Jenny's Kitchen

The Haight-Ashburies

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Thu, 29 May 2014 18:41:00 +0000

The Haight-Ashburies

This week I hooked up with my old friend from 7^th grade whom I will name here as Jesse Winchester. We hadn’t seen each other in decades. (Please don't the math; yes, I’m probably older than you).

Back in our running days, we cut school incessantly, sometimes for a week at a time. We were what they called "incorrigible." We would change our school clothes for hippie garb that we brought along in brown paper bags and change at the SF bus terminal. I had an olive green embroidered Mexican dress with bell sleeves and wore beads and leather sandals.

It was spring, and I can still smell a sickly sweet odor of ornamental cherry blossoms like incense. It brings me right back to that place and time, even now.

We were somewhere in the Haight, and we scored some acid on the street --you could do that in those early days. We were starting to feel it as we slowly made our way up toward the park, and somewhere between Shrader and Stanyan, a man came up to us and said, “You girls better get out of here. Martin Luther King’s been shot and there’s gonna be a riot.”

It was hard to believe that on peace and love street anything so violent could happen so suddenly, but unbelievably a few minutes later a whole group of black kids came furiously running out of the park on the south side of the Haight. They were smashing all the windows and going crazy.

We got on the bus to go back home and sat in the back. Jesse was crying. I saw all the old faces on the bus turn around to look at us. “Jesse, you have to maintain,” I told her. “Jesse, maintain...”

So there we were 45 years later on the same stretch of street. It was night, and we just parked there and looked around. Looked it up on our smart little phones. Yes, it was April 4, 1968.

Jenny Kerr - Time is a Highway

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 22:19:00 +0000

Howdy Hi there, Friends and Neighbors,

This is a special notice today, but first we’d like to thank everybody for your kindness and generosity in making our recent Kickstarter campaign a big success.

And today we’d like to share with you one of the cool projects that we were able to fund, thanks to your largesse.

So without further ado, we would like to announce the world debut of the very first official music video, “Time is a Highway” from the new CD “Head of Fire."

The video was created by a very talented young videographer by the name of Vanessa Hellmann. It was shot entirely on location in San Francisco, in Golden Gate Park, the Great Highway and the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. It is a beautiful love letter to everyone’s favorite city, San Francisco.
Here is a link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =lOOBje8A6eg

We certainly hope you have as much fun viewing it as we had making it, and we would also like to give you a call to action. After you see the video and fall in love with it as we hope you will, please, take the next steps: Subscribe, Leave a comment, and Share the video to every music lover that you know via Facebook, Twitter and email. And just maybe, we can make it go viral as the kids say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =lOOBje8A6eg

Okay, okay, okay, already!

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Sat, 27 Jul 2013 06:38:00 +0000

So much news and so little time... And my new manager, Billy Cohen, over at Labyrynth Productions , is kicking my butt into gear. Yes, he's from New York with a degree in English and a degree in business from Columbia and was on the wrestling team.
So, of course he's gonna kick my butt. He's the perfect manager.
First, announce the two cool shows coming up. (Okay, Billy!)
This Wednesday at Pasta Moon in Half Moon Bay, at 6:30 pm with bass virtuoso James Whiton (Tom Waits) and Marisa Martinez (Eric McFadden) and Philbillie, of course. I hear this place has been turned into a lovely music venue with great sound. No cover.

Our first show here: Sunday, Aug. 4th at 11:30 AM. Brunch at the Fenix, which appears to be an absolutely gorgeous supper club and again, no cover.

And I don't know if you heard but on September 21 at the Uptown Theater in Napa, Philbillie and I are so excited to be opening for one of my all-time heroes, Dr. John.

All this got crossed off the to-do list:

1. Made some jewelry and trinkets to go with the music. Weird, funny things, Banjo Cat pendants, Mona Lisa with banjo rings, cufflinks, bolo ties, one-of a-kind Western shirts with cats and banjos. T-shirts too.Check.

2. Started an Etsy store with said trinkets called Jenny KerrFuffle - Offhand Oddments and Oddities. Like the name? www.etsy.com/shop/JennyKerrFuffle

3. Getting ready to do a Kickstarter promotion, ‘cause it doesn’t look like the labels are exactly jumping at the chance to take on our new CD (“The numbers just don’t add up,” was the general response). So here we come, Kickstarter. Check.

4. Philbillie’s got the Okey Doke Records website up and running. Check.

5. Release the CD! Oct. 19. Double check! No, no, no, not the Kraken, the CD.
Release the CD!

Our ship has come in.

What’s Really Happening Now –or the Real Reason I did my Own Cover Art--

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Wed, 29 May 2013 06:12:00 +0000

Okay, I’m gonna tell you all how it really happened. It’s a pretty extraordinary and circuitous story, some of you might think I’ve finally cracked, but maybe some of you might relate and it might help…

All right, so I have a friend, Joel, I’ve know for 35 years who used to be an upper-echelon international banker, quite a brilliant man, and then he became a healer, like a really great healer, Chinese shaman-type great healer. He had a wife whom he adored, Alice, and she taught chi gung, and they were soul mates and lived happily for 35 years.

Joel's mother suddenly fell ill and died of a stroke, and when he told Alice, who was very close to his mother, she had a heart attack instantly and also shockingly died. So my friend lost the two people closest to him, 10,000 miles apart in one day.

After a while of being very lost without Alice, Joel consulted a well-known medium. He had pretty jaw-dropping results, and it seems that Alice was explaining all sorts of things about the afterlife
to him.

