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Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Label: Rock Ridge Music

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Tony Lucca will be releasing his covers album, Under The Influence, on September 27, 2011, via Rock Ridge Music.  A 10-song compilation of tunes (see full track listing below) by artists that influenced Lucca as a musician and songwriter, the album was produced by Mike Vizcarra (Brian Wright, Ladies Gun Club, Truth & Salvage Co.).  Under The Influence is the next entry in Lucca’s catalogue and follows on the heels of 2010’s Rendezvous With The Angels.

Says Lucca of his latest musical undertaking:  “Under The Influence was originally going to be called Wish List, consisting of songs I wish I had written. These, of course, would have been songs I’ve spent the last 20 or so years learning and playing for people. However, when it came time to make the record, I realized that what I could stand to benefit from more would be something a bit less conventional, maybe say, a little less predictable. After some great discussions with my producer Mike Vizcarra and our friend Brian Wright, we decided to dig a little deeper, come up with a set of songs that might pay a greater ‘homage,’ songs that could possibly reflect a deeper sense of well, influence.”

After appearing on the “Mickey Mouse Club” for six years in the early ’90s, Lucca went the Internet route and sold his first two independent releases, his debut So Satisfied (1997) and the follow-up Strong Words, Softly Spoken (1999), through his own website. His first commercially distributed album, Shotgun, arrived in 2004. It was succeeded by his Rock Ridge Music debut Canyon Songs (2006), Come Around Again (2008), and the aforementioned Rendezvous With The Angels (2010).  His songs have been featured on TV’s “Friday Night Lights,” “Brothers & Sisters,” “Shark,” and “Felicity” and in Kevin Costner’s feature “Open Range.” He has been seen on E! Entertainment Television and A&E, and performed numerous times on NBC’s “Last Call With Carson Daly.”

Over the course of his career, Lucca has shared stages with *Nsync, Marc Anthony, Macy Gray, Johnny Lang, the late Chris Whitley, Sara Bareilles, and Tyrone Wells.  Lucca has also completed several cooperative tours with Jay Nash and Matt Duke (which resulted in TFDI, a collaborative EP recorded at SPACE in Evanston, Illinois, and released by Rykodisc in late 2009, and When I Stop Running, a full-length album by the trio that was released by Rock Ridge Music in the summer of 2011).

Label: N/A

Gaby Moreno’s new album, Illustrated Songs, continues her love affair with the sounds of the blues, soul and jazz that captivated her as a girl. Although she was born and raised in Guatemala, it was the sounds of the American South that inspired her to become a songwriter and recording artist. “I heard an African American woman singing on the street in New York City when I was younger. I just froze. When I asked her what she called that music, she looked at me and said, ‘That’s the blues, honey.’”

As Moreno devoured albums by Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald, she discovered an affinity for the vintage African American sounds of the 20s, 30s and 40s. She combined them with the sound of the Latin music she loved from the same era to create the 12 tunes on Illustrated Songs. Her affection for old fashion music is even reflected in the record’s title.

“The illustrated song is a type of visual art from the vaudeville era of the 20s,” Moreno explains. “You could consider it an early kind of video. They’d project still images from glass slides on a screen and have live musicians playing to accompany the pictures. Since this album was inspired by the music of the 20s and 30s, the title went well with the mood of the record. Every song is in its own little world.”

Moreno co-produced Illustrated Songs with engineer Ryan Freeland (Aimee Mann, Grant-Lee Phillips, Ray LaMontagne). The album was cut live, in four days, with her regular rhythm section; Sebastian Aymanns on drums, bassist Leslie Lowe and Moreno herself on guitar, complimented by a string, horn and woodwind section arranged and conducted by Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann, Grant-Lee Phillips) as well as guest musicians Patrick Warren, Larry Goldings, Greg Leisz and Mark Goldenberg.

