Allison Iraheta interview

“I only know where I’m at because it’s a day off” she tells me, and even “day off” is a relative term in that it simply means there’s no Glam Nation concert for her that night; she’s just come from doing local radio press and now she’s chatting with me. Allison Iraheta hasn’t likely had a real day off since she tried out for American Idol when she was sixteen years old and then spent the season rising to fame while competing with fellow musicians as much as a a decade her senior. Since then she’s done the Idol tour, pushed out her debut album Just Like You, and has now embarked on the Glam Nation tour with former Idolmate Adam Lambert and Orianthi. The timing is good, as Allison has just released her new single Don’t Waste The Pretty, which not so coincidentally features the latter on guitar.

“It’s just a rocking song,” Allison says of Don’t Waste The Pretty. “The message is amazing. And then we talked about different choices and stuff, but also, we brought up the idea of having Ori play on it, and it was like the perfect song for her to rock out on. It just all worked out.”

The song, like her entire album, knowingly straddles the line between rock and pop: she’s a rocker at heart, but she understands that having just turned eighteen she’s in an age bracket that leans toward pop, as well as the fact that this is a pop-leaning era in general. “It’s definitely pop stuff that gets the attention of the listeners right now, you know what I’m saying? But I definitely wanted to stick to that rock edge. So it’s definitely the pop that is on the album, but I like I said, there’s definitely the rock edge to it.”

Those expectations give her a chance to catch people off guard if they might have been stereotypically expecting “poppy young innocent sort of thing” as opposed to the veteran rock that Idol viewers have come to know her for. “People that don’t know me from Idol, say they randomly see me out doing some live stuff and I’m doing some rocking stuff, like I’m doing Pat Benetar covers and all the stuff we do live from the album, even thought it’s a bit poppy tracked down, when we do it live it’s definitely rougher, it’s definitely edgier.”

Allison Iraheta is the future of rock and roll whether she knows it yet or not, which means that with the lack of an established blueprint she gets to make up her own rules. But those suspecting intentional symmetry in the fact that her backing band consists of two girls and two guys may be surprised to learn that it just worked out that way. “We went through some auditions with musicians, and then my girls kicked some ass,” she says with a seeming bit of pride. “So we decided to stick with my girl drummer and my girl bassist. And now it’s working out, it’s really cool, I’ve got two girls and two guys in my band and it definitely attracts people.”

If the pink-red-purple hair is Allison’s visual signature (asked if she plans to keep the crazy hair colors forever, she teases that “I just might shave my head for the rest of the shows”), it’s her husky “I can’t believe this voice is coming from a teenage girl” singing voice that makes her instantly recognizable. But she admits to having been unwittingly using her instrument wrong until recently: “I’ve actually changed the way I used to sing from the show to now, because I actually just learned how to sing properly. I was more of like the screamer and not really taking care of my voice, but now being on the road and doing this every night, I’ve learned. I get sick a lot, and I lose my voice very easily. And I think it’s maybe cause I sound like a man.”

If the world learned how to pronounce Allison Iraheta’s last name from Idol host Ryan Seacrest then they’re apparently saying it wrong, as she finally broke the news to him that he had been botching it all along when she appeared on his radio show after the season had ended. So I asked her for the correct pronunciation, just so I would never again say it wrong one way or the other, which is when she admitted that “there’s like two versions of it,” the original Spanish pronunciation of “EAR-uh-HAY-tuh” which she grew up with, along with what she says is now the “correct” pronunciation, anglicized along the lines of “I-ruh-HEE-tuh” – a version she’s adopted because it’s a pronunciation that “everyone is cool with saying.”

Over the past seventy-five issues, Beatweek Magazine has interviewed some of the most famous musicians on the planet. But of all the times we’ve opened things up for our readers and Twitter followers to submit questions in advance for possible use, we’ve never previously received even a fraction of the overwhelming number of questions that Allison’s army of fans submitted to us (we stopped counting after receiving more than a hundred in the first several minutes). So that in itself begs the question that every artist fears having to answer: why do your fans like you so darned much?

