Democratized coffee fund

Prince - Purple Rain. You won’t see the hardest work I did this year. Over nearly three months, I chased an opportunity so nestled in the pocket of my skill set I thought it impossible that I’d be ignored. And yet. Also untelevised: executing an octogenarian birthday bash and the hours into days of administrative work required to produce music and documentary film. The work continues behind the scenes. Baby I’m a Star

Kate Bush - Live on Stage. The inexorable cycle of seeking institutional validation and coming up short inspires a retreat into the sanctum of La Femme Pendu and her matron saint, Kate Bush, whose live performances were informed by her multi-disciplinary artistry (her dance training, the poetry and philosophy of her brothers, the folk history of her British upbringing). She shows me what to do through symbols and dreams. Them Heavy People

Kate Bush - The Whole Story. They’re hits for a reason. I could listen on a loop, and sometimes I do. For years I dismissed the idea of ever covering my very favorite. Too much baggage, too mythic to even approach. Then again? Feel the fear and do it anyway, no better time than now. The urgency that has propelled me through so much creative sludge this year led to this. Now we can begin. Experiment IV

Please enjoy, and do share it. That’s what it’s all for.

Keep listening.

Coffee makes the donuts

The Cramps - Gravest Gravy. Nothing changes if nothing changes. An unreleased Cramps album sits on a shelf for nearly 50 years until Henry Rollins, Ian McKaye, and Don Zientara dig it out for restoration, a gift for those of us who still crave the gravy. It wasn’t going to mix and master itself. Are you the kind of person who sets the wheels in motion? Or waits around for someone else to pick up the keys? I Can’t Hardly Stand It

Hole - Pretty on the Inside. Frustration manifests in myriad ways. I’ve never seen a raised decibel level result in faster work or clearer heads. So the screams stay on the inside while the outside calmly gets the job done, until I get home and can depressurize with some cranked up speakers. Better out than in, but careful not to spook the neighbors. Clouds

The Cure - The Top. Cortisol drops, the vents are opened, the nervous system returns to baseline, and the emotional hangover begins. The lesson of my year has been that waiting for permission will leave you cold and hungry, and waiting for other people to take initiative will have you gathering cobwebs before you know it. If you want an outcome, you’d better get busy. Nothing is promised. I’ll give you three guesses what I’m dressing as for Halloween. Hint: it doesn’t even feel like a costume anymore. Give Me It

Keep listening.

You were on every Pinterest board I made for my first apartment. I knew I wanted you more than I knew or cared what colors to choose for rugs and accent pillows. I still remember the day I found you, in a garage somewhere in the Valley. I felt like I was stealing you from the nice man who’d kept you for decades, shuttling you to Los Feliz to become my most cherished instrument.

We stumbled through my first half-hearted attempts at songwriting together, your presence in my Berklee homework videos garnering extra mentions. You fit beautifully in every dwelling, so well accented by any artwork I hung above you (and we’ve moved around a fair amount since 2013). Over the years, I invested in the proper accessories owed to your vintage design: the music stand fitted to your shell, the replica bench of the era. Vintage King saw me coming every time.

I’m sorry I didn’t take you for service more regularly, and that I sometimes used your bench to stack books and clothing on more often than I sat there to play you. I’m sorry your jacks never worked, even after I fitted you with a new pedal and took you all the way out to Van Nuys that one time. I’m sorry I can’t keep you forever. As I played a little Angelo Badalamenti on you for the last time, I reminded us both that you had a long life before I found you. I hope that wherever you’re off to, you’ll continue to be cherished the way you deserve.

You’ll remember the last time I made a decision like this. After 14 years with my Joan Jett signature Gibson, my very first electric, which had journeyed from Los Angeles to Toronto and London to New York, I wasn’t reaching for her as much as I used to. I don’t believe in hoarding instruments; these magical tools are meant to be used. Often, optimally. I’d been coveting the heavier artillery of a Gibson SG for some time, and couldn’t justify the new acquisition without creating a vacancy on the rack. When the sale cleared on Reverb, I spent an evening thanking JJ for the memories. Then I let her go. The space you leave behind won’t stay empty for long, but the new keyboard won’t be anything like you either.

It’s tempting to imagine that with unlimited space and endless resources, I’d have a menagerie of all the unique instruments I’ve welcomed into my care of the years (you remember the banjo-ukulele phase). However, the honest truth is that I like to pack light. It’s not the things themselves that hold meaning; it’s the memories we make with them. After we go from crayons to perfume, and then reach the end of the perfume bottle, do we need to keep the bottle to remember the good times we had?

Thank you for 13 years of being the coolest thing in my collection. Bon voyage, mighty Wurly. I hope your new owner can fix that noisy amp of yours.

If you enjoyed my sentimental anthropomorphizing of a vintage electric piano, consider donating to fund future gear acquisition:

Buy a girl a coffee

I’ve been in Los Angeles for 24 years. When I arrived, sans smartphone or GPS system, I sat in the passenger seat of the Dodge Neon my mother rented for pilot season and plotted routes to auditions using a Thomas Guide. In the nearly quarter century that has passed, I’ve amassed stories on every corner. Here’s a recent example: I visited a gallery opening this spring that happened to be in the same building where I had my second set of headshots taken (I was 12). Dinner on the upstairs patio at the Formosa followed, where I realized I’d spent an evening at an obligatory wrap party a decade prior. The following weekend I audited a class on a block in Atwater Village smack in between where I’d been scanned for a 3D-printed action figure and where I’d played a socially distanced Rock-a-thon during the first COVID Halloween. I can’t drive through a neighborhood in LA County without flashbacks flooding in from all directions: there’s the building where I waited to meet the producers on that one series, that’s the corner where I stopped a dog from swallowing a chicken bone, this is the intersection where I cried in my car just for the length of the red light. The only thing weirder than navigating the memories is witnessing the locations themselves turn into ghosts. Nick on Sunset, The House of Blues, Taix, Fry’s Electronics… tale as old as time1. That’s its own essay:

There is one distinctly Los Angeles experience that endures, which I return to again and again with renewed perspective and a deeper sense of meaning. That experience is Ultimate Jam Night at the Whisky-a-Go-Go. I have been circling how to present this for months now. It only took one martini at the Chelsea Hotel to get me honest.