Illustrated Songs includes tunes in Spanish and English. Moreno’s supple vocals are both soulful and elegant, casting an inviting spell that’s midway between innocence and experience. The album opens with “Intento,” a meditation on love’s uncertainty set to a laid back, vaguely Latin pop rhythm. Patrick Warren’s serene piano compliments Moreno’s wistful vocal. “I found a poem in a journal I wrote when I was 17,” Moreno says. “It fit a melody I had that I couldn’t find any words for. I don’t usually work that way, but it was a perfect fit.”

“Ave que Emigra,” was inspired partly by Gaby’s own experience migrating to the USA as well as the Arizona’s anti-immigration stance. Its Latinized Bo Biddley beat supports a rocking, mostly acoustic performance, marked by tasty mandolin fills, Lowe’s syncopated bass line and Moreno’s playful vibrato. “Mean Old Circus” has an ominous feel, intensified by a dark arrangement that veers from a verse using calliope/oran, sinister accordions and Celeste to a sprightly ragtime chorus. Moreno gets in touch with her inner Aretha on “Sing Me Life,” one of the album’s most soulful tracks. The arrangement tips its hat to the ‘60s sound of Stax/Volt with Golding’s big Hammond B3, Greg Leisz’s tough distorted guitar and Moreno’s strong, dynamic vocal.

Bob Mintzer’s baritone clarinet sets the melancholy tone for “Garrick,” a tune based on “Reir Llorando (Laughing Crying),” a poem by Juan De Dios Peza, that Moreno loved as a girl. “Everybody says go see Garrick if you’re depressed. He’s a comedian with an otherworldly aura and he’ll cure you. In the last verse, a doctor tells a man that if reading a good book, or loving a woman, can’t light his spirits, he should go see Garrick. The patient says, ‘I am Garrick. Change my prescription.’ This is my version of the story.” The jazzy big band arrangement brings to mind the hits of Cab Calloway, with Moreno crooning the cheerless lyric with an insouciant nonchalance.

Other stand out tracks include “No Regrets,” a bossa nova sung in Spanish and English, driven by the acoustic bass of David Piltch and Moreno’s mischievous vocal; “Fin” a tropical groove that blends a 50s country waltz with Hawaiian lap steel, mariachi guitars and a sassy vocal from Moreno, Y Tu Sombra” a ballad accented by Aymanns’ subtle percussion accents and the smoky cabaret number “Daydream By Design,” a bright and breezy performance that shows off Moreno’s excellent phrasing and Golding’s sprightly piano work.

The inventive orchestrations of Illustrated Songs highlight Moreno’s remarkable growth as a singer and songwriter. “I wanted to push myself this time and explore all the colors I hear in the music. Edith Piaf, The Boswell Sisters, classic boleros and Trio Los Panchos got into my brain and transported me to another era. I tapped into that when I was composing these songs”

Gaby Moreno was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Her family wasn’t particularly musical, but Moreno was singing before she could talk. “When I was 2 years old, my mom would take me to parties,” Moreno recalls. “I’d get up on a table and say, ‘Ladies and gentleman, Gaby Moreno will now sing for you!’ I was not shy at all. When I was five, I was singing along to a classical piece and she heard I had perfect pitch. She took me to voice lessons; I never stopped.”

Moreno’s father was a concert promoter. When he brought Ricky Martin to Guatemala, Moreno was his opening act. “I was nine years old, singing to backing tracks,” Moreno says reluctantly. “I’m not proud of it. It’s kind of funny to me now. He wasn’t a superstar yet, but it was a big deal for me. I haven’t sung for that many people since. I loved the feeling as a girl, but today I like intimate venues where I feel a connection with people.”

Moreno continued performing at festivals, mostly Disney and Broadway tunes. She also listened to Latin pop on the radio until a fateful trip to New York City. “I like musicals, so my parents took me to see Les Miserables. After I heard an African-American woman singing on the street, I went to the nearest record store, saw they had a blues aisle and bought a bunch of CDs: The first song I put on back home was Koko Taylor’s ‘Wang Dang Doodle.’ When we play live, it’s one of my favorite covers.”

