Article 1 of N2 Magazine Music Review by Ginger Leigh

Here is the uncut version of the article I wrote in May's edition of N2 Magazine (A Guide to Culture in Central Texas - Temple, Waco, Georgetown, Cedar Park, etc).

Dear N2 Readers,

Welcome to the first edition of N2’s Music Section! I’ll take a brief moment to introduce myself and then we will move on to two uniquely different and equally fascinating artists, Gavin Degraw and Kellye Gray.

I am a musician; a professional touring and recording artist. I am highly and often inspired by other artists, not just only the music they produce or the shows they execute, but also by their varying business strategies in this ever-changing entertainment industry. I believe in being a member of the music community, working together with other artists to help promote our music, our shows, our love of a common jewel which is MUSIC. Without music, society is without flow, rhythm, a secondary – but incredibly important – language of emotion, romance, societal, political and familial conflicts and journeys. You too can be a member by purchasing new music online or in stores

With instruments like itunes, myspace, facebook and our own websites, the playing field has opened up to vast sea of tiny CD outlets for anyone to sell and shop for new or old music. I intend to share music with you in the hopes that you will be inspired to be a part of the musician’s journey.

In this article, I will introduce to you two artist who have very different stories; one being on a major label, the other being independent. Gavin Degraw is one of the artists who manages to reap the rewards of being signed to J Records (Clive Davis’ baby), with hit songs such as “I Don’t Want To Be” and “Chariot”. Kellye Gray is an artist who has worked on her music career for 25 years, having been on a label which began beautifully and ended poorly, and who today releases records independently, thanking daily her angel investors and her informidable strength to carry on. Both of these featured artists are lucky in their own ways and have managed a level of success which I encourage you to applaud and support.

Gavin Degraw
I sat at my desk with the Blackberry pressed hard to my ear hearing the kind and intelligent voice of Gavin Degraw on the other end. He is a busy man at the moment on a national tour supporting the release of his latest CD, Free. I started my 40-minute phone interview with Degraw by asking him the question, “Tell me 5 musicians you have playing on your iPod.”

Chris Whitely (whose song “Indian Summer” is featured as the opening track on Degraw’s new CD), Martin Sexton (whose tone I can hear in Degraw’s music), Donnie Hathaway, Pavarotti, and Dwight Yoakum (who Degraw says “Gotta give a shout out to my buddy Dwight!”)

He obviously has a wide span in his taste for music, which is also apparent in the way his records stand alone in their varying genres. His first release titled Chariot (2003, J Records) was more pop/soul, then his second release, self-titled, Gavin Degraw, was much more rock, and now his third release titled Free is more soul, bluesy, stripped down, mature. Each album is fantastic in its own unique way, but I have to admit that his newest release, Free, is by far my favorite. I feel this CD is for a more adult audience.

I was introduced to Degraw’s music a few years ago by three young pre-teens. Coming from their direction, I assumed Degraw to be a young pop star. I continued to hear his hit songs played on pop radio through the years and today. I asked Degraw if it was his intention to release his first album to a younger audience. “I didn't design [Chariot] to be anything but identifiably me while being held under the wing of a record company. As a musician, you will know which producer to work with. The Producer has a stamp, almost more than the artist. The producer[Mark Endert] balanced out his task at hand- taking a new artist and bringing him to the forefront of popular music, while satisfying the artist...Mark did a great a job.“

The bigger poppy production of his first record undoubtedly did its job for Degraw. Chariot was certified platinum and yielded three gold singles: “I Don’t Want To Be,” which soared to No. 1 on the Top 40 radio chart, “Follow Through,” and the title-track, “Chariot.”

Degraw certainly changed direction in his recent release. In the title track, “Free”, Degraw says he is pointing out his own extremes, the way that he battles himself, his opposing characteristics, which everyone has. “I want to be free, release this weight of self-criticism onto something more important, more valuable to my life. You become consumed and imprisoned in your own mind.” While listening to Degraw explain this song I remember something Fitzgerald wrote: “Intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Degraw is an intelligent man and Free will make him a longer-term major-label artist; quality setting him on his path to legendary status. It is sure to bring to his career a shift, or maybe simply a growth, in his listenership – at least it will bring in a 30+ audience. I wondered how he got away with releasing a more mature record under the “wing of a major label,” when to my understanding the machine prefers to continue branding an artist under one sound, one style, holding on to the same demographic every time. Degraw replied, “Even younger than 30, there are plenty of 18 year old high school kids and freshmen in college who are looking for this type of music and this style, less-is-more type of thing....Itunes makes this type of production more commercially viable. [It’s] the public's opportunity to revolt against the conveyer belt of mass-produced music. All the people making marketing decisions of all industries target the same people....It's not a small group of people...why not make something good and don't HAVE to sell it. Let people who are interested find it!”