What is Ultimate Jam Night, empirically? It’s a semi-regular gathering of pro musicians who happen to be in town, or who commute in just for the occasion. They descend on the Sunset Strip to play a preordained set of cover songs organized around a theme chosen by one of its three organizers (Chuck Wright, Adam Mandel, and Jessica Chase). Hosted by Hal Sparks, the night opens with a local opening band cutting their chops for the built-in crowd who come to partake in the scene (the front row regulars know what I mean). There’s no rehearsal. Often bandmates meet for the first time moments before taking the stage together. Things can and do go wrong, but most of the time what transpires is three hours of high-energy rock performance the likes of which only professionals can deliver. It goes down on Tuesday nights. It’s always free. The Whisky turns its profit from sales at any of the three bars within view of the stage. It’s sponsored by a cadre of rocker-backed liquor ventures (Sammy Hagar’s Red Rocker Lager and Beach Bum Rum, recently).

The musicians who come out to play are unpaid, which brings me to one of the keys to what makes this so special. As a gigging player, the gift becomes a grind as soon as it becomes a living. How can we retain a sense of play when to play is now synonymous with work? At Ultimate Jam Night, the stage is set to play just for the love of it and for the chance to hold that space together. Ask anyone backstage and the word you’ll hear is “community,” everyone’s favorite word as AI psychosis threatens to consume more of us each day. Romances, friendships, and whole new bands blossom in the green rooms upstairs. I watched a newly engaged couple harmonize before their duet performance for the crowd. I shared the stage with John Orr once, and a couple years later provided him a vocal feature on a very cool indie release.

I met Matt Fuller at my second jam, slotted in for a very late performance of Only Happy When It Rains by Garbage. The other guitarist had suffered a personal emergency a mere hour before the show, and Matt had already handled a variety of solos that evening. I found him listening to the tune on his phone, quietly learning it by ear. Having made a chart to assist in my own memorization, I sat with him to help navigate the tricky song form. That was four years ago. Today we’re in the middle of production on a full-length rock album filled out by other Ultimate Jam Night locals and musical road warriors, Ben White (bass) and Topher Allis (drums)2.

Beyond the ties that bind (and break) backstage, there’s also an unspoken but glaringly obvious aspect to the whole operation that transcends its surface features. Ultimate Jam Night is about keeping something alive.

The Sunset Strip: at every turn, under siege from soulless developers who would raze historical venues in favor of more unaffordable housing and yet another Le Labo outpost.

The Music: rock never died in Europe, South America, abroad in general, but domestically is asphyxiated by pop trends. Everyone plays instruments at Ultimate Jam Night. You can’t fake a hard skill.

The Fashion: I’ve seen trad goth, hair metal, 70s punk, 90s grunge, and all manner of glorious Hollywood trash dress to impress at Sunset and Clark. Even anime heads fresh off the train from San Diego. The only dress code is to be your authentic self.

The Humans: Adam Mandel, one of the night’s producers and an indefatigable champion of emerging talent, bared his cancer diagnosis on stage at the 2024 Jam for Adam. Unwavering, he continues to share the ups and downs of his treatment while remaining dedicated to the platforming of up-and-coming bands in the opening slot. It’s the humans that create the experience, and Adam’s journey reminds us not to take a second of it for granted.

The Scene: Look, in the words of Emily Wolfe, “home is so nice.” We have infinite content at our fingertips from the comfort of home. All that stands between us and rotting in bed is the force of will that so many of us can’t access when the social battery runs low. It is now a radical choice to commit to a show that starts at 9 pm on a school night when YouTube promises vintage concert footage and Instagram offers an endless scroll of synthetic fulfillment, making us all too dopamine-deficient to recognize that the answer lies in connection. And making that connection requires action.

This is the Gospel of Ultimate Jam Night from a Los Angeles Evangelist. I have no choice but to champion this institution that gives so much to the city and the people lucky enough to experience it.

I give you this exhausted example of the “badass” moniker: I’ve received it in response to playing instruments, being in bands, approaching physical fitness with zeal, putting myself through university, having directed seven episodes of television before turning 30, speaking up for myself in situations that threatened my safety or dignity, wearing a leather jacket, or simply saying “no.” Now read that list again and imagine the writer is male. Is “badass” the descriptor of choice?

Read more

• Marry Me - 2007

The start of it all, on an iPod in Toluca Lake. Berklee jazz influences on full display. See issue #33 for this record’s previous recipe placement. What, Me Worry?

