Saturday, April 19, 2008
For the songwriters
2007 International Songwriting Competition winners announced
In a related note, Pause & Play again will partner with the ISC to support this year's contest. More details later.
In a related note, Pause & Play again will partner with the ISC to support this year's contest. More details later.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
So, what's up with the blog?
Why so few posts since December/January? Easily answered. Since then, I've been working very hard at my "real" job, as entertainment editor for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida. "Real," as in it pays the bills.
Here's some of my music-related handiwork lately ...
Dennis Lambert: Hitmaker finds a fan base in Philippines
Davy Jones enjoys his fame
The Jimmies' sound pops for children
Vibes good again for Mike Love
Juice Newton: Still the queen in fans' hearts
The Moody Blues - Livin' on the Edge
New singer revives Blind Melon
Here's some of my music-related handiwork lately ...
Dennis Lambert: Hitmaker finds a fan base in Philippines
Davy Jones enjoys his fame
The Jimmies' sound pops for children
Vibes good again for Mike Love
Juice Newton: Still the queen in fans' hearts
The Moody Blues - Livin' on the Edge
New singer revives Blind Melon
It's ... it's ... it's the Vault!
Pause & Play opens up the Vault of Fame again to add new best-song and best-album entries.
This is a pretty impressive batch of songs and albums, if you ask me - ranging from Bee Gees to Rage Against the Machine, from Little Richard to Mary J. Blige.
Check 'em out here!
This is a pretty impressive batch of songs and albums, if you ask me - ranging from Bee Gees to Rage Against the Machine, from Little Richard to Mary J. Blige.
Check 'em out here!
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Return of the P&P blog ... this time for sure!
Has it really been since Jan. 31 that I've filed anything? Anything? All apologies ... I vow to do better. Beginning now, with what I hope will become a daily fixture.
Here are some future items for P&P:
NEW STUFF:
All-American Rejects, The (title TBA) - Interscope, summer 2008
"Peace, Love & BBQ," Marcia Ball (producer: Stephen Bruton; guests: Dr. John, Wayne Toups, Tracy Nelson, Terrance Simien; Read here) - Alligator, April 8
"Enchanto," Sergio Mendes (guests: Natalie Cole, Fergie, Juanes, Carlinhos Brown, Vanessa da Mata; Hear here) - Starbucks/Concord, June 10
"Year of the Gentleman," Ne-Yo (first single: "Closer"; Hear here) - Def Jam, June 24
OLD STUFF:
"Exclusive [CD/DVD]," Chris Brown (2007 album; with a DVD of tour footage) - Jive, June 3
Here are some future items for P&P:
NEW STUFF:
All-American Rejects, The (title TBA) - Interscope, summer 2008
"Peace, Love & BBQ," Marcia Ball (producer: Stephen Bruton; guests: Dr. John, Wayne Toups, Tracy Nelson, Terrance Simien; Read here) - Alligator, April 8
"Enchanto," Sergio Mendes (guests: Natalie Cole, Fergie, Juanes, Carlinhos Brown, Vanessa da Mata; Hear here) - Starbucks/Concord, June 10
"Year of the Gentleman," Ne-Yo (first single: "Closer"; Hear here) - Def Jam, June 24
OLD STUFF:
"Exclusive [CD/DVD]," Chris Brown (2007 album; with a DVD of tour footage) - Jive, June 3
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Finally, more Vault entries!
So sorry for the lack of activity on this so-called blog. A full-time job away from P&P is taking more and more time away from what I truly enjoy doing ... like adding more songs and albums to our Vault of Fame.
This time, there are eight songs and eight albums to induct ... to make up for a few missed months of new entries.
Hope you enjoy this bunch - from Shania Twain and Naked Eyes to The Cars and Tom Petty.
This time, there are eight songs and eight albums to induct ... to make up for a few missed months of new entries.
