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Agota Dunai Lost in Black Forest

Agota Dunai Interview 2026 Front Page PhotoMost people when they think of Black Forest, think of the delicious cake or the legendary forest in Germany, but there is also the sixty-two minute, 2025 film Black Forest written and directed by Attila Szabó. It stars Hungarian actors Ágota Dunai and Gábor Joó. If you are a fan of Black Mirror, thriller films with a little bit of fantasy mixed in, you will probably enjoy this film. Dunai who is quickly garnering international attention is a very good actress who has played everything from Natalia in Black Forest, to a Drag King, a few flight attendants and a French football player’s wife. She has socialized with Mozart, been a smuggler and been a Celtic shaman playing a drum. Her film credits include appearing in films with Josh Hartnett, Tom Cruise, and Katee Sackhoff. The Cruise film is scheduled for release this fall and she was not allowed to tell us more than that.

She describes Black Forest which appeared on Hungarian television as, “weird, dark things are happening.

Natalia (Dunai) and her husband Kevin (Joó)) are going down the road and another car almost hits them. They get off the road and they decide to stop there and have their hike in that part of the forest. After a while they realize they are lost, so they decide to go back to their car, but they cannot find it. They find another couple who are lost as well.”

From there the film takes a turn that is part Sliding Doors (the film), part Alfred Hitchock and very supernatural, as seemingly evil forces try to prevent them from finding their way out of the forest.  

“Everybody’s story goes in a different way,” she says.

One of the more interesting roles that Ágota Dunai has appeared in was as a drag king, who knew? We thought there were only drag queens.

“Recently, I was cast to play a drag king. I was in shock and even my agent was in shock. I was really happy. It was a small role, but that finally made me think, finally I am breaking out of my stereotype. I think the kinds of roles I get are expanding. I can’t really talk about it, because the film is still being made, but Read More

 

 

 

Deer Fellow Cinematic Pop Folk

Deer Fellow Interview Front Page PhotoImagine if you will a couple of gamers meet online while intensely competing against each other and then develop a crush and decide to meet. Well, that is not at all how things happened with Alyssa Kelly and Matt Salois who now call Austin, Texas home.

Alyssa says, “It is a very classic Austin musician meeting about eleven years ago. We both liked each other’s sets at an open mic and Matt came up and introduced himself to me. It was my first night at open mic, but Matt was a regular. A couple of months later we sang together a cover song at the open mic.”

They are not native Austinites, but both have been in the Texas city long enough to claim it as home, with Alyssa having moved from Kansas City Missouri, thirteen years ago and Matt was born in San Deigo, but grew up in Houston, prior to moving to Austin in 2009. That is a long way to go to find your musical selves and to marry someone, although it was not planned that way.

They stopped by to chat about their recently released album Hues and Matt Salois explains why that title was picked.

“It started with the song “Beautiful Gray” and that is about this in between will they or won’t they start a relationship. The feelings with that we incorporated into “Beautiful Gray,” just like it is not black and white,” says Matt, before Alyssa adds the word, “haziness,” which Matt echoes.

Continuing Matt says, “The titular track Hues was actually based off a video game Hue, which is a video game about getting through obstacles and challenges, by manipulating backgrounds and colors or things that are in your way or changing a landscape, so you can see something you didn’t see before. It is all about the emotions tied to different colors and the perspective you can get depending on what you are feeling that day or that week or the mood that you are set in. The song “So Low,” is about depression and is blue.

The good thing about video games is you do not have to play video games to understand the concept behind it. The video game is an inspirational metaphor  how the way emotions help you navigate what you Read More

 

 

 

 

Electronic Firefly

Electronic Firefly cello 

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Scarlett Macfarlane is Sorry

Scarlett Macfarlane photo front pageRecently, New York, singer, songwriter, musician Scarlett Macfarlane sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine to talk about her music and life. Perhaps the most important things you could know about her came from the answer to a question we asked her near the end of our conversation. That being, What do you think has shaped your music?