The blues overtook Moreno’s life. She studied hard and discovered early jazz, torch songs, soul, R&B and artists like The Boswell Sisters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, as well as the classic Mexican sounds of Trio Los Panchos. “I learned English from blues records. I’d read the lyrics, then go to my dictionary. In school, we had basic English, but the records made me interested in learning it and singing it.”

The sax was the first instrument that spoke to Moreno, but when her mother bought her a guitar, she was captivated. “As soon as I knew a couple of chords, I started writing songs. I wanted to play the blues. When I’d put on a soul record for my friends, they’d look at me like I was an alien.”

As soon as she was out of high school, Moreno came to the U.S. and enrolled at the Musician’s Institute in Los Angeles. “I met my drummer Sebastian as well as my bass player Leslie there. Living in Los Angeles, surrounded by different musician friends, I discovered the classic rock of the Kinks, Zombies and Harry Nilsson.”

In 2006, she won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest with her song “Escondidos,” first in the Latin category, then overall. That success gave her the confidence to produce her debut album, Still The Unknown. The album was played on KCRW and NPR, getting excellent reviews praising its sparse, elegant sound and Moreno’s quietly soulful vocals. The record’s success led to opening slots on tours with Tracy Chapman and Ani DiFranco. In 2010, an instrumental piece Moreno wrote with musician friend Vincent Jones was selected as the theme for the new NBC show Parks and Recreation. The theme earned an Emmy Nomination. Moreno’s tunes were also used on E!’s Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami, Lincoln Heights and Ghost Whisperer on ABC and MTV’s The Hills.

In the summer of 2010, Moreno played the Roskilde Festival in Denmark with singer/composer Van Dyke Parks, performing traditional Latin American songs mixed with Calypso and Americana music. Parks and Moreno are planning a recorded collaboration of standards, but in the meantime Moreno will stay busy touring Europe and the US to support Illustrated Songs.

For further information, contact THINK PRESS:

Monica Hopman / (323) 661-7802 / monica@thinkpress.net

Find it on iTunes here: http://bit.ly/gv7fIg

Catch him on tour this month performing songs from the new record!

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Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Label: N/A

If you’re going to make soul music — joyful, authentic, modern yet classic soul music — it really helps if that music is allowed to come straight from your soul.

Pebble To A Pearl — the latest radiant gem by the gifted singer-songwriter and performer Nikka Costa — is far and away her most direct and convincing musical statement yet. If this is Costa’s most pleasing album to date — and it clearly is — then it’s exactly because the woman singing to us so powerfully has finally found the creative freedom to first and foremost please herself.

“I’ve never felt so proud of an album,” says Costa who earned rave reviews and devoted fans around the world with her kinetic live performances and distinctively funky albums 2001’s Everybody’s Got Their Something and 2005’s Can’tneverdidnothing. “Obviously, I want people to hear the album and love it,” explains Costa. “But, when it comes down to it, I don’t care because this is a totally unfiltered expression of who I am and what I do.

Pebble To A Pearl is the uplifting sound of an artist unbound following a difficult period with her previous record company — sadly, an all too common story in recent years. “This was a totally different experience and one that felt emancipating,” Costa says. “First, I got out of the old label, which was major. Now I’m just so happy not to be caught up in that big machine that’s breaking down. For a while, it felt like I was on deck of the Titanic, and I was just supposed to play the violin for myself on the ship as it was going down. I know that I was feeling that way — and could tell the people at the company were feeling that too — but no one could admit it. There was bullshit going down all around me, and I was extremely happy to get out of it all. Of course, then I had to figure out what the hell to do. I knew I wanted to make another record, but how?”

As Pebble To A Pearl demonstrates brilliantly, the answer to that big, lingering question was to do it fast, do it for yourself and do it for all the right reasons. And so it was then that Nikka Costa began recording her album on her own dime for her own new label, the wonderfully and fittingly named Go Funk Yourself Records.