• Actor - 2009

My first time seeing St. Vincent was on this tour, at the El Rey theatre in mid-city Los Angeles, the poster from which has hung in every home I’ve occupied since. More than one jam has invited me to play the title track, which I oblige with delight. Woefully missing from my library. Marrow

Cash for coffee and records

• Strange Mercy - 2011

The crest of the indie sleaze wave, which upon crashing would ebb and never flow again outside the chambers of nostalgia. At Coachella 2012, I watched her molest a theremin and crowd surf during her debut of the album-less single, Krokodil; it was the same weekend our overlords tried to get us on board with the Tupac hologram. Year of the Tiger

You can imagine how it felt like I really got away with something when they let me do Cheerleader at Ultimate Jam Night:

• St. Vincent - 2014

The artist is reborn in alien form with the fourth record, a self-titled proclamation of identity. The David Bowie comparisons begin, the arrival of the signature guitar by Ernie Ball following shortly behind this release cycle. On Digital Witness, she foretells the influencer culture that was only nascent at the time of its writing. Over a decade later, the futurist perspective on performative social media feels uncanny:

Digital witnesses
What's the point of even sleeping?
If I can't show it, you can't see me
What's the point of doing anything?

• MASSEDUCTION - 2017

Containment and restriction as a form of liberation. And lots of latex. A new edition of the signature guitar, including a leopard print pick guard, that I manage to refrain from investing in. A completely unexpected acoustic piano companion album placing these highly produced tracks in an organic, intimate context. I see the duet with Dua Lipa at the 2019 Grammys and bring it to my hairdresser for years to come. Dark hedonism, Young Lover and Slow Disco conjuring the desperation to connect in the wee hours at a village nightclub. Fear the Future

• Daddy’s Home - 2021

So deeply New York. A concept album thanking Joan Didion and Candy Darling in the liner notes. A tour that looked like PBS on quaaludes. My first concert post quarantine, on NyQuil in a garden box at the Hollywood Bowl, hallucinating the Chelsea Hotel and the undeniable urge to slide into Fosse choreography during the title track. Her Zane Lowe interview acknowledging creative blocks has found a permanent place in my own anxiety toolkit; even Grammy winners get insecure. Down and Out Downtown

So deeply did I connect to the world of this record (and its ensuing edition of the signature guitar model), I could no longer put off adding the Music Man StV to my lineup. I took a swing and landed an artist support agreement, feeling the legitimacy of my independent musicianship in a whole new way.

• All Born Screaming - 2024

The nihilist period arrives: Hell is Near. Smoke em if you got em. We’re All Born Screaming and the world is on fire, but music is still worth making. Fully self-produced for the first time and inviting the likes of Dave Grohl and Cate LeBon into the mix, this record was followed by a version entirely en español. Global perspective, macro vision, the artist in full mastery. Flea

Full house at the Orpheum in New Orleans, all about that here.

• Live in London! - 2026

When the compositions from the entire discography are so strong they merit a final tour with a full orchestra, where do we even go from here? A Stop Making Sense style concert film? A multi-media autobiography1? A hard pivot into film scoring à la Trent Reznor, Danny Elfman, et al? The saint ascends. The Party

These Record Recipes began as a journal entry and blossomed into a gentle way to celebrate physical media and musical discovery. We used to make each other mixtapes, then playlists, and now we send memes. I hope any of these 50 newsletters have inspired you to reject convenience and automation in favor of the texture of the tangible. Nothing beats the crackle of a needle on PVC, or pushing air through an amplifier. More soon. X

Keep listening.

Buy me a coffee?

Pixies - Surfer Rosa. No skips, a perfect 10. Kurt Cobain cited Gigantic as his favorite Pixies tune and admitted that Smells Like Teen Spirit was an attempt to emulate the Boston rockers. I’ve seen them live more than any other band on my fantasy festival roster, covered Where is My Mind on an episode of Warehouse 13, and will consume just about anything Kim Deal creates (honorable mention for her recent solo record and duet with Kim Gordon on Everybody’s Live). I don’t know how to explain this, but this is a warm weather record perfect for the dry Hollywood heat currently impeding my hot girl walks. Cactus

Nirvana - Nevermind. Now’s as good a time as any to admit I had my grunge phase right before I turned 21. Subletting a Barton Fink style bungalow apartment in Los Feliz, between seasons of television and having abandoned NYU for Berklee, I tied the stupid flannel around my waist and learned blues riffs on my Telecaster and thumbed through the copy of Cobain Unseen that Saul gave me as a wrap gift. I took myself on a pilgrimage to Seattle to visit the Experience Music Project’s massive Nirvana exhibition, armed with a vintage Polaroid camera and a desire to feel the spirit. I took a bus out to Lake Washington at sunrise and scrawled my own tribute on the memorial bench in Viretta Park, completely alone in the pre-influencer landscape. I’ve covered In Bloom at Jam Night and taught kids to play Smells Like Teen Spirit and Lithium. A couple Christmases ago I learned that my cousin’s daughters thought Nirvana was a t-shirt brand. All things must pass. Drain You

Hole - Celebrity Skin. The last exit on the way to oblivion. This record is the drive along Sunset Blvd all the way to the water, dying palm trees leaning south, hanging on for dear life to a dying friendship, a dive bar makeout in expensive vintage, a red lipstick smudge on the rim of a vodka soda. If I am in the mood for this one, it’s a whole record with zero interruption kind of mood. The end result is empowered, inspired, and out for blood. Use with caution, or use once and destroy. Boys on the Radio

Bonus reading: Even the Good Girls Will Cry is chock full of behind the scenes anecdotes from an artist who lived through it and kept her wits about her even when the going got tough. Highly recommend.

Keep listening.

Buy me a coffee?