So I decided to have a reading of my own. It was a very safe, protected and loving feeling, not scary at all. And it was a phone reading. I’d never even seen the medium. She asked, “Let’s see who’s there for you today…ah. Do you have a grandmother; was her name Louise? Was she a musician? A bit round? She’s showing me that. Do you have a photo in the drawer of her with a musical instrument? She wants you to take that out because she likes to be remembered.”

Well, knock me over with a feather. There's no way she could have known any of this. She also asked, “Who is John? I hear his name very loudly. Who is John?” And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember a relative of that name—that is—until I hung up and thought about it. And then it dawned on me, it must have been my great-grandfather, John C. Lincoln, industrialist and inventor.

So I figured if old John C. had something to tell me, I better well listen, so I scheduled another session.

The medium described John C. physically, spot on, tall, thin, proud of his thick head of hair even in his old age. He wanted to tell me that I should be much more creative, I should be writing more, and not just songs, teaching, and also definitely drawing my own CD cover. And that I should invent instruments that would make me sound different and unique. That I should start by thinking about what doesn’t work with the instruments that I use.

It’s true that I have a banjo, slide and standard guitar on stage and how much less work it would be if they could be consolidated into one instrument. Or even just the banjo and slide…it would make life so much easier. I’ve been thinking how that could happen, perhaps a bridge that raises for slide and lowers for banjo. But also, just as an aside, I don't think you have to do everything a dearly departed soul asks you to do after all, right? I mean, he was an inventor, and of course he's going to tell me to invent stuff. I did, however, draw the cover and interior artwork for the upcoming CD. So I sat down and drew and drew
and drew.

The most important thing that I’ve learned from these sessions is that my task on this earthly plane is, as it is for most of us, to dissolve the ego. I sure spent a lot of time trying to pump up my career, and it hasn’t done me any good, physically, spiritually or emotionally. I was getting sick of the whole ball of wax.

This is what led me to rethink how I wanted to present my shows from now on. I wanted to be more interactive, more generous and more collaborative and a little bit less about "me me me," and hence the Jenny Kerr "and Friends" format. It just feels right right now.

I’ve been able to let the whole damn thing go. Hell with it. I don’t care anymore. It is what is in
this moment, this small moment which is all we have. My heart feels like a bird that’s been
let out of a cage.

Now we're really getting serious...

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:40:00 +0000

Guess what? Oh yeah, there's a show, but also...

..after Lo these many years of doing everything ourselves, we are blessed to have a management team now.
Ladies and Germs, meet Colleen Kennedy and Billy Cohen of Labyrynth Productions. She was with Bill Graham forever and he has been a talent buyer forever, and they're great. They do ginormous events like Bay to Breakers and the huge menorah lighting ceremony in Union Square. Check 'em out at www.labyrynth.com.

They've got this brilliant eleven-year-old kid, Daniel, who builds cigar box guitars and plays drums, electric ukulele and keys. We've been giving him a bit of coaching, so he's sitting in on some songs with us for our upcoming show June 8th, and we've been working on a song that he entitled "Stacked Up over Newark" which we plan to perform for the first time too.

We played the Plough and the Stars for the first time a couple of months ago and loved the venue. Turns out it's a fun, down-to-earth Irish bar with a stage. They have a long tradition as an acoustic music venue, and the usual crowd there is real supportive so we are doing an "and Friends" kind of show. What I love about this show format is that I get to invite super-talented friends that have crossed our path and share these talents with our fans.

This time we are thrilled to introduce Diego "El Twanguero" Garcia who was the most killer player we heard at the Zihuatanejo International Guitar Festival where we performed this year. And it's his first SF appearance! You're gonna love it. He combines Spanish styles with twang. Pretty breathtaking, and, Ladies, he's not too hard on the eyes either.

Also we have the Keller Sisters. Philbillie produced their EP here at Okey Doke Studios, and they've been getting quite a buzz (and not just from caffeine). Between the fine songwriting and tight sibling harmonies, it's something you won't want to miss.

Now, along with all this other fun stuff, we have a sweet new line of merchandise. I designed some cool BanjoCat t-shirts and several pieces of jewelry including rings, pendants and bolo ties. We also have a grumpy cat, a banjo dog and some other odd images you'll have to see...

Also the website is updated and looks real fine. Hey, we had to actually pay our webmaster, so go have a gander, will ya'?

So come out to the show on June 8th at the Plough and the Stars, 116 Clement St,.SF 9 PM for some good clean fun,

Women of Zihuatanejo

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 06:22:00 +0000

Women of Zihuatanejo

We just spent a couple of weeks performing at the Zihuatanejo International Guitar Festival which is held in a town on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico that if anyone's every heard of, it's usually in reference to the "Shawshank Redemption."

It's a great place; many retirees and vacationers and old hippies. There has been a lot of new-age talk among the ex-pat gals about how Zihuatanejo was Cihuatlán or "Place of Women" referring to the western paradise of the Aztec Universe, the home of the “goddess women.” I think this may be more wishful thinking on the part of the invading gringas than reality.

No one knows anything for sure, but Jacqui, a friend I made who was actually born there, has an in with the local archeologist and the historian who provided a more likely explanation. When the Aztecs came to conquer the fishing village, all the men were conveniently out at sea. So they called it “Place of Women.”

Jacqui reminds me what mofos the Aztecs were. The conquered were used for human sacrifices and those parties could go on for days.

But she also reflects on the Roman Catholic practice of mass as a symbolic form of human sacrifice. Well, yes, I never thought of it like that. Here’s the body and blood of Jesus Christ. I guess we’re all pretty bloodthirsty at the end of the day.

Jacqui told me the story of her grandmother that sounded like something out a García Márquez novel.