Hope you enjoy this bunch - from Shania Twain and Naked Eyes to The Cars and Tom Petty.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
For Sharon Jones, success is sweet at any age
By GERRY GALIPAULT
Sharon Jones has so much soul power, she could make a jailhouse rock.
The New York-based singer, with her band The Dap-Kings, is finding success late in life, at age 51, in a business littered with teenagers and twentysomethings churning out generic hits.
She’s reveling in the attention, mindful of all the years she struggled — all the years she toiled at tough jobs.
Like her two-year stint as a prison guard at Rikers Island, New York’s massive jail facility.
“When I was at Rikers, I was singing with neighborhood bands and doing some studio stuff here and there,” Jones said in a recent phone interview. “One night, I made the mistake of telling the inmates that I sing. I was joking around; they were joking, too, but they were serious ... they said they wouldn’t lock up until I did a verse and a chorus of ‘The Greatest Love of All.’
I was worried that I was going to have to call the squad team in. So I sang it, and then said, ‘Now lock up.’ They cheered me on. One of the inmates had to make them all go back in and then when he got to his cell, he said ‘Miss Jones, you can close mine now.’ ”
Riot averted.
Then there were the years she spent as an armored car guard for Wells Fargo. She even packed some heat, a .38 revolver.
“I would go with the trucks to ATMs at Citibanks,” she said. “I would wear regular clothes, and I would step up and watch the guys put the money in the machines. I did that for a couple years, then I did some security over on Broadway, watching some of the big buildings. It prepared me for this; it got me ready.”
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Long before Amy Winehouse spearheaded last year’s neo-soul revival, Jones and The Dap-Kings were stirring up memories of 1960s R&B on the nightclub circuit. Then a pair of albums, “Dap Dippin’ With Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings” (2002) and “Naturally” (2005), captured the essence of James Brown, Aretha Franklin and all things ’60s and ’70s soul. It caught the ear of producer Mark Ronson, who recruited The Dap-Kings to play the authentic funk/soul sounds on Winehouse’s breakthrough “Back to Black” album in 2007.
A third album from Jones and The Dap-Kings, “100 Days, 100 Nights” (on Daptone Records), kept the ball rolling in early October.
“If it took Amy Winehouse for people to learn about me and The Dap-Kings and Daptone Records, that’s a good thing,” Jones said. “I have nothing bad to say about her. I just wish her the best.
“I met her last summer in Florida. Her manager treated her like she was a superstar, and all I wanted to do was hang out with her, because I’m pretty down to earth. I’m like, ‘Let’s take a picture,’ and the manager’s all ‘No, no pictures.’ But she seemed like a nice girl.
“The only thing I have to say is that she’s in my prayers, that she really needs some friends to pull her up, not push her down. That environment that she’s around, she needs to let it go.”
Born in Augusta, Ga., and raised in New York, Jones idolized Augusta’s favorite son, James Brown. She had the thrill of a lifetime in the fall of 2006 when she got to meet the Godfather of Soul after a concert in Italy.
“It was a few months before he passed away Christmas Day,” she said. “I literally waited backstage for 45 minutes till he came out ... he looked me in the eye and said, ‘God bless you, daughter,’ and they took a picture of us. It’s on my MySpace site. I could feel his heart beating through my fingers because I put my hand around his waist. I looked him in the face and for some reason I knew I wasn’t going to see him again. He didn’t look well; he looked so weak.”
Another thrill was a chance to appear in a movie. She has a small role in Denzel Washington’s “The Great Debaters.”
“You’ll see me in the first three minutes of the movie,” Jones said. “I was singing and dancing all over the juke joint. I enjoyed the experience, and I was so looking forward to my little lines. But they cut two of them out, and they cut out my song ‘That’s What My Baby Likes.’ But that’s OK; I’ll wait for the director’s cut to come out on DVD.”
Success is better late than never for Jones, who never doubted for a moment that people would appreciate her music.
