A couple of cool things

A couple of cool things going on right now in my little music world. First of all, I am thrilled to have been invited to play at the 30A Music Festival this coming January. It's a weekend filled with music on the beautiful NW coast of Florida. This year the line up is amazing. 150 performers at over 25 venues throughout the weekend of Jan.17-19 including RICHARD THOMPSON, ANI DIFRANCO, LOUDEN WAINWRIGHT III, DON DIXON, MARTI JONES, MATTHEW SWEET, SHAWN MULLINS, TEDDY THOMPSON, MARY GAUTHIER, MARSHALL CRENSHAW, ALLISON MOORER, GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS and MANY MORE. Including me! I still can't quite conceal my delight. At any rate I have already started rehearsing and getting my callouses on. The only thing left to figure out is....what to wear..... If you think a nice, mild weekend on the Florida coast filled with music and food and wine is for you--PLEASE COME! Here is a link to all the festivities. Did I mention that I am THRILLED?!!!!!

 Also, I am happy to say I have a track on the new disc, DEL SHANNON TRIBUTE: SONGWRITER VOL.1, out on RockBeat Records November 19th!! Again I am in amazing musical company, all of us trying to show our respects to Del as the excellent songwriter that he was. I am triple psyched to be on this for many personal reasons, one of which is because Del was a very good friend to me and has DEFINITELY affected my life in many positive ways. I miss him so much. The record is a wonderful, eclectic mix of Del's work, hand-picked by various musicians that just wanted to pay tribute to an excellent and sometimes under appreciated songwriter. Known mostly for his powerful voice and incredible guitar playing, his songwriting was sometimes a little lost in the shadows. We attempt here to shine a light on his wonderful words. Here is a link with the full track listing and details.

 I am currently in the studio writing and recording songs for myself as usual. I am also writing and putting together production ideas for Marti Jones next musical project, YOU'RE NOT THE BOSSA ME, a bossa flavored record of original songs. Don Dixon asked me to co-produce it with him and I couldn't say "YES" fast enough. It's first for me to be producing and writing specifically for someone other than myself. The fact the the "someone" in this case is Marti is just awesome. There are no two musicians I respect any more than I do Don Dixon and Marti Jones. I am pinching myself and hoping I never wake up from this dream!

Damn! I should have kept my eye on the potato. Things never turn out like I expect them to. Sometimes things turn out better than I'd imagined...sometimes they turn out worse...but they never, EVER turn out exactly how I'd imagined them to be. For example, in my wildest dreams, I would never have suspected the lowly potato to be my biggest competion as a musician. But it is true. A few days ago I posted a video for a song of mine called "Sugar On The Floor" on my facebook page. Now the video is nothing to write home about, and it wasn't the first time I'd posted it, but the song itself is something that took a lot of time and energy to think about, write and record. I also had help from a few other people who poured their precious musical energy into the making of that little 3 minutes of sonic joy. At the same time, I posted a funny little picture of a heart-shaped potato that had just happened to fall out of the sack in my kitchen cupboard. This is where I made my big mistake. The next morning I noticed that the potato had received much more attention than the song. Don't get me wrong, I love my potato, but it slightly depressed me that my potato garnered more observation and commentary than my song. I mentioned my slight agitation with this fact to my husband Dan. He looked at me and calmly gave me the perfect reply.."Well, Kelley, you've just got to find a way to beat the potato". Beat the potato. Not the reply I was expecting. Beat the freaking potato. He was right! Never in my wildest dreams as a 12 year old, guitar slinging, tom-boy girl did I expect to run up against such a powerful stumbling block in my musical expression. I was positive that it would be because there are many, MANY more talented and hard-working musicians out there that can play and write circles around me, and THEY would deserve to be heard more than me. Forget my 12 year old convictions, I still thought it to be true until this morning when I realized that the biggest hurdle to my songs being heard had NOTHING to do with musical ability, but was due to a tiny root vegetable hiding in my kitchen cupboard in a bag covered in dirt. It's my own fault for posting Mr. Potato Heart. He is a cute little spud. But the next time any one asks me, "What advice would you give to young, blossoming songwriters today?", I would simply reply, "Do it for the love. Be true to yourself. Practice. Listen. And, most of all, beware of the potato".