“I think life has informed my music. There are so many things. When you talk about multi-level highways, I had nineteen levels at once (when I was thinking). I think a stream of consciousness answer (is best) rather than taking time to think about it, because if you ask me tomorrow, I will have a different answer. The values in my family have never felt like anything that was material was the most important thing.  Who you are mattered more than any of it, that inner sense of self, that inner conscience. I was treated like an adult from a very young age. My parents would always ask me for advice. They never treated me as less than in any way, shape or form in any phase of my life. Not that it gave me a sense of self-importance, but rather it gave me a sense of self-worth. What you do is not who you are. I was raised to believe that anything was possible. It is just a matter of figuring out how to get there. That could be a bad thing to, because it could set you up for well why I didn’t  succeed. I have never lost sight of; sure, I will give it a go. I am not afraid to think big, dream big and have aspirations. I think that has fed my music more than anything.

I also think and the first answer that came to mind I consume a lot of science fiction and fantasy. I feel like I live in a science fiction novel half the time. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I see the world as being pretty crazy. This is pretty crazy what we are doing here and so life is a crazy thing. There is so much we don’t know and so much we think we know. So much is always changing, it is like living in a science fiction novel. When you consume a lot of that and you consume a lot of fantasy, I think that finds its way into my music as well. Those are my two answers, family and self-worth and the sense that anything is possible. That kind of surreal,  Read More

 

Hank Alrich and the Broken River

Hank Alrich Interview Front Page PhotoMany if not all of Hank Alrich’s songs on his new album Broken River tell stories and that should not be surprising, as he joined this writer in conversation for ninety minutes recently and it felt like sitting across from the legendary Davey Crockett, except there were no exaggerated stories of Hank wrestling a bear. Maybe that is for a future album.    

That is where our conversation began…with the stories, not the bear! 

“Almost all of them (songs) have a story and that is how I work. People like to talk about their intention and meaning, but I honestly don’t understand the process of what brings me a song. As a friend of mine said, do not dig too deeply into understanding how a process works. I will be washing the dishes or sweeping the floor or splitting firewood and a line will come to me.  I don’t know where it comes from and I have learned that if a line gets my attention, I better log it. I will say it into a phone or I will somehow save it.  I will dry my hands from washing dishes and I will write that line down and I will go back to washing dishes and thirty seconds into washing dishes the next line comes (he says in jest) it takes forever to wash the dishes sometimes.

In November of 2017 songs had just been coming and coming. I drove from California (to Austin) for the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. For several years I was directing the music which is embedded in that wonderful arts and crafts festival. I told myself you need to stop writing and get on with getting out of here. I was literally putting stuff in the van and the opening lines and “The Perfect Hat,” shows up, the second song on (this) album. By the time I had the van packed I had all of the lyrics. Now it had taken too long to pack the van. I didn’t actually put the music together until I got to Austin.  It is one of those songs Read More

 

   

Marie Lind From Denmark

marie lind interview front page photoSinger, songwriter, choirmaster Marie Lind like so many of the world’s great performers in music (Lill-Babs from Järvsö, Sweden and Joni Mitchell, Fort MacLeod, Canada and Jewel Kilcher (known simply as Jewel), Homer, Alaska), comes from a small but beautiful part of the world. She grew up on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, population then about forty thousand and change.  

She describes her birthplace as, “It is close to Sweden. Some of it is very rocky in the north and in the south, it has really good sandy beaches. A lot of people vacation there, because of the beaches and fine sand. In the summer if the weather is really nice and the sun is shining it feels almost like being in the south of Spain or Italy. Even though it is a small island, not everybody knows everybody, but almost. If you want to go to university you have to go to Copenhagen and the mainland.”

Continuing Marie Lind says, “I was born there, in a little town in the north and then I spent my childhood there, before moving from the island to go to boarding school in 1992, I think. I did not move back to the island, because I wanted to go to a music high school. It is called a gymnasium. You live at the school and you share a room with other students.  I think we were eighty-six students when I stayed at the school. I stayed there for two years and they were some of my best school years.