“In my younger days, they would say it’s all about luck, this and that,” she said. “But I knew God gave me a gift and I knew that people would accept me for my vocals and not the way I look or my age.”
Sharon Jones has so much soul power, she could make a jailhouse rock.
The New York-based singer, with her band The Dap-Kings, is finding success late in life, at age 51, in a business littered with teenagers and twentysomethings churning out generic hits.
She’s reveling in the attention, mindful of all the years she struggled — all the years she toiled at tough jobs.
Like her two-year stint as a prison guard at Rikers Island, New York’s massive jail facility.
“When I was at Rikers, I was singing with neighborhood bands and doing some studio stuff here and there,” Jones said in a recent phone interview. “One night, I made the mistake of telling the inmates that I sing. I was joking around; they were joking, too, but they were serious ... they said they wouldn’t lock up until I did a verse and a chorus of ‘The Greatest Love of All.’
I was worried that I was going to have to call the squad team in. So I sang it, and then said, ‘Now lock up.’ They cheered me on. One of the inmates had to make them all go back in and then when he got to his cell, he said ‘Miss Jones, you can close mine now.’ ”
Riot averted.
Then there were the years she spent as an armored car guard for Wells Fargo. She even packed some heat, a .38 revolver.
“I would go with the trucks to ATMs at Citibanks,” she said. “I would wear regular clothes, and I would step up and watch the guys put the money in the machines.
Long before Amy Winehouse spearheaded last year’s neo-soul revival, Jones and The Dap-Kings were stirring up memories of 1960s R&B on the nightclub circuit. Then a pair of albums, “Dap Dippin’ With Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings” (2002) and “Naturally” (2005), captured the essence of James Brown, Aretha Franklin and all things ’60s and ’70s soul. It caught the ear of producer Mark Ronson, who recruited The Dap-Kings to play the authentic funk/soul sounds on Winehouse’s breakthrough “Back to Black” album in 2007.
A third album from Jones and The Dap-Kings, “100 Days, 100 Nights” (on Daptone Records), kept the ball rolling in early October.
“If it took Amy Winehouse for people to learn about me and The Dap-Kings and Daptone Records, that’s a good thing,” Jones said. “I have nothing bad to say about her. I just wish her the best.
“I met her last summer in Florida. Her manager treated her like she was a superstar, and all I wanted to do was hang out with her, because I’m pretty down to earth. I’m like, ‘Let’s take a picture,’ and the manager’s all ‘No, no pictures.’ But she seemed like a nice girl.
“The only thing I have to say is that she’s in my prayers, that she really needs some friends to pull her up, not push her down. That environment that she’s around, she needs to let it go.”
Born in Augusta, Ga., and raised in New York, Jones idolized Augusta’s favorite son, James Brown. She had the thrill of a lifetime in the fall of 2006 when she got to meet the Godfather of Soul after a concert in Italy.
“It was a few months before he passed away Christmas Day,” she said. “I literally waited backstage for 45 minutes till he came out ... he looked me in the eye and said, ‘God bless you, daughter,’ and they took a picture of us. It’s on my MySpace site. I could feel his heart beating through my fingers because I put my hand around his waist. I looked him in the face and for some reason I knew I wasn’t going to see him again.
Another thrill was a chance to appear in a movie. She has a small role in Denzel Washington’s “The Great Debaters.”
“You’ll see me in the first three minutes of the movie,” Jones said. “I was singing and dancing all over the juke joint. I enjoyed the experience, and I was so looking forward to my little lines. But they cut two of them out, and they cut out my song ‘That’s What My Baby Likes.’ But that’s OK; I’ll wait for the director’s cut to come out on DVD.”
Success is better late than never for Jones, who never doubted for a moment that people would appreciate her music.
“In my younger days, they would say it’s all about luck, this and that,” she said. “But I knew God gave me a gift and I knew that people would accept me for my vocals and not the way I look or my age.”