After a few years of getting no shortage of frequently contradictory record company input, Costa’s greatest motivation came when she realized exactly what sort of album she wanted to make.

“Before long I had an epiphany because I even reached out to other writers, and it wasn’t working,” Costa explains. “I thought maybe I’m not being specific enough about what I want. Finally, I just went with my gut instinct. Keep it up, soulful, happy and real. I don’t want to do anything but that. I don’t want to try to accommodate what I think other people want. So I was super clear to myself and from that moment, everything flowed.”

Costa and Justin Mitchell Stanley, producer of Pebble to a Pearl, made up what she calls “our dream band” including the great James Gadson on drums, Shawn Davis on bass, James Poyser and Keefus Green on keyboards, Jason Falkner and Chris Bruce on guitars.

“We decided to get back to the roots of recording. We all set up in one room and communicated with each other rather than playing to something that had already been laid down to tape. So in five days we had fifteen songs down. Leave the mistakes and keep the vibe,” Costa recalls. “We completed the whole album in basically three weeks. I’m so excited in a way I haven’t been in a long time. It feels like so much has come together right this time and I think it’s because I’m not trying to prove anything anymore.”

That sort of assurance is on display throughout the new album, from the infectious opener “Stuck To You,” to the clearly autobiographical “Can’t Please Everybody”, the cheeky humor of “Love to Love You Less” to the concluding, politically charged “Bullets In The Sky”.

Pebble To A Pearl is clearly a breakthrough effort from a woman who literally grew up in music. Her father, legendary producer, conductor and arranger Don Costa, has a profound influence on her life though he suddenly passed away when Nikka was ten years old. By that point, Costa was already a successful recording artist. At eight years old, Nikka released her first album, with her version of “Out Here On My Own” from Fame. This was the beginning of many albums and tours throughout Europe, South America, Australia, and more, which led to a nomination for ARIA Breakthrough Artist in 1996, Best Female Artist in 1997, and the MTV Best New artist in 2001.

Now with her latest album, Costa feels like a whole new artist in the best possible way. “Everything seems based on fear at the big labels today, and you can’t get music made like that. You can’t do anything like that. This was the opposite of that.”

Ironically, after Costa, Stanley and their friends recorded Pebble To A Pearl, they were approached about a new and more productive record company relationship. “We were going to put it out ourselves solely through Go Funk Yourself Records,” Costa explains. “Then Concord got word of it and that we were doing it ourselves and approached us about going through the newly re-launched Stax Records. So we invited them into the studio and played them a few things and they were like, `We have to have this.’ And it was so nice to hear enthusiasm coming from a company based on what we were doing, not based on what we could be doing.”

For a lifelong soul music lover like Costa, making her album and now having it affiliated with the legendary Stax Records, whose roster included some of the best in soul music like Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes, is the fulfillment of a dream. “How perfect is that?” Costa says with a huge, winning smile. “Stax is the epitome of what I’m about – that was the original, integrated soul music. That’s the vibe that moved me about soul music when I was twelve, and it moves me still.”

After playing some warm up dates in the summer, she says that when Pebble To A Pearl comes out in September, she wants to hit the road hard. “I want to get on the bus and just go for it. Playing live is when it all comes together, it’s my thing – the part I love the most.”

Look forward to Nikka Costa pleasing crowds — and herself — in a venue near you.

-David Wild, July 2008

Check out the dates on our TOURS page – we look forward to seeing you on the road!

http://chamberlinband.com/

 

Andrew Belle  

Bronze Radio Return  

Chamberlin  

Christopher Paul Stelling  

Gaby Moreno  

Jackopierce  

Jason Reeves  

Jay Nash  

Lucy Wainwright Roche  

Matt Duke  

Nikka Costa  

Rosi Golan  

Sugar & The Hi Lows  

The Milk Carton Kids  

Tim Brantley  

Tony Lucca  

Tyrone Wells  

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