Labor Day - A National Day of Mourning.  
it's quiet in NYC, out on Staten Island, everyone has barbecued, deejayed, argued, drunk, visited, driven around, made love and bought some stuff from China from the 99c store.  That was yesterday, Sunday.  Today is the aftermath. The weather has been swinging from light showers to humid muggy weather and a barbecue today at the humid, ragtag end of summer  would be like setting fire to yourself in a sauna.  Overkill.  Unpleasant.

I won't go over the bridge today, the Verrazano Bridge that was proudly build by union iron workers, and now will be refabricated in China, because,  the public was told, that there are no fabricators to build the parts, in NYC and no steel mills nearby.   This article appeared in the Times recently and investigating citizens found out it was a lie, that there certainly were iron fabricators and steel producers in the NY/NJ area. Chinese bridges are about as safe as their baby formula.  I for one hope that they give the job of refurbishing the bridge to a couple of Americans, for a change . Not that it affects me much.   I don't have a car cause I'm scared to buy one and default on payments.  

I watch videos instead on Netflix, melting into a psychic fetal position on the cheap.  No more TV here.   $50 a month is a waste of money.   Gotta save, gotta save.

I share the space with my boomerang son and his friend. They both work in the food industry, often doing absurd shifts that go from 6:30 am to 2am some nights.  They just say yes.  In six months, my son has taken 3 consecutive days off only once.    5 years of college and he's hustling on the day shift.

Today, Labor Day, a National day of Mourning,  only a dog cries in a yard.  Noone blasts music.  It's a somber day, in preparation for the beginning of the Grind.

Today, a friend sits in a homeless shelter, forced out of her home of 20 years because some new landlords wanted to turn her 900 a month studio into a 400k condo.  Can you blame them?  More Gucci bags.  More Prada.  More Mercedes.  Who cares about pesky tenants?  Who cares that they are employed at jobs that pay under the poverty line?  That the 900 dollars represented 70 percent of their income?  That they were college educated?

Today, a relative goes to the food pantry, beause her job as a home health aide is not furnishing enough hours, and her last client just died.  Who cares that 80 percent of her money goes to an umlimited Metrocard and the rent on her furnished room with a toilet down the hall that she shares with alcoholic men collecting disability?  At least, she has health insurance.

Today, a teacher collects her student roster and is told that she is now an independent contractor with no health insurance.   She must get liability insurance, a DBA and health insurance.  She is old enough to retire but earns half of what she earned 7 years ago.  Her rent and utilities are about 3/4 of her earnings.  A person with a master's degree, she has never owned a home and will be eligible for retirement.

The Kias, Mitsubishis, VWs, BMWs and Lexises all park around the block.  Only one car in 10 is made in the US.  Detroit is quiet, too, I guess, on this national day of mourning.

Playing Anita O'Day In Roz Nixon's SS NIRVANA at BIRDLAND

One of the things I promised my Dad before he disappeared over the rainbow into the next dimension, was that I would use my alto tones.  He and his girlfriend had been big band singers, and I knew that they were politely holding back their opinions about  my rock and roll singing. Though I had been signed to big name labels, and done a lot of radio and TV,  to them, rock singing was just so much caterwauling.  I guess they disliked the genre as much as I dislike the screamo-emo stuff.  So, I did promise that I would look into a few ballads.

Nowadays, I don't need to scream so much.  I've gotten pretty good at it, but I've been exploring the old standards.  As a guitar player friend said who switched from the blues 12 bar to the jazzy 32 bar structure, "I got sick of the same 3 chords'.

I sort of agree.  While there is practically no song as hypnotic as 'Woolly bully" or 'Too many Teardrops", Billy Holiday's "Don't Explain" tears the gut right outta the bucket.  Nat King Coles' "Nature Boy" is as mysterious as 'Sally Go Round the Roses". and 'When Sunny Gets Blue"..has always been my song, an ode to hormones and clinical depression.

 Well, anyway, now I get to sing some of these beautiful old songs as Anita O'Day in Roz Nixon's latest musical, SS Nirvana, at Birdland on November 3rd.   I get to sing with all these lovely jazzies, Ghanniyya Green, who plays Sarah Vaughn, Charles Bartlett, as Louis Armstrong, TC3 as Johnny Hartmann, and Nikita White as Ella Fitzgerald.

   This is like stepping off into a time capsule of the late fifties, and early sixties, when singers were inventing like crazy, creating scat and vocalese at a time when Bop was king and  big bands had shrunk down to tight, fast little combos.

