Billy Corgan teases new Smashing Pumpkins “Oceania” album tracklist

Billy Corgan has announced that the Smashing Pumpkins are set to release something of an album-within-an-album in the form of Oceania. In the midst of his multi-year, one song at a time Teargarden by Kaleidyscope forty-four song opus, Corgan says Oceania will be released as a traditionally formatted album; the songs will in turn be part of the ongoing Teargarden collection. Today he came one step closer to making Oceania a public reality by teasing the possibility of tweeting the tentative tracklisting. From his @Billy account on Twitter, earlier today: “I’m assuming those that are SP fans in the crowd wouldn’t mind me putting up a tentative tracklisting of the ‘Oceania’ album?”

Corgan hasn’t yet posted the song titles, but we recommend Pumpkins fans keep an eye on his Twitter account as the evening goes on. Yesterday he revealed that there were only two songs remaining which still needed percussion parts, to be provided by Pumpkins drummer Mike Byrne. Then it’ll be “bass, bass, bass” in reference to the parts to be added by Pumpkins bassist Nicole Fiorentino, before “the [guitar] army shows up.”

The “proper” album in the form of Oceania comes in the midst of new Pumpkins songs being released incrementally for free through the band’s official website. Teargarden has been underway since last year; Corgan spoke with Beatweek about it early on in the process in our cover story interview. Meanwhile, plans are now in motion for the Smashing Pumpkins back catalog from the band’s major label days to see rerelease along with a chunk of previously unreleased older material. For those Pumpkins fans who can’t wait to find out the (tentative) tracklisting for Oceania, here is Billy Corgan’s official Twitter account.

Raphael Saadiq interview: Stone Rollin’ into 2011 and beyond

by Linda Domingo

Raphael Saadiq is cool. How cool, you ask? His musical career spans over three decades. He has toured with Prince. He was a part of not one, but two successful R&B groups. He won a Grammy Award. He has collaborated with artists such as Joss Stone, D’Angelo, A Tribe Called Quest, and Stevie Wonder just to name a few. He has three critically acclaimed solo albums under his belt. He’s so cool that he titled his fourth album “Stone Rollin’” in reference to rolling dice, or gambling. Released on May 10, Stone Rollin’ blends classic Motown soul with raw rock and roll and pure energy.

The retro influences have always been present in Saadiq’s music, but in 2008, he really let them shine on his third album, The Way I See It. Saadiq continues this journey into the past on Stone Rollin’, but it’s harder, rawer, and more rock and roll than his previous record. “Stone Rollin’ refers to many things,” says Saadiq. “A change in my style of music, leaving the group when I was younger, and changing my name. Starting my career over…Playing music that I really loved that nobody really cared about playing anymore.”

As one-third of the R&B groups Tony! Toni! Toné! and Lucy Pearl, Saadiq’s music has already been through more changes than most artists experience in their entire career. His recent shift toward old school R&B and soul seems to have stuck…for now. “It’s just something I like. It’s like being a designer. I mean, every designer isn’t the same,” said Saadiq. He compares the history of music with the history of fashion, with trends coming and going, and the revival of vintage styles.

The new harder sound was an organic evolution, according to Saadiq. “[The band and I] played like that all the time anyway,” says Saadiq. “I think that it just manifested and came out now. It’s always been there, but at this particular time it just kind of came out. So I said ok, let’s stone roll, let’s let it go. Put everything on the table. Let’s go.”

This attitude is prevalent throughout the album, which is fast-paced, gritty, and high energy, like an old school dance party where everyone lets their hair down and sweats through their shirts. Stone Rollin’ opens up with “Heart Attack,” which sets the tone with Saadiq’s screaming vocals over a garage band-style guitar line. The rest of the album leaves no room to take a break until the second to last track, “Good Man,” where Saadiq croons the blues about a woman’s betrayal. The last track, “The Answer” is a thoughtful, socially conscious march that features a vocal performance that recalls his first solo album, Instant Vintage.

Every track is unique, yet Saadiq manages to create a cohesive piece of art with Stone Rollin’. Saadiq’s personal favorite track is “Over You.” “It kind of gives me a Run DMC, Beastie Boys type of feel. Like ‘99 Problems’ by Jay-Z, and I never really heard anybody sing off of anything like that,” says Saadiq. Coming right after “Over You,” is the album’s title track, a sexy, funky ode to a bad woman whose figure “makes an old man throw away his cane.”

On The Way I See It, Saadiq worked with Motown superstar Stevie Wonder for the song “Never Give You Up.” On working with Wonder, Saadiq explains, “I have no words. He’s an amazing writer, an amazing performer. Just his presence alone is filled with happiness.” Stone Rollin’ has its own surprises, such as vocals from Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano and a moog solo from Earth, Wind and Fire’s Larry Dunn. “That was a double whammy for me to have both of them on the track,” says Saadiq. Although a fan of old school and indie music, Saadiq doesn’t find much inspiration in contemporary, mainstream music. “I listen to it all,” he says. “If you listen to the radio, you could hear everything you could hear in like fifteen minutes. It doesn’t inspire me to write music. It may inspire me to have a drink in the club,” Saadiq laughs.

Thankfully, Saadiq stays inspired and continues to churn out great songs. His new album takes the best music of the past and combines it with the energy, intelligence and ingenuity of the future. If Saadiq’s career has been a result of stone rollin’, he must be one of the luckiest guys in the music industry.

Learn more at RaphaelSaadiq.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

All Time Low come home: band plays high energy gig for hometown fans

by Keri Franz

Can I just say that the royal couple may as well have been doing a signing on-campus for how many people were there. I was told by girls around me that there are “super fans” that show up around midnight the morning of the show and campout to ensure a good spot in the pit. I’m not sure that “super fans” is the best term though…

Hundreds of people (just follow the JAGK and Glamour Kills shirts – you’ve come to the right place) of every age demographic have been lined up outside the sold-out, Retriever Activity Center all day. So, they don’t get radio play – who needs it with crowds like this? But, what about Yellowcard …they’re pretty mainstream, right? Yes, they certainly are, but for every one Yellowcard shirt I saw, there were at least ten more for All Time Low.

You know that something’s gonna go down when you’re a mile back in the line outside the venue, and you can hear the teeny creepers screaming when the doors open. By seven o’clock, the show had started off with The Summer Set. They have been touring non-stop for a couple years now, so I’m pretty sure everyone in that packed house knew just who they were. This summer, they are set to release their latest CD, called “Everything’s Fine,” so they took the opportunity to play some new songs. The songs were typical, radio-ready, pop-rock songs, like what they’re already known for. They had a great energy, and the crowd was giving it right back. They had some kooky Alvin and the Chipmunks-type effects on the microphones in-between songs which wasn’t the smartest idea being that it’s a gymnasium, and the sounds were basically exploding off the walls. Crowd surfers were going even when the music wasn’t playing. Two of the dudes from Yellowcard came in at the end to help finish out “Chelsea,” the song they’re best known for at this point. They were a perfect start to show that I was sure was going to blow the roof off the stadium.

Following The Summer Set was Hey Monday. Their sounds are pretty similar. The instrumentation has a harder edge which is juxtaposed with Cassadee Pope’s too sweet, high-pitched vocals. If you can imagine injecting Hayley Williams with pink and glitter, that’s Hey Monday’s lead. The crowd seemed to dig it, but I can’t say I’m a huge fan of such a vocalist. Even after all the line-up changes and drama in the band within the last year, they are doing well—or so it seems. More of the crowd was on their feet for them, and the band got a little crazier than The Summer Set did. One of the guitarists flung himself out into the crowd. He was brave figuring there were SO many crowd surfers. During the last song, the guys from Yellowcard came out and took the drum set away piece by piece, only after Cassadee gets done saying those guys could’ve been dicks to the newbies on tour, but they’re like part of the family. It’s that type of obvious camaraderie that made this show get more and more interesting.

The energy in the RAC started to increase steadily as we all waited with baited breath for Yellowcard to go on. After being on an indefinite hiatus, they were graciously taken out on tour with now label mates, All Time Low. I had never seen them before, but solely based on the greatness of “Ocean Avenue,” I was über excited and felt like the moment would never come. They finally walked out on stage, the lights died down, then a long pause. “Surprise,” was all they said, to which no one really responded in the crowd. Lead vocalist Ryan Key yells, “That was the most anti-climactic rock show intro I’ve ever been a part of! Should we turn the lights off and do that over again or just go? Go—get off the stage!” The band seriously walked off-stage and came back a few seconds later. Wow, what a start. It was pretty hard to tell that these guys have had some serious off-time. They were like well-oiled machines out there. At last the rawk out, head-banging portion of the show had begun. The band insisted that the crowd form a huge circle pit, which is apparently different than a mosh pit. Key insisted, “It’ll be fine, I promise.” They played a nice mix of new and old material. For their second studio single, “Hang You Up,” Zack Merrick of All Time Low came out to assist on bass—only his was bright pink—to which Key teased, “He’s so hot right now…so hot,” and everyone under twenty-one shamelessly wet themselves. Up to this point, the Yellowcard pranksters had seemed to have gotten through their set unscathed…that was until four masked men came out. Ironman, The Flash, a spaceman, and the King (yes, the “have it your way” King) joined the guys on-stage. As if that wasn’t awesome enough, the King was throwing unwrapped cheeseburgers out into the already disgusting crowd. For the last song, the crowd surfing hit an all time high (no pun intended). I’ll give you one guess as to the song. Yep, it was “Ocean Avenue,” to which one of the guys in the band stage-dived into the crowd. For being some older duders, they can rock out just as hard (if not harder) than the newbies on the scene.

