Singer-songwriter Juli Crockett

(See update at bottom of post!) My friend David Hurlin, one of Fairfield Iowa’s favorite drummers, has been living in LA and playing with the alt-country, love drunk, hillybilly rock, freak-folk revolution band known as The Evangenitals for some time now. He told me about the band leader and songwriter Juli Crockett and Juli and I quickly found each other on all the various blogs and social networking pages we both inhabit on the web. Juli is a fountain of inspiration, energy and creativity with multiple degrees and titles – a BFA in Theater from NYU, an MFA in directing experimental theater from CalArts and she’s working on a PhD in Philosophy at The European Graduate School. She’s an ordained minister of the ULC and a retired, undefeated professional boxer!  (According to Sports Illustrated, she’s the “real” Million Dollar Baby!)  What kind of music would come from such varied life experience? One of my favorite descriptions on the band website is: “The jukebox at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.”

As I always say, probably the best way to really find out what a band is like is to listen to their music!  Here is a video of them performing the song Bad Town live:

The Evangenitals’ current project is actually theatrical!  Titled Dawn of Quixote: Chapter the First, is a philosophical and musical exploration of the first chapter of Don Quixote, written and directed by Juli. It stars Shaughn Buchholz (Scrubs) as Quixote, Christopher Goodson (Cold Case) as Sancho, and Lisa Dee (Evangenitals, Killsonic) as Dulcinea. The live original score is performed by the Evangenitals. They have been invited to perform the show at the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland this August!

Dawn of Quixote: Chapter the First

While CalArts is supplying venue & promotional support in Edinburgh, the band needs to raise the majority of the funds themselves to cover transportation, room, and board for all nine performers. They have turned to a fascinating new fundraising site called Kickstarter to help manage pledges.

The idea behind Kickstarter is you can post your project, different levels of pledges and prizes for those pledges, the total amount needed and a deadline. You then promote the page to your fans and start collecting pledges. However, if the total goal is not met, nobody pays anything! It seems both potentially amazing and potentially frustrating – I know that Allison Weiss made more than her goal that she needed to release a new EP in just one day and so is continuing to raise funds until the Kickstarter due date comes, in hopes of earning enough to make a full length CD instead. But what if someone raised partially enough and then didn’t get to use any of that money at all?  On the other hand, the format could provide some peace of mind to investors who don’t want to donate only to see their money sit stagnant or be spent on something non-project related…

In any case, at the time of this posting, The Evangenitals have gathered 26% of their pledges and have two weeks to go before their deadline.  Prizes range from “A warm fuzzy feeling inside” to personalized, autographed headshots of actors Shaughn Buchholz and Christopher Goodson to drum lessons with David Hurlin to a moonlit, midnight horseback ride with the Cast & Evangenitals and many others inbetween.  Check out their Kickstarter page through the widget above or by going to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/635470598/dawn-of-quixote-rides-to-edinburgh-fringe-fest .  I myself have already made a pledge of $10, and I DO feel a warm fuzzy feeling inside. 

If you’re interested in finding out more about the band, buying their CD’s or listening to more songs, check them out on MySpace or on their website.
(Careful Fairfield readers will notice that the band roster includes not one but TWO Fairfield members – Matt Ticciati recently joined them on bass!)

Tune in to KRUU-LP 100.1 FM here in Fairfield or kruufm.com worldwide online on Tuesday 6/30 for a mini Michael Jackson tribute of covers sung by female singer-songwriters starting at 9am central, and then the interview with Juli Crockett!

UPDATE: At the last minute, we were able to get co-founder Lisa Dee on the line too, so we had twice the fun!  Stay tuned for the podcast which will be posted to the station website soon.

Singer-Songwriter Ember Swift

UPDATE: The Ember Swift interview has been rescheduled for 5/26. I’ll still play some songs off the new album for those of you hoping to hear it, and tune in on the 26th for the interview!

One of my music loving friends brought the indie Canadian musician Ember Swift to town several years ago and I was blown away by her show, (including the talented multi-instrumentalist Lyndell Montgomery, who is also someone you should check out!) which was vibrant, lively, passionate, quirky, informative and fun.

When I went home that night to find out more about Ember online I was even further inspired as I learned more about her empowering and generous attitude toward her independent career.

Blessed with both an artistic AND a business mind, Ember’s  website for her Few’ll Ignite Sound label was a testament to her clearly defined mission and ethics.  Phrases like “Independent by identity, not by default”, and the following paragraph so inspired me and gave me hope as an artist: “In keeping with our ethics, we believe it is very important to share the knowledge we acquire and to keep information FREE for everyone. The hoarding of information and the defensive, fear-based idea that we must keep this power from others is still rampant in this industry. We are not in competition. We can all live here together. It is Few’ll Ignite Sound’s goal to promote a more cooperative approach to the world of independent art.”