Now, I get to sing some jazz here and there, with Jim Satten's MMD jazz trio, or even on a little date where I'm booked to work with a group I don't know..  But the music is like comfort food for me, reminding me of the music of my growing years, when the record player was full of Peggy Lee and Dakota Staton, and Dinah Washington and Miles Davis, and Chet Baker and Gil Evans,  Stan Kenton and Broadway tunes.  Music is a shape shifter.  It starts out as an old tune that brings back memories, and then it changes up and becomes quantum mechanics, where time warps and speeds up and slows down according to what?  The moon?  The room?.  Then it becomes a crazy meditation, bringing on levitation and out of body experience.  Anyway, I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doin'.

The Creative Process as told to a Grant Panel

I have been writing songs for many years.. My work samples that I am presenting are parts of songs written in that last five or six. My work is impressionistic rather than consciously thematic; and the songs are reflective of the particular time/space coordinates of that place in my life. Songs written when my son was born are very different from those written when I was breaking up with my ex-boyfriend. I have recorded CDs worth of songs, nine of which have been released. My creative process has thus far followed this process: I hear song fragments in my head, and I hum them, embellish them, write down lyric strands. When several songs are whirling around in my head, and the fragments become more intricate, I feel it is time to take them from the ethereal to the material.

I would describe this step as downloading the melodies, beats and lyric couplets from my mental hard drive. Usually I will play the piece, without a complete lyric, on piano, and I write out a simple chord chart, and offer it to band members to play. I will usually fill in most of the blank spaces in the lyric before rehearsal. More recently, using a Garageband program, I have found a new way to show new work. I upload a tape loop and then play a piano part, to indicate key, tempo and song structure. Then I overdub scratch vocals to the computer. Once those are complete, I will send the songs via Skype, or per snail mail, on CD to the musicians in my live band. They will listen, and practice a rudimentary form of the tune. When we get to the rehearsal room, we play the piece together. This is where suggestions are made. I work with extremely skilled players, who are able to embellish the piece, in their own style. A simple bass line will be made more rich by the bassist, and additional guitar lines and sax lines are suggested. At the end, a song is ready for live recording and/or live performance. We first lay down basic tracks together, bass, drums, guitar and a scratch vocal. Overdubs are next. A keyboard or sax is added as needed, as are backing voices. Solos are added. Then the permanent lead vocal is put on, and then the piece is mixed.

Drummers are dancers who are sitting down!!

My sister LOVES to find grave sites of famous people and long dead relatives. While looking for our great-great grand mother, Susan Anastasia Marcella Goldrick Whelan, she took a side trip to the tomb of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, a deity in my sister's tap dancing world, right up there with Jimmy Cagney, Ginger Rodgers and that other Irish guy..oh yeah, Gene Kelly. I have a theory that Irish dancing was a brief form of flamenco dancing, learned by the Irish as the Spanish Armada was camped out, poised to attack the English heretics who had left the True Church..in what? 1600? Anyhoo, the Tudors wailed on the Spanish, and they went home, leaving the Irish as the English punching bag for 400 following years..and in addition, the flamenco instruction was incomplete..the Irish never learned the arms part of the dance, leaving only the dead arm position of Riverdance. Oh well..

Singing at the SaPPHIRE!!

I like the name of the place..The Sapphire Lounge. It sounds like a club that existed in a Raymond Chandler novel, or an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
I got to sing with Margold, McDermott and Satten, no not a law firm dedicated to medical malpractice, but a jazz trio created by 3 escapees from the rock n' roll wars. Jim Satten has played with Mary Wells, Bo Diddley, Ronny Wood and Ronnie Spector, just to name a few, and Denny McDermott was with Steely Dan. Mitch Margold, who played with the brilliant guitarist Cornell Dupree and Toots and the Maytals and I got into a conversation about the worst jobs we ever had. We both had had bad vibes after playing gigs in prisons, and we decided that they were some of the wierder gigs. (Steve Marshall chimed in to say that his worse gig was at a frat house, where there was so much beer on the floor that the band was getting electrocuted everytime they touched a microphone..Toga..toga..toga..)
Anyway, we're videotaping these sessions for local TV, so every Tuesday nite at 8pm we play at the Sapphire Lounge, 249 Eldridge Street, on the Lower East Side, right off East Houston, where my great great grandparents lived before the Civil War, and before moving to Holbrook, Long Island, where they scuffled around as farmers, for a while. Their spirits are in the neighborhood, and I get a warm and fuzzy feeling just walking up to Allen Street.