So, at last, the time had come. What everyone had been waiting for was here—Alex Gaskarth on vocals and guitar, Jack Barakat on guitar, Zack Merrick on bass, and Rian Dawson on drums. All Time Low playing the last date on their long tour in their hometown. The energy was pulsating off the walls, and, when they came out, the blood curdling squeals were enough to break the sound barrier. What gets the people so riled up exactly? Well, for starters, Dawson is the drumming machine gun who seems to be level-headed, Merrick is the ripped, sexpot without a shirt on, Barakat is the ever ADHD kid that gets everyone hyped up, and Gaskarth is the instigator to both the crowd and the band. And that’s honestly not even the half of it. They weren’t even through the first song and the bras were being thrown onto the stage already. That’s a pretty solid tradition at All Time Low shows. And not three songs in and Barakat was calling for a bigger mosh pit than Yellowcard had. “Mosh pit the size of Manhattan—go!”

They played two songs, “Timebomb” and “I Feel Like Dancin’ Tonight,” which are going to be on their upcoming album of the same name as the tour. Many people knew the songs already due to their growing viral popularity. Let’s hear it for song leaking! After the havoc the boys wrought on Yellowcard’s set, Key and his boys took their shot at the All Time Low boys. Unbeknownst to the crowd, the Yellowcard Camp had sabotaged the All Time Low Camp’s monitors. They pranked them by making kissing sounds into the monitors, so they couldn’t hear themselves feeding back. They were pretty thrown off by it for a while, which had the crowd wondering. Continuing the entertainment, at one point, Barakat disappeared from the stage. Here, he had run up to the top balcony to walk through the estrogen heavy throngs of pubescent teenagers. I felt so bad for security at that moment, but, if not for them, poor Barakat would’ve been drawn and quartered.

That’s one of the things that’s so unique about seeing this band on their own turf. Their families are quite supportive of what they’re doing and come out to their shows at home. Typically, at least one of the guys calls their parents out onstage about something. This time, it was Dawson’s turn. His mom, Cathy, came out and sat down at his drum set, only to play a few beats per Gaskarth’s teasing. Additionally, Barakat made the comment, “Everyone’s getting laid tonight,” to which Gaskarth said, “Eww, dude, your parents are here!”

“Let’s see how you sing, Baltimore, Maryland.” Gaskarth and his acoustic guitar alone started on a cover of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” This led straight into “Remembering Sunday,” one of the bands older, mellow songs, which everyone was crooning along to. This was Hey Monday’s opportunity to get the guys back. Lead guitarist, Mike Gentile, came out dressed in a pink cape, Rayban’s, and Superman undies, lip syncing to Cassadee’s side-stage singing. As he helped to finish up the song, he was touching all over Gaskarth, and he couldn’t help but laugh. To cinch it up, they shared a quick kiss; seemingly, kissing and making up for all the shenanigans.

Before he mellowed the mood even further, Gaskarth prefaced the song “Therapy” with some interesting words. “This next song goes out to anybody who’s ever been told that they way they think or the way that they feel is the wrong way to think or the wrong way to feel. It goes out to anyone who’s ever been knocked down, walked over, stepped on, back-stabbed, double crossed. Anybody who feels like they don’t quite fit in the world. Anybody who feels like when they’re standing in a room full of people, they’re still alone. But, more importantly, this song goes out to all the assholes that make us awkward kids feel shitty. There is no room left in the world for intolerance and for other people’s bullshit. It’s 2011, people, let’s grow up. This song is called ‘Therapy’. It goes out to all of you.” That introduction seemed to give the song some more feeling and meaning than usual. Sean Mackin, the amazing violin player for Yellowcard, helped to finish up the song.

Following the song, the guys left the stage as though the show were over. Then, there was the loudest chant of “All! Time! Low!” I’ve ever heard at one of their shows. Of course, they weren’t done and were coming back to finish up the show. They went with “Weightless,” one of the singles off their latest release, “Nothing Personal,” and the eternal closer, “Dear Maria, Count Me In.” It’s like waiting for “Saturday” at a Fall Out Boy show—you know it’s coming, and you can’t leave until you hear it. Something that has always captured me about these shows is how Gaskarth and Barakat interact with one another on-stage. It is vaguely reminiscent of the banter that went on between Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge of Blink-182. When Gaskarth and Barakat asked Mackin to come back out to do a back flip, the way they went back and forth with each other took me back to a Blink show. Towards the end of “Dear Maria,” all hell broke loose. Practically everyone involved in the tour came out on-stage and surely made it a memorable end to the Dirty Work Tour. People were in costume, played random instruments, and acted plain crazy. It was a great finish to a great show and tour. As Alex Gaskarth said to the token guy on crutches in the mosh pit: “I have no legs, and I’m here to party.” Case in point, hometown shows are always insanity when it comes to All Time Low. I would recommend any diehard fan get out to one of these shows someday to see how crazy things can get.

Learn more at AllTimeLowBand.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

Memorial Day weekend 2011 travel tips: five must-pack road trip items

So you’re hitting the road for Memorial Day weekend, in what might be your first serious home-away outing in 2011. Good for you. If you’re driving, here are a few must-have items that every road trip can benefit from. They may sound old-school, but you never know what the road holds, or what you’re in for when you inevitably end up at a motel.

Surge strip: That $39 night Days Inn might be surprisingly adequate overall, but finding enough electrical outlets to charge your twenty-first century devices may be a another story. The typical motel has the television, lamp, refrigerator, and microwave all plugged into the same bulging electrical outlet, leaving you to have to unplug one of the lamps by the desk just to be able to charge up your laptop or phone. The solution: take a slim surge strip with you. And while you’re at it, charge your iPhone through the USB port on your computer instead of taking up a separate wall socket for it.

Ethernet cable: Many or most hotels have wifi, but it’s a crapshoot as to how fast and reliable it is. Some hotels also have a network jack in the room, and I’ve found that the wired internet in motels can sometimes be night-and-day faster than their wireless network offers. But don’t expect a budget motel to necessarily have network cables available at the desk. Bring your own, if internet access at the hotel is important to you.

Roll of quarters: Toll roads. Vending machines. And if you’re on an extended trip, washers and dryers (in such case try to stay at a hotel that has laundry machines rather than hunting down a laundromat). Bank of America will allow you to withdraw a roll of quarters from the teller window if you’re a customer; other banks are likely the same story.

Bottled water: Just because you can stomach the tap water at your house doesn’t mean you’ll find what comes out of the rest stop water fountain, or the hotel sink, to be drinkable. Even many budget motels have micro-fridges. Grab a case of bottled water before you hit the road, chill it at the hotel, and you’ll have cool drinking water on hand for the next day’s drive. Or if you don’t want to use environmentally unfriendly bottles, fill your own containers with your own water at home and take it with you. Either way you’ll also save money, as even the twenty-five cent cost of a bottle of water when bought in bulk is better than paying a dollar or two per bottle from a vending machine.

Toilet paper: The cheaper the motel, the worse the toilet paper. If that’s not something you’re looking forward to, pack a roll of your favorite brand into your suitcase.

That’s what I recommend finding room for in the car when you head out this Memorial Day weekend. Your turn. What are your must-have road trip items? And which items have you toted along on past road trips which turned out to be useless?

iPhone 5 countdown clock: release date now in Samsung’s grubby hands

Apple may need to push up the iPhone 5 release date as a direct result of a competitor attempting to get its hands on the design in advance, forcing the iPhone countdown clock to be moved forward by a notch or two. The theory all along has been that Apple would release the fifth generation device when it’s good and ready, which based on last month’s out-of-nowhere launch of a white iPhone 4, be awhile. The latter has been interpreted as an attempt to, for whatever reason, extend the life of the iPhone 4 era and release the iPhone 5 later than Apple’s customary yearly upgrade cycle would normally have dictated. While explanations posited span from manufacturing and development delays to the fact that the iOS 5 operating system doesn’t appear to be ready yet, Apple clearly wants the iPhone 5 to come out a little later than sooner. But those plans have have just been blown by rival Samsung, although not quite for the reason the latter is hoping.

