iNTERViEWED
BY BRiAN LUSH
Albums that boast an eclectic mix of music are nothing new
to me but in the case of LISA BELL’s latest release ‘DANCING ON THE
MOON’, I
must say that the Colorado-based singer-songwriter gives eclecticism a
whole
new meaning. Her glorious sound is hard to put a finger on. Is it jazz?
Adult-Contemporary? Roots music with jazz chords? After one meditative
listen,
a word like “genre” goes out the window and you find yourself getting
lost in
the lush, plush soundscape brought to you by an A424 tuning that the
music of ‘DANCING
ON THE MOON’ is set to. The title track is built around a playful jazzy
bounce
as refreshing as a glass of chardonnay at a pool party on a breezy
summer
night.
BELL’s
rich voice melts like butter over the arrangement. The meditative yet
assertive
‘NO TIME’ is a most curious kiss off; a country ballad with jazz
chords. Or is it
a jazz ballad with a twang?
MOVE ON
is a tale of finding the
strength to move forward yet not quite being able to forget the past.
The
upbeat number is accentuated by a plucky acoustic guitar and maracas.
ROCKWIRED
spoke with LISA BELL over the phone about her
latest release. Here is how it went.
Now that DANCING ON
THE MOON is out there for everyone to hear, how do you feel about the
finished
work?
I’m very pleased with it. I think it shows an incredible
evolution from where I came from before at the start of my musical
career. Nine
years ago I started out doing all jazz standards and for a while after
that, I
was pretty much known as a jazz standard singer. As the years have
progressed I
have become more of a singer-songwriter. You tell me, what kind of
music do you
think this is?
It’s hard to say what
it is. It’s a hard thing to pin down. Is it adult-contemporary? Is it
jazz? Is
it pop or light rock? It’s hard to tell.
Right! Good!
Nice
to know I had
the right answer.
And that is part of the challenge of course. This new album
can’t fit into anyone box so that does make it quite challenging but I
also
like it because it’s eclectic and I think it appeals to everyone. We
just did a
CD release concert on Saturday and it was really well received and the
audience
was up and dancing. It was a lot of fun.
Considering that your
first album was all jazz standards, how did songwriting begin for you?
I actually had done one original song on the first CD and I
don’t play an instrument well enough to play for myself or even well
enough to
write. For me, songs have always been formed in my head. Either
choruses or
entire melodies will form in my head and I can play piano well enough
to where
I can write out the melody and then work with a co-writer who can make
the
chords come to life a lot more than I could and a lot more unique than
anything
that I could do on my own.
And in this case
you’re working with guitarist BOB STORY and MARK OBLINGER.
Yes, and MARK OBLINGER also plays acoustic guitar on the CD
and BOB STORY plays electric.
Describe
working with
them.
BOB STORY and I have known each other for a long time. He’s
been my guitar player for a long time. He’s a great friend and
co-writing
partner. He’s got these great melodic ideas. I’ll go and sing a melody
to him
and he’ll come up with all kinds of amazing backing chords. MARK
OBLINGER has
also become a dear friend. He used to be with the band FIREFALL and he
wrote lots
of songs for them. He’s an amazing songwriter in his own right. He
wrote the
title track DANCING ON THE MOON for me. It was a lot of fun to write
with both
of them. They have very different styles of songwriting. MARK has a
great ear
for lyrics as well as melody and it was a lot of fun writing with him.
We
really co wrote a bunch of songs together from scratch all the way to
finished
product.
How
did music begin
for you?
When I was little, my parents would play all sorts of jazz
album around the house like ELLA FITZGERALD and HERB ALPERT AND THE
TIJUANA
BRASS. I started singing along with them as I was growing up and as I
got a
little older it was people like TONI TENILLE and KAREN CARPENTER and
ABBA. ABBA
was my favorite. Through that, I learned to sing a lot of harmony and
background vocals. When I was about thirteen I went to summer camp and
I was
singing around the campfire and this girl turned to me and said ‘Wow!
You have
a really good voice!’ and I was like ‘Really?’ so I started thinking
about that
a little more seriously and then High school was where I really started
getting
into the choir department and feel that that saved me from moving in a
bad
direction. I got into the jazz choir and fell in love with that.
Before your debut,
were you ever in a succession of bands?
No, not really. In 2001 I did my first CD ‘DARE TO BE’ and
formed a band if you want to call it that. In Colorado and
in most parts of the country,
people are in multiple bands so I called my band SO DO OTHER PEOPLE.
They are a
band that plays with me all the time but they are really side men too.
I’ve
always played with my own players and found my own guys and gals to
play with.
More recently, I’ve been a female vocalist for a couple of other bands
in the
past two or three years.
Other
than the fact
that this album boasts original material what do you think is the
biggest
difference? What do you think has changed the most?