Prince - I Wanna Be Your Lover. We mourned 10 years ago, didn’t we? We passed around that Super Bowl performance and marveled at the gargantuan size of the catalogue even as we came to terms with knowing there would be no more new Prince. For a recent audition, I was tasked with learning some Purple Rain era guitar cuts and re-immersed myself in the body of work; beyond the nasty riffs it was the undeniable groove that reactivated some formative practices. Like so many little girls do, I started ballet class at the age of three, with jazz and tap dancing added to the slate not too long after. Annual recitals ceased at age eleven upon my move to Hollywood, but dance class is something I can never stay away from for long. I Feel for You

The B-52s - The B-52s. The original party band. Before inviting you to hop in their Chrysler as big as a whale, these Athens, Georgia scene queens injected a little levity into the blossoming New Wave sound with their kooky debut. Delightfully unserious, this record coexists with John Waters movies and lots of leopard print in my imagination. Flip further through that Rolodex of culture and I’m reminded of quarantine; during the majority of lockdown, I sought solace and sanity through constant virtual dance classes. My favorites were the Fosse workshops offered by Steps on Broadway. You can’t tell me Fred Schneider didn’t attempt the Rich Man’s Frug at least once. Dance this Mess Around

Madonna - True Blue. 40 years of papa preaching, living to tell, and dreaming of San Pedro. I’ve never identified as a Madge mega fan, and yet when Confessions ii arrived this month I had to let it rip. No one does mono-culture better than Madonna; my algorithm is full of joyous mash-ups of her early and late career hits mixed by boys in crop tops grinning ear to ear. If summer 2024 belonged to Brat, then let 2026 bear the summer we dance ourselves out of stagnation and toward absolution. White Heat

Let’s get physical (media).

I booked my trip to NYC to see the Jellicle Ball before the closure was announced, before hearing Danceteria and revitalizing my relationship to the Prince discography and jazz class at Steps. At first it was just an expanding ache for a change of scenery, then it became a weekend built around art and culture that feels at any moment like it may expire. It’s always my tendency to season even a short trip with literature that deepens the experience, and any excuse to break up with my phone is welcome these days. I’m going to devour this new book on dance in New York (probably on the flight), and I’m going to dance myself sore whenever possible.

Wishing you a very analogue summer, may your dance floor be a mile wide.

Keep listening.

Buy me a coffee?

Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes. When I saw Violent Femmes play Coachella back in 2013, they were already a legacy act well past the height of the folk punk moment that birthed them. Their debut album is about as adolescent as it gets: emotional, restless, chaotic, and raring to go. Who among us didn’t connect with the frantic demands of Add it Up and Gimme the Car, especially those of us yoked to the productivity ethos of boomer parents who treated anything less than excellence as abject failure? Time marches, the feeling endures. Why the hell are we grinding so hard if we can’t have a little fun? Let me go on, etc. Gone Daddy Gone

Pixies - Come On, Pilgrim. From the first twanging notes of the opening track, this mini-album debut is all gas, no brake. Black Francis squeals Vamos and I’m already out the door. There was a day last week that had me context switching to the max; comedic commercial callback on the other side of town, virtual dramatic callback at home, coaching clientele in the evening, and tending to band admin and family drama in between. Look, I just want to get where I’m trying to go and be proud of how I got there. I’ve Been Tired

Tom Waits - Mule Variations. What do two alternative rock debuts have to do with mid-late career earthy Tom Waits? That grimy feeling of rolling up one’s sleeves and getting down into the dirt to make something grow. Turns out that never changes. You’ve got to get behind the mule in the morning and plow for someone to take notice and ask, “what’s he building in there?” Big in Japan

Keep listening.

It was on a recent rewatch of my favorite scene from Heat that I finally made the connection: a life in showbiz is a lot like a life in organized crime.

We spend our lives doing base, ridiculous things in the hope of one day getting “made”. The margin for error is paper thin. Fail to kiss the right ring and you just might sleep with the fishes. There are codes that are nearly impossible to explain to a lay person but which are widely accepted in “the business”, like production chains of command and the dangers of circumventing one superior to get to a bigger boss. As I watched Pacino’s detective and DeNiro’s thief face off over diner coffee, the parallels became undeniable.

In this way, representation snuck up on me. Look far enough outside yourself and humanity will still present you with a spotless mirror.

My last watch list was all inside baseball: movies about theatre, music, ballet, and film that grapple with artistic identity and creative madness. You can find that here:

Below are my five favorite mafia and/or organized crime stories, each of which illuminates some aspect of the madness of being an artist.

Goodfellas (1990) dir. Martin Scorsese

“My whole life, I always knew I wanted to be a gangster.”

My parents took me to see my first Broadway show when I was five or six years old. I drank in the ceiling of the Saenger Theatre, painted royal blue to resemble the night sky, the luxurious red velvet curtain that seemed to conceal a whole private universe. I remember thinking: there are people back there who are performing magic. I want to be back there: I want to be one of them. Cliché as it may seem, there is no refusing when the life chooses you. Just ask Henry Hill.

The Godfather (1972) dir. Francis Ford Coppola

“Everyone will still think you've got it. They're gonna be staring at your face, Mike. So walk out of the place real fast, but you don't run. Don't look nobody directly in the eye, but don't look away either. They're gonna be scared of you, believe me, so don't worry about nothing.”

Not everyone can stomach the arena. My first ever pilot season, I network tested three times. Sometimes I can’t believe my gall; eleven years old, in front of a room full of stone-faced executives in Brooks Brothers suits. Locked in on punch lines, holding for laughs, trained on hours of TV Land reruns and whatever technique the Louisiana public school drama department could instill. I didn’t know to be intimidated by Lorne Michaels when he sat in during run through on the pilot I did book that year. I only knew the mission: make them laugh. Kill, as they say in comedy, and don’t let them see you sweat.

Donnie Brasco (1997) dir. Mike Newell

“You think I hate you? I don’t hate you. This job is eating me alive. I can’t breathe anymore.”