After Samsung’s Galaxy products were a little too copycattish of the iPhone and iPad, Apple filed suit to get Samsung to back off from stealing so brazenly. In that lawsuit, Apple has been granted detailed access to the upcoming Galaxy products which Samsung has already publicly unveiled. In a counter move, Samsung is now demanding detailed access to the iPhone 5, despite the fact that it hasn’t even been unveiled yet. And while Samsung’s legal department wouldn’t theoretically be allowed to unveil iPhone 5 details to the world or to even make its own development teams aware of iPhone 5 features, the real world doesn’t work that way. It would take a mentally ill judge to grant Samsung’s motion, as A) Apple is the aggrieved party here to begin with, and B) getting to see secret unannounced plans in no way equates to having access to products which have already been shown to the public anyway. But that may not be a risk Apple is willing to take.

And so like in one of those TV series finales where the crew blows up their own ship in order to make sure the bad guys don’t get their hands on its secrets, it’s possible Apple may simply blow up its own iPhone 5 gameplan. That’s not to say the iPhone 5 won’t come to market. Rather, the opposite. If Apple fears that Samsung could actually gain access to iPhone 5 plans before they’re unveiled, Apple could fire back by simply beating them to the punch and unveiling the iPhone 5 sooner than planned. And because unveiling an iPhone 5 months before its ship date would kill iPhone 4 sales in the mean time, we’d also be looking at a bumped-up iPhone 5 release date. If indeed iOS 5 delays are the only thing holding up the iPhone 5 at this point, we could see the iPhone 5 emerge soon, and with iOS 4.5 instead, all just to make sure Samsung doesn’t find a way to sabotage the launch in the mean time.

As such, the release date of the iPhone 5 may now have less to do with whatever date Apple has marked on a calendar, and more to do with just how devious Samsung’s legal department really is in terms of getting such an insane motion granted. Considering that the smartphones from companies like Samsung are currently in something of a grace period sales-wise with the iPhone 4 growing long in the tooth, Samsung could ultimately be shooting itself in the foot if its outlandish legal actions end up causing Apple to push the iPhone 5 out to market sooner than originally planned. So how about you? If the iPhone 5 is released soon, but without iOS 5, will you still buy it or wait until the iOS 5 cavalry arrives? Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

BC Jean interview: Beatweek 2011 Rising Star dishes on everything

by Bill Palmer

“No more waiting,” she says of the newly accelerated stage of her career she’s finally entered. BC Jean will be a household name eventually, but the twenty-four year old has dealt with some fits and starts in the name of getting there. She wrote one of the biggest hit songs of the past few years in If I Were A Boy, but she didn’t get to be the one to sing it. And her first live performance this year with her backing band was washed away in a monsoon. But momentum has finally kicked in, and the artist who sings like a rocker and writes like a pop star is suddenly being tapped left and right. Her new single I’ll Survive You has gotten her invites to perform it on the Tonight Show and The View. What was originally supposed to be a mere mentoring role landed her an acting gig in a TV series. Maxim has even come calling. And she’s finally gotten to move to the neighborhood she’s always wanted to be in.

“Hollywood’s been good.” It’s her new home after growing up in San Diego and making a pit stop in an LA suburb. Relaxing in a lounge on Hollywood Boulevard after a day of filming scenes for her TV show auspiciously called Talent, BC’s laid back nature suggests that there’s nothing that fazes her. But the lyrics she writes tell a different story as they reveal her insecurities, her bad breakups. “I’m just honest, is the problem.”

“This is super lame for me to say,” she warns, “but I’ll have moments where I’m like god, I miss my ex-boyfriend or whoever it may be. I miss my friend that I got in a fight with. But you feel like you have to hold that pride. It’s like maybe you should just write them, and it’s like no, you have to go back to that moment. So I’ll go back and turn on a song that I’ve written in the past.”

The songs she’s amassed for her debut album are “love-hate with relationships, friends, boyfriends, the city.” Just A Guy is a bookend to If I Were A Boy, in which she accepts the fact that men are going to act according to their nature. I’ll Survive You is a vulnerable emotional ballad (“I’ve got those down to a T on this record,” she jokes). The song Anyone has her earnestly pleading “soulmate, find me” and exploring “the idea of monogamy, especially being in this town and this industry.”

And yet for every somber moment in her musical arsenal, there’s the feeling that the rocker in her is just begging to be let out. She’s got a hard charging song called Break Up Sex which is about exactly what you think it’s about, although she admits that she doesn’t recommend it “because then you never really break up.” And then there’s the up-tempo song HelL.A. which has made it into her live set, even though she’s not sure whether it’ll make the record. Nor is she sure when her label Sony will push her album out the door.

“It’s scary,” she says of waiting on fame’s doorstep, “because you don’t know. Like I’ve always said, you’ve got to work really hard, you’ve got to accept the no’s and know that’s one step closer to the yes, you’ve got to be patient and keep making your craft the best it can be, and then there’s that little bit of fate and fairy dust. I felt like I was ready at fourteen to be in this business. I was ready to be on the radio then, in my head. And now looking back I’m like oh my gosh, can you imagine? My career would have been ruined. I wasn’t an artist then.”

It’s no coincidence that BC portrays a character in talent who has to deal with the ups and downs of the music industry as both a singer and a songwriter. She wasn’t even supposed to be a part of the show. But after serving as a guest judge for the competition in which the star of the show was being cast, the producers rewrote the script and created the co-starring role of Harper specifically for her. In the fictional show, Harper essentially trades a song she wrote to a label in exchange for a record contract; in real life, it’s always been a little vague as to just how Beyonce ended up with BC’s song. But there are other parts of the Harper character which BC can take more direct credit for. Has she ever thrown a snowball at someone, as Harper does in the show’s opening scene? “Probably.” Ever jumped in a swimming pool with her clothes on? “Yes.” Care to share that particular story? “No,” she says with a laugh.

“Every day is different,” she says of how she’s been spending her time of late. “That’s the best part for me because I’m major ADD girl.” In her alone time, she paints. The results, which she’s willing to show off, reveal a hidden secondary talent. And she’s been doing co-writing sessions with labelmate Adam Lambert for his upcoming album, a process she’s tried previously with other artists without much success. This time, however, might be a different story. “I really dug this collaboration because I feel Adam and I are really similar in a lot of ways. So we really got along and became a little friendly off of it. I have no clue if any of the songs will make his record, but there’s one in particular that we both love.”

Writing songs for a living means that little gets held back, and in fact has served as an outlet. “I used to not even cry when I was really young,” she says. “I remember I was like four and I was watching Bambi and the mom dies in the beginning. My mom said she was crying, and I was just sitting there like this, with a stone cold face. She goes, ‘aren’t you sad?’ I’m like no. I wouldn’t show emotion. I was tough girl. And I still am, to a certain degree. But at the end of the day I would go in the closet and cry about the boy in my life in junior high who didn’t like me or whatever it was, and I’d write about it.”

Her mom, by the way, is also her manager. And while that scenario has infamously not worked out well for some other artists, it’s exactly how BC wants it. “I don’t really know another way to do it,” she says of keeping it in the family, “because I can say whatever I want to her and she still has to love me at the end of the day. There’s going to be times when the mother in her comes involved and I’m like ‘Alright, you’re either mom and you’ve got to leave the room and come back in as a manager or we’ve got to just not talk for the rest of the day.’ We definitely have our little moments but it’s healthy.”

In describing herself, she admits that “I’m stubborn in every part of me. Everyone who knows me knows that. I’m also loyal and honest and reasonable, but I’m stubborn. I’ll know when to back down, but even when I know it I still don’t want to.” So did she have to be talked into the doing the Maxim shoot? “No, not at all,” she says. “Dream come true. Being there, yes, it was tough, I’ll admit that. As much as I like to get dressed up and sexy, there’s definitely a part of you that’s like, you never now how the pictures are going to turn out, so you don’t want the wrong look. It’s Maxim. It’s sexy. I’m like okay, feeling a bit naked here, but let’s try it out.”


There’s still plenty to be figured out. There’s the ongoing question of whether the natural lefty will eventually evolve into left or right handed guitarist. There’s the more immediate issue of hitting the road in support of her latest single (“You have to find the right tour”), as she performs for radio stations in the mean time. And there’s the seeming tug of war as to whether the final cut of her album will lean more toward her rock tendencies or her pop affinities. But one way or another the wheels are finally in motion to position BC Jean as the next big thing. She says she’s ready for it, or for this next stage at least. The rest may simply have to be figured out along the way. Or as she puts it, “I think we’re, as people, always developing.”