Jacqui’s grandmother, Mariana, and her grandfather, Ignacio, lived in a remote village in the brown scrubby hills high above Zihuatanejo called Vallecitos. This woman bore him six children; however, they never exactly tied the knot. This was not because of lack of wanting to marry; it was simply because the bishop, the Obispo, only came through the village once every six years, and when he finally came through and saw she had delivered children outside the sanctity of marriage, he refused to marry them.

Ignacio was a tradesman and purveyor of goods throughout the region. Among his customers was a powerful hacienda owner who lived far away in the lovely town Guayameo, more than 250 miles from Vallecitos. On one of those trips, Ignacio happened upon a beautiful woman with long black hair, the daughter of the wealthy patrón.

He was love-struck and to his surprise, it appeared that his feelings were reciprocated; they fell in love. He never mentioned his family in the village, however, when he asked the father for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

As news of the grand wedding spread throughout the dry hills like a high wind, Mariana got word of Ignacio's infidelity. She had resolved upon a course of action, and procuring seven burros, one for each child and one for herself laden with a few carefully chosen provisions, set out upon the arduous trip on the rocky dust-choked road to Guayameo.

She and her children appeared before the patrón of the hacienda. She explained to him, “I do not want to fight, I do not want money, I just want to know how I am going to feed these children if those two are to marry.” In short order, the wedding was called off, and Mariana went home with her brood of children and burros trailing behind her.

When Ignacio eventually showed up outside his house in Vallecitos that evening, tying his horse to a tree, a bullet whizzed by his ear. He stopped in his tracks, then called to her, “I don’t want violence, I don’t want to fight. I want to marry you,” to which she replied, “And why the hell would I ever want to marry a man like you?” And that as they say was the end of that.

Jacqui is points to her arms; it is that woman’s blood that runs through my veins, she proudly exclaims. Maybe there is something to be said about the women of Zihuatanejo after all.

She made me these cookies from this grandmother’s recipe. Square, large and flat, like a saltillo tile, mottled like dry earth baked by the heat. Not too fancy and not too sweet. Just like I imagine Jacqui’s grandmother.

Tortillas de harina dulces de Mariana (see translation below)

Ingredientes
2 tazas de harina
½ taza de manteca
1/2 cucharadita de polvo de hornear
4 cucharadas de azúcar
1/2 cucharada de sal
1/2 taza de leche

Procedimiento
Se cierne la harina con el polvo de hornear y la sal y se le agrega el azúcar.
Se revuelve todo muy bien, se hace una montañita y en el centro se abre un hueco donde se pone la manteca derretida y se le agrega la leche necesaria para formar una masa manejable que se pueda extender con el rodillo.
Se divide en porciones que se extienden con el rodillo formando las tortillas, que se ponen a cocer en el comal.
No se voltean hasta que no tienen color, para que después puedan esponjar bien.

Mariana's Sweet Flour Tortillas
Ingredients
2 cups flour
½ cup shortening
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk

Sift the flour with the baking powder and salt and add the sugar.
Stir everything well, and make a mound in the center, a make a well in the flour where you put the melted shortening. Add enough milk to form a dough that can is stiff enough to roll.
It is divided into portions and roll out with rolling pin and place on a griddle to cook.
Turn when they begin to color , so that they can be puff up nicely. (I think this is what it means...J.)

A Gringa Like Me

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:31:00 +0000

Well I’m spending a lot of time in my room in Mexico now; I have a nasty head cold or flu something. Maybe it’s dengue fever. I hear they have that floating around out here. Anyway, I’m still gonna play tonight. My set is at 12:30 tonight.

We’re playing mostly for the expats down here, generally a wizened and ropey-veined bunch of heavy drinkin fun-lovin’ retirees. And there are the volunteers who run around helping us all out.

In fact, one especially sweet lady, Jacqui, who was born here when it was a beautiful gringo-less fishing village, told me the real story of her childhood here, how her father took them out in the fishing boat and when they reached the rocks, he’d say, “Applaud, children!” and all the hundreds of birds would fly when they clapped their hands. Now that’s a real show. That’s the show they should be having here.

It’s funny where we’re staying. Not exactly comfortable for a gringa like me, but I’m getting used to it. The overhead fan only turns at tornado velocity as if to want to blow me back over to my side of the border. Evil fan. Look. It's spinning so fast you can't even see the blades.

Phil’s fan chirps. Incessantly. Like a wind-up tropical bird playing and replaying the floor show of a Disneyland paradise. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Next plane of tourists arriving. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

Also there’s a weird big picture in a blood-red frame in my room of a baby with curly hair. Did a family live here before? Did the baby die? Why didn’t they take the picture with them? I’d love to take it down, but maybe the baby did actually die, and its spirit would be pissed off if I took it off the wall. Nothing worse than an angry dead baby.

As long as I’m on the subject of weird, in case you didn’t know, you’re not supposed to put toilet paper in the toilet here. They say the pipes are really small. Philbillie says with his indefatigable Philbillie logic, "It’s a third world country, what do you expect?” but I just don’t get it. Why would they put in a toilet that can’t handle toilet paper? Now you know in case you ever come down here. You can thank me later.

And there's more weird in the bathroom, too. The tile. It's like a gilded and marble Mafioso’s dream of bad-taste luxury, a bas-relief of gold seaweed, coral and bubbles encased in a ring of gold for vapid queen mermaid (that would be me) who to ponder mindlessly, mouth half-agape, as though she has something to say from astride her porcelain and plastic throne.

One last thing. Can you say door knob warmer?

