Did your upbringing impact your passion for music? When did you realize that music was something you could pursue professionally? Music was a way for me to express difficult emotions in my life. We came to the U.S. from a refugee camp in Thailand and had massive culture shock as well as constant financial pressure to pay rent, pay back our airfare from the camp, buy food and buy a…
Describe the formation of the group The High Plains Drifters, and the significance behind the group’s name? Christina Benedetto: This is more a question for Larry. But for my part, Larry and I have been friends and drinking buddies for ages. When he asked me to join the group I was over the moon. I love all the guys in the band. Just to give you a rundown, in case…
The 21 different performances included in Elizabeth Sombart’s Singing the Nocturnes are a more than adequate overview and re-interpretation of Frederic Chopin’s vaunted Nocturnes written just before the composer’s untimely death. Sombart’s musical reputation is built on superlative piano playing that’s propelled the French-born pianist from her beginning at seven years old, multiple years of study in various major foreign capitals, and working alongside the finest music instructors working today. INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/elizabeth_sombart/?hl=en…
The Harmony Dreamers project, led by multi-instrumentalist and composer Byron Lee Scott, gathers musicians and vocalists from around the globe for a sprawling album release entitled I Come from Earth. The driving concept behind this release is gathering a collection of world musicians from North and South America, Europe, and far beyond to perform a song cycle laudable for its positivity and welcoming tone. This musical moment is meant to encourage…
Gary Sohmers claim a long list of successful credits and collaborations during their long music career but their work together conceptualizing, writing, recording, and releasing Beasties: A Sci-Fi Rock Opera must rank among the most unique entertainment and musical experiences in recent memory. It harkens back to an early era in music history when the concept album reigned as the pop world’s flavor of the moment. Pop songwriters long ago began exploring…
The Refusers are a Seattle based five piece who’ve been around for a while writing and releasing angsty, entertaining, and guitar-driven diatribes. It is the sort of browbeating you get from many humorless clods masquerading as bands or songwriters – witness the title of their latest single “Eat the Bugs”. It is the sort of songwriting that no one else would do but these guys, tailored to the audience they’ve…
Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys’ new single “Goth Beach” the latest off-kilter confection from Sickert’s wonderfully skewed songwriting imagination. Sickert and his extended band of cohorts of Boston staples boast a long catalog of prior releases endearing them to indie music aficionados and tastemakers in the United States and beyond. The single “Goth Beach” gives listeners surf and beach music with unexpected Sickert twists. He blows away…
2022 has been a busy year so far for Alt.Pop artist Little Hurt (Colin Dieden, Ex-The Mowglis) with touring ramping up again. He continues to explore the edges of Alt. Pop & Alternative Rock with new single “Cooler If U Did”, due to be released on Friday, 9/16. The song features a tight groove and a soaring atmospheric chorus that is instantly memorable. Dieden says “Cooler If U Did’ was a song that was written after I went…
Paul Nourigat isn’t going to let the world and life he loves sink down the drain, if that’s where it’s headed, without saying something about it. His EP collection of demos Complex Truths presents listeners with three tracks that tackle modern life with unsparing contempt for anything that strikes Nourigat as limiting individual potential. Potential is a wide thing. It’s potential for happiness, material success, and decision-making mundane and large, and Nourigat…
Les Fradkin’s return under the moniker California feat. Les Fradkin isn’t any attempt to cash in on a moribund but potentially lucrative musical brand name. The band’s original incarnation notched a few hits in the 1970s before bowing out at the dawn of the 1980s. Rejuvenating the band sounds and feels like unfinished business for Fradkin, however. The new single “Perfect World” is unquestionably pop. The harmony vocals, piano, guitar,…