“Geez, I hate talking about myself,” she half-jokes before coming up with an entirely logical answer. “I think it might because I put myself up to like me being young and all, a lot of my fans out there are about my age or younger, and they really point out the fact that I’ve gone through a lot of things that they’ve gone through themselves. They can really relate to me and I can really relate to them.”

Of those hundreds of questions we picked the most popular and the most intriguing, the former being what dozens of her fans want to know: will there be a music video for Don’t Waste The Pretty? “Maybe up ahead. We’re gonna see. Right now we’ve got the whole tour going on, we’re just waiting on how it does.”

The other reader-submitted question focuses on the future. Allison has already said that she plans to take a larger songwriting role on her next record (she’s said that for her debut album there simply wasn’t the time). So once she sits down to start writing lyrics for album number two, what topics will she be looking to focus on? “Maybe more personal stuff. More on what has actually happened in the past few years of my life. All those songs that were written on this one were more overall, not so personal. So I think I’m gonna get more personal when I start writing.”

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

Orianthi: the Beatweek interview

Orianthi is currently existing in two worlds simultaneously. To the pop music world she’s known as the rising vocalist who scored a hit single with “According To You” from her album Believe late last year and is re-releasing the album today with new songs tacked on. But within the world of professional musicians, Orianthi is one of the most sought-after lead guitarists in the industry and she’s played on new releases from artists ranging from Adam Lambert to Mary J Blige in the past year alone, while being tapped for live television guitar duties by Alice Cooper, Carrie Underwood and others along the way. It’s a puzzle, then, how some of Orianthi’s newfound pop fans have yet to even figure out that she’s responsible for the guitar work on her own pop songs, let alone manage to connect the dots and realize that she’s the blonde guitarist from Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” movie. And you thought your days were busy.

“I love coffee,” Orianthi tells me as we speak now about the new release of Believe (II), while she sips her fourth coffee of the day and it’s not yet lunchtime. The first time we spoke, eight months ago when the original iteration of Believe was released, she was only on her second coffee of that particular morning. She’s speaking faster these days, but it’s with good reason: she’s doing promo for Believe (II) at the same time she’s kicking off the Glam Nation tour with Lambert and Allison Iraheta (she also plays the guitar on Iraheta’s new single, also being released today). For all the guitar related honorifics which have already been laid at her feet by guitar gods like Carlos Santana and Steve Vai (the latter of whom she’s collaborated with in the studio twice in the past year), Orianthi is now working on earning a title of a different kind: prolific pop singer who can’t seem to stop writing new tunes and recording them as voice memos on her iPhone as she goes.

Having covered her early days with me last time around (she first picked up a guitar when she was six) and her move from her native Australia to Los Angeles a few years back (documented in the song Feels Like Home), this time Orianthi and I skip to the four new songs on Believe (II), along with what inspired her to start laying down new material so quick after pushing the last album out the door.

Of her new single Shut Up & Kiss Me, she says its “a good followup to According To You. There’s a happy vibe to the song and it’s a lot of fun. So I decided to get back into the studio and record that song.” Her lyrics in the song, for the first time, reference the fact that she’s a guitar player, and it’s no accident. She says some newfound fans heard According To You and assumed the soaring guitar work was that was that of a session player, “and so I thought by referencing a guitar riff in the lyrics in Shut Up & Kiss Me, people would realize I’m actually playing the guitar.”

Before we even get to the other three new songs, she makes it clear that her mind is on the future: “there should be a third record out real soon too.” I ask if she’s going to stick with the Led Zeppelin naming conventions and call it Believe III. She has a joke at the ready. “I might change the name of the third one to We Believe Again, or Please Believe Me.” At least I think it was a joke.