I would probably classify one or two of the songs as jazz
and the rest of the songs could be anything else from blues to roots
rock to
pop tunes to adult contemporary. It’s a very eclectic mix. There is
even a song
on there called HOW LONG which has a strong New Orleans feel to it and
could
easily be covered by someone as a country tune because it has that kind
of feel
to it as well. Despite the eclecticism, all of the songs flow together
as well.
In settling on your
musical identity was there ever a songwriter that you kind of looked to?
Someone that I emulated?
Yes.
I love NORAH JONES’ tunes. I like her more recent things as
well as – I listen to an eclectic mix of things like ANIMAL LIBERATION
ORCHESTRA. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them but they’re
amazing.
They’re friends with JACK JOHNSON so they get around. It’s a wide
variety of
people. As I was writing this most recent CD I shared some of thee
songs with
people at the DURANGO SONGWRITING CONFERENCE in California and
I got a lot out of it. It’s a
humbling experience. Everyone has a different opinion. Six people can
listen to
the same song and one can absolutely love it and the other can
absolutely hate
it. It’s all very subjective but they all had some great ideas on how
to make
the songs better. After attending it I re-tooled some of the songs.
What songs from
DANCING ON THE MOON resonate for you the most personally and why?
I think MOVE
ON
is one that resonates for me
the most at this given moment. It’s all about the need to change but
the
challenge is that if you don’t let go of your past life, you can’t move
forward. For me right now, I would love nothing more than to do music
full time
but I can’t get there yet. It’s hard. Part of me wants to quit
everything else
and just do music full time but I’ve still got a mortgage to pay.
Hopefully
this will be the CD that allows me to do that.
A song that stood out
for me was CARRY ON. Would you like to talk about it?
I’ve had a lot of relationships in my life that have ended
or I thought would end and that song is an amalgamation of a lot of
things that
I had felt or journaled about at the time. I took my diary and reread
it and
picked some of these things out. That was one of the tunes that we had
re-tooled pretty significantly after that songwriter conference. Some
of the
lyrics were pedantic and more obvious than others and we came back and
thought
harder about how we could phrase things differently. I think that is
also one
of my favorite tunes on the CD. It’s a very emotional song.
This whole album
seems to have this theme of looking forward. Is that a fair assessment
coming
from me as a listener?
Yes. I would say that that is exactly where I am right now.
Everything kind of has that theme to it for sure. Even the order of the
songs
were crafted very carefully. It’s very relationship oriented. It’s
about the
emotional rollercoaster that we are always on as human beings.
From the time you
released your very first CD up until now, what has been the biggest
surprise
for you?
I suppose that when I released my first CD, I had some
pretty big expectations of what could happen and I approached it in a
very
naïve way as I suppose most musicians do otherwise non of us would ever
do
this. I’ve had to adjust those expectations pretty significantly over
the
course of nine years. The one thing that I know that I don’t want to do
is play
in bars my whole life. That’s not what I want to do and this music
doesn’t
necessarily lend itself to a bar with pool table in the back with the
television blaring. I’ve really put a stake in the ground this year
where I’ve
decided that I’m just not doing that anymore. I would say that that is
probably
the biggest surprise.
The two covers on
your current CD are FIRE AND RAIN and MISTY ROSES. What compelled you
to record
these two songs?
With FIRE AND RAIN, the producer had an amazing
arrangement worked
out for that song and
I thought that it would fit perfectly on the CD. It was the pretty much
the
same with MISTY ROSES. A friend of mine played the original version by
TIM
HARDIN. He had the original LP and we played it on his phonograph. I
loved that
song and that one is probably the most jazz standard on here. There is
a part
of me that can’t let go of those jazz roots and I don’t think that I
should
because I’ve worked really hard in that genre and became pretty well
known for
that at least in Colorado. It would be hard to leave all of that behind.
What would you like
someone to come away with after they’ve heard DANCING ON THE MOON?
What we haven’t touched on at all is the tuning aspect of
the CD. Part of the big thing about this CD is
that it is tuned in a different tuning system then we are used to
hearing. You
probably wouldn’t have even known that had I not told you. Most music
is tuned
to A440 and this CD is tuned to A424. The whole goal behind this CD was
to see
how the A424 tuning could affect the mind and the body. It’s more
relaxed and
it puts your brain into an alpha state which is where meditation
happens. Even
if a song is upbeat and uptempo, it all kind of flows together. The
music has a
very rich feel and hopefully it touches your heart and your souls and
your mind
in a different way. That is what I want people to come away with
whether they
call this country or jazz or rock or pop, I want them to love the music
and
feel touched by it.
MAY 10,
2010
BRiAN
LUSH (FOUNDER,
EDiTOR-iN-CHiEF)
