Fefe Dobson: grown up, filled with Joy, still young at heart: interview

by Bill Palmer

Seven years after the release of her debut album, Canadian pop star Fefe Dobson has finally returned with her sophomore effort. In that sense the new album’s title “Joy” could just as easily refer to how glad she is for it to finally see the light of day as it does to the album’s final track of the same name. Four solid years in the making, Fefe tells Beatweek about how Joy came together, why she got “remarried” to her original record label, the story behind her hit song Stuttering, and how being a Canadian musician means a different career path.

Your song Stuttering has been stuck in my head since I first heard it. What can you tell me about it?

Basically, the word “stuttering” is a new way of saying you’re lying, change the lingo up a little bit. You tell someone “yeah, you’re stuttering” and it’s like hey, you’re lying. It’s just a new way of calling someone a liar (laughs).

It sounds like the song must have been at least partly inspired by experiences from your own life.

Yeah, I feel like not just myself but anyone can relate to someone lying to them or not telling them the truth or living a double life of some sort. So yeah definitely, I’ve been there. I’m sure everyone has.

Your new album Joy has been a long road for you, right? Years in the making.

It’s been about four years making this album, trying to complete it and trying to make it right, and having the right tracks, and having the right look, and growing up, and feeling confident. All those things take time. I started really young. I started when I was sixteen and I’m twenty-five now, so it’s definitely a process to be comfortable in your own skin. And not even just that, promote that.

When you first started working on this record it was an indie project, right?

I was label-less at that point, and I started writing with friends and just trying to figure out what sound I wanted. And then my manager Chris Smith started his own label called 21, so I joined onto that. And then after that it was major label. But we had a lot of that record done, and then we signed with Island and then they supported us a lot and set me up with a lot of cool writers that I digger.

You worked with JR Rotem on Stuttering. What was that process like?

You know, I never actually got in a room with JR (laughs). Sometimes you don’t actually have to be in the room with people who produce. You go in, your sing your vocals, you can do it in a different country or a different city. But Claude Kelly recorded me, I love Claude Kelly, he’s awesome. Love JR too. I met him once (laughs). He’s cool.

Do I have this right? You ended up re-signing with the same label you had originally been on?

Yeah, totally. We got remarried.

That’s unusual. How did that end up happening?

Originally I wasn’t dropped because of Island not believing in me anymore. I wasn’t dropped because of that. I was dropped because there were some musical differences at that point, and I needed time to grow as an artist. So I always stayed in touch with LA, and when he heard Joy and he started hearing some of the tracks off the record, and I came in to see him, it was just instant. Island basically proposed, and I said yes again.

Your first record came out when you were eighteen, and then you kind of disappeared from us and now you’re back as an adult. Aside from the obvious things that go with the age difference, what’s different about you now?

Naturally I’ve grown up. I look at the world differently. I speak differently. I hold myself differently. The clothes I wear are different. The music I listen to, my iPod is filling up more and more. I’m learning new artists that I adore. I’m learning about more movies and culture and my own culture. So that’s been a change, you know? If I made the same record when I was eighteen, there’d be a problem. We all have to evolve and change. As long as you’re being true to yourself then you’re good to go.

Are you treated differently in your native Canada vs. the U.S.? Fans, the industry, shows, do they feel different to you?

One thing about our country Canada that’s amazing is that for radio we have a thing called CanCon where we have to play a certain amount of Canadian content, which is great for artists in Canada to really be able to have their music played. You can be an American artist and have a great song as well, and not be sure if you’re going to get any radio play because you have to compete against the major artists. In Canada it’s like if you have a great song and you’re Canadian, you get radio play. So it’s cool that way.

Aside from your singles Ghost and Stuttering, if I asked you to pick out another song or two from the record that you’re really excited for people to hear, what comes to mind?

There’s a song called Can’t Breathe that was written by a fellow Canadian writer, his name is Tawgs, and then produced and co-written as well by Bob Ezrin who’s a legendary rock producer who did Pink Floyd The Wall. It’s a ballad. To me it’s very beautiful. I have a wonderful, talented guitar player Orianthi who plays the solo.

