riffs Magazine sat down over a Zoom call with Luz Nicolas, originally from Madrid, Spain and having lived in Washington D.C. for more than a decade and performing and acting as assistant director for numerous plays over the years at the GALA Hispanic Theater. She was in the midst of rehearsals for the stage production of Kiss of the Spider Woman for which she is the assistant director.  

For those not familiar with the play adapted by Manuel Puig from his 1976 novel and later made into both a film and a musical, she explains, “It is about two men in jail, but they develop a character of a woman. It is a fascinating (story). Manuel is an Argentinian playwright. There is also a film with William Hurt and Raul Julia. I think that was in the ‘80s (1985) [Editor’s note: The film also starred Sonia Braga in three roles as Leni Lamaison, Marta and the Spider Woman]

The story is about two men who are in the same cell. One of them is there, because he is a revolutionary who goes against the government and the other one is there, because he is gay and he is also accused of being a pedophile.

It begins with one of them talking about a movie. He is telling a story about a woman. They get to know how different they are, and yet at the same time, they are starting to understand each other very well. They love and care for each other very much.  What Read More

 

 Actor Ruben Yuste

Ruben Yuste May 2024

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 Las Tres Sisters  Film Interview

Valerie Maldonado Interview PT 1 Photo Front PageThe film Las Tres Sisters while primarily about the relationship between the three primary Latina female characters, as seen through the eyes of Mexican Americans, also has two amazing male actors, Cristo Fernández as Kin and Adam Mayfield, the real-life husband Virginia Novello (Sofia) as Harold, who plays Maria’s husband. Again, without providing spoilers, we might describe Kin as being a combination of mystery man and quiet hero, which works well as his character plays an important role in both the story and highlighting an important part of the Latina culture. Adam Mayfield’s character Harold is just loveable. That is the only way to describe Harold. Although he appears intermittently throughout the story, he is just the kind of guy that you want to wrap your arms around and give him a great big hug.

So often male characters are portrayed in one light, as being stoic and that is a stereotype drawn from generations of the expectations often placed upon men in real-life with phrases such as “Come on be a man,” and “Man up.”  A certain portion of society wanted to deny men the opportunity to be vulnerable, to not feel emotionally moved by happy times, sad times, pain or joy. The character of Harold runs counterpoint to that stereotype.

Valeria Madonado explains, “Adam Mayfield is married to Virginia Novello in real-life. We always knew that Adam has a wonderful career, so we knew we wanted him to be in the movie, but originally it was going to be another part. Then we thought, no he should be Harold, so we rewrote Harold. Harold was different (at first) and we rewrote him to cry, because that is how Adam is. Adam cries all of the time, which I find beautiful and it also is funny. A lot of the times I will go over to Virginia’s house, I will knock on the door and open the door and Adam is crying. I will go hey Adam, I will go hi, are you good? He will go yep. Oh yeah, I was watching a commercial. I will say okay cool. I go in and I will hang out with Virginia.

We are so used to seeing Adam cry all of the time and we are showing our personalities through the characters that we (decided) to show this in him. Also, you don’t see a lot of men on screen that cry all of the time. We thought it was funny (Harold’s crying) and we also thought it was endearing. We also thought it was a little bit of a conversation, because oh, he cried. It is something that society does if a man cries, they go eww.

Then Maria (the character) goes no I think it is sexy. We just wanted a little bit of a conversation there. With my character (Lucia) it was eww, but as a writer and producer it was to show men in a different light. We were trying to show men and women in a different light than we usually do. I think it is actually stronger to cry. There is this weird thing when people think it is weak to cry. No, crying means you are willing to face your emotions and that requires strength. Most of us are usually avoiding our emotions at all costs. That is more weakness than strength. Strength is feeling your emotions and letting them out and letting people see you. My dad and my brother also cry a lot, so I have just grown up around men who cry. It requires strength and I don’t think that I can fully relate if I had a partner that doesn’t cry. I don’t think I could understand that. It would be like, what is wrong with you? Where are your emotions? I don’t want someone who is Read More

 

Jesse and Noah Leave Love Alone

Jesse and Noah Photo 2024 front pageJesse and Noah Bellamy who perform and record simply and Jesse and Noah, visited with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently to talk about their new EP Leave Love Alone, which derives its name from the titular song and to ring in the holiday season with two Christmas songs, one a cover tune and the other an original.  

We jokingly asked them about the song “Leave Love Alone,” and if it was a reference to a relationship that went sideways.

Jesse replied, “That is an older song, so I don’t even remember. I started that song with Simon Bruce, an Australian singer and songwriter who lived here in Nashville for a while. We halfway finished it and he and Daniel Tashian finished it and then it came back to me. Daniel was going to put it out and then I didn’t hear anything for a while and so I thought I would just throw it into this mix of songs that we were doing for our next session. We thought we could do a pretty good job on it. We recorded it, got it ready to go and he ended up putting his out around the same time or maybe a couple of weeks before or something like that.

He released it mostly in Australia. I guess it is worldwide, because of streaming.

The songs ended up being so different and with different audiences, so they didn’t really clash.”