A relationship has to be strong to sustain the potential months apart on tour, on location, or on contract. It’s no damn fun to be the one at home, and the one on the inside can lose themselves to the world and the character in the blink of an eye. Donnie Brasco loves his wife, but the role he’s playing undercover has consumed his entire being. And how do you explain the paradox that what happens on stage is simultaneously complete fiction and complete truth? The stress fractures require vigilance.

Heat (1995) dir. Michael Mann

“That’s the discipline.”

I have very nearly quit a few times: masters programs onboarded and abandoned, my stint as a music teacher, hours in therapy interrogating who I am when I’m not on the gig. Unfortunately, when the rubber meets the road, I don’t want to do anything else. The outside world and the art life are yin and yang. Vincent Hanna (the law) and Neil McCauley (the criminal) can’t do what they love without the other playing the antagonist. So too with art and everything outside of it: what would there be to make art about if not as a reflection of everything else?

The Many Saints of Newark (2021) dir. Alan Taylor

“It’s the wanting.”

Of course, it’s all a matter of perspective. Comparison is the thief of joy, yada yada yada. I’m not afraid to admit that the joy of all I have accomplished can be eclipsed, dwarfed by the longing for all I have yet to do. I yearn, I want, and wanting is the root of all suffering. It is also the fuel that drives the damn bus.

It’s thought experiments like this that make family dinners very challenging.

Colt Holden

Northeast LA’s favorite multi-instrumentalist finally giving us original tunes with vocals to boot. A little industrial, a little emo, a whole vibe. Full album when?

Garrett Shut-Up

Lean, mean punk rock about the Creature from the Black Lagoon, a zombie attack, and one very persistent barfly. Get out your battle jacket for this one.

Maudlin Strangers

Here’s a Chris Isaak cover from pop rockers frequently spotted at We Found New Music and School Night. Led by Jake Hays, who just recently launched a skate brand that follows the 1:1 donation format (and plants trees in the process).

L.A. Exes

The lesbian Beatles. I will take no questions at this time. Go see them open for OK Go if you don’t believe me.

Late Night Brunch

SGV area high schoolers who formed this band out of their after-school music ed program. Riot grrl and 90’s alternative influences for days. The kids are alright.

Paige Pedersen

Sweet and soothing, voice of an angel. If you’re a fan of Laura Marling and Joni Mitchell, Paige will be very much up your street.

Stream, save, support, share, whatever. Just fight automation complacency like the arts depend on it. It seems a midsummer music guide is an annual impulse:

Spin me that coffee

The Cars - Candy O. The day begins when my alarm goes off at 7. Sit up, practice 20 minutes of transcendental meditation before I force myself out of the cool, quiet nest of bed. Hot water with lemon scored by as much of a news podcast as I can stomach while I pull my first double espresso of the day. Practice chess and French while I make my latte disappear. Once it’s gone, unroll the yoga mat and break a sweat for 40 minutes while the podcasts continue. In the shower by 9, hoping the day’s hustle renders more tangible results than it did yesterday. Like a phone call I’ve been waiting on for weeks. Let’s Go

The Clash - London Calling. The existing to-do list might include audition tapes (I had to speak Italian in one this week), preparing pitch materials for a directing project (self generated, in this economy), meetings with coaching clients, self-submitting on a litany of gigs ranging from indie shorts to regional theatre, applications for grants and dev programs, coordinating with band mates for a return to the studio, while voiceover audition requests with 8 hour turnarounds ping in my inbox and all the quotidian demands of adult life occur with the same dull but consistent frequency as always. If I showed you the stack of plays I’ve read in the last 3 months you might wonder, as I have, why my brain hasn’t exploded yet. Lost in the Supermarket

Elvis Costello - My Aim is True. I have a leather key fob with this album title stamped into it, a souvenir from my summer in Atlanta 11 years ago. Isn’t it hard to keep track of what you’re aiming at when you’re firing at so many moving targets? Context switching requires nimble presence, and after a long day of hustling I sometimes just need a quiet moment to myself, listening to Declan sweetly sing my name. Caffeine in the afternoon, something green for dinner, and melatonin to power it all down. *slams laptop shut* Welcome to the Working Week

Keep listening.

Buy a goth a latte

Jerry Goldsmith - The Omen. Not too long ago, a colleague asked if I’d ever considered composing for film. Everyone says fake it ‘til you make it, but I’m a terrible liar and my first response was that there are just too many more wildly qualified composers for me to even entertain the idea. Ave Satani was in the first playlist I made for La Femme Pendu inspiration. Some things are untouchable.

Mike Oldfield, Leonard Slatkin, National Philharmonic Orchestra - The Exorcist. You are not simply haunted by the silhouette of Max Von Sydow under the street lamp, or disturbed to your core by the sight of Regan’s young body contorting against her will; these images are indelible because of the quivering strings beneath them, the intervals that feel wrong to your nervous system. Tubular Bells or Fantasia for Strings, you know exactly what time it is.

Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Phantom of the Opera. Look, being an ALW apologist is not the proudest lane of my musical journey, but allow me to quote Lady Gaga’s comment on her classical training: “It taught me where to put the drama.” Inject that 1980’s synth and electric guitar straight into my veins, because choosing the Phantom is a lot like choosing the bear. Generations of Hot Topic goths can’t be wrong. Right? The Music of the Night

La Femme Pendu - Absolute Horror. She’s sparse, she’s spare, she is intentionally cold and haunted, and she is the first attempt at self expression by someone who’d been told where to stand and what to say since she was on training wheels. It’s me, I’m someone. The above film scores, along with those of Rosemary’s Baby, Suspiria, and The VVitch, spun on repeat while I plunged the depths of horror narratives to find the demonic feminine in heavy reverb. There’s a lot I’d do differently, and at the same time I wouldn’t change a thing. Je Vous Jette Dehors

Keep listening.