BCJean.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

Beatweek Magazine’s 2011 Rising Stars issue, volume two: BC Jean, Parachute, Asking Alexandria and more

Beatweek Magazine’s 2011 Rising Stars issue, volume two:

• BC Jean cover story interview: the next big thing dishes on everything

• America’s Got Talent winner Michael Grimm talks debut album

• Whooznxt: Asking Alexandria takes over Jimmy Kimmel Live

• Interviews with rising stars Parachute, Lelia Broussard, Auburn, Eliza Doolittle, Jason Reeves, Breanne Düren, and Laura Jansen

Read this issue now

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Whooznxt: Asking Alexandria takes over Jimmy Kimmel Live in social media triumph

by Bill Palmer

It’s late afternoon on Jimmy Kimmel’s outdoor stage in Hollywood, and a massive crowd is going nuts for a band which weeks earlier hadn’t even been on the music industry’s radar. The sudden rise of Asking Alexandria has coincidentally run parallel to the rise of the firm which ultimately connected the dots to make today happen. The band got the Kimmel gig through Whooznxt, a startup which seeks to bridge the gap between rising artists, social networks, and live gigs. With Asking Alexandria now sporting more than a million Facebook fans amidst mainstream chart success, and Whooznxt already on its way to placing the next big thing on Jimmy Kimmel Live next month, it’s a fast evolving story with a lot of moving parts. Backstage in Kimmel’s arcade-style green room before the gig are Asking Alexandria guitarist Cameron Liddell who’s about as stoked as you’d expect, Whooznxt founder Jeffrey Yapp who conceived the idea after years of working at MTV, and members of Team Kimmel who are forever looking to stay out in front when it comes to the music side of the late night talk show wars. And they’re all talking.

The story starts back at SXSW, where Whooznxt launched and immediately spotted an explosion of online fan popularity from an under-the-radar young metal band called Asking Alexandria. “There were a lot of folks there who had been diehard SXSW folks who thought they knew everything,” says Yapp, “and were asking me, ‘Who is this band?’” By the end of the festival they’d won the award for longest line of fans to get into a venue and were suddenly on their way. “We didn’t even realize it was at this point,” says Liddell of his band’s sudden rise, “and then a few days later we were confirmed for Jimmy Kimmel. We couldn’t believe it. It’s awesome. We’re just so excited. We play really heavy music compared to what this show is all about, and it’s just an awesome chance for heavier music.”

Yapp says he got a “front row seat to the meltdown of the business of music” during his MTV tenure, which saw him bringing titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band to market. But he nonetheless believes that “the music business really hasn’t changed. It’s still about the band, the song, and the fan.” While convincing potential partners to give stage time to bands based solely on social media presence may not sound like the easiest task on paper, Kimmel among others has been an early ally. “Jimmy’s got a real commitment for allowing emerging artists to have that opportunity, give them that break. When we told him the way we were going to do ‘heat’ or how hot a band was, based on their fans, he thought that made a lot of sense.”

The Whooznxt concept nicely dovetails, not coincidentally, with Jimmy Kimmel Live’s longstanding philosophy of getting to bands early. According to JKL co-executive producer Doug Deluca, “It is a very unique philosophy because most people, especially the network, only want the big names because they’re promotable,” he explains. But he took a liking to Whooznxt after realizing that “it’s really giving bands an opportunity to promote themselves to get out there. I just wanted to get involved because we’re very digitally minded at the show. It’s all about broadcast but it’s also all about growing our digital fanbase and really reaching people in real time.”

Minutes before taking the Kimmel stage, Liddell is surprisingly laid back in comparison the the kind of heavy metal music he’s about to perform. “We’re fairly relaxed,” he says of himself and his Asking Alexandria bandmates. “We like to have a drink or two and I guess things get a little bit crazy then, but more often than not we just like to hang out and chill out with friends.” Of the current crossroads which sees the British quintet suddenly blowing up on the sales chart and social media ranks after years of toiling on the road, he muses that “everyone is just slowly getting around to the fact that we’re a legit band. I feel like we’ve had some haters, like fuck this band, they’re not worth anything. But they don’t realize how hardworking we are. We’ve worked our bollocks off these last two years, so I think slowly kids are getting around to the fact that, oh yeah, they actually have worked hard for what they have.”

That hard-work-pays-off theme runs within the Kimmel ranks as well. “When we launched the show nine years ago we knew we were the new kid on the block,” says Deluca. “The one thing that was unique to us was to create an atmosphere that people wanted to come and hang out, including guests and musicians. It was important to us that we did the best music on TV to make it a place where bands wanted to come play, because if the great bands were here, then the celebs would want to be here.” As evidence of that environment, the green room in which we’re sitting includes a billiard table and a string of arcade games along with an open bar and signed music memorabilia mounted on the walls.

But the reason bands really want to play Kimmel is because unlike the cramped indoor stages at most talk shows, Jimmy has a full size festival stage in the parking lot out back. Scott Igoe, the music executive for the show, explains the stage’s origins. “Daniel Kellison, who was our original executive producer, came in and said we have this back parking lot, we can rent it and put a stage out there.” Even as Jimmy Kimmel Live boasts of the highest YouTube views of any late night show and is pushing forward with the JKL app for iPhone and other platforms, the outdoor stage, which has hosted notable events over the years including the Alice in Chains reunion performance in 2009, serves as a real world counterbalance. Or as Igoe puts it, “It is a great selling point, is it not?”

As for Asking Alexandria, whose sudden rise has seen them invited to be a part of milestones ranging from performing with Sebastian Bach at the Golden Gods awards (accepted) to being part of the Charlie Sheen tour (respectfully declined due to scheduling conflicts), Liddell says that “it feels like this is finally paying off. It’s like a dream come true.”

And when it comes to the future of the music industry, Yapp sees Whooznxt as merely a twenty-first extension of what it’s always been about. “Music from the beginning of time has always been word of mouth. Social networks allow that to happen faster on a little bit more scale. But if you don’t have a good song, you’re not going to have great fans.”

AskingAlexandriaOfficial.com • Whooznxt.com • JimmyKimmelLive.com

Auburn interview: Beatweek Rising Star 2011 talks Perfect Two, debut

by Bill Palmer

“I laugh a lot more, so I think that means I’ve matured,” says Auburn of how her life has changed over the past year since she first made it onto the radio with La La La. “My idea of maturity may be the opposite of most people.” The first female artist signed to the hit factory known as Beluga Heights is gearing up for the release of her debut album later this year, and in the mean time her subsequent singles have shown her to be a more complex artist than any one song might have foreshadowed. In fact on her latest single Perfect Two she’s traded in synthetic beats in favor an acoustic guitar ballad.

“I’m interested in seeing what happens with Perfect Two because it’s been out for awhile,” she says of the fact that the song has been available in a more raw form via her MySpace since last year. “Probably ninety-seven percent of the people who will go and buy it on iTunes already have it, so it’s just based on support I guess. It’ll be pretty dope to see that.” That support saw the song reach the top fifty on the iTunes pop chart, and it’s no great surprise that fans got on board with the single as they’re the ones who chose it. After posting pieces of four new songs online, she “decided to leave it up to the fans, even though I knew Perfect Two would win. I swear I already knew. I just wanted to see what they wanted to hear.”

The all-out acoustic number comes after Auburn had already begun to step away from La La La with her second single All About Him, which featured something of a retro feel. “I went to the studio and I was really in a lovey-dovey moment. I had a boo at that time, a little baby, my little Asian treat and I wanted to write a song for him. So I wrote the song, and none of us thought it was going to be that song, next-single material. But the closer we got to finishing it, the more excited we got about it.”

After asking someone she respected for constructive criticism on All About Him, she was informed that the song was “too kiddish. I don’t agree, but I was told it was too kiddish. So I guess now the funniest part is Perfect Two will be my next single, and that’s even more corny. So I’m in love with this direction right now.”

Fans who’ve been patient in waiting for Auburn’s debut album shouldn’t be concerned by the fact that she’s been back visiting her native Minnesota of late and recently wandered off whimsically into Wisconsin on an unplanned road trip; she’s set to reconvene with Beluga producers JR and Tommy Rotem in Los Angeles in June to continue working on the record. Already in the can are “forty songs recorded that I love” along with other lesser works that are simply “eh,” she jokes. But don’t expect her to have access to her own demos during the upcoming sessions.

“Let’s say me and JR or Tommy make a really dope song. I’m able to hold onto the rough cut. But it’s been proven that I can’t have the final product, otherwise I’ll release it online and just call it a snippet but it’s pretty much the whole song. So they’re like okay, you can’t hold onto the song,” Then she admits that “I asked them not to. I don’t trust myself.”

Some of the new material has been exposed through the single contest, with brief pieces of Doin’ Me and So Over You having been posted for voting purposes. She says the former has turned out to be widely relatable, as “a straight up gangster tweeted me ‘I love that song.’ So I love the fact that so many different people can relate to that song. La La La, a lot of people liked it but it was primarily for girls, for women. I don’t think guys like being told ‘Don’t call me,’” she says of the line in which she famously complained of guys ‘blowing up my phone.’

As far as the song So Over You, look around and you’ll discover that it’s floating out there in full. “A lot of people have heard that. It got leaked,” she quips, “and that one was actually not me.”

