Thursday, November 3, 2011

Cliché Magazine Review!

Whitton: Vintage-Inspired Songstress on the Rise to Stardom

BRITTANY REDDEN OCTOBER 31, 2011 0
W:  I graduated high school when I was 17 and then had a record deal in Malaysia with my first band called “Jaime and the Blue Suits,” which was a big 10-piece band.  We played jazzy techno-blues music, a very interesting, very European sound.  So, that actually fell apart and from there I joined a reggae band for a couple of months.  At the end of my 17th year I moved with my sister, Stacey Whitton-Summers, to Myrtle Beach, SC where we recorded my second album, but our first album together.  She’s actually a Marilyn Monroe, Shania Twain and Gretchen Wilson impersonator.  I was so fortunate to get to travel with her because she goes all over the world.  We would just go play music on the side.  It was really a fun experience.  However, as far as this album I’m just releasing, I saved all my pennies that I made over the last few years installing voice and data cables for computer connection, building microwaves and radios for corporate buildings and then bartending on weekends.  So I really saved all my money to get the top players, the top recordings, the top engineers and even down to the illustration, so I’m very, very proud of this new record.

W:  I’ll tell you how this endeavor got started.  I play guitar, and anytime you play guitar and you’re just a vocalist you have acoustic music or folk music or Americano or what not its all in the same family.  So I was playing guitar at an open mic in Pasadena and there were four people in the audience and my current producer with this album, Ian Coyne, was one of them.  I had just been hired for a 1940s review show on a cruise line and I was getting ready to leave and he wanted to write a song together.  I decided to go in and we wrote a song together and it was immediately placed in a film called The Fifth Quarter with Andie Macdowel and Aiden Quinn. So then I thought, “How can I leave now?  I can’t leave!”  So we just ended up writing a handful of songs.  He produced a couple of my acoustic songs.  I’ve also had the liberty of writing with a couple of great writers on the album in Joe Solo, who’s written for Macy Gray and Fergie, and Peter Fox who’s written for Rachel Yamagata, so its been quite the experience.  As far as my music, you take my natural acoustic sound and intertwine it with a little big band, singer-songwriter stuff and that’s what the sound came out to be on this album.
W:  Well when I met Ian, I had a few side projects coming up where I would sing big band songs and jazz songs and blues songs, so yes.  But I’ve always loved the style of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.  I used to sing them in my room in front of the mirror, so I’ve always had a love for that type of music.  But Iam a singer-songwriter and that’s where my roots are.  My acoustic music is a little more vulnerable and melancholy sounding.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with Jeff Buckley, but that’s kind of where I stem from.  Ian really dissected my vocal ability and saw a little bit of vintage in it, so we built the instrumentation that was appropriate around the songs.  When I met him he had never done big band or jazz music either.  It’s just naturally what was developed.
W:  It took a long time, but all good things take a long time.  We really crafted the songs and focused on making them the best they could be by getting the best players, building relationships and networking.  That all takes time.  It was definitely a process.  But I’m seeking a manager right now.  I have a marketing team, a publicist and a good group of people, but there’s always a time and place when you’re ready and now I’m ready to find management!  I’m planning to tour all text year through the US and parts of Europe.  The tour is not booked all the way but that is my intention.  So in the next couple of months it just depends on who I meet, but it’s all beginning to roll and I’m very excited.  I have a handful of shows coming up in the next couple of months and I have two residencies that I’m going through until the end of the year.  Now I’m just getting people to my shows and by next spring definitely doing a lot of shows outside of California



W:  I toured up to Seattle and I have a friend up there whose dad said to me, “What do you like to do when you’re not working?”  I thought about it and I realized, wow, even on vacation I’m always working!  Sometimes that can be overwhelming, so even on vacation I love doing yoga. Another really therapeutic thing for me is gardening; I love to garden.  It goes with my cooking.  I’m actually working on a cookbook for my merchandise.  I’ve been trying to rack my brain on what’s different, what unique merchandise can I come up with.  I love to support local artists and I’ve been looking into getting a person who makes mugs by molding them and making them look really cool and authentic.  I already make these matchboxes with my face on it for your fridge and my sister’s flowers.  I try to be as creative as possible.  But a cookbook is definitely on my agenda.

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