Some Angel

Whenever I hang out with Marti, I almost always wind up with an idea for a song, or she for a painting. It’s pretty much how we operate on our own anyway, and when we get together it seems to magnify. We don’t live close to one another so we end up traveling a lot in an effort to stay in touch. “Some Angel” is about the purest collaboration we have ever had on a song in my opinion. I love it so much I opened & closed my CD COCKTAILS with it. We took our time and really tried to get it right. This video is compiled from snippets from my camera over the last few years. We DO work hard, but as you can see here, sometimes you just gotta let loose and paint the town red. Just let all the heavy stuff that you deal with day to day fall away, and exist in the moment. And laugh. And cry. In other words…it’s just healthy to occasionally set one’s inner AB FAB free! To Patsy and Eddie…CHEERS!

Blue Town

"Blue Town" is a song from my new disc COCKTAILS that I recorded live in my Irish studio 2 years ago. It is inspired by two completely different towns: BALLYCOTTON, IRELAND and CANTON, OHIO. It's about how time creeps up on you, taps you on the s houlder and points out that whether you like it or not...you have arrived. I always think I'm 'going somewhere', never committed to permanence, until one day I see a flash of reality and realize that I've been living in a place for YEARS. All of the sudden, I am home. The crashing of dreams and reality. That is what "Blue Town" is about. I think we all have those moments when we feel rusty and unfulfilled, thinking that everything would be fine if we could JUST get out of town and start over. The reality is that you will only wind up in ANOTHER blue town. Sometimes you just have to let your dreams go drifting by, gather your true friends and raise a glass to surrender. There is beauty to be found under the neon lights. It is in living in the moment. In this video, I had just finished writing "Blue Town" while I was wrapping up playing shows for my last CD, TWIST. I think it's the stepping stone song between the two records. You can hear it here (on this page) naked and freshly written if you click on the video above. OR..you can pick up a copy of COCKTAILS to hear the fully realized version with Marti Jones' lush vocals and guitars, Don Dixon's perfectly, haunting bass and Jim Brock's spinal percussion. Worth it, if only for Dixon's gorgeous string arrangement. Here's mud in your eye.

MIXING "COCKTAILS" FOR "3D"

What are you doing October 27th? I am heading for Nashville, Tennessee to join my pal Marti Jones Dixon, to celebrate both the release of my new CD, "Cocktails", and Marti's solo, painting exhibition, "3D: Drinki ng, Dining and Dancing". That shiny, Saturday evening we will hook up at LeQuire Gallery to attend the artist's reception for her show. There, we will be performing songs from "Cocktails", as well as favorites from our past albums. This special event seems an obvious chance for us to celebrate Marti's new paintings AND the release of my new record. Being longtime friends we've teamed up musically MANY times. Never truer for "Cocktails". We co-wrote a few of the songs, and of course, she sings on them all. It's true that in the past few years, Marti has been concentrating more on visual art than singing, loving them both, but always feeling that painting is her true passion. So when she DOES swap one of her paint brushes for a microphone, it is a RARE and CELEBRATORY sound that occurs. She is a songbird. No denying it. She describes her current 3D: Drinking, Dancing and Dining project as, "a collection of observations of the world that surround our attempts at recreation". I can dig that. Sounds like what I've been WRITING about! "Cocktails" has turned out to be about, both the joy AND the consequences of, the pursuit of pleasure. We think it makes perfect sense that both projects would reflect each other. Basically, the last few years we've spent traveling back and forth from our respective homes in Ohio and California, to my place in Cork, Ireland, recording and painting along the way. We're just two Irish American girls. We drink together, we eat together, and we've even been known to dance on occasion. Marti painted about it. I wrote about it. I recorded "Cocktails", once again, under the watchful and talented eye of Mr. Don Dixon, aided and abetted by the most excellent of percussionists, Jim Brock, (who will also be there to perform with us on the 27th). There are seven songs total, one for each day of the week, and I love them all. I hope you will too. So the key words here for this 2012, pre-Halloween weekend is: CELEBRATE. 3D. COCKTAILS. October 27th @ Le Quire Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee! Hope to see you there. http://www.lequiregallery.com/artists.html

"Cocktails"...new record coming in October!