One of the four “new” songs is actually older than she is, as it’s a cover of John Waite’s 1984 classic “Missing You” which was at the height of its commercial popularity right around the time she was born. “I heard it a lot when I was younger and I loved the track, and of course I’m a big fan of the eighties. I was thinking of songs to cover and I was playing that song and I love the lyrics, it’s a cool vibe, it’s really different. So we decided to put it on the record and we play it live too.” It’s not the only cover song currently in her concert repertoire, as she debuted her live take of Prince’s “Lets Go Crazy” on the first night of Glam Nation over the weekend. And yes, she’s already collaborated with Prince in the studio as well.

But it’s the mid tempo “Courage” which just might end up being her biggest hit to date, and the song’s uplifting message is to her own liking. “Hopefully when people hear it, it helps them through things,” she tells me. “Just to move on with life and everything you need, and to have courage every day with what you do. I just think the lyrics are really strong, and every time I sing it, it makes me feel really good.”

I mention that seemingly half the new albums that the labels send me these day feature her on some kind of guitar part, and I ask her how she manages to find the time to pull off all that studio session work while pursuing her own pop career, coffee notwithstanding. “I love doing both. I love just being the guitar player, getting up and collaborating with different artists. That’s a lot of fun. And I love playing in my band and singing and playing my songs, I love doing that too. Being able to do both is really awesome, and I hope I can continue to. There’s never a dull moment. I’m always doing something to keep my brain occupied, cause I get bored easily too, so it’s always great to be playing different things. When I’m asked to guest on someone’s record it’s really cool. I actually just collaborated with a German violin player called David Garrett. We played Walk This Way, we just recorded it. I’m going to Berlin in a couple days to perform it with him in Germany, and I’ll come back here and do the tour. While my band are driving in the tour bus, I’ll be flying off to Berlin. So it’s pretty crazy but it’s awesome at the same time.”

Speaking of the Glam Nation tour, it’s Adam Lambert’s baby, and he told me back in April that the tour is going to be all about atmosphere and interactivity for him. So what does Ori have planned for her tour set? “Nothing too extravagant. Didn’t bring elephants or pyro. We’re gonna put on a rock show. We’ve got lights going on, we’ve got some colors going on, extended guitar solos. We just have fun on the stage, and I think that’s the most important thing. ”

Her fourth new song, by the way, is a collaboration with producer RedOne, probably best known at this point for his work with Lady GaGa, a fact that Orianthi brings up before I can. The song is an electronic track she made without her band, and its “Addicted To Love” title left some of her band members wondering, as I initially had, whether it might be a cover of the Robert Palmer song. Instead it’s nothing of the sort, a metallic electronic haze which pushes boundaries. “It was a really different sort of musical style. So going in there and coming up with that song, it’s really different from the rest of the stuff that’s on the record, but I’m always up for trying different things and experimenting. I mean, that’s what music’s about, just creating and collaborating with different artists from different musical worlds. Getting in there and recording with him, he’s more of the electronic world, and I kind of come from the world of going in the studio with a live band.” She’s also quick to point out that the re-did the vocals on some of the Believe songs that carried over to Believe (II), after solidifying the songs while on the road.

There’s a grass roots campaign playing out on Twitter right now to try to get Orianthi on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest in the fall, and because she somehow manages to find time to hang out on Twitter, she’s seen it. “It’s really cool of the person who started it,” she says. Her secret to carving out time for her Twitter escapades? Airplane wifi. “I’ll Twitter multiple times on the plane, especially from LA to New York. When they’ve got wifi on the plane, then I’m on the internet the entire time.” In the time it’s taken me to write this article she’s tweeted nine times from Germany. Scratch that. Ten.

What’s perhaps most remarkable about her Twitter experiences is that so many of the people around the world replying back to her tweets are sporting a profile picture of themselves with Orianthi’s arm around them. Of the extraordinary amount of time seemingly involved in agreeing to pose for that many photo requests from that many fans in that many cities, she says it’s just part of the job. “It’s really great meeting everybody, and they’re all really sweet. We play shows and they come out to it and they’re singing along and they’re really happy, that’s what it’s all about. Music’s all about bringing people together and making people happy, and I think that’s my job as a musician to basically help people. Listening to your song helps them through situations, or coming to the show takes them away from reality for a bit, and makes them happy, and that’s what it’s all about. So meeting people and signing things, it’s part of your duty as a musician to do that. I feel it, anyway. If they’re gonna support you, come to your show, your records, that keeps you going, and I love it.”