Friday, January 18, 2008
Rhonda Vincent is all The Rage
By GERRY GALIPAULT
Should this bluegrass thing not work out, Rhonda Vincent can always fall back on a role she filled last June: wedding planner.
Not only did Vincent plan the wedding for her publicist and personal assistant, Julia Yoakum, she wrote and performed the wedding song and served as matron of honor.
"It was such an exhausting day," she said in a recent phone interview. "It started so early, because of the scheduling at the Ryman (Auditorium in Nashville); it got changed the night before. The rehearsal, which you do the day before, we had to do the same day. Then I played at the Bluegrass Series that night at the Ryman and stayed after to sign autographs."
But she says it was all worth it, especially singing "I Give All My Love to You," a track off her new Rounder Records album, "Good Thing Going" (released Jan. 8).
"Julia wasn’t finding a song she could use for the wedding, so as I was planning the wedding out, I was writing down all the things she had said before, like 'I'll never find anyone,' 'There's nobody for me,' " Vincent said. "Before I knew it, I came home and we made it a family project. I left the lines to the song in the living room and my husband, daughter and I would add to it.
"The very first time I sang it was at her wedding. I was so nervous. It was at the Ryman Auditorium on June 28, and I think it's on YouTube somewhere.
(In fact, you can see it here: tinyurl.com/26b583.)
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Will Vincent help plan her own daughters’ wedding some day? No way, she says.
"That's my first and last. Never again. Besides, both my daughters told me they don’t want me planning their wedding. Thank goodness for that."
So, Vincent's stature in the bluegrass world is safe and secure. She has won seven straight International Bluegrass Music Association awards for best female vocalist, from 2000 to 2006. With "Good Thing Going," she will likely add an eighth trophy to her mantle.
The album's highlight is "The Water Is Wide," a lilting duet with Keith Urban.
"I'm really excited that people recognize that song when I perform it," Vincent said. "It came from a Karla Bonoff record (1979’s 'Restless Nights'). Everybody wants to sing along with it. I always wanted to record that.
"I actually recorded that song for the previous album, 'All American Bluegrass Girl,' but it has to fit the project and it didn't seem to fit with that bunch of songs. So when we worked on this album, I knew, 'Yeah, this is the one.' And I just knew Keith would be the guy. Karla sang with James Taylor on her cut of that. I just thought that Keith had the perfect voice for it."
Vincent, who co-produced the album with her brother, Darrin, knows a thing or two about recording. The 45-year-old mandolin player has been in the business since she was 5. There was no way around it; music is ingrained in her family's history in Kirksville, Mo.
"My first recording was with my family in 1967," she said. "I sang two songs on the 'Sally Mountain Singers' album. I grew up in this musical family that spans like five generations and hopefully it'll be six generations. My daughters are singing and my brother's children are singing.
"It was this wonderful life of music, and it was a very intense life of music. When I was 5, we had a radio show and a TV show. We were performing locally and regionally because of the TV show. My dad would pick me up from school every day and we would sing till dinner, and after dinner friends would come over and we would sing till bedtime. It was a concentrated life of music that evolved into a career."
Her solo career didn't take off until after she formed her band, The Rage, in the 1990s. With each album in the 2000s, her sales and popularity have soared.
Over the years, Vincent earned respect within mainstream country, much like Alison Krauss has.
"We actually grew up together, and we're friends," Vincent said. "In 1985, I did a show called 'You Can Be a Star,' and I went to Nashville for a brief period and I got a job with the host of that show, Jim Ed Brown. My family was still performing and there were some shows I missed; this one time, my dad discovered this 12-year-old girl from Champaign, Ill. He hired her. She wore my clothes and she toured with my family. It was Alison!
"I've watched her blossom into this incredibly talented young lady. She has created her own style of music much beyond bluegrass."
Should this bluegrass thing not work out, Rhonda Vincent can always fall back on a role she filled last June: wedding planner.