I had to go overseas to Sjaelland to the island where Copenhagen is. I had to move a bit to go to that school.”

As for the transition, she says, “We only had one escalator on Read More

 

 

jojomago Fabulous New Album

jojomago Interview Photo Front PageIt is unusual for someone to confess to you their biggest dream in your first face to face conversation, but in explaining her stage name jojomago that is exactly what this incredibly talented singer and songwriter did recently when she sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine. The jo part is easy, because it is her first name, but what about mago?

“In Italy Mago means a witch or a wizard. It has a different kind of twitch and people are (she tilts her head to one side) why jojo the witch? My biggest dream is to have grey hair and move out into the woods. Yes, that is my hope and dream that I can grow into a wise old witch in the woods with grey hair. (she laughs quietly) Who knows? Some people think that a witch is a bad thing, but I’ll take it,” she says with a hint of mischief in her eyes. 

The name jojomago however has roots far deeper than when this American lady moved to Italy fifteen years ago and she explains, “jojomago is a nonsense name. I have a bunch of aunts and uncles and their love language is making fun of you. When I was little, one of my uncles decided my name was ‘jojomago, baddest girl I know.’ He would say it over and over again and I hated it. “Baddest,” no I’m not the “baddest,” I’m  a good kid. It has always been a name that stuck with me and when I decided to start a music career I really wanted to have a name that was unique, one of a kind, because I could go by Jo or JoJo, because that would make a lot of sense, but there are a lot of artists out there that are Jo or JoJo and you know how it is, finding an emerging artist is the worst thing Read More

Kristen Ford and Her Pinto

Kristen For Interview Photo Front PageWhen we sat down to chat with singer, songwriter and musician Kristen Ford it was only a few days after she appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show.  

I had it (The Kelly Clarkson Show) confirmed less than forty-eight hours before we filmed it and it came from an opportunity in 2021. In this industry even the best of us gets so confused and broken down and It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Enjoy the wins when they show up. Never be too impatient, because things happen sometimes slowly and then all at once. They flew me out of Sacramento to New York.

It was the first time I worked with a producer. I think I kind of got tunnel vision and though oh my god this is actually happening. Don’t mess up. (On the show) there were The Temptations and Zöe Zaldaña. I just try to be low key around famous people.”

It seems almost prophetic when she says, “This year is the year of the horse and I don’t know if you follow the Chinese zodiac. We go from the year of the snake into the year of the horse and the fact Pinto (her current album) is that horse spirit and then a surprise like Kelly came out of nowhere.”

When you read about the first half of Kristen Ford’s life it sounds a bit like a troubadour, as she lived in six states by the time she was nineteen.

“I grew up mostly in western Massachusetts, but I had moved across the country a few different times from an early Read More

 

 

 

 

 

 

Floating on the Dreamline

Alan Williams Interview Photo Front Page On March 29, 2026, singer, songwriter, musician Alan Williams’ journey that began as a child and Julie Andrews will come to a rest with Floating on the Dreamline the unofficial release of his new album and his retirement concert. As we sat thousands of miles apart recently, at opposite ends of a Zoom call this writer could only have wished that our conversation had taken place in person. Alan Williams is the kind of person you warm up to in a heartbeat. He is thoughtful, intelligent, and he is as much interested in the interviewer as you are in him.  

Let us add some clarity to that Julie Andrews comment we made, a reference to him as a child seeing The Sound of Music. With a smile only leaving his face for fleeting seconds during our entire conversation he explains.

“Who can say no to Julie Andrews on the top of a mountain? I don’t normally gravitate toward musicals, but as a young impressionable child that seemed larger than life. It was so successful back in the day you could trot it back out to the theaters a couple of years later and the crowds would pour in. My dad took me to see it when I was three years old.  We were in Morristown Tennessee,” smiling he continues, “I don’t think Julie Andrews was ever planning to make an appearance there. 

I don’t remember this, but I have been told the next day my mother was in the kitchen and I was around the corner and there was a piano, and I don’t know why we even had a piano, because nobody played and she heard somebody banging out Do-Re-Mi. It was me with my hand above my head to touch the piano keys. I found middle C apparently and I began to play the song from the movie.

Immediately it was we’ve got a prodigy let’s get him lessons. This Read More

Fiona Joy Hawkins Lava and Snow

Fiona Joy Hawkins Interview 2026 Front Page PhotoIt had been a while since we sat down with Australian composer and pianist Fiona Joy Hawkins, who has performed internationally and exquisite music has resonated with fans all over the world. In this conversation we talked about her album When Shadows Talk.  

She begins by explaining why she refers to her music as Neo Classical / New Age, “Neo Classical means derived from the Classical period. You have the Baroque period, the Classical period, the Romantic period and a whole pile of smaller ones and I guess that has led up to now and I think that is Neo Classical. New Age means something a little more connected and it means being connected and spiritual, but without any religion. It says something about the world around us and it has a deeper meaning. A lot of music has gone before us, going back to the Gregorian chant. One music period develops and grows from another.”

The music is Neo Classical / New Age. You have a concept and you write about that and hopefully they (the listeners) understand where that piece of music comes from. Really, music has no value unless it has value to the listener. You hope when they are listening it takes them somewhere else in their own space and they connect with the piece of music. That is usually what happens and that is the beauty of instrumental music. It can mean whatever you want it to mean.”

Segueing into talking about the album, she says, “In 2024 I figured it was time that I recorded another album. I wasn’t really inspired. My husband (Bas) was going to work overseas for six weeks, so I thought okay  this is really the perfect opportunity for me to Read More

 

Iris Jacobs Dutch Filmmaker

Iris Jacobs photo front pageIt is A Highly Suspicious Connection. No, those capital letters were not us screaming at you, but they are the title of a film by Dutch screenwriter, actress and  director Iris Jacobs, who for the past ten years has called Barcelona, Spain her home.

“I started this project during the pandemic. Lots of things were going on in the online atmosphere and I was seeing a lot of things going around, especially with conspiracy theories and polarization was already happening there. Then I had an idea to write a romantic comedy thriller and to combine these elements. It is about these two characters that represent these polarizations. They are sort of opposites, but somehow, they are the same. They were both trauma informed polarizations, but they have different coping mechanisms. You have a spiritual wanderer who is in the misty countryside and she is going to have a date with an ex-military man. He is extremely suspicious and he thinks that he is being recorded all of the time. He is going to meet this woman in the countryside.

They seem to be different, but they sort of have a similar trauma and that is also why they are really attracted to each other. They are also very reactive in their relationship. They find a stranger bound to a tree. They go on this mission together. The guy bound to the tree appears to know more than they do. They have to collaborate to figure it out. Of course, they fall in love (not the guy in the tree). Read More

 Actor Ruben Yuste

Ruben Yuste May 2024

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 Stew Cutler Undercover (Mostly)

Stew Cutler 2025 Interview Front Page PhotoUndercover (Mostly) the new album from Stew Cutler does not describe some child hiding underneath the blankets from an imaginary monster, but rather the superb guitarist covering seven of the nine songs that appear on the record and adding to them two of his own compositions. Let us say this and be completely transparent throughout our history, Riveting Riffs Magazine has been a little apprehensive of albums heavily populated by covers, because so often the artists merely try to sound as close as possible to the original artists, leaving you wondering why you did not just buy the original record. That, however, is not the case with Stew Cutler’s Undercover (Mostly). He has reimagined some iconic songs, arranged them as purely instrumentals and given us a special gift that we will enjoy for many years to come.   

So, we wondered at this point in his career what would lead Stew Cutler to create an album like this.

He explains, “A while ago a friend of mine came by to see me play and she is a manager person, a producer person and she didn’t end up working with me, but I did for many years work with her on her main project which is the Harlem Gospel Singers. Her main comment was your music is really good, most people don’t know any of these songs. Why aren’t you doing any covers?