I invite Orianthi back for another interview whenever she gets around to releasing her next album, which I refer to again as Believe (III).

“Believe Again, yes, Believe (III),” she jokes.

Believe Yourself, I offer.

“Definitely one of those.”

Believe (III), or whatever she ends up calling it, will have to wait for another release date to come along. But Believe (II) hits streets today.

Learn more at Orianthi.com • iTunes • MySpace • Facebook • Twitter

Adam Lambert skips Idol finale, says Glam Nation “is my priority”

Adam Lambert spoke about his absence from last night’s American Idol season finale, saying that he “would have loved” to have been there in order to support the finalists (with whom he had worked as contestant mentor last month) and to bid a sendoff to departing Simon Cowell, but “this tour for my fans is my priority.” Lambert explained that he had spent the day rehearsing for Glam Nation, meeting with the tour’s lighting designer, costume designer, music programmer, band and dancers, and “created all day.”

Lambert went on to confirm that he had a throat bug and that he had been put on “vocal rest” from his own rehearsals, which had caused him to fall behind in his tour preparations. He also confirmed that he had never been asked to perform on the Idol finale in the first place.

Lambert’s response via Twitter came in response to some external gossip suggesting that there had been some kind of drama going on behind the scenes with regards to why he didn’t appear on the Idol finale. As it turns out, it appears to have all been much ado about nothing. The Glam Nation tour kicks off June 4th in Pennsylvania. Here’s what Adam told Beatweek about the tour.

Adam Lambert Glam Nation tour dates announced

After teasing the tour in an interview with Beatweek Magazine earlier this month and since revealing its name, Adam Lambert has reveled the first batch of U.S. dates for his upcoming Glam Nation Tour. Kicking off June 4th in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Lambert will remain largely in the northeastern quadrant of the United States for the month of June with highlight dates including the Nokia Theatre in New York City on June 22nd and a show in Toronto. Also announced are three July dates in Kansas City and California, along with a return to Pennsylvania in September for Musikfest and a September 18th show in St Petersburg, Florida.

More Glam Nation tour dates to be announced at a later date. For more on what Adam Lambert told Beatweek about the Glam Nation tour earlier this month, check out the full interview.

Opening acts on the tour include fellow former American Idol contestant Allison Iraheta and guitarist Orianthi.

Full list of announced tour dates thus far:

6/4 – WILKES-BARRE, PA – THE FM KIRBY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
6/5 – SAYREVILLE, NJ – STARLAND BALLROOM
6/8 – TOLEDO, OH – OMNI
6/10 – COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA – HARRAH’S BALLROOM
6/11 – MAHNOMEN, MN – SHOOTING STAR CASINO
6/12 – PRIOR LAKE, MN – MYSTIC LAKE CASINO HOTEL
6/14 – COLUMBUS, OH- LC PAVILLION
6/15 – MILWAUKEE, WI – RIVERSIDE THEATER
6/17 – HAMMOND, IN- THE VENUE AT HORSESHOE CASINO
6/18 – ROYAL OAK, MI- ROYAL OAK THEATER
6/19 – WEST TORONTO, ON/CANADA – MOLSON AMPHITHEATRE
6/22 – NEW YORK, NY- NOKIA THEATRE
6/24 – MASHANTUCKET, CT- MGM GRAND THEATER AT FOXWOODS
6/26 – ATLANTIC CITY, NJ – BORGATA SPA & RESORT – EVENT CENTER
7/15 – KANSAS CITY, MO – MIDLAND THEATRE
7/27 – COSTA MESA, CA – OC FAIR – PACIFIC AMPHITHEATRE
7/28 – COSTA MESA, CA – OC FAIR – PACIFIC AMPHITHEATRE
8/13 – BETHLEHEM, PA – MUSIKFEST
9/18 – ST. PETERSBURG, FL – TROPICANA FIELD