October 9, 2011

Next week is the 7th Annual Oktoberfest at the Marsh Sanctuary in Mt. Kisco, NY!  Live music, food and drink all day in a most beautiful outdoor Hudson Valley setting (pictured above)!  This Oktoberfest is especially cool because it is the 100th anniversary of the Brookside Amphitheatre, the Marsh's own outdoor music space - a stage surrounded by a semi-circle of Greek columns and stone-terraced seating built into the hillside!  Add on top of that peak Fall foliage and why would you choose to be anywhere else???  There is a $20 suggested donation to help fund a new project at the Marsh: a new compostable toilet!!!  No sh*t!  Couldn't resist the pun :D

I had the pleasure of managing the "Jam Tent" for a few hours both Saturday and Sunday.  It's a new tent at the festival and its point is to allow one and all to come and sing or play a song with whomever is sitting around in the circle.  It's organic and loose, so my job was to use my middle school classroom management skills to keep the songs rotating around the circle in a subtle and fair way.  I wasn't sure what to expect, and I always lack a little confidence in "jamming" with others.  Of course, 20 minutes into it I relaxed finding there was nothing to worry about.  It was a beautiful sunny day, the folks who came to sing or play or listen were lovely, and everyone behaved (of course)! 

What I loved most about the Jam Tent was that it reinforced to me that everyone has somethng special and creative to offer, and you can never tell what that special something might be just by looking at a person.  Men, women and children came to sing and play in our tent.  Young, old, Latino, White, Black, Asian, short hair, no hair...you get the idea.  A little girl with long brown curly hair and thick framed glasses of about 9 years old curiously walked over with her parents and we asked her if she had any requests.  What do you think she might have said?  Carole King!  The next thing we knew this lovely 4th grader is belting out a Carole King classic and us adults in the circle are all just stunned by her talent and confidence.  She brought the house down!  Later on that day someone mentioned that Clarence Clemons, saxophonist in Springsteen's E Street Band, had just passed away.  The members of the circle did a fun sing along of Thunder Road, helping each other along when someone forgot the bridge chords, or some of the many lyrics.  It was a bonding experience.  I also greatly enjoyed one man who stopped by and played "Rose in Spanish Harlem" on his harmonica and sang the verses in a deep husky voice.  Totally unexpected.  At one point the lovely and talented Maura Kennedy wandered over, sat down and sang a heartwarming duet "Love Hurts" with my friend Rick - right off the cuff!  I'm smiling just remembering how organic both afternoons really were.       

If you  missed the Clearwater Festival this year - go check it out here.  I hope to see you back there next year!    

Check out this little article about my latest CD project with Hudson Valley Super Group Backwoods Jupiter.  Thanks to Adam Fischer for writing it!  Our "band" website is www.backwoodsjupiter.com! 

 December is filling up with some great shows I am proud to be a part of.  A particular highlight will be opening for Mr. Jeffrey Gaines at the Towne Crier in Pawling on Dec. 18.  Gaines was a staple on the radio during my formative early teenage years, and I am honored to be playing a few songs to open the evening.  Check the calendar for details.

 Happy Halloween!  Just got back from 3 days of cabin camping with middle school kids up in woodsy Connecticut (I'm a social studies teacher in my Monday-Friday life!).  Thursday was one of the most beautiful weather days I have ever experienced in 32 years of life...about 68 degrees, sunny and blue skies.  That combination is lovely, but that wasn't all.  It's Autumn in CT, and this means that the leaves on the trees have exploded in reds, oranges, yellows, and still a little green.  So, perfect temperature, perfect scenery, and surrounded by positive folks just put me right over the top.  Thanks, everyone, including Mother Nature, for an incredible day.  I'll post a pic when I figure out how to get pics from my phone to this computer :)

Jules

 Now we have entered into my favorite season: Autumn.  Maybe it's because I became a teenager in the early '90's when stealing your dad's flannel and wearing it for a week straight was all the rage (just me?).  I just love the Hudson Valley this time of year. 

Just a little update:  The Desire Project will be released January 5, 2011.  This will be the 35th anniversary of the original recording's release, so we thought it would be fitting to do it then.  Just to recap: some friends and I re-cut Dylan's Desire in 3 sessions throughout August and September.  To say the least:  I'm excited.  We jammed ourselves into the recording studio called Woody's House and took turns singing and playing different instruments.  We recorded it live, which means what you hear on the CD is actually all of us playing together in a room, from start to finish.  This may seem a strange aspect to point out, but musicians don't usually do it this way anymore when recording a CD.  Most record one instrument at a time so if you screw up, you can do it again and again until you get perfect.  Perfection sounds great (this is how I recorded all 3 of my previous albums) but often times in the achievement of perfection, the artist also risks losing the soul of the performance.   And what good is a soul-less performance?  All humans make mistakes, and it's stupid for us as musicians to pretend we don't make them too.  This is one of the details that drew me to the original Desire - there are so many imperfections in the playing and the singing.  It has been said the Emmy Lou Harris disliked the Desire recording because it was riddled with accidents and mistakes.  I really have no idea if this is true or not, but when you listen to the recordings you can see how someone seeking perfection would be turned off by most of these tracks.  I love them because they are alive.  I hope you'll give them a listen and love them too :)

Be good, Jules   

CHECK OUT MY "LINKS" PAGE - MANY NEW ARTISTS!!!!