Buy me a coffee

Outkast - Stankonia. I don’t know what the future holds. I wouldn’t trade places with a Gen Z or Gen Alpha for all the gold you could offer. If I had one wish, after world peace and actionable reversal of the climate crisis, it’d be that young people could know the unbridled joy of the party that erupts when B.O.B. drops in the club. As Charmaine Neville put it so purely at French Quarter Fest last year, “Booty shaking music can unite the world, y’all.” So Fresh, So Clean

Fugees - The Score. When Norman gave me this album, I knew I’d made it into the inner sanctum. We made it past the iTunes playlists of his early 90’s East Vancouver essentials, a crash course in what shaped the Chinese-Canadian multi-disciplinary artist (get into the street art). He said Ready or Not, this is a library staple. Norman has never lied to me once. How Many Mics

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue. I believe in accountability, so I shan’t ignore the excellent pieces of writing1 that grapple with the difficult truth of Davis’ behavior alongside his brilliance as a musician. We have infinite examples of the coexistence of truths: visionary art and reprehensible behavior can and often do flow from the same source. One doesn’t ever justify the other, but if we bury it in the back of the bin we sure can’t learn anything. “Laws of silence don’t work,” says Maggie in Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. On his centennial, the music is as relevant as the appraisal of the man who made it. Freddie Freeloader

Keep listening.

Caffeinate me

Duran Duran - Rio. The first time I heard Rio was on a FM radio station somewhere between Biloxi and Gulf Shores. It was raining, and I was given leave to find the station that would score the weekend drive now that we were out of range for Kool 95.7 New Orleans. I was maybe 10 years old, and up to that moment had been raised on a steady diet of Motown and the Beatles. Suddenly confronted with 80’s synths (Rio faded directly into Thomas Dolby), I felt as if I’d discovered something independently of my parents for the very first time. It would take acquisition of my first mp3 player to finally commit to the New Wave life, but better late than never. Hungry Like the Wolf

Plastic Bertrand - Ça Plane Pour Moi.

“So what are you listening to these days, Allison?”

Mind fogs, no less than 12 artists come to mind at once, creating too crowded a field to identify a theme.

“I mean, ask a librarian their favorite book, uh….”

Don’t be the musician who can’t name a musician, dammit, what was on shuffle this morning?

“I am generally always in the mood for late 70’s punk rock.”

Gen Xer nods with approval, moves on to what their teenage daughter is listening to.

Sparks - Angst in My Pants. Persistence looks like 10 albums in 10 years. Longevity looks like, nearly 40 years later, French art house director Leos Carax engaging the brothers Mael in a cinematic rock opera released shortly before their definitive documentary directed by Edgar Wright. That was one wild Cinespia double feature. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many reformed hipsters in one place. I Predict.

Keep listening.

A girl loves her coffee

Blondie - Parallel Lines. If you think you saw me tooling around Edinburgh in my Dr. Marten’s this week, you did. After telling stories in my Debbie Harry jacket all weekend, a quiet stroll along Leith Water Walkway was right on time. I found my way to St. Bernard’s Bar where, upon sitting down with my Aperol spritz, the bartender threw this very record on the turntable and a gentleman wandered in to inquire about selling his vinyl collection. One way or another, the rock life keeps me on the line. Hanging on the Telephone

Peaches - The Teaches of Peaches. There are few recordings that incite the specific cocktail of arousal and aggression in me that Peaches’ first record triggers. That her raunchy audacity continues a quarter century after her celebrated DIY debut is a testament to her feminist vision and songwriting prowess (and yet where is she on all these ridiculous lists deifying the diaristic acoustic songwriter?). When that cymbal kicks in you’ve got to either hold me back or get bail money ready. Set It Off

Joan Jett - Cherry Bomb (12” single). This song was written by a teenage Joan Jett at the inciting moment that formed The Runaways. Apt that she would re-record it for her solo record, Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth, in her 20s. Experience is currency, and if we’re lucky enough to still be singing our songs so many years on, why shouldn’t we shift the context? Bombs away.

Keep listening.

Buy a girl a latte?

The Beatles - Abbey Road. In the 90’s, I had the same blue and red double CD compilations we all did: the volumes that traced their hits from 1963 to 1970. Before I grasped the concept of albums, tours, and early versus late career style evolution, I wore these four discs out. Singing along to Octopus’ Garden in the bubble bath after ballet class was routine. The politics of who wrote what never occurred to me; I knew only harmonies about love and how some of the songs were, as my parents knowingly informed me, about drugs. By the time I was studying music with academic rigor, I’d already buried The Beatles beneath the alt rock of the generations that followed them. They felt as overly familiar as the alphabet, and I already knew how to read. Come Together.

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Not until pulling these records from my collection did I remember the thrift store artwork I collected in my teens. There was the hand sketched portrait of the Beatles for Sale album cover, the jumbo blue pop art depiction of the Fab Four, both treasured and hung on my bedroom walls with pride. Lost to time and memory, like singing When I’m 64 for my great aunt’s 100th birthday in 2004 somewhere in the California central valley. I suppose in my rush to graduate to bigger sandboxes, I forgot what inspired me to get building in the first place. With each passing year, creative growth seems vitally dependent on a return to the original sandbox in its humble purity. A Day in the Life.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold as Love. Toronto, 15 years ago. My loft apartment had a little windowless vestibule not large enough for more than a rented keyboard and Vox amp. I plugged in my new Telecaster, built by my driver on Warehouse 13, and didn’t worry about making a statement. Jimi was interested in making sound, and that was good enough for me. The course of life may inevitably present the guardrails and gatekeepers that make you forget why you fell in love with your passions in the first place. But above all else, remember: we are here to make a sound. Castles Made of Sand

Keep listening.