Awe, yes, says Ginger Leigh! Let people find it! Viola’! Make the music you believe in and hope that people find it.. And I applaud his courage to change and to take risk. He describes his first launch onto the scene with Chariot as like being that glass pitcher of Cool-Aid running through the wall. He was breaking down walls, getting some attention from the start. With Free, he hopes to maintain what he already built, while branching out to reach other people. I agree with Degraw when he says that music shouldn’t be about a demographic, a tribe, but about taste and similar interests. He spent only 2 weeks in the studio recording Free, hoping to create a sound without big production bells and whistles, without over-thinking the recording, but staying true to the songs. In my opinion, he succeeded. Free is the kind of record I can gift to both my father and my niece. The music is luscious and spare, authentic and raw holding up this man’s rich vocals and intimate lyrics.
Learn more at www.gavindegraw.com

Kellye Gray

Make the music and let people find it! Find THIS, my friends….Kellye Gray, the magical jazz vocalist who can sing with – and often beyond – the best of the best. From the first note you hear from Gray’s mouth (or should I say Gray’s lungs?), you are stopped in your tracks. You can practically cut through Kellye Gray’s vocals with a butter knife; so thick, luscious, creamy, rich. The first note makes you wait, makes you hang on for the next note. That tiny nanosecond feels like a lifetime, as if it’s the first time you have ever heard music. And then she soars, and you soar with her.

My favorite song of Gray’s is her rendition “Everything Must Change” which has a different meaning for everyone. Whether it makes you think of your own children growing older or how society must adapt to social shifts or something about your own life’s journey, Gray makes this song her own and yours. She sings it from such a personal place that the intimacy she shares with you feels like she is putting a sweet spell on you by singing a message right into your ear.

Gray has released 7 records, the most recent being KG3, Live form the Bugle Boy. I have also played the Bugle Boy a number of times. It’s a sweet listening venue in the least likely place – La Grange, Texas. The owner, Lane Gosney, makes certain that the audience doesn’t chit-chat during the show and even asks you to turn off your cell phone. If you have Kellye Gray on the stage, there need be no distractions. You won’t want to miss a moment of her live performance. Even though you missed this show at the Bugle Boy, I’m sure there will be plenty more opportunities, but in the meantime you don’t have to feel left out; you can get the CD! This tiny venue not only offers a special listening experience, but they record the show and hand the results right to the artists then and there. Kellye tells me that on this special evening, she and her guitarist and bassist hadn’t played together in 6 or so years. She handed the guys her music charts and off they went to spontaneously bust out some of the most sensual, exciting and true jazz music heard today, opening with Summertime and ending with “If You Never Come to Me”. They left the Bugle Boy feeling high off their performance. A number of months later, Kellye met up with the guitarist who asked about the recordings from that night. Gray hadn’t even listened to them. Upon his suggestion she later did and decided the night was so magical that she would release the music to the public.

This is one of the most fascinating parts to being an independent artist. You can release whatever you want, whenever you want. There are no labels to answer to, no marketers shaping your artistic content. Gray has only one CD that was released on a label years ago. Although it sold over 75,000 copies and Gray was reaching the top of her world, the label turned on her and the deal ended in a lawsuit. Even though Gray escaped the mess unscathed, she does not maintain the rights to the recordings, which I understand are often found on eBay and other online outlets for quite a high price.

I have known Kellye Gray and her music for quite a number of years. I have always admired her vocal ease and her massive stage presence. Her body is her instrument. Her voice is her brass. Her lungs are her drum. Her arms are her strings. Her eyes are her spotlights. You immediately succumb to her wishes, like being entranced by her body’s orchestra, while feeling your own sense of empowerment. There is no wimp inside Kellye Gray, only a leader and a super-powered chanteuse.