Not only did Vincent plan the wedding for her publicist and personal assistant, Julia Yoakum, she wrote and performed the wedding song and served as matron of honor.
"It was such an exhausting day," she said in a recent phone interview. "It started so early, because of the scheduling at the Ryman (Auditorium in Nashville); it got changed the night before. The rehearsal, which you do the day before, we had to do the same day. Then I played at the Bluegrass Series that night at the Ryman and stayed after to sign autographs."
But she says it was all worth it, especially singing "I Give All My Love to You," a track off her new Rounder Records album, "Good Thing Going" (released Jan. 8).
"Julia wasn’t finding a song she could use for the wedding, so as I was planning the wedding out, I was writing down all the things she had said before, like 'I'll never find anyone,' 'There's nobody for me,' " Vincent said. "Before I knew it, I came home and we made it a family project. I left the lines to the song in the living room and my husband, daughter and I would add to it.
"The very first time I sang it was at her wedding. I was so nervous. It was at the Ryman Auditorium on June 28, and I think it's on YouTube somewhere.
(In fact, you can see it here: tinyurl.com/26b583.)
Will Vincent help plan her own daughters’ wedding some day? No way, she says.
"That's my first and last. Never again. Besides, both my daughters told me they don’t want me planning their wedding. Thank goodness for that."
So, Vincent's stature in the bluegrass world is safe and secure. She has won seven straight International Bluegrass Music Association awards for best female vocalist, from 2000 to 2006. With "Good Thing Going," she will likely add an eighth trophy to her mantle.
The album's highlight is "The Water Is Wide," a lilting duet with Keith Urban.
"I'm really excited that people recognize that song when I perform it," Vincent said. "It came from a Karla Bonoff record (1979’s 'Restless Nights'). Everybody wants to sing along with it. I always wanted to record that.
"I actually recorded that song for the previous album, 'All American Bluegrass Girl,' but it has to fit the project and it didn't seem to fit with that bunch of songs. So when we worked on this album, I knew, 'Yeah, this is the one.' And I just knew Keith would be the guy. Karla sang with James Taylor on her cut of that. I just thought that Keith had the perfect voice for it."
Vincent, who co-produced the album with her brother, Darrin, knows a thing or two about recording. The 45-year-old mandolin player has been in the business since she was 5. There was no way around it; music is ingrained in her family's history in Kirksville, Mo.
"My first recording was with my family in 1967," she said. "I sang two songs on the 'Sally Mountain Singers' album. I grew up in this musical family that spans like five generations and hopefully it'll be six generations. My daughters are singing and my brother's children are singing.
"It was this wonderful life of music, and it was a very intense life of music. When I was 5, we had a radio show and a TV show. We were performing locally and regionally because of the TV show. My dad would pick me up from school every day and we would sing till dinner, and after dinner friends would come over and we would sing till bedtime. It was a concentrated life of music that evolved into a career."
Her solo career didn't take off until after she formed her band, The Rage, in the 1990s. With each album in the 2000s, her sales and popularity have soared.
Over the years, Vincent earned respect within mainstream country, much like Alison Krauss has.
"We actually grew up together, and we're friends," Vincent said. "In 1985, I did a show called 'You Can Be a Star,' and I went to Nashville for a brief period and I got a job with the host of that show, Jim Ed Brown. My family was still performing and there were some shows I missed; this one time, my dad discovered this 12-year-old girl from Champaign, Ill. He hired her. She wore my clothes and she toured with my family. It was Alison!
"I've watched her blossom into this incredibly talented young lady. She has created her own style of music much beyond bluegrass."
Monday, January 07, 2008
What's new (1.7.08)
Goodbye 2007, hello 2008!
NEW STUFF:
Black 47 ... (March 4)
Chris Cagle ... (Feb. 19)
Ray J ... (April 2008)
Webbie ... (March 4)
NEW STUFF:
