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Undecover (Mostly) - Stew Cutler

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 Under Cover (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. 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 age. After I finished high school, everybody left. It taught me to be super adaptable and also music, and guitar and writing songs have been my anchors and stability. Maybe I hit that number by nineteen, but I have continued at a frenetic pace with living in different cities. I have moved forty times. I could do an inventory, but I think it would be traumatizing.

We wondered how much living in all of those places may have influenced or imprinted upon Kristen Ford’s songwriting.

“I would like to think that I am just a very curious person in terms of having new experiences and trying different Read More

 

 

Electronic Firefly

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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 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

 

 

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 Read More  

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 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 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

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 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 re-release an album and I got really disenchanted with the world at large. When I went to write I felt like I had so much to say, but I couldn’t figure out how to say anything. I couldn’t really relate to humanity. I felt like they were at each other’s throats in so many ways. Everybody was turning on each other. I (became) really disillusioned and so I started writing some things three years ago and I couldn’t really catch fire with finding my voice. I did not want to not write about things that were important and pivotal, but I didn’t want to be brow beating or anything. I had to find a magical way to bring people together. I felt like the world was so divided and I still think it is in a lot of ways.

My Canadian friend Daniel Lanois (celebrated musician, composer, producer) who is my neighbor, (with whom) I have become very good friends over the last fifteen or so years would always invite me to hear what he was working on. His work ethic and everything he works on is really impressive. I found what I wanted to write about and they were things that would make people sing along with me. I wanted the right music that would bring people together.

I went up to his house and he played some music for me and that is always very mind blowing and amazing. He is such an amazing artist. I came home, picked up my guitar and I started writing “La La La Love.” I was in such a state of frozen artistry that I decided I was going to write the silliest song I (could) come up with. Stuff that I had warded off my whole life. I was never going to have a song that is La La La or all trite stuff. This song came out and you might think it is lighthearted, but the verses are very intense, “It’s been a hard couple of years / Just tryin’ to stand up straight, don’t fall under this veil of fears…” It is something that everybody can relate to. It talks about “…I think I know the way / Don’t fall too far from love, oh love”  It  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 I would like to be (he smiles). I want people to feel like they were there and experiencing some of these things.

There is some stuff I describe about travelling in the wintertime along the coastline on my snow machine. You would think that everything is white, but when the sun goes down the colors are different hues of indigo, violet and pink and there are shadows and this and that. You don’t really notice it, but when you take the time to look, you say wow. How would I describe that, because it looks amazing. I thought of how I would describe that whole experience when I drive up to camp in the wintertime, as the sun starts to set and all those beautiful colors  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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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 trying to finish the versions that we had.”

As for drummer Herschel VanDyke, Jesse says, “He has been playing with us for seven or eight years or something like that. He is pretty key to our sound at this point. Read More

 

  

 
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