Produced by Pino Squillace, engineered by Brandon Henegar and recorded at the House Of David Studios in Nashville the song is a Country song, with Rock influences and excellent musicianship. Those who have followed Jesse and Noah over the years, should not be surprised that Noah serves up some incredible electric guitar licks, while being joined by Lorenzo Piccone and Steve Cirvencik (also on guitars).

Jesse and Noah are talented producers and sound engineers in their own right, so we wondered why they chose to have other people produce and engineer the album Leave Love Alone.

They laugh simultaneously, and Noah finally says, “We just got bogged down,” while Jesse adds, “Some of these songs we were producing and had versions of them, and we just couldn’t finish them being at home. It took a long time to get everything out. We started working on some of them in 2020 and we did some sessions at the ranch down in Florida. It seemed like it would be easier to go in (to the studio) and recut them from the ground up rather than Read More

 

 

 
Emily Zuzik - Age + Alchemy

Emily Zuzik Interview Front Page PhotoSinger, songwriter and musician Emily Zuzik or as she likes to say, rhymes with music, is a lot of things and has accomplished many things during her life, some of which we talked about during a wide-ranging conversation recently. Her current EP, Age + Alchemy, consists of three co-writes with Ted Russell Kamp, two songs written solo and a cover of John Lennon’s “I’m Losing You.” Referring to herself as a seeker is an apt description and another might be a modern-day philosopher who expresses her thoughts and experiences through music. Her musical influences are just as eclectic as her other interests, with David Bowie, John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Elvis being among them. A palette that spans eight decades, and no if you are wondering her life has not spanned anywhere close to that many decades! 

In talking about what she means in describing herself as a seeker she says, “That could mean many different things. To seek out adventures, to seek out experiences, to seek out love, to seek out a way that doesn’t hurt people, to seek out spiritual. To just be sensitive to where you are in any given environment and your interactions with other people. I think as you get older you understand or you seek out different ways to make sense of things that happened in the past or people you have had past relationships with, good, bad or whatever. Seeking is the process of growth,” then she adds smiling, “I am a Pisces.

When I was younger, I always felt out of sync you could (say) I was not cut from the same cloth as where I grew up. That is a very simple way of looking at it. Even my peer group, I never really locked in with people I connected with until much later. A lot of times they were older people who had stories to tell or had some sort of experience that informed what I was about to do (that she connected with). I have had certain older relatives whom I connected with more than other ones. I had older friends when I was younger. I think also where you are is a continuum of things that will happen in the future and things from the past. I have always been interested in that sort of thing too. If I am interested in a particular thing I will research how did that start and how did it come to where it is now. Then to dream where could it possibly go in the future? (We told you she is a philosopher.)

My family went to Japan for the first time and that is very much a part of the cultural landscape there. One minute you will have some whacky futuristic thing that will cross your path next to a 1,500-year-old temple. Read More

 

 

 

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Macartney Reinhardt - New Song

Macartney Reinhardt June 2025 thumbnailThe new single “Two Ships,” from Country singer Macartney Reinhardt is a song about a relationship that has ended and it was written with Kylie Sackley and Stone Aielli,  a duo who have had their songs recorded by Keith Urban, Sam Hunt, Alan Jackson, Priscilla Block and many more.  

Macartney Reinhardt describes this experience as, “I have co-written before, but this is one of my favorite ones that I have ever done. I was on Instagram one day and Stone messaged me saying I would love to write with you and then he brought in Kylie. The first song the trio wrote together was “Cowboy Without a Conscience,” released earlier this year (2025). We really meshed from the beginning.”

Although the song has a summery feel to it, don’t let that fool you, because with a big smile on her face and her dimples showing Macartney Reinhardt says “Two  Ships,” was written on one of the few days of the year when it was snowing in Nashville.

“I wanted to write a song about when you go from being so close in a relationship and then after the relationship it (feels) like you never knew that person. That has always been a strange thing to me, how you can go from every day being with somebody and being so close to him and then a breakup. It is like you don’t know him. Then Kylie came in and she said I have this idea called Two Ships. She asked do you think we could combine those. I said yeah, definitely. She had taken it from Two Ships passing in the night that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem. We just started working off of it. We started the first verse and then went to the chorus. We made a little track for it and we went from there with it. It was one of those songs that wrote itself,” she says.  

Describing the song as, “a pretty ballad type song and slower than the ones I have put out recently,” she says,  “It outlines when you are getting near the end of a relationship and what it starts to look like. The first verse talks about the memories you have with that person. (It is when) you feel like you don’t even know who these people are. You are getting near the end of the relationship and it’s falling apart.  You know what is coming and you don’t want to accept it. You are thinking about when there were better times. By the bridge it talks about when you are at the point of just passing and you have nothing left to say to that person. It is not knowing who they are anymore. They went from being your best friend and your favorite person in the world to being a complete stranger.”

So, Macartney, how does a barely nineteen-year-old young lady with an incredibly handsome boyfriend and who the two of you are obviously really in love, write a breakup song?

“That is just what I gravitate towards. I take experiences from the past and even if that is not what I am going through at the moment. Right now, I am not Read More

  

 

  

 
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