In the early morning hours when the roar of the diesel trucks and whining scooters have subsided, you hear the ocean waves breaking and loud birds I’ve never heard before, maybe some still left from when this place was a gringo-less paradise. Whoever needed a road, anyway, a luxury hotel, an Italian or sushi restaurant in Mexico? Drug lords cater to the north American party animals. Dead bodies lying in the road. The green palms wave at me in the night. Here’s what I think. Everything tells me: gringo go home…

So this promoter walks into a bar…

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:53:00 +0000

…and he says, you only have about 400 Facebook fans, so we won’t consider you for our festival. We might let you come and play-- for free.

Hmmm, (along with some under-the-breath profanities which need not be duplicated here), sez I, my ego bristling.

But wait, I vowed to myself, my New Year’s Resolution, and lifetime resolution, as the new age-etarians are fond of saying, to

dissolve the ego.

Getting to that point of needing to dissolve my ego is a bit of a long story, maybe for another blog. Suffice it to say, it appears to me that we all could benefit by dissolving the ego, which comprises the brain, judgment, criticism all that fun stuff and rather work from the heart. Maybe that’s why we’re all walking around this planet in this lifetime. Maybe we just didn’t get it last time around…

So I decide to go ahead and ask folks to like the music page. First Phil and I sent out a wry little note to our paltry fan base “We Live to be Liked” which didn’t get too much response. So I look at all my friends on Facebook, about 1200, 1300. And I’m wondering, who are all these people? What real contact do I have with them. I don’t really know most of them at all. And so, I embarked on a project to write each and everyone and ask them if they wouldn’t do me a little favor, and ‘like’ the music page.

It’s been a fascinating process. I've been visiting their Facebook pages, seeing new babies that have been born, musicians struggling to stay afloat, French people who probably won't understand my post, Dutch people who probably will, folks with parents that had just passed away. I've been congratulating, consoling, and just being with.

But each time I got to anybody famous or semi-famous, I was stopped. I was sure they wouldn’t have time to answer such a puny little cry in the wind. But on I went anyway. And the surprising thing, they usually all answered, and sometimes I even had a conversation with them.

As it turns out the process of connecting with people in this way was far more fun and valuable to me than any festival I might have played.

I’m about halfway through. So on and on I go wading out in the waters of people, and the circle of friends that is making a small momentary ripple in this vast ocean where we are all the same…

More on Maui

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:00:00 +0000

Here's an article I recently wrote for Hermonicas.com, a website about women harp players, past and present.
It's got some other pix of the Maui tour. Hope you enjoy it. -JK

Maui Tour—or I left my Heart in Makawao

Philbillie (my partner, guitar slinger, road manager and engineer/producer) grew up on Maui playing, cutting his teeth in the clubs. His dad put in the first FM rock radio station on Maui. Philbillie's sister had recently moved back with her 2 boys, so I thought it was high time that we put together a tour and take the occasion to visit them.

Turns out everyone wants to go to Maui. We brought along bass player Dave Newman, and the fabulous Eric McFadden www.ericmcfadden.com who has played with P-Funk, Eric Burdon, and lots of famous folk too numerous to name here. Let's just say he's one hot guitar guy.

While there, we had the good fortune to hook up with a great drummer, Josh Greenbaum, who we wanted to steal away from the island and bring him back to SF. Might just steal him yet.

We got to stay in a beautiful place, Rainbow Acres, way up a windy road on a mountain in a eucalyptus forest. It’s a farm where they grow and sell all kinds of succulents and cacti. Wherever we went we were making fast new friends and fans.

Philbillie had some old radio contacts and we played a benefit for the community radio station there, Radio Mana'o, making fast friends with the DJs there, especially singer/songwriters Dorothy Betz and Les Adams www.betzandadam.com. Here's a shot of us all jammed into the tiny studio there.

Touring a new market for the first time can be worrisome. You just don’t know if anyone’s gonna show up to hear you, especially if they never heard of you. We had a number of club dates in the tourist part of the

island, Kihei, and as the word got out, (on the coconut wireless as they call it) more and more folks came to see us.

We got to play Charlie’s, Willy Nelson’s hangout, which was really fun, and by the time we did the Radio Mana’o benefit at Casanova, they had one of the best turnouts they ever had in something like 15 years of benefits.

One of the high points was a house concert that was put together by master guitar-builder Stephen Grimes www.grimesguitars.com. This guy has built guitars for George Benson (four of ‘em!), Leo Kottke, Willy Nelson, Larry Coryell and the list goes on. We got to hang in his studio and play with crazy-ass amazing guitars! Ukeleles, too. By the way, you better pronounce it right over there—that’s oo-koo-lay-lay. It’ll save you a few scowls if you say it right. Steve had put together a very cool house concert for us. It was the first one he did, and it pretty much sold out.

Here’s Dave Newman playing a Steve Grimes guitar:

If the Tiki gods are willing, we’ll be back in March for another tour, since we’ve had a festival offer. Another chance to go back to paradise. It is paradise, yes, but only for the people who are there who make it so. Aloha and mahalo.

The Kindness of Strangers

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 23:11:00 +0000

Olinda, Maui

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”—Blanche du Bois

(I think she said this after being violated by Stanley Kowalski.)

We are up a winding road in the cool reaches of a forest upcountry.

Driving up there are brown horses, white horses standing the green shade like a Gauguin painting, flocks of stumpy-tailed goats, huge lush overgrowth of vines and flowers, yellow and red hibiscus everywhere that long-haired women tuck behind their ears, white sweet plumeria blossoms fallen onto thick green lawns.