In retrospect, it was only two months into lockdown that I sent in this panicked application. Which left four months before semester start. And just because it seemed implausible to make money as an artist, that didn’t mean I stopped being one. The musical side quests of this period reflect what was top of mind during those long days, when I wasn’t meditating, writing morning pages, making tiki drinks, watching the Sopranos, reading Apollo’s Angels, cleaning out closets, and clinging to sanity like a cat on a fence post.

EPs

The Legend of the River King

I woke up one quarantine morning thinking about the tradition of southern gothic legend. Did I dream of a giant white alligator, who could be conjured out of the swamp to claim his bride but once a generation? I can’t remember. What I remember is the dream I had that became the bridge lyrics in Drinking Tour of New Orleans. A song cycle about bad blood and worse weather, with a healthy dose of folk magic.

Bonus inspiration, the gator prints of artist Leslie Charleville.

Bonne anniversaire à moi

You may refer to the prologue for a refresher on l’accord du participe passé and its significance in this project. Let me clear the air once and for all here. Anniversaire, the French word for birthday, is masculine. So the correct translation of “happy birthday” is joyeux anniversaire. Dear reply guys and gals who don’t listen to my music but love to take to the comments section to tell me my grammar is wrong: I don’t think a birthday should be masculine any more than a trash can should be feminine. Yet here we are, dans la poubelle. Hopefully this won’t affect my citizenship application one day.

Et pour l’amour was written as a sort of unofficial theme song for And for Love, a bespoke bohemian bridal atelier founded by my dear friend, Angel. Un petit pas vers moi imagines a lurid romance with a ballerino. I released them on my birthday, quietly observing the fact that I’d finally turned out a pair of tunes that didn’t traffic in ghosts and monsters. I’d get back to that shortly.

Les Ballets Tragiques

For most of 2020, I spent an average of three hours a day in movement. Mat Pilates on zoom followed by a 90 minute barre class, and usually yet another barre led by ABT’s Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside on Instagram live. When modernity gets bleak, escape into the baroque. A tip of the hat to the original LFP concept, these four tragic narratives from ballet lore are set to the (public domain) melodies of their originating scores. If these sylphs could speak, what would they say? The album cover is an original painting by Billy Morrison, intrepid guitarist and Warehouse 13 enthusiast who graciously granted me permission to use his work, even before he gifted me with his solo performance on j’en veux plus.

Guest appearances

Damien Done and I traded features like a handshake. He is the voice of the beast quoting Revelations on la somnambule. In return, I recorded my verse on Bounty and Blight during the last of the VAMPYR sessions, and filmed my half of the music video in Jackson’s photography studio during an album art shoot. We have in fact never met. One day I’d like to fix that.

I met John Orr at an Ultimate Jam Night. We were playing on Bowie’s Moonage Daydream, and John let it rip on saxophone. I made a mental note to add him to my roster of future collaborators, but he beat me to the punch when he invited me to add vocals to this dreamy track released this year as The Last Domino.

Where is she now?

Last summer, Jake Hays invited me over to his home studio for a day long marathon writing and recording session. We churned out a song that (as far as I know), will be part of his next Maudlin Strangers release. Beyond that, the wish list grows. I have a long standing dream of producing a Serge Gainsbourg covers record, backed by LA jazz musicians. More character concept album ideas are in the mix, not yet ready to emerge from the subconscious soup. For now, La Femme Pendu is dormant, returned to hanging upside down to observe the rhythms of life before she can return to her duties as the haunted francophone bard.

Thank you for listening.

In the two years between the release of VAMPYR and the recording sessions for The Wheel of the Year, my life saw a wholesale restructuring. A breakup, a move, a teaching job, a return to acting after a five year drought, joining 7Horse and Fainting Party as their auxiliary guitar player, all connected to a deeper exploration of identity divested from institutional approval. Asking, in short, how can I choose myself when no one else is choosing me?

The idea for songs prompted by the seasonal sabbats observed by pagans came to me very quietly, in the dark, on the winter solstice at the end of 2021. I would not revisit this framework until the dust had settled over a year later, when personal observance of planetary transits and changing of seasons became an integral part of my self care. I knew I wanted to produce another album. I also knew the approach had to be more gentle than previous writing cycles. So on each solstice, equinox, and cross-quarter holiday, I cast a sacred circle and wrote into the truth of the moment, with corresponding astrology and tarot to shape the imagery. This is what I mean when I say I’m a Virgo; adding productivity to an otherwise unproductive practice, seeking comfort through tasks.

Prior to 2023, the few La Femme Pendu live performances were always solo. Playing with Fainting Party empowered me to finally ask other musicians to learn my songs. We brought a double act to a handful of Los Angeles venues that summer, always lavishly perfumed, while every six weeks the poetry of the season was sprouting, budding, blooming quietly.

I quit my music teaching job to pursue a certification in behavioral health, forcing my creative accountability by putting a session on the books with Dave Darling, who had relocated to Portland not long after we recorded VAMPYR. I loaded my Prius with three guitars, pedals, and a week worth of studio clothes and hauled all the way up the interstate to bring these songs off the page and into the air. The whole album came to be in less than a week’s time, enriched by morning walks, afternoon coffee breaks, and home cooked dinners with Dave and his spectacular wife, Brie. I drove the 16 hours home in one trip, energized, and the dominoes kept falling. I was back in the studio in no time, singing backup for Matt Fuller’s new band (the one he’d convince me to join a year and a half later), and recording even more originals (this time as Dr. Smith and the Night Shift, produced by Phil Leavitt and featuring the 7Horse players). A Super Bowl commercial fell into my lap, followed by my unexpected casting opposite Bruce Campbell in Hysteria! It was a total transformation from the bleak start of the year, when I thought I’d finally met the final boss of clinical depression.