One of Gray’s best albums to date is Live at the Jazz School which I have had loaded onto my iPod for a long time and now sits next to KG3, Live from the Bugle Boy. Like Gavin Degraw’s recent CD, Gray speaks about the essence of the music. She releases live records because she too hopes to stay true to the songs themselves without them being over-produced for the masses.

We discussed Gray’s life path to music and the jazz paradigm in general at my dining room table where I conducted our recent interview for this article. Ironically, over dinner, wine and conversation my iPod on shuffle chose out of thousands of songs to play Gray’s music a handful of times, as if the iPod itself was enchanted by her presence in the room. Gray’s personal iPod spins the likes of Miles Davis, Fiest, dZihan&Kamien, Suba and Shirley Horn, a personal friend to Gray.

Kellye Gray found her voice around the age of 5 or 6 while cruising around in the backseat of her mother’s T-bird while her sister used to encourage her to sing Barbara Streisand which she did with ease. But Kellye didn’t go into music in her youth; instead she studied theater at university and later became a stand-up comedian working alongside the likes of Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison. As a young child, her life was interrupted by her parents divorce at the age of 5. Her mother remarried a man who adopted Kellye and became her father and was her jazz influence. When Kellye couldn’t sleep at night, she would sneak down to her father’s record collection and put the needle down to the likes of Sarah Vaughn and Thelonious Monk. The jazz music would help her sleep and if you asked me, it sunk in so deeply and ultimately formed the singer in Gray that we know today.

When her mother and new father divorced, she and her sister were sent to a Texas State School. In the 1950’s it wasn’t easy for a single mom to get a good paying job and the State of Texas determined her mother’s income as unfit for raising children. This terrifying experience of loneliness and confusion made a strong survivor of Miss Gray. She was bound to be expressive in life, which she first adapted to the stage and then comedy and later, in her 30’s to jazz performance.
When Gray was 24 her mother passed away. She moved to Austin for a shot at a new life. One day an acquaintance asked if she would sing a song he had written for a big show. She agreed, having used her musical talents for a few years in more of a theatrical way in her recent past. But Kellye had not yet used her jazz voice in a show such as this. 800 people waited in the audience for the show to begin. She was told at the last minute what the form of the song would be! She was terrified. Before walking out on stage, she exclaimed “I have no idea what that means! What do you mean by chorus, by solo?” The reply was “You know, SOLO on top of the music! Like Ella [as in Fitzgerald]!” Gray recalls that moment when she was “at the end of the diving board, I just had to throw myself off.” And that she did. She opened her mouth, her lungs, and her memory of the records playing in the night when she was a child, and let it all out. At that moment, she knew this was her calling. Music, Jazz Music, found Kellye Gray in a frightful moment of spontaneous performance in front of 800 people. And she has never stopped singing since.

Kellye’s entrance to the world of Jazz began there and continued by her own will to succeed. She worked Piggy’s Jazz Club on 6th Street and ultimately found her way onto local stages 2 or 3 times a day, 7 days per week. She grew to be a name that could sell out the Paramount Theater on Congress Avenue.

But like anyone’s career, there are big moments and lesser known moments. Gray eventually moved away from Austin to work other jazz scenes. Many years passed and she came back to Austin to find that she lost touch with many of her local fans and that there isn’t much of a jazz scene left. This is why Kellye spends half the year on tour all over the world, performing concerts and conducting vocal seminars.

If you ask me, Gray is only now getting started. The twenty-odd years she has been performing have laid the ground work for a woman who is primed to rise again. I asked her if she would be willing to sign a major label deal if it were to land on her desk today. “Sell out? At this point in my life? ABSOLUTELY! I’ve done my own thing for all these years!” With the forthcoming release of “The Best of Kellye Gray” let’s hope it gets in the hands of someone who can take her to the next level. I doubt she’ll actually have to sell-out. Her authenticity is the appeal that today’s industry is seeking. If Gavin Degraw can release a stripped down, honest, small production record, then there is no reason why Kellye Gray can’t sign a major deal that will release her as she is – an old-school jazz vocalist who delivers dreams to her listeners inside the spaces between her ever-lasting notes.
In the meantime, the ever so beautiful KG3 Live at the Bugle Boy is available online and in regional stores. Go get it!
www.kellyegray.com