Little jangly suburban houses are scattered over the jungle towns of Makawao and Haiku. The words are lovely, rolling off the tongue—Kauhikoa, Kekaolike, Kula…

But further down to the coast the more the island smacks of Southern California beach cities, hotter and stickier, with sad condos, refrigerated big box stores, giant blue ice drinks, fancy desperate resorts, and poor people picking glumly along the shopping aisles looking at price tags.

They say there are ancient ghosts here. When the moon is full, warrior ghosts, the night marchers, haunt their old paths near ancient rock temples. They say if you hear their drums, take off all your clothing, lie face down on the ground, or they may tap your shoulder and you will join their eternal march.

I keep thinking about life here before Hollywood, before 50’s pin-up Hawaiian babes, before Amerika. Before Captain Cook.

A couple of millennia of taro pounding, vicious bloody fighting between brown anthill islands. Fighting each other. But not fighting nature.

The first thing the missionaries did was plant kiawe trees with sharp thorns that would drop on the ground, so the Hawaiians would have to wear shoes.

And they made the bare-breasted hula dancers wear shirts. The nakedness shocked their Victorian sensibilities.

In the rich tourist resorts, the grounds are swept immaculate, the green is clipped and natural world held briefly at bay. Brown men serve white women tall drinks with ice.

Beautiful fruits, both wild and cultivated: Surinam cherries, white pineapple, mandarin trees. And rats. Rats under the porch. Scuttling English rats from Captain Cook’s scuttled ships. Rats eating the fallen fruit.

The island has been violated by the kindness of strangers. Waves of it washing up its shores. Ghost warriors beat their drums and march down the night.

Head of Fire, Feet of Clay

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:48:00 +0000

July 13 2011, San Francisco

Four months already and I haven’t come up with another blog. Swore I’d write one once a month, but I just didn’t get around to it.

I kept journals for years and years. Why oh why is it so hard for me to sit down and write the damn blog?

I figured it might interest you to hear the story of some of the songs coming out on the new release...

Head of Fire, Feet of Clay

Got no fear, and I got no hope

Rollin down the river in a tin can boat

Don’t throw me a line ‘cause it’s much too late

Head of fire, feet of clay

My true love taught me not to feel

Taught me when to run, taught me how to steal

So I stole his heart and I gave it away

Head of fire, feet of clay

I’m the last big chief in this one-cow town

Won’t crawl, won’t kneel and I won’t bow down

So they left me lying where I lay

Head of fire, feet of clay

Kick down the dead, climb the graveyard wall

When you get to the top, boy, you better not fall

You laugh when they say it’s gonna end this way

Head of fire, feet of clay

* * * * *

Well, at the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, I especially like this one. One of the best moments for me in my musical life, Bill Bottrell chose this one (and another one called “Say Goodbye.”) to produce out of all my material. He played drums on it. We went up north to his studio in Mendocino which has been closed off for a few months, and in the process it had gotten moldy. I was singing in an isolation booth, and started to get an asthma attack, but I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to whine, wanted to be brave!…you can hear it in my voice, but it adds an oddly cool quality.

I took inspiration on this song from a few places. The title was an ”Untouchables” episode from 1960 that came on in the wee hours www.imdb.com/title/tt0737756/ and I thought the title would make a great song. I didn’t know what to make of it at the time.

The line about the “tin can boat” seems to me like I might have heard something like it in a Dylan song, but I might have dreamed it, or just imagined I heard it and filled in the spaces. You can get some great lines like that. I never found the Dylan song with that line. Maybe you know it. Well, it’s belongs to this song now.

The last verse’s first couplet comes from a 2008 PBS special on the black Indians of New Orleans called the “Order of Myths.” There’s an old guy talking about the stuff he sings, nonsense stuff, but I thought it was very poetic:

Make fire, make thunder

Kick down tombstones

Midnight put the dead on the wall

Dude tell you I’ll make a tireless climber

Slip the wall

Get to the top

you better not jump or fall

Help Wanted

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 23:18:00 +0000

Well, we’re got seven tunes in the can. They are sounding better than anything I’ve done before! And we think we might have a few songs that might have legs.

The question now is how to get them into the right hands.

As we all know, the music business is a tough biscuit to chew. It's a shark pool, so you really need a shark on your side if you don't want to be trampled in the dust. Heck, you’d need a landshark…

Is anybody out there up to the task? Are you willing to break a few legs, cut off a few thumbs, and maybe just be a little ruthless? Would you trade your grandmother to Somalian pirates for the chance to have your client make the big time? Lord knows that what it takes these days.

Back in 1966, in the time of the Summer of Love, The Beatles gave David Crosby an advance tape of the song, “A Day in the Life.” When Buffalo Springfield's manager found this out, he sent an attractive young girl over to Crosby's house to steal the tape.

He then took it to the biggest DJ in L.A. and offered it to him with the stipulation that he play his clients' new song, “For What It's Worth” every time he played the new Beatles’ song. A scoop like that wasn't to be passed up, and so the deal was made. By the end of that summer, everyone in L.A. knew “For What It's Worth” like it was the national anthem, and it made the charts.

I want a manager like that--someone willing to go the whole nine yards, someone who will bend every effort, and comes from a long line of effort-benders. I want someone who won't take no for an answer, even while being pepper-sprayed or menaced by attack dogs in front of a large record company's headquarters.

It takes a lot of wherewithal to front a successful band, and we want someone with large quantities of it.
Are you out there? We'll leave a light on for you.

Creating the Perfect World

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 10:15:00 +0000

Philbillie says I should blog about Bill. Okay. Here’s what happened.

We decided to use as a part of the new record an older recording of one of our favorite songs “Head of Fire, Feet of Clay” that we tracked some years ago with super-producer Bill Bottrell (Michael Jackson, Sheryl Crow, Tom Petty, Shelby Lynne, the list goes on) at his studio in Mendocino.