With both Absolute Horror and VAMPYR, it was only after considerable time and distance that their deeper meaning was revealed to me; The Wheel of the Year was no different. What goes up must come down. And when you’re down, you won’t be down for long. This was what I needed to be true, and in the manifestation of new work it was made so.

And now, unpacking this spiritual song cycle, with individual album covers inspired by the pulp paperbacks collected by Astraleyez.

IMBOLC

First of February. What is hidden in snow comes forth in the thaw.

Sign: Aquarius. Tarot: The Star. Moon phase: waxing crescent.

OSTARA

Spring equinox. Femme in full bloom.

Sign: Aries. Tarot: The Emperor. Moon phase: first quarter.

BELTANE

May Day. This Tennyson poem.

Sign: Taurus. Tarot: The Hierophant. Moon phase: waxing gibbous.

LITHA

Summer solstice. A sad song about sunshine.

Sign: Cancer. Tarot: The Chariot. Moon phase: full.

LUGHNASADH

First of August, the lion’s abundant harvest.

Sign: Leo. Tarot: Strength. Moon phase: waning gibbous.

MABON

Autumn equinox. Let the leaves fall, shuffle the deck.

Sign: Virgo. Tarot: The Hermit. Moon phase: last quarter.

SAMHAIN

Halloween. I would dig my own grave to see my departed again.

Sign: Scorpio. Tarot: Death. Moon phase: dark.

YULE

Winter solstice. The true beginning of the wheel, placed at the end to signify that the cycle never stops. Renewal is inevitable.

Sign: Sagittarius. Tarot: Temperance. Moon phase: new.

Between the release of Absolute Horror in May 2020 and my brief sojourn in graduate school1, La Femme Pendu generated a pair of concept EPs and a pair of singles as I dug deeper into the soil of who she might be after the credits rolled on the first LP. More on those in installment four. For now, the album that demanded to be born.

On my honor, it went like this: In January, I rented a stack of my favorite vampire films from Vidéothèque, watched them with open notebook and pencil in hand, and followed each screening with an intense writing session assisted by my Akai MPK Mini. I spent February cooking up some very rough and ready demos in GarageBand and sending them along to Dave Darling, both of us keeping track of vaccine availability. In March I practiced until my number came up for the first Moderna shot, and by the end of the month we were recording my second album. I solicited guest vocals from Cherie Currie and ripping guitar features from Jake Hays and Billy Morrison. Picture the Alien chestburster rupturing John Hurt’s sternum and you have a fair characterization of the way this album behaved.

If the tone-setting cover song for Absolute Horror was Mother by Glenn Danzig, the most obvious choice for VAMPYR was Bauhaus’ Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Despite encountering zero obstacles to licensing the former (with all publishing royalties attributed to the original songwriter), TuneLicensing rejected my request and directed me to contact Peter Murphy’s publisher directly for permission to license an interpolative work. Reader, you know I never heard back. But no one said I couldn’t release it for free, so it lives on SoundCloud and even rendered this cool review.

With no other creative employment to slow me down, I put VAMPYR on track for release in October of that very same year, and ran the same play I’d developed for the first album. I told Jackson I wanted high contrast vampire pop art, like Andy Warhol for Interview Magazine, and wouldn’t it be great if we could emulate the opening sequence of The Hunger with some window blind shadows? Facebook marketplace delivered and the vision was made real. Gold vampire teeth, red lipstick, black leather, Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love aesthetic slapped on the sensibility of a Saturday night at Bar Sinister.

The vinyl pressing came next. I returned to Qrates to crowdfund a blood red first pressing, and while my test copies arrived without incident, my personal order of five vinyls would never materialize. I’ve only ever seen the finished product on my father’s coffee table. This would be a harbinger of what was to come at Qrates; last year, having waited 11 months for the remaining units of Absolute Horror to be delivered so I could offer them to fans directly, the site shuttered without fanfare. Setting aside the stock and funds they have yet to surrender, I can’t even share with you the fabulous feature interview that teed up the VAMPYR release. Another casualty in the DIY struggle.

The final swing I took at merch for LFP2 was a grindhouse inspired t-shirt; my pal Tillie whipped up the vector and built the screen by hand, and I joined her in her backyard to print a very limited number (13 if I recall) of deadstock black t-shirts. Packaged with vampire teeth from Hollywood Toy & Costume, sold via Instagram stories, and never to be reproduced. A drop as mercurial as the vampire herself.

These songs have never been performed live. They were born in isolation and there they remain, pacing in the dark with fangs bared. As before, please enjoy your track by track watch list. Thank you for listening.

Type O Negatif

Eternal life and eternal love for the vampires of Detroit. Blood on a stick. Featuring Cherie Currie.

La somnambule

Isabelle Adjani looks the vampire square in the eyes and declares that she will not be discouraged.

Allons chasser

The ancient queen is deceptive. Let’s go hunting. Featuring Jake Hays.

Laisse-moi entrer

What one lonely child will do for the friendship of another.

L’oceans de temps

If he’s not crossing oceans of time to find you, dump him.

J’en veux plus

Alternate title: Claudia’s lament. The abject rage of the infantilized lady. Featuring Billy Morrison.

La nuit a un prix

Roadhouse vampires fall in love and meet their doom.

Rapproche-toi

Are you a good boy? Or a bad boy? Featuring Jake Hays.

L’un de nous

Sleep all day, party all night. Never grow old, never die.