Although her album won’t be out for awhile, Auburn says she currently has a preference for its title: Call Me Auburn, which also serves as her Twitter username. So what are the odds the title sticks? “I have no idea,” she admits. “That’s just something I would do.”

Learn more at CallMeAuburn.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

Eliza Doolittle interview: Beatweek Rising Star 2011 invades America

by Bill Palmer

“Luckily I’m not sick of them,” says Eliza Doolittle of the songs on her self titled debut album, which has been a hit back home in the UK since last year but is just now seeing release in the United States. Backstage at the El Rey in Los Angeles while her band is downstairs doing soundcheck with her, Eliza is testing out her brand of perky retro-tinged pop in American waters for the first time. At home she’s become popular enough that she’s frequent fodder for the British tabloids, on the strength of songs like Skinny Genes and Pack Up. But her American journey is just beginning.

“I’ve always wanted to travel in America and do a road trip here,” she says of finally getting the opportunity across the pond. Whether her success will translate is an age-old question whose answer seemingly always turns out differently. “Sometimes people just won’t get it. I think there’s something to be said about honesty, I guess, and just being yourself. It doesn’t matter then whether it goes well or not because at least you know you’ve been yourself. And in a way, sometimes being honest and being yourself is the reason why it doesn’t translate, because it’s your culture and sometimes that’s the thing that doesn’t swim over the sea very well because people like what they know already. It’s like that in some cases, and then in some cases it doesn’t matter and the music connects anyway. We’ve got some great British artists that have come over here and done well.”

Eliza and I have spoken before, and she’s been all too happy to cover the bases: Skinny Genes is her attempt to get guys to stop wearing skinny jeans if they’re not thin enough to be wearing them. Her stage name of Eliza Doolittle is spin on her birth name of Eliza Caird; her drama teacher tagged her with it back in school a few years ago and the name stuck. Even though Pack Up went on to become a major UK hit, she admits that she was initially so unsure about the song that she wasn’t even sure whether she wanted it on the album, as it didn’t strike her as being “massive.” It seems there’s only one subject she’s not interested in opening up about, and it’s the meaning behind her song Mr. Medicine. I’ve been trying to get her to reveal that particular secret since last year, and I’m likely not the only one.

“I’m sure it will come out one day,” she says, “and everyone will be like, ‘What? I don’t get it.’” She’s made it clear that the song isn’t about drugs, and she’s hinted that the meaning actually rhymes with ‘Mr. Medicine,’ making it somewhat of a surprise that no one has thus far figured it out. The accompanying video, she says, is another roundabout hint. “I thought it was such a cool idea having this walk home and all these creatures. They’re a metaphor for my demons I guess, trying to shake them off. They really want to be my friend, or they really want to play with me and have fun with me. And I’m just like no, go away, you’re not the right thing for me. What’s great about me is obviously no one knows what the song is about, so I wanted to keep that mystery still. So it does add to the sense of the song, in the sense of saying goodbye to something.”

Her fashion sense, which has included everything from short-shorts to ornately acrylic fingernail add-ons to feathers hanging from her hair, has garnered plenty of notice for its uniqueness. Perhaps too much attention? “I wouldn’t call it a part of the music, but I think it goes nicely with the music. With people like Lady GaGa, music and fashion go really well together. If you look back to David Bowie or Queen or anyone like that, there’s always some kind of expression through fashion as well as the music. I like to play around with it just as much as anyone else,” she says. There’s also one popular trend which hasn’t made it into her world and likely won’t: “I don’t like tattoos at all.” But either way it all comes with a warning. “I don’t think you should read too much into anything I do,” she says. “There’s not much to read into. I don’t take anything too seriously.”

There is, however, a serious message embedded in her song Go Home. And it’s not the meaning which some listeners may glean from the surface. “That particular song is a nod to how grateful I am for my lifestyle,” Eliza explains. “I might be stuck in a country that I don’t know that well, but I could leave if I wanted to. I could fly back home the next day. And then there are some people who have had to move away from home for some reason, whether it’s a war thing or something has happened to them and they cannot go back home. I put myself in a girl my age’s shoes, I try to anyway, to put the two different worlds into one song. It was basically trying to say, any complaints I have, I need to shut the fuck up and just be happy with what I have. That sentiment is strong through my whole album because I feel really lucky for a lot of what I’ve got. I love the music and I love to express myself through it. And there’s so much scary shit going on in the world and I’ve always felt that whatever problems I have are really nothing compared to what may be going on somewhere else out there. And that song is a perfect way to put that, because home is one of the most important things, I think.”

ElizaDoolittle.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

Jason Reeves interview: Beatweek Rising Star 2011 talks The Lovesick

by Bill Palmer

He’s perhaps the most in-demand songwriter of his generation, and now the world gets to know Jason Reeves as a singer. Even as he’s been co-writing seemingly half the hit songs on pop radio of late, he’s also spent the past two years crafting his own major label debut album entitled The Lovesick, which will finally surface this summer. Having had enough of living in Los Angeles, he’s bailed instead for the outskirts of Nashville, which he says can be “very calm if you need it to be.” And for someone who shares words for a living, he’s notoriously soft spoken. That doesn’t mean, however, that Jason Reeves doesn’t have a lot to say. While taking time out for morning coffee at an old haunt in the LA valley, he peels back the layers of his writing process, dishes on the duets on his album with Colbie Caillat and Kara DioGuardi, and waxes on why lovesickness isn’t such a bad condition to have.

“This is record is very tragic,” he explains. “It’s called The Lovesick because I was literally lovesick while I was making it. I still am. And for me the word lovesick goes both ways. It’s what you think of it when you hear it, that negative connotation. But at the same time I want it to be the beautiful side of it too, as if I’m just wildly in love and that’s my illness. So both spectrums of where that word can take you are what I want that to mean. I don’t want it to just mean like I’m sick with love and I’m heartbroken or something like that.”

That heartbroken intensity is no more apparent than in the song Save My Heart, whose breezy instrumentation and floating vocals serve in contrast to its underlying desperation. “I had come to this place with this girl where she pretty much was abandoning me, and that was all I could do was write this song saying I’m going to save my heart for you, I’m not going to move on. I will wait for you to come back. Oh man. The song is insane, like I want what I can’t have, I’m going to make you mine no matter what it takes. That’s maybe all I could do to save my own sanity at that point was to write a song like that, saying that I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t going to abandon that idea.”

‘Maybe,” he adds. “There’s a lot to that song. I can’t even share with people the true details of this record, which is unfortunate, but that’s a hint at it.”

There’s also a lot going on musically on The Lovesick, more so than some fans might have been expecting based on his earlier acoustic EP or his work with other artists. Sticks and Stones features synthetic percussion and has an overall R&B-pop feel to it, along with an electric guitar slicing through the song here and here. I turns out it was the first song he recorded for the record, about two years ago, and he just went where the muse took him. “I recorded that song and wrote the song the same way I write every song,” he says of Sticks and Stones. “There’s no plan necessarily when it’s coming together. It just happens. My favorite thing about writing is just letting the song go where it wants to. There’s a spark and the song gets born out of that, and this song we could tell that it needed to be produced like that because of the rhythm of the verses and chorus.”

“To be honest, I didn’t even know if this song was going to be for me when we first demoed it. The reason I kept it is because the demo that we made very quickly in Nashville, which was our first experience with the producer who produced the record, Adam Smith. I had no idea if there was a person in Nashville that could even do a pop demo because it’s such a country-heavy city. You can find a million people to do a country demo for you right away, but there’s very few pop producers there. So I asked around, found out about this guy, we went to his house and recorded that in about two hours or so, and that is the master. That’s the recording on the record. We didn’t change it. We didn’t re-record it. That was the first time I had ever sang a song in just one take, because I didn’t care. And the whole record came together that way. I don’t want it to sound like it wasn’t planned or it was just slopped together, but we didn’t overanalyze it because a record can be ruined in my opinion if you spend too much time thinking about it. Is this the right note here? Should I take this part out and replace it? The whole record is very instinctual.”

Despite having been made in Nashville, the heart of country music, Jason makes clear that “it’s very much a pop record. There’s not even one moment of country in it.” In fact the first line of the first song harkens back to his west coast days, as Helium Hearts opens by referencing the iconic LA intersection of Sunset and Vine. “I’m really uncertain of why we used Sunset and Vine,” he admits. “I think maybe it just sounded beautiful. I love the word sunset and the word vine together. They’re interesting. It’s probably because I’ve been there before we wrote this song. I was probably walking through there and it was in my subconscious and I needed an intersection in the world. Basically I wanted it to be LA though, because the whole whole purpose of that song is that it says ‘Floating away from the fortune and fame.’ Trying to get away from the madness that can surround the music industry. Not only that but everything in LA. And that’s part of the reason I went to Nashville in the first place was to get away from it.”