We had high hopes of him recording the entire album, and we took home a CD of a rough mix, thinking we might finish it someday with Bill. But as it turned out, after the first sessions, Bill was lured back to the bright lights of Tinseltown.

We thought about re-recording it from scratch

but realized that his version had really become the definitive one for us. But we only had (what we thought) was a rough mix.

When we recently talked to Bill about doing a final mix for this song, for various reasons, it wasn’t feasible to remix, and in any case upon re-listening Bill thought it was excellent as it was and gave us his blessing to release it. However, we wrote that "in a perfect world 'Head of Fire' would have one more element, sustaining, like either steel or strings," but added that the mix sounded blankety-blank awesome.

So we gave a holler to our first-call pedal steel guy, Dave Zirbel who did a gorgeously executed track. Here’s a glimpse of Dave at work on the tune:

http://tinyurl.com/4pe53qn

And so I guess it’s done now, at last. But isn’t the perfect world always a work in progress?

Making Records is Like Making Sausages...

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 10:19:00 +0000

Everybody enjoys the final product, but you don't want to know what goes into making it.
So Philbillie has a sinus infection, and I’ve had a cold for a week.

But even in the face of adversity we soldier on, and are nearing completion of the long-awaited (by us at least) CD. Today we tracked background vocals on a couple of tracks with the fabulous Lady Chi and Pamela Parker who sing with RonKat Spearman of P-Funk in Katdelic. We forgot to turn on the video when the girls were here. Too bad. They’re really cute, and sing great too.

Monday we go to the East Bay to re-record some more B3 with Harry O. See, we almost completed one of the main songs. But after tracking the lead vocals we realized that the key was far too low. So we scrapped the lot, saved the drums and proceeded to recut basses, guitars, banjos, vocals all in one day. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise since in the process we made it even bigger better fatter and groovier. You could even catch a glimpse of some the overdubs on the jennykerrband youtube channel or just look at the little video roll on the left. Stay tuned, we’ll have some sweet video up soon of Harry and his big organ (Hammond B3, that is), and also Eric McFadden as he tracks some mandolin.

Train to Salvation recorded at Okey Doke

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 03:08:00 +0000

Philbillie is really proud of this record; he recorded and co-produced it with Eric and of course worked his hiney off on the mix . I got to play harmonica and banjo sing a little on it (I'm part of the 'Drunk and Dirty Angel Choir'). I think it's gorgeous. The title track is epic.

In the press:

WWW.BLUESMATTERS.COM
Eric McFadden is an American guitarist but this album – his first for French label Bad Reputation – has a decidedly French feel to it, albeit French on the Mexican border. If you are after ‘normal’ Blues this won’t float your boat but if your tastes are more to the seedy side of life and death and you enjoy polka and accordion then he has it all and in spades. McFadden’s guitar work is a delight and his voice is gruff and dense, world-worn and full of life’s experiences. The titles tell part of the story – ‘Last Day Of My Life’ or ‘Stealing From The Dead’ – but his songs are exquisitely painworn and felt

PARIS-MOVE.COM
Véritable ‘coup de cœur’, cet album de McFadden mérite la note maximale, ‘Indispensable’, car dès la première écoute cet opus vous deviendra indispensable tant il est géant. Monumental.

Chicken and ABCs

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Click over to Amazon and check out the rave reviews for our dear friend Marissa's album featuring the talents of Jenny Kerr and co.

What's It All About?Marisa Martinez is hoping to help kids learn while getting a big dose of musical inspiration with her newly-released compact disc, ABC And Chickens. Martinez, a National Board Certified teacher with a Masters in Elementary education, and a Bachelors Science in Special education, also performs regularly in several bands. This kindergarten teacher and longtime musical performer hopes to support music in the schools through the production and sale of an educational CD for children.
Music has helped so many children learn to read and become excited about learning and after completing her master's thesis on the crucial interaction between music and art in a young student's educational development, Martinez realized that ongoing cuts in music classes both in her school district and hundreds of schools across the country were robbing students of that important component of schooling. Aimed at the pre-K to 2nd grade set, the 18 songs on ABC And Chickens help kids learn counting, naming the days of the week, spelling, social skills and other important lessons.
Marisa has been a full-time Kindergarten teacher for almost 10 years, singing and playing these songs with her classes for years. These songs align with the teaching standards and have helped children learn all they need to know in preschool, kindergarten and beyond. She has three daughters, three cats, three dogs, and one husband.
Working with producer Phil "Philbillie" Milner, Martinez gathered a few friends who happen to be some of the most noteworthy players in San Francisco, all former or current band mates - guitarist Eric McFadden (George Clinton, Eric Burdon), drummer Paulo Baldi (Les Claypool, Cake), cellist Sam Bass (Les Claypool), bassist/tubist Ed Ivey (Faraway Brothers, Brass Monkey Brass Band) , multi-instrumentalist Jenny Kerr and Mike Anderson on the Bass. Martinez composed most of the songs and sang or played on every cut. The recording sessions were great fun for the musicians and more than a few admitted they learned something new just being involved.

New CD in the works at Okey Doke Studio

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 02:39:00 +0000

Live in the studio at Okey Doke records with producer/engineer Philbillie Milner and drummer Anthony Vito as they set up to record tracks on the upcoming Jenny Kerr release tentatively titled "The Good Life" Here they demonstrate the "Glynn Johns" drum miking technique for that massive John Bonham sound.

