NO DEPRESSION MAGAZINE

The Roots Music Authority Magazine

 

 

BY STACEY ZERING

OCTOBER 27, 2015

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Q: There is so much emotion in your vocals on the Roots: A Tribute album. When you record your vocals, do you try to imagine yourself as the protagonist of the song? How do you instill your own feelings into a song? 

A: Yes. I do try to imagine myself as the protagonist.  I am also an actor who graduated with a theater degree from Northwestern and have worked and studied as an actor for a long time.  So I treat each song like I would treat a role.  I try to put myself in the shoes of the person speaking, to find that character, her story, her feelings, and then bring her to life.  I am acting the song as well as singing it.

 

Q: What made you decide to sing these songs in particular? 

A: It was a long process over a period of several years playing clubs with the band and trying out all kinds of things.  There are songs I heard as a child growing up, songs I played in various bands as an adult, songs people suggested.  I ended up with the ones that represented a range of what I feel is my style and the style of the band; songs that speak to who I am.

 

Q: What track has the most meaning to you and why?

A: Oh gosh, they each have their own story for me, and I can’t really pick one as having more meaning than another.  “Minnie” makes me laugh;  “Give Your Mamma” wants me to really pull those notes and feel the power; “Heartache” is raw; “Grapevine" is heartbroken.  Each one is unique for me.

 

Q: What are your plans for your next album? 

A: We hope to go back in the studio next year and expand on what we’ve started.  I will continue to pick a combination of roots, blues, jazz, ragtime, and other songs that resonate with me as well as my husband, Greg.  He has a grittier feel, and I love it on this album and in the band.  I think it works well with how I see the general style of the band and what we will do going forward.

 

Q: "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" sounds refreshingly different. How did that come about? 

A: I heard a slow version of the tune once, and it gave me the germ of an idea.  I asked our bass player at the time, Ravi Knypstra, to jam with me, and he came up with that brilliant opening line which then fed my interpretation of the beginning.  And then it just sort of revealed itself.  Mike Hughes on keyboards, Michael Rosen on drums, Les Benedict on trombone, Ruben Ramos on bass, and Greg Ellis on guitar added their interesting and nuanced ideas. I just sang what was in my head, found the character, told the story, and there it was.  My amazing band played a critical role in the final cut.  I am so glad people are responding to that arrangement.  It was such a labor of love.

 

Q: How did you get introduced to the blues? 

A: Blues came to me from all kinds of places.  My mom was a classical pianist as well as a jazz player, and she loved "Rhapsody in Blue."  As a child growing up, I would hear her on the living room grand playing that great classic as I was falling asleep, a magnificent blues lullaby.  When I think of it even now I can still feel it in my bones.  Mom also played in a Dixieland band right up until she passed at age 83, so she introduced me to the wild Chicago and New Orleans everyone-play-at-once kind of raucous rag and Dixie style which I love.  And big bands. Cab Calloway was her favorite, and we’d sing along, hi de hi de hi de hi.

Another big blues influence on me happened during my college years and came from an unusual source.  My pastor would spend evenings in downtown Chicago playing piano in blues clubs on Rush Street and ministering to those who needed it.  They called him the Night Pastor.  He could lay it down with the best of them, and I often went to listen to him and the groups he played with.  Those years really exposed me to down-home raw Chicago blues right where it was happening with the musicians who lived it.  So this music has been a visceral part of my life from my earliest memories.  It is home for me.