The “we” he’s talking about is his own team of co-writers, some of whom have joined us for coffee this morning. So why does in-demand songwriter Jason Reeves, the guy whose phone rings when other people need help with writing, bother to use co-writers for his own material? As it turns out, co-writing is something he believes in quite passionately. “I can write alone and I do it a lot,” he says of his process, “but I believe in co-writing for a lot of reasons. The funny thing about it is I never co-wrote a song ever in my life before I met Colbie Caillat. She was the first person that I’d ever co-written for, and it just opens up so many doors that you can’t get to by yourself. Even if both of you have an idea that isn’t going to be used, it takes you to a different place that you’d never have gotten to. Say you both come up with two lines that aren’t going to work and they’re like brick walls that you can’t get past. The fact that you have to go around those walls to get to a new place, that place that you get to is somewhere you’ll never go by yourself. The exponential possibility of multiple imaginations working together to get to someplace new for me is so much more powerful than yourself. I just feel like I can get very lost in my own head when I’m writing a song. Getting stuck is really bad for creativity, being stuck at a place that you can’t get out of by yourself. For so many things in life, it’s better to have somebody there.”

With Jason having co-written a significant number of Colbie’s songs over the years, and having lent his vocals to a song on her last album, she returns the favor by offering vocals on Jason’s song No Lies. But she’s not the only female voice to appear on The Lovesick, as Kara DioGuardi chimes in for a duet on No One Ever Taught Us. “I’m not sure if she’s ever given her vocals like that to a track,” he says of the latter. “I’m just very honored to have her on it because I love her.” When asked which songs on the album he’s hoping will get noticed, he immediately points to the duets. “Those are two of my favorite tracks, and those girls are two of my favorite singers in the world.”

Despite the rise of his own singing career, he plans to continue writing for others to the extent that he can. “I will always do that,” he says of his co-writing efforts which have ranged from Colbie to Lenka,to Katharine McPhee. “Doing my own music and touring and promoting, it makes it harder to do that. But I still have to try to balance it because both of them have their own role in keeping me balanced in doing this. I can get very sick of myself, and I can get very sick of just writing songs with other people. So the fact that I can do both is really healthy for me.”

And when it comes down to the ups and downs of lovesickness, Jason still sees the condition as a positive. “I believe in it,” he says of love. “I think it’s one of the most powerful and beautiful things that we have as humans in the world. I do believe it can destroy people. I can be torturous, horrible, and venomous at the same time. But I think the thing about myself is that I’m not afraid of it. No matter how many times I get hurt, I want to keep trying because in my opinion the bliss of love is like a black hole that sucks any pain or heartache away. For me, when I’m in that moment of having love and sharing it, and that feeling of being on fire, it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been hurt or if I’m about to get hurt again.”

JasonReeves.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

Master plan: iPhone 5 has been a September release date baby all along

Call the iPhone 5 late arrival a delay if you want, but the breadcrumbs have been there all along to point to September being part of Apple’s master plan. From the odd-timed Verizon iPhone 4 to the white followup to the 4G hangover, signs abound that Apple has been planning for some time that the iPhone 5 release date would come more than a year after that of the iPhone 4, even if it does bust up Apple’s tradition of popping out a new iPhone every twelve months. Here are the signs as to why the iPhone 5 was never coming this summer.

- When Apple allowed Verizon to push out a Verizon iPhone 4 in February, many assumed it would fall by the wayside in favor of the iPhone 5 within a few months. Apple’s exclusivity deal with AT&T prevented Verizon from being in on the original iPhone 4 launch, which was likely the genesis of the iPhone 5 late release. Apple figured it would push out a Verizon iPhone 4 in late winter, a white iPhone 4 in late spring, and an iPhone 5 after summer. In hindsight, the vPhone 4 was a sign that Apple wasn’t in any hurry to kill off the iPhone 4.

- On that note, there’s good reason. Now that the smoke has cleared from the various iPhone 4 pseudo-controversies, the numbers show it to be a runaway success, outselling the previous generation by about a two to one – and widening – margin. No wonder Apple isn’t in a hurry to get to the iPhone 5.

- As a cherry on top, the later Apple waits to push the iPhone 5 out the door, the more of an impact 4G will have. Right now, Verizon and AT&T barely have 4G presence to speak of. But by the fall it’ll be a different story.

- Finally, Apple has figured out what should have been obvious all along: while the public heavily favors the iPhone over Android (ask any non-geek), they’re not generally willing to change carriers to make it happen. The arrival of the Verizon iPhone, and the presumed arrival of a T-Mobile iPhone and a Sprint iPhone, are ultimately more important to marketshare than the iPhone 5. That means Apple can afford to take its time in developing the next iPhone while allowing the carriers to fight the marketshare battle on its behalf in the mean time. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

The Beatles wish Bob Dylan a happy 70th birthday via Twitter

Welcome to 2011, in which the world’s most influential band uses Twitter to publicly wish one of the world’s most influential solo artists a happy birthday. Bob Dylan turns seventy years old today, and The Beatles have taken to Twitter to wish him a good one: “Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan. May you stay “Forever Young”! Peace and love from Apple.”

While @thebeatles is a verified account, it’s not clear precisely operates it; the signature suggests that Apple Corps (not to be confused with Apple Inc the computer company) is operating it. Paul McCartney has a separate Twitter account of his own. But in any case it’s cool to see two of the most vital musical acts of their era interacting in such a manner. Bob Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, turns seventy today.

Michael Grimm interview: Beatweek Rising Star 2011 talks debut album

by Bill Palmer

“I don’t speak too loud,” says Michael Grimm while relaxing in the restaurant of his hotel on the Sunset Strip, a place he doesn’t visit often. Winning on America’s Got Talent and the big payday which came with it haven’t changed the Waveland, Mississippi native much. He’s still wearing the hat which he became famous for while competing on the show. He’s still living in Las Vegas (but dodges the Strip), and after having proposed to his girlfriend while on The Ellen Show, is preparing for the wedding. And true to his word, he’s using the prize money to build his grandmother a new house, having already broken ground on it. But that’s all secondary to the fact that he finally has an album out the door, and in addition to reinterpreting popular songs from the likes of Rod Stewart and Alicia Keys, he’s managed to get four original songs of his own onto the album as well.

To understand him as a musician, you have to understand the Gulf Coast environment in which he grew up. “It’s a different sort of scene down there than the rest of small towns,” he says. “Every small town has its own thing, but that one really does. If you’ve ever been to New Orleans you’ll see it’s almost like another country. Good people down there but great food and a lot of thick culture.” Raised on old school country music along the lines of George Jones while absorbing the blues, funk and soul of New Orleans, is no surprise that his new album shows traces of all of the above. And while he’s released records in the past, he considers this one to be his true debut.

“When you use the word album today, you’re not referring to a record,” he says. “It means it’s a completion of your art. It’s something you’ve completed as a singer, as a musician. So this is my first album. I’ve recorded other CDs, a couple live CDs and one original, but they were just to have something to give to people. It wasn’t anything that had a lot of money or a lot of time invested for that matter.”

And while winning on the TV show came with a record deal, it worked out better than he could have hoped. “I don’t know if I believe in fate or not, but times like these I kind of do believe in fate. They provided me with a record label with Sony immediately. But the thing is years ago I was to sign with Sony, came very close to it, and the guy that was representing the company for Sony for me was Michael Flynn. When I won the show, he comes walking out. I love Mike, and I wanted to work with him so bad, and he comes walking out and the end of the winning of the show, and I was so happy because if there’s anybody to have signed with it was Sony. So it’s weird how the wheels roll around, and there’s Michael Flynn, A&R for Sony giving me the big hug and saying congratulations. And we’re both going wow, this is weird, we’re finally getting to work together.”

The album features reinterpretations of songs which come from four decades and from too many genres to keep track of, from a list of artists so disparate-seeming on paper that it might leave one to wonder how they might all jive together on record. “I would say the same thing,” Michael admits of any skepticism fans might have before hearing the album. “Most of these songs that were put together were ideas that I threw up. I just felt we’ll take a different approach to it, but how can we do that if we’re doing a song that sounds country right here and then we’re doing a song that’s more seventies rock and roll, and then we’re doing another song that’s more soul, how are we going to make all that work together? Well, luckily we called Mr. Don Was on that one and he did a great job. When we explained it to him, he helped put the ideas together by picking these songs with me. I’m looking at him going, is this gonna work doing an Alicia Keys song next to this song? He goes ‘Yeah.’ He had no doubt.”

Michael Grimm’s hat might as well be another appendage of his body. He wore it on television; he’s wearing it now in the restaurant. “I’ve always worn a hat,” he explains. “My hat’s always been on my head, and there’s also a more important side to why I wear a hat. It’s sort of telling people that I’m not taking off my hat and changing for anybody. I am who I am. I’ve been who I am for thirty-two years now, and I’m happy with that. So when someone tells me to take off my hat, I’ve always been a little cautious around them. Now I know they mean good intent, but they’re just trying to critique me in some way. I don’t think it all has to be a visual thing. I’m a singer. They want you to look nice and pretty and decorate you up out there, but I’m just a singer. Let me wear my hat and go sing.”