Paper Girl in a Digital World

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 19:30:00 +0000

Even though I swore to myself, and publicly, on this blog that I'd post once a month, I just can't seem to do it. Even though there's been all kinds of news to relate, like writing new songs, recording, playing with some new wonderful musicians (of late we're working with Kevin Hayes who played with Robert Cray for 20 years, and bassist Tim Eschliman who is playing with Commander Cody), I can't seem to get off my duff to blog about it. Maybe it's because Paper Doll Girl over here doesn't even seem to have a duff, or even a pelvis for that matter. Well, I guess that elimates the pesky problem of doll genitalia, or bloomers in this case. It looks like a strange immaculate conception; she is giving birth to herself and to her emotionless twin with no birth canal. Mystifying, her alternate blank face, presumably the back of her head. Well, if it's on paper, the back is already blank, so it would seem that this would be the face Doll Girl uses when she really wants to mask her emotion. Much easier cutting out this shape than tiny dark glasses, I suppose.
Bottom line, I think I've finally o.d.'ed on self-promotion, marketing and social networking. It seems everyone has a blog, and a Myspace and a website and at least one Facebook page, and a Sonicbids EPK and a Reverbnation site, and on and on ad nauseum. With all our "tips for musicians" and ruthless promotional tactics, it seems the only money being made in the music biz is by the folks providing these tips and how-to services. Just the artists are left screaming, whispering, or sincerely imploring, "Look at me, look at me, look at me."
Ambition is just a mask of the ego's sense of inferiority. I'm done, cooked, stick a fork in me. I'm making music for its own sake. Just give me a pair of scissors and let me run with it.

The Best Music You’ll Ever Make

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Thu, 06 May 2010 07:25:00 +0000

As a result of a personal growth seminar he is participating in, Philbillie is producing an event called "Twang for Tots," a benefit for a children's music in the schools. It all started with our dear friend and fiddler Marisa Martinez who teaches at one of the most financially impoverished schools in San Francisco. We kept hearing horror stories about funding cuts and teachers spending out of their own pockets for the most basic supplies like pencils and the books. All these years, Marisa has been quietly buying art supplies for her class and teaching them to sing and draw. Phil and I went there once or twice to sing for these little munchkins. Once was Halloween. They loved it, they all sang with us and we watched the parade in the playground. But there were some sad and troubled kids in that classroom to be sure.

It has been a long-standing dream of Marisa’s to create a children’s CD, and so she has finally done it with "ABC and Chickens," www.abcandchickens.com with our good buddies, Eric McFadden, Paolo Baldi and others. Philbillie produced and engineered it. Marisa did the artwork, sang on it, played on it, wrote all the songs except a couple. I was pleased that she covered an unreleased song of mine, “Schroedinger’s Cat,” whose subject matter I thought was pretty advanced for the kidlets, but Marisa assured me that the meowing cat on the track would work just fine for them. So bleary-eyed Phil went down to the school bright and early to record the kids singing on several of the tracks. As a treat Marisa bought a pizza. Some of these kids don't know where their next meal is coming from.

Phil and I have regularly played shows for Bread and Roses, an organization that provides music for people who live in institutions or are otherwise isolated from society. They are dedicated to promoting wellness through the healing power of music. We’ve played rehab centers, cheered up abused moms and kids in shelters over Christmas, played for mentally disabled adults who could barely talk, but sure could sway to the music. We always have an indescribable feeling when we do these shows. A light feeling in the soul. It’s why we do it. The best music you’ll ever make is for the ones who need it the most.

Twang for Tots Benefit for Friday, June 4^th,7 PM

Restoration Workshop

630 Treat Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94110-2016

415 671-5219

Philbillie@gmail.com

Broken Record

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:17:00 +0000

Scarier and scarier, cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); I wonder how we will ever make enough money for treacle and new shoes, now that we must give away all our beautiful music for free. No one wants records, or tapes or even CDs now. How will we ever manage? Poor dear little songs! What will we do with them? How will they ever find ears to appreciate them? And she began to cry. But slowly a plan began to take shape in Alice's mind. Why, we'll sell them outright to television shows and adverts and films...yes, we'll take them to market and sell them outright. No matter! she said bravely. And so she tucked her precious songs into a lovely basket with bright blue ribbons and started off for the covered market. But much to Alice's chagrin, as she approached the market, she saw a long line down the lane, full of other people carrying baskets with even brighter ribbons, even shinier songs. Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, to gaze on the endless line meandering like a great snake; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again. And then she began to blog...

Blossom in the Dust

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:07:00 +0000

I promised myself I'd write once a month, and here it is, only 3 days late. Not like my new CD, which is, something like 2 years late. That's the blessing and the curse of the home studio.

Songs are like children. Early on, they must be nurtured. If neglected they eventually drift off like homeless waifs into the whorls of stars.

Odd that the saddest events in our lives can produce the most inspired songs. And what we hear out of the corners of our ears can become lines in those songs, and so I thought I heard my friend, Suz, say at the kitchen table one afternoon the phrase, "Blossom in the Dust." But she didn't say it. The song did get written, though. It was for my uncle, a wonderful man, a psychiatrist, naturopath and healer who decided inexplicably to end his life.

Around the same time I was contacted by a fan who lives in Belgium. He was grief-stricken. His son, Remy, had been killed by an automobile, did I want to write a song for him? As I listened to the grief of this man, while slung up in my own grief, I realized that this is a song for everyone who has had a loved one plucked too early from their heart.
http://jean-luc1952.skyrock.com/

It's been two years now that I've been trying to keep this child of a song alive, from floating off into the ethers. As the year comes to a close, I think I may too have finally finished it.