I don’t have a really good answer as to how this all got going. I thought of it as a challenge to take some songs that people knew and to turn them around a little bit. I have been a little bit fascinated with songs that end up as hits or top forties hits like the song “Betcha By Golly Wow,” the one that I did on solo guitar. It was a top R&B hit. It is such a Jazz tune. So many of Stevie Wonder’s songs were Jazz tunes. Now I can’t say that about “Close To You,” I am proud of the arrangement on that. It was a little different and I included a drum solo out of respect for Karen Carpenter. It was played by Bill McClellan. I introduce it on stage as Freddie King  meets Karen Carpenter.”

The interesting thing about “Betcha By Golly, Wow,” is that is almost associated with the Philadelphia group The Stylistics and for good reason as the single was a gold record that peaked at #2 on the R&B charts in America and #3 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Here is the thing though, The Stylistics were covering The Thom Bell and Linda Creed song recorded in 1970 by Connie Stevens under the title “Keep Growing Strong.” So, we might say that Stew Cutler recorded a cover of a cover and reimagined it, just as The Stylistics reinterpreted the song in their own way.

It occurred to us that even those of a certain vintage may be familiar with many of these songs, such as “Summer Breeze,” by Seals & Crofts, but many others may be hearing these wonderful songs for the very first time.

“That is something Read More

 

 

 

 Ana Luísa Ramos

Ana Luisa Ramos Interview Photo front pageSão Paulo, Brazil to St. John’s Newfoundland in Canada is almost 8,000 kilometers, a distance that likely a young girl named Ana Luísa Ramos thought she would never travel when she was singing in a children’s choir, let alone make St. John’s her home, many years later. Proud of her Brazilian heritage, but obviously proud of her home in recent years, Newfoundland, Ana, her husband Eric and their family have not only traveled together across great distances but also have had a musical journey together that started many years ago. Ana Luísa Ramos sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine over a Zoom call to talk about her life, career and took us back the very beginning.        

She begins, “I was born in Ribeirão Preto and that means Black River. In the city we have this river and it used to be a big river. Now it is not that big and not that clean anymore. I was born in 1988. I always loved music. My parents are not musicians. From my mom’s side her grandma and her brothers, they used to play and sing and paint, but music is very present in my culture and people are very much connected to music.

I have always had music at my house and I had many diverse influences. My father loves Brazilian music, but he also is a Beatles fan and all of the sixties Rock bands. My brothers, I have two older brothers and they were the ones who introduced me to MTV. We used to see what was happening in the U.K. and in the U.S. I remember the first time I saw Pink Floyd (big smile).

I started singing in choirs and my grandma, my father’s mom, loves Classical music. At the time we would listen to music on CDs. There was this magazine that if you bought the weekly issue, you would receive a different CD every week. There were many composers.

My grandma is a very simple person who only did primary school, but she would love to listen to music. She was a housewife. She stayed home, cleaning, cooking and taking care of the grandkids. I still remember listening to all of the Opera singers and the Classical music. I would sing with my (she does air quotes) Opera voice. My mom decided to put me in a choir (Her eyes sparkle as she remembers). I still love to listen to Classical music. That is how I started and I was very (much) a perfectionist. This was Coral Infantil da Cia Minaz (Children's Choir) at the Teatro Minaz.

It was a very different experience. We would have theory music 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 the same. With that story it was written during the COVID period. Veurne is a town and we have these Christmas markets every winter in all the towns here in Belgium. Of course, during COVID, they Read More

 

 

 

 

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Rachael Sage and The Sequins

Rachael Sage Interview 2025 Photo TwoRachael 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 (Kelly Halloran) and not one but two phenomenal cellists (Dave Eggar and Ward Williams) who record with me and tour with me ongoing. I think what you are really asking about is how we layer these string tracks and to some degree it interacts with some brass on a few of the tunes with my wonderful trumpet player Russ Johnson. Read More
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