Though the large database of venues and other musical resources on the site was removed when they lost their main administrator and could no longer maintain up-to-date information, that spirit of cooperation and sharing of knowledge is perhaps more evident than ever in Ember’s newest project – Lentic.

After completing a degree in East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, Ember had always expected to travel to China, but her music career took a life of it’s own.  For 10 years Ember toured internationally, and released 9 albums plus a DVD project in that time.  In 2007 she finally realized her goal of traveling to China and has been splitting her time between Canada and China ever since.  (For a good read, check out her travel blog about one of her stays in China.  While she no longer updates that particular blog, the writing and insights are both exquisite.)

As she spent over 12 months in Beijing, Ember’s music began to take a new direction, and as a result she needed a new name to represent the new body of work.  Looking for something that was the opposite of the speed and fire in her given name, she came upon the term lentic, which is a word meaning “of or related to or living in still waters”.  As new project, Lentic is a musical expression of Ember’s experiences in merging East and West – everything in Lentic, from the lyrics to the packaging to the instrumentation, is a beautiful collaboration of languages and cultures, allowing the two to learn from, inform and celebrate each other.

Another fascinating element to Lentic is how it was produced.  Ember connected with a Canadian musician and producer named Tim Rideout through the internet, and he immediately understood the new sound she was going for in the project.  They created the album by sending each other the pieces back and forth over the internet from across the continents!  The result has been dubbed “Folktronica” and I for one, love it!

Have a listen yourself at the Lentic website or on her MySpace.  You can purchase the CD, including the option for a special limited edition silk book with all the lyrics in English and Chinese, Ember’s photos of China and each one is signed and numbered by Ember as well.

You can also tune in to KRUU-LP 100.1 FM here in town or kruufm.com online anywhere on Tuesday from 9-10 AM Central time to hear some tracks from Lentic, and an interview with Ember that will start at 9:05.

My friend and crafter extraordinaire Nandi introduced me to the Lovell Sisters a while back.  She went to one of their concerts over on the East Coast where she lives and afterward she talked to them about whether they were open to doing  interviews and then also surprised me by sending me a signed copy of their debut CD from 2005 – When Forever Rolls Around.

I thought they were really talented and was amazed to find out how young they were (all of them were under 20 at the time they recorded the album).  I played songs from When Forever Rolls Around on my show a time or two and kept meaning to email them about an interview but somehow didn’t get to it for a while.

Turns out I picked a good time to email when I finally did, because their manager got back to me with the tracks from their brand new, about to be released album called Time to Grow.  I didn’t even know they had a new one in the works!  Even better for this songwriting focused blog and radio show, five of the songs on Time to Grow are originals!

In any case, if you’ve been listening to the  Lyrical Venus Radio Hour the past couple weeks you’ve gotten a sneak preview of some tracks on the album and you know it’s another good one.  The girls had a deal with a record label lined up for a bit before they started recording, but when it became clear that their original material was not going to be the focus they decided to stay indie.

It obviously hasn’t held them back one bit.  The title track Time To Grow, is a finalist in the 2008 International Songwriting Competition, and Distance, a Grand Prize Winner in the 2008 John Lennon Songwriting Contest.  The are scheduled to play in major music festivals all over the country this summer including Bonnaroo, MerleFest and the Telluride Festival.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of hearing Jessica (Fiddle), Megan (Dobro) and Rebecca (Mandolin) Lovell, this video is a nice overview of their beginning days:

And this is a great song from when they played at the The Philadelphia Folk Festival in late 2007 that really showcases their playing and harmonies:

Feed and email readers may need to come to the blog to see the videos

Time to Grow is available in digital format right now, exclusively on , but you also can get it in CD format at live shows.  Starting on May 19th it will be available on all the major digital retailers and finally on July 7th will be the official actual CD release.

Check out the Lovell Sisters on their official website, MySpace or Facebook for more info, pictures, tour dates and song samples.

Tune in to Lyrical Venus Radio this Tuesday April 28th for the interview.  KRUU-LP 100.1 FM here in town, and http://kruufm.com online anywhere!

Jessica will be calling in at 9:30am till about 10am, but be sure to tune in at 9am because in the first half of the show I will be playing lots of great songs including some brand new tracks from Ember Swift’s new project Lentic.  She’s been spending a lot of time in China in the past couple of years and has created a fascinating new world/bilingual/folktronica sound.  If all goes well with our schedules we should be having an interview with Ember soon as well!