Ah, the moon
Is scarred with silver
And its face
Too far to touch
So pale
In the branches
Like a blossom
In the dust

Ah they told you
Life would hurt you
But they didn’t
Say how much
Cast your pearls
Back in the ocean
Cast your blossoms
In the dust

Take this flower
From your heart
Your tears have turned it
White with rust
Let the wind
Strip the petals
Scatter blossoms
In the dust

Love until
You are empty
Love until
You love too much
Love until
Love undoes you
Makes you blossom
In the dust

Halloween with Kelli and Metso

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:12:00 +0000

Why is it so hard for me to blog? I kept journals for years...Well, I guess there are paper people and techie types.
Oh well. Anyway, we've had our dear friends from the UK, Kelli Ali and Metso staying with us for few weeks. We met a few years back at Zihuatanejo Guitar Fest. A couple of weeks ago we did a beautiful show at Yoshi's, with Barry Melton, Stevie Coyle, and Caroline Aiken. Philbillie and I backed up Kelli, a refreshing change of pace for me. She has delicate haunting songs that really get under your skin. The organizer confessed aside to me, "I lost my virginity to a Kelli Ali song!" He told me was "Six Underground." Kelli laughs when she says she has heard that from a lot of fans. How many, I ask. Hundreds, she sighs...
Hallowe'en is our favorite time of year, and they have really got in the SF
Hallowe'en spirit. Metso, Kelli's beau, photographer extraordinaire, carved the most exalted pumpkin for our Hallowe'en this year. Also he took some magical photos, which you can view on Adrian Metso's facebook page (blogger not letting me post link, grrr!!) Like I said, there are paper people...

Rollin'!.....

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:39:00 +0000

Here's a cool feature about a recent session here at Okey Doke Studio working on Eric McFadden's latest CD co-produced by our own Philbillie. This was produced by SPINearth.tv correspondent Narayana and you can check out the full story at:
http://spinearth.tv/city/san-francisco
and...
http://7x7.com/blogs/clamour/studio-local-singer-songwriter-eric-mcfadden

See full report...www.jennykerr.com

The Red Light Is On

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:06:00 +0000

Here at Okey Doke Studios, at a secret location somewhere in San Francisco, we have been making the Jenny Kerr Band records for, lo, these many years. And although mainly a private project studio, our facility has been host to some very special outside projects as well. Most recently our man, Philbillie, has been engineering and co-producing the latest effort from our good buddy and local guitar legend Eric McFadden. This one is the long awaited follow-up to the deeply acoustic "Devil Moon" CD of 2003. Also mainly acoustic based, Eric and Philbillie have brought in some more orchestral textures to this one.

Carla Kihlstedt, of "Sleepytime Gorilla Musuem" who has recorded and toured with none
other than Tom Waits, lays down her trademark ghostly violin.

Sam Bass of "Loop Station" and "Les Claypool"on cello

The Ringleader.

Accordion Goddess (and Accordion Babe calendar girl)
Isabel Douglass. She also plays with "Rupa & The April Fishes".

A fine, handsome group of kids and talented, to boot. This new disk is slated to drop this spring, including wide European release on Bad Reputation records in France, and we here at Okey Doke Records couldn't be prouder.

noreply@blogger.com (Jenny Kerr) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:11:00 +0000

Well, it is inexcusable, even my mother has noticed the absence of a new blog, and you know mom's ALWAYS right.

So here we are back for 2 weeks from Zihuatanejo where we played for the International Guitarfest. It's our fourth time there. And this I think was the best festival yet. Over the course of the four years, we've made some wonderful friends, Jeanne, Rick, Catherine, Kelli Ali (from previous years) and of course, Heidi Nygaard, who was our most gracious hostess. She has the most beautiful house. Eric McFadden came with us for his second time on the festival. We all got to stay in this fab house! The house became music central for the festival, and there was jamming many a balmy Mexican night into the wee hours.

www.tomatis.no/mexico/Zihuatanejo.html

Eric's friend and mentor, Stan Hirsch, and supercool wife Trish came too. They stayed in the bungalow which is also on the property.

Stan does blues yes, but also mixes in his own edgy thing...he had some hispanola trippy melange in there...and he's got this crazy thumb/tremolo fingers isolation technique that is humanly impossible, yet he does it. It's been driving me crazy for years. How, Stan? How do you do it? www.stanhirsch.com

Stan and Trish shared with Patrick Sweany, one of my fave new players on the festival this year www.patricksweany.com. He made a grand arrival, getting totally soaked by the cabbie who had driven Pat way out of his way, on purpose and was trying to charge him like $100 bucks for a $10 ride. So there was a big yelling match in the street.

Now Patrick has the most soulful voice, plays gutbucket guitar, blues, ragtime, R and B, great obscure tunes and great tunes of his own...and knows song after song after song after song. But GOOD ones. The last night of the festival he was one of the last guys standing, 5:30 AM, I think it was, and he was still singin' 'em, fresh as a daisy. Well, maybe not that fresh, but at least he sounded good...

Here's the bungalow where those guys stayed: Oh yeah, I almost forgot this totally crazy kid guitar player, Lenny or Jay Leonard, Juatco...a young sweet guy, pretty fresh outta Berklee, and played as fast as a jackrabbit. What the heck IS your name, Lenny? Anyway, a whole lotta talent, and hysterically funny guy. The kind who leaps flying fully dressed with a guitar into the pool, although he didn't actually do this, it would be easy to imagine him. Hope I get to see him again sometime...

A special hello to Marianne, who inspired me and taught me a couple of truly magical things, but they're secret!

So here we are back in cool San Francisco, with only a few mosquito bites that are fading along with the memory of this year's Guitarfest.