I've been getting this question a lot lately: "So Jules, what is this Desire Project all about?"

The short story:  8 friends and I have decided to re-cut Bob Dylan's 1976 album Desire. 

The details:  I bought Bob Dylan's album Desire, on vinyl, in 1996, for maybe $1.50.  My friends and I used to drive around Yorktown in an old orange clunker we called the Pumpkin, listening to a mix tape that included Bob Dylan's "Hurricane."  The other songs were just fine (the Kinks, American Pie, Jimmy Buffet), but when Hurricane came around we listened to every single word.  We discussed what this song might be about (this was before you could whip out a your phone and google it!).  We thought it was deep.  We were shocked that a white man could sing the word "nigger" and get away with it.  In short:  we loved Dylan for writing and singing this song.  After high school, when we as friends went our separate ways, I think I found Desire, the album that Hurricane was on, in a second-hand book shop in an aging mall in Mohegan Lake.  But I can't say for sure.  As so often happens with romantic memories, it is hard to separate fact from fiction.  Wherever this record came from, it made its new home on my childhood turn-table, and stayed there for the next ten years.  When I came home from college to visit my family or help out around the house, I would throw it on, now and again, letting the whole album spin numerous times throughout an afternoon.  I moved beyond simply enjoying Hurricane, to appreciating the entire record:  Dylan's wild story-telling, and learning of instruments that were not particularly popular in '90's pop music: the violin, accordian, mandolin, harmonica.  

8 or 9 years ago I started hanging around this bar in Astoria called Gibney's (now Gilbey's).  That Happy Hour crew was a wild bunch - hard workers and hard drinkers.  Since politics and religion are the two topics to steer clear of in Happy Hour situations, I often found myself in more benign music discussions.  We would still argue, but no one felt personally insulted at the end of our passionate conversations.  Dr. Ron, the local dentist, and I, found we both shared a love for Dylan's Desire.  He taught me a little about Dylan's history, The Band, and often suggested tunes for me to cover.  It got to a point where when Ronny and I saw each other, it was just a matter of time before one of us sang to the other random lines from Desire, like "I married Isis on the fifth day of May..." or "One more cup of coffee 'fore I go, to the valley below."  Others in the bar would often overhear us, and soon another Desire conversation would begin!  My friend, Tadd, in particular, was one such patron who also loved the album.  We even hijacked the jukebox a few times and played the thing to death.  The cool thing was - nobody minded!  It just sparked more conversations about what a great album Desire is.  

So last year I finally rescued my old turntable and the record from my childhood bedroom and we set it up in our living room so we could give the old vinyl a spin.  Sure, I downloaded it on itunes and burned it to a CD, but that clean sound doesn't pack the same crackling punch that a record hits you with.  Of course, the skips were all still there and I listened for them as each verse went by.  I also gave some songs that I hadn't previously been very interested in a good, long listen.  Joey, a tune that romanticizes mob life, sprang to life in my imagination (all 11 minutes of it!).  And Sarah.  Oh Sarah - perhaps I couldn't understand this heartbreaker of a waltzing love song at 17 years old the way I can now as a grown woman.  It hit me like a ton of bricks. 

At this time about a year ago, I decided I'd like to learn a couple of these tunes and put them into my set list for upcoming cover gigs.  Tadd and I did just that, but it didn't satisfy me.  I needed more, somehow.  Then, last winter, I was asked to sing harmony vocals for a Pink Floyd tribute project - the band Stanley Maxwell and my friend Johanna Kodlick were going to perform Floyd's Wish You Were Here album in it's entirety for a charity event.  I just thought this was so cool.  What an awesome idea: to learn the whole album and perform it live!  I can't be sure, but this must a piece of what inspired me to wake up one morning and say to myself, "I should just learn all of Desire and perform it live.  That would be sick!"  lol.  I approached Tadd about it, and immediately he was like, "I'm in!"  Gaining confidence that maybe this wasn't such a ridiculous idea, I shopped the idea around to some more musical friends.  Everyone I spoke to (there are now 9 of us in total!) was thrilled by the prospect of making this thing happen.  We finally got together last week and recorded live 4 of the 9 songs on the record.  To be sure, it was a magical night. 

We have a bunch more work ahead of us, recording more in September and doing all the things that go along with a project of this nature.  I'll be sure to keep you posted, and feel free to write and ask me any questions if you're curious.  Here are the wonderful musicians also taking part in this cool project - I'm sure they have their own stories for wanting to do this - feel free to ask them:  Fred Gillen, Jr., Matt Turk, Debbie Tuzman, Scott Urgola, Tadd Kroneck, Curtis Schmidt, Steve Kirkman, Eric Puente.

More soon,
Jules