If I’m not in my studio making some kind of noise...I am a fish out of water. I have been that way since I was a kid. Every once in awhile I have to force myself OUT of my little pond, and step back and observe whether I’ve managed to make any noise nice enough to play for someone other than myself. I don’t know about you, but the ‘noise and information’ level has been increasingly cranked-up to ELEVEN on my life’s amplifier. Everything seems to be competing for my attention. I’ve come to the conclusion that all I can do is focus on the things that really matter to me. Somehow it seems this OVERWHELMING world turns out to also be very FREEING. I am forced to simplify due to overload. Well, I’ve recently jumped out of my ‘pond’, and decided I have a pretty nice handful of songs to play. It’s a little batch I’m calling “COCKTAILS”. There are 7 songs, one for each day of the week, and I love them all. In December, I recorded basic tracks with my friends Don Dixon and Jim Brock, at Brock’s studio in North Carolina. And just this first week of May, I flew to Dixon’s studio in Ohio, where he recorded, live, a four piece string section of arrangements he had written for most of the ‘cocktails’. They are absolutely gorgeous. Dixon continues to blow my mind. He is KING! Both sessions were amazing. I try to soak in all that beautiful and professional musicianship. For me it is the BEST part about writing songs. Working with people I respect, and in this case, that I love. All around and in-between those two sessions over the last year, I, (and another musical cohort Marti Jones), have been writing and singing and recording vocals. Somehow, just typing this fact, makes it perfectly clear why I call it “Cocktails”. Well, that, and the subject matter of the songs. Also my friend Mick Hayes, an excellent musician living in Ireland, lent his jangle-jangle Banjo to one of the tunes. His musical touch, as well, encouraged me to pull my head out of the water, and see that there might be something sort of interesting about these 7 songs. It doesn’t matter how many there are...they just feel ‘done’ and somehow ‘connected’. So I just wanted to prime the pump for another inevitable round of tooting my own horn about how excited and proud I am of this batch of songs. I’ll be mixing Cocktails, (literally), this summer in Ireland, and plan to release a limited pressing of the disc on Saturday, October 27th in Nashville, TN @ The LeQuire Gallery. It will be in tandem with a solo show of paintings by Marti Jones Dixon called, “3-D: Diners, Drinkers and Dancers”. It happens to be the weekend before Halloween. Somehow appropriate. It will be a celebration, both visually and aurally. We’ll be doing a little live show there that night, with more dates to follow. More on that later….. “Cocktails” will be served this October. I am, once again, extremely psyched.

From a letter to a friend....

Just a little rant on the value of creativity in the world today.

Our whole society is seemingly becoming more and more geared
to reinforce the theory that creativity of all kinds, is worthless.

It's being pounded into our collective heads that things like
painting, music, writing, photography, etc., are really sort of
useless and, in fact ANYBODY CAN DO IT so why PAY someone.
The point is NOT EVERYBODY CAN DO IT! The 'powers
that be' have somehow raised the limbo stick so every
Tom/Dick/Harry can dance under it and be a Rockstar.
Making stuff up is hard! It takes time. Serious energy. And to be
good, you have to be smart. Learning music theory for example
is every bit as difficult as learning Algebra and Geometry. They've
cut back the creative programs in schools. (Like they don't matter).

And parents live in FANTASY-VILLE thinking that their child is
going to win American Idol, or that their stupid 12 year old's Flip
video of his teenage bedroom will go VIRAL on YouTube and they'll all become RICH and FAMOUS. Yeah. ANYBODY CAN DO IT BECAUSE IT'S ALL CRAP!

The real artists do what they've always done. Make art for art's sake. As you most definitely know, there is SO much to explore and learn and improve on when you start a creative project of any kind. That's where you have to get your "compensation". Because, traditionally, creative people are BUSKERS most of the time. Because the product of an artist's hard work is usually intangible, or it's worth is judged on a sliding scale of popular "taste", THEY USUALLY GET CRAPPED! I mean...it's not like being a baker. You wouldn't EVER walk into a bakery and just TAKE a loaf of bread with the reasoning..."Well I know it's stealing, but I'll do it JUST BECAUSE I CAN". But people do it EVERY DAY to music. And Movies. And books.

And visual arts? Man, they do have something tangible to sell, but it's NOT bread. It's sort of nebulous. The line between good and bad art is micro THIN. Who get's to say what's good or bad? Usually some rich, fat, white guy who doesn't have an ounce of taste. He gets to 'decide' because he wants to collect the most expensive and popular pieces because he thinks it makes his DICK bigger. He doesn't give a shit about the actual work. Hasn't got a creative bone in his body. And USUALLY, the artist never lives to see there monetary success if indeed they ever get it. It escalates after they are DEAD!

Now, all that being said, I know I'm preaching to the choir. I was just compelled to remind you, cause I do know how crappy it feels to be disrespected for your creative time and energy. It won't stop you though. Somehow it will improve the next thing you work on. O.K., Polyanna is done.