So why did he take his hat off for judge Sharon Osbourne? “Nope, I did not actually,” he clarifies. “She did not tell me to take the hat off. What I did was, it wasn’t because of Sharon. It was because Sharon made a good point when she spoke about that because it made me think, well, the label and everybody else and the network is going to be wanting me to take this hat off eventually. So I made a choice, my own choice, to pull that hat off before they said anything to me. Because once it gets to that point, you know what I’m saying? I don’t want them running it. So I took the hat off and I went and made them cut my hair really corny, like let’s make me look really cornball here, as corny as possible. And they tried to make me look all nice. That’s not me, man. It just don’t work for most guys. I don’t know how some guys do it. By doing so anyway, they went ‘Oh, we don’t have to ask. Put your hat back on.’ And so the next song I did was You Can Leave Your Hat On, and I was making a statement about that whole moment there.”

He was also wearing his hat when he proposed to longtime girlfriend Lucy on national television, during his first appearance on The Ellen Show. But he says he wasn’t trying to show anyone up by using such a grand stage for his proposal. “She told me awhile back,” he says of Lucy, “I don’t care if we get married in a courthouse. She always wanted to go get married right now, let’s not have the ceremony. But your proposal better be good or you’re gonna have to do it again. So I thought well I’m gonna ask her to marry me, it’s my woman, what a better chance than now, than to do it on Ellen. So that’s why I took the opportunity and that’s why I did it. Now I’m not asking anyone else to try to live up to that. Not everyone get a chance at being on Ellen. So I just took it while it was there.”

After the wedding Michael head out on tour, something he’s gotten used to as a musician over the years, and something he’ll have to continue to make a part of his life. “Touring is the place that you make your money at. The labels make their money everywhere else, you make your money on the road. So you’ve got to learn to like it. It’s better than lifting boxes.” But he’s hoping to avoid flying as much as possible. It’s not the flying itself that bothers him. It’s the airports. “I don’t do well with crowds,” he admits. “I can sing to a crowd of fifteen thousand or more and I’m comfortable on stage. But I have some sort of anxiety I guess when I go out amongst a lot of people. I can’t even go to the store, man. I’ve always been that way. I’m a simple guy. I don’t like the fast pace life too much. And when I get time, I’m a recreationalist, man. I’m out camping, skiing, water rafting. That’s where my heart is. It’s not in the city. So I’m a simple man. That’s simple. This here isn’t real life. This is all just a made up world that we make.”

Still, having left the Mississippi swamps years ago to make his home in Las Vegas, he still loves the place. “It’s a crossroads for a lot of stuff, and that’s why I moved there. It’s twenty-four seven, and I’m a night person. I’m not a gambler. I don’t like going out and partying and all of that.” But true to form, he adds “I stay away from the Strip unless I’m playing there.”

MichaelGrimmMusic.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

Twitter buys TweetDeck, but to pillage it or kill it off?

It turns out Twitter wasn’t messing around when it said there was no need for third party developers to continue making Twitter clients – and now TweetDeck is no more, at least in terms of being a third party. After having launched “official” Twitter apps for each major platform by acquiring players in each category (Tweetie for iPhone, etc), and having used trademark law to go after third party clients like UberTwitter, it turns out Twitter has swallowed TweetDeck whole, says Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC. Considering Twitter’s official position that third party Twitter apps are no longer a good thing, there’s little question that TweetDeck is about to go bye-bye as a standalone product. But now for the real question: did Twitter buy TweetDeck in order to take the best of its features and fold them into the existing official Twitter apps, or simply to make TweetDeck go away?

Either way, expect TweetDeck loyalists to cry foul in a big way. While many who’ve tried TweetDeck over the years have found its multipaned design to be confusingly busy, plenty of others swear by it. In fact, Twitter’s current “lists” implementation appears to at least partially owe its genesis to the feature found in TweetDeck much earlier. The move comes at a time when the official Twitter for iPhone, once known as Tweetie, has come under harsh criticism for recent updates which have implemented a widely hated favorites bar and inexplicably removed the “quote tweet” feature. The company’s recent revamp of its web browser interface has also come under harsh criticism as users have found that the busily complicated new design now requires more clicks in order to accomplish the same tasks; backlash toward “new Twitter” has been so strong that the company has been forced to leave “old Twitter” intact as an option for far longer than it likely wants to.

Assuming Twitter does kill off TweetDeck as a standalone product (why else would they have acquired it?), expect even more hell to be raised by users going forward. Not that such complaints may ultimately matter, as Twitter has made it clear that it wants control of the end-user experience. And with no legitimate mainstream Twitter competitors on the horizon, users will likely just have to learn to live with it – or to raise so much hell as to embarrass Twitter into backing off. Either way, don’t expect TweetDeck users to go quietly. The question is whether there are enough of them to manage to make a collective dent.

Skylar Grey reveals “Dance Without You” buzz single from debut album

Skylar Grey has peeled back another layer of the mystery surrounding her debut album as she’s revealed the title of her first single: Dance Without You. Referring to it as a “buzz single” ahead of what will be the official lead single, Grey only shared the album artwork for the single, leaving fans to wonder when exactly they’ll get to hear it and, oh by the way, what the song sounds like. The singer has thus far been better known for songs she’s collaborated on (I Need A Doctor with Eminem and Dr. Dre, Coming Home with Diddy Dirty Money, Things I Never Said with Lupe Fiasco) and those she’s written for others (Love The Way You Lie), but is now striking out on her own with a solo album about which very little is known.

The secrecy surrounding Dance Without You and the entire album is in keeping with the theme of Skylar Grey’s career thus far: pictures of her have been rare, her vocals were portrayed by someone else in the I Need A Doctor video, and even during her Grammy performance of the song, she was largely in the shadows. Even her most-used profile picture only shows her face lit from one side. But now fans at least have the name of one of her songs to work with, if not the song itself, and that’s one more piece to the Skylar Grey puzzle than they had yesterday.

Jason Derulo back with “Day-O” Don’t Wanna Go Home from Future History

Ever wonder what the Banana Boat Song might sound like if it were re-imagined as a genre-blended twenty-first century pop song? Don’t worry, Jason Derülo has it all figured out. The lead single from his forthcoming album Future History, entitled Don’t Wanna Go Home, is an up-tempo track with a dance beat – and the chorus is, incredibly, “Day-o, me say day-o, daylight come and we don’t wanna go home.” And you know what? It works.

Don’t Wanna Go Home is yet the latest evidence that Derülo can create a song in any genre, using any kind of samples, and turn it into a hit. Not that we didn’t see enough evidence of that from his first album, from the R&B tinge of Whatcha Say to the rock hooks of In My Head. Last week he won the BMI “Songwriter of the Year” award along with production partner JR Rotem. Derülo was also the 2010 Beatweek Newcomer of the Year, and he appeared on the cover of Beatweek Magazine fourteen months ago (read the cover story interview).

Jason Derülo’s new album Future History is due out in September, which means you can likely look forward to subsequent singles popping up during the summer in the mean time. Don’t Wanna Go Home is currently available in iTunes.

Breanne Düren interview: Beatweek Rising Star 2011 talks Sparks

by Bill Palmer

“Gold Mine is a pretty accurate representation of where I’m at in my life,” she says, “both personally and musically.” Here in Los Angeles for a promotional stint, Breanne Düren is a long way from home. The singer from Minnesota is in the early stages of her solo career after having been thrust into the spotlight for the vocals she contributed to the last record from fellow Minnesota native Owl City, with whom she then ended up touring. Her debut EP is called Sparks, and the first song on it serves as an apt introduction. “The metaphor is about the journey of self discovery as an artist and as a young adult, figuring out what it is that I do best. What is it that fulfills me and makes me happy? What are the gifts that I have to give to the world? What is it that I have to offer? I think that search and that journey is a really important and fascinating time in ones life, put in a fun three minute pop song.”

If the songs on Sparks are happy and even dreamy sounding, you can’t blame her. “All the excitement of going on tour and doing all this traveling and meeting all these new people, and the chaos and excitement of it, is what I feel like I’ve put into these songs,” she says. “The young excitement and the dreaminess of it, and the lushness, it’s all these crazy emotions and this wild ride that I’ve been on.”

That joy is perhaps best illustrated in the video for Gold Mine, which sees her dancing throughout the clip. “I was the artsy child,” she explains of her upbringing. “My parents put me in dance lessons, and they put me in vocal lessons of course because I was always singing. Piano lessons, I did all of that growing up. Tap, jazz, ballet dancing when I was younger, and then when I got into high school I did dance line which is the group of girls that are in the music video. I went back to my high school, wheeled and dealer with the high school faculty to get these girls to do it, and they were excited to do it.”

Owl City fans will be able to spot Breanne’s voice from her contributions to the Ocean Eyes album, a collaboration which came about by happenstance. “This was when I was in college and stepping out a little. I was recording some demos and I was performing some singer-songwriter-y gigs. I met a guy named Austin who was a mutual friend of both Adam and myself. Adam was looking for a girl to sing on one of his songs that he was recording, and Austin thought our voices would sound good together. I went down to Owatonna, Minnesota with Austin and recorded the song in Adam’s parents’ basement. Adam was really shy. We just kept in touch. It was like a year and a few months from that point that he asked me to go on tour, because all these things had happened with him. He signed a record deal and he was going out on tour and was looking to put the band together. He knew that I played keyboards and obviously sang, so that was that. It was a pretty cool little fate sort of thing that happened and I’m very grateful for it.”

So about that umlaut in Düren: it’s real. The full name is Dürenberger, but “I was looking to shorten the name when I was in college for musical purposes.” And her Minnesota accent, though comparatively subtle, gets noticed. “I get made fun of all the time when I’m on tour. I think it’s in a few of the things that I say, like I say oh my gosh, you guys, and that is apparently really Minnesotan. For some reason I’m kind of defensive about it. I don’t know why. I mean I’m proud to be from Minnesota, but there’s something about the accent that’s a little funny sometimes.”

Speaking of touring, her upcoming dates will give Breanne the opportunity to focus on not just performing music but also on crafting more of it. “I write on the road,” she says of the plans for her full length album, which won’t be out before next year. “I really enjoy that environment for creative purposes. So I plan on writing the record on the road this year, which may sound ambitious, but I can’t wait. I think I’m definitely getting back to that creative place now that all of these things have happened. I have a couple songs that I think we might try to bring back, but I’m very much thinking this is my year to be creative and to write on the road with other people, co-writing stuff.”

And of that college degree she was working on when Owl City came calling and turned her life upside down? “Interestingly enough, I am finishing it right now,” she says. “Last night I was doing a take-home final. I have one final when I get back from LA on Saturday and then I’m done and I graduate college.” But with college out of the way, it’s all about the music. “I feel a great responsibility to give it one hundred percent of what I have, because I realize that there are so many artists out there and so many musicians and talented, talented people who work really hard. It would be such a shame for me to not take this opportunity and run.”

BreanneDurenMusic.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

Lelia Broussard interview: Beatweek Rising Star 2011 is in it to win it

by Bill Palmer

After years of slow-simmering indie success, Lelia Broussard is suddenly on the fast track. “I’m a busy woman now,” she says with a laugh, but she’s not kidding. She’s the frontrunner to win a high profile competition which would land her a major label record deal and put her face on the cover of the legendary Rolling Stone magazine, and whether she wins or not she’ll be performing for tens of thousands at this summer’s Bonnaroo festival. It’s a long way from three months ago, when she was playing to an audience of a couple hundred people at an LA club and during a post-set interview encouraged me to tune in to an upcoming late night talk show which would ultimately be announcing the contest, though she couldn’t reveal that at the time. Now sitting in a Santa Monica restaurant, the current New York resident and Louisiana native who’s lived everywhere at one time or another over the years is recounting the ways in which her professional life has suddenly begun changing quickly, and why those changes are likely just the beginning.

“I got a call from an A&R guy at Atlantic who had heard my record,” she says of the label’s invitation to join the fray after hearing her late 2010 indie release Masquerade. “I think they had picked everybody else and then they asked me to do it.” The invite-only contest, which began with sixteen contestants and is now down to the final two, sees her automatically signed to the label if she wins. So did she have to think twice before accepting the offer? “Yeah I did. It’s obviously a huge opportunity and it was exciting, but you have to consider every option. You have to think about it. You have a contract and there’s a lot of things to consider. So yeah, we had to think about it. But in the end, obviously it was something we decided would be a good thing to do.”

But even while encouraging fans to vote for her through online channels like Twitter and Facebook, Lelia has found time to make new music. “Part of the contest has been they’ve put us in the studio with producers. I worked with a production team called Espionage, and they’re from Norway. They’re really great guys, sweet, funny. They did Hey Soul Sister, and they co-wrote Beyonce’s Irreplaceable. So we recorded a few songs together.”

The songs, entitled Turn Me On and My Heart’s A Cannonball, are both more lyrically upbeat than much of the storyline from Masquerade, something she says is simply a reflection of her current surroundings. “I wrote the material from Masquerade a year ago now, so obviously my life has changed. I have different people in my life. There’s going to be times when you’re happier and times when you’re upset. I wasn’t trying to do anything. It’s the same, I’m just writing about what I’m feeling and what’s actually going on.”

She’s also continued working with Masquerade producer Dan Romer on her own time. “We’re working on four new songs. I’m really, totally excited about them and I love the direction that they’re taking. I haven’t finished the lyrics yet. We’ve written all of the music and melodies, but I haven’t written all the lyrics yet. So that’s kind of a different thing for me. I usually write everything kind of all at once.”

But the influx of new material amidst a career-altering backdrop doesn’t mean she’s written off the Masquerade era already. In fact the album is set to be remixed and re-released with additional tracks, and she just shot a video for the title track. In the video, “there’s a lot of boxes and there’s people trying to put me into boxes. They shove me into this box thing and then I break out.” So is the artist who’s been self-releasing albums since high school, and still doesn’t want to be boxed in, ready for life on a major if she wins? “Sure,” she says. “The people that I’ve been working with at Atlantic are great. Hopefully it’ll be good.”

Now in the fourth and final round of the big contest, Lelia has been a runaway vote-getter in all four rounds. But while she was one of the best kept secrets of the Los Angeles music scene for years before moving to New York City, her lack of a national profile means that her core fanbase has been the driving force in the voting, spiraling outward from there.

“It’s been a very pleasant surprise that it seems like I’m doing really well. It’s been great. I didn’t expect anything. I had no idea,” she says of her competitive success. She’s still taking to her social media accounts to actively wrangle votes from her fans even as she appears to be thus far leading the voting in the final round by significant margin. “My fans are really amazing and they’ve always been incredibly supportive. With this whole thing that’s come about, they’ve gotten more excited and there’s more people that know about me now and they’re excited. I think people like the idea that they are a part of something and that they are able to help make something like this happen, and it makes them really excited and want to help and tell their friends. We’ve always tried to treat the fans well, and I think that’s something that’s been an advantage. We’ve been working on that for a long time.”

And if she doesn’t win? “That’s going to be totally fine.” But either way it very much looks like 2011 will be the year in which the long-simmering artist finally plants herself firmly on the national radar – and after years of seeing her first name butchered by most who encounter it, the public may even finally learn how to correctly pronounce the name “LIL-yah” Broussard.

LeliaBroussard.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook • Choose The Cover

The Mentalist fallout from Season Finale: Red John dead, viewers stunned

Patrick Jane, hero avenger. Patrick Jane, cold blooded killer. Viewers of The Mentalist are still chewing over the season finale, attempting to piece together what they just saw. The show’s reluctant hero, who’s been solving crimes for years all while hoping to avenge the murder of his family by the mysterious Red John who’s been tormenting him the whole time, finally came face to face with the villain – and upon being satisfied that it was really him, shot him dead. Audiences had been expecting the Red John storyline to play out over the entire series run, so with the show certainly coming back next season but Red John apparently gone from it, questions abound as to the future of the show’s storyline. And that’s on top of debates over whether the killing was justified and whether that was really Red John.

Some Beatweek readers saw it coming: “Patrick Jane isn’t the kind of person I consider ‘compassionate’. He has a heart, yes, but I think that was totally in character for him. After he does crazy things, he always acts calm as if nothing happened. Also, it was very powerful. I think it was symbolizing that he was letting go of his anger and inner sadness.” And from another reader, “how can you say  “Patrick killing someone just seems crazy”?  he said he was going to do so and repeated that many times during the last three seasons.  His only reason for staying with CBI was to kill  Red John.  And when it comes to fulfilling that goal he’s also far from rational….he sleeps on the floor under the Smiley Face that RJ left in his house.  You haven’t been paying attention, mate.”

Others are still looking for more answers: “They’ve been stringing us along so long with Red John, if that was him, they better explain how he was able to do everything he did and manipulate so many people.”

Then there are those who see the killing as little more than justified self defense: “It was Red John and he was carrying a concealed weapon which he threatened Jane with.  He can be linked back to O’Loughlin via his cell phone and O’Loughlin executed two uniformed policemen.  Jane will be tried and the verdict will be justifiable homicide.”

And at least some viewers are concerned for the show’s future. “OMG what if this wasn’t the real red john? a bit dissapointed with him…will there be a copy cat in season four? will there be a season four?” Well yes, there will certainly be a season four. But where things go from here is anyone’s guess. Here’s more on the Mentalist season finale.

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