I always had this gut feeling you were going to resurface as Felicia Dobson. I’m glad you stuck with Fefe. It’s a cool name. But was that ever a consideration?

When I’m old and grey, I’ll still be Fefe Dobson. But I might disappear under my full name. No one will know. Even if I got married, I’d still be Fefe Dobson. I might get older, but for me I’m still young at heart. And also, my fans know me as Fefe. My friends know me as Fefe. My mom knows me as Fefe. I think if I was like, “Mom, I’m Felicia now,” she wouldn’t know how to deal with me.

FefeDobson.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook

On anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death, Orianthi performs on Regis

A year to the day after the late Michael Jackson died, his former guitarist Orianthi is taking the stage on Live with Regis and Kelly to perform her latest single from her solo career. At the time of Jackson’s death, Orianthi had spent months in rehearsals with the king of pop and had been tapped to be the touring lead guitarist on his “This Is It” tour; she was later featured in the documentary posthumously released of the same name. Orianthi released her solo album Believe late last year, on which she sings and plays guitar; she re-released the album as “Believe (II)” earlier this month and is currently on tour with Adam Lambert and Allison Iraheta. Orianthi’s latest single is entitled Shut Up & Kiss Me, and her biggest hit to date is entitled According To You.

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

Beatweek 2010 Hot and Rising issue: Orianthi, iPhone 4, Saving Abel and much more

Orianthi covers John Waite “Missing You” on new album Believe (II)

Orianthi is set to re-release her album Believe on June 8th under the name Believe (II) with four new songs including new single “Shut Up & Kiss Me.” The new album just arrived here at Beatweek offices, and we can confirm that the new song “Missing You” is in fact a guitar-fueled cover of John Waite’s 1984 hit song of the same name. The other two new songs on Believe (II) are the mid-tempo radio friendly “Courage” which sounds like it could be in line to be the next single, along with the RedOne-produced “Addicted To Love” which we can confirm is not a cover of the classic Robert Palmer song. The rest of Believe (II) consists of songs from the original Believe release, including the hit “According To You.”

Orianthi’s version of “Missing You” is not the first time that the song has been covered; Tina Turner released a high profile cover version in 1996, while Rod Stewart, Brooks & Dunn, and Tyler Hilton have also covered the song.

Alice Cooper and Orianthi rock out on School’s Out For Summer

Rock legend Alice Cooper opened tonight’s American Idol finale, and he brought the most sought-after young guitarist on the planet with him as he and Orianthi tackled his classic song School’s Out For Summer. The performance was typical Alice, complete with school kids with their faces painted and Orianthi dressed in what looked like a school uniform herself.

Alice Cooper is working on a new album with producer Bob Ezrin. Orianthi is set to release her new album Believe II in June, before hitting the road with former Idol contestant Adam Lambert.

For her part, Orianthi tweeted that she “had a blast rocking out with Alice Cooper on Idol tonight!”

Orianthi debuts motorcycle-themed music video for Shut Up & Kiss Me

Orianthi has released the music video for her new song Shut Up & Kiss Me, which is the lead single for her forthcoming album Believe II due out on June 8th. The video features the virtuoso playing a bright red guitar and a guy with a malfunctioning motorcycle who’s rescued by a brunette who arrives on her own motorcycle, and at various points Orianthi is seeing playing her guitar while sitting on an all-red motorcycle of her own. Keeping with the theme, the video also includes a red amp, a red chair, and in the final scene of the video, Orianthi uses a red pair of Monster Beats headphones as a massive guitar pick.

The Shut Up & Kiss Me video can be watched via YouTube. The release of Orianthi’s new single and its video come ahead of the release of Believe II and and her participation in the Glam Nation tour which kicks off early next month.

Orianthi to release Believe II on June 8th, includes four new songs

Orianthi will re-issue her hit album Believe on June 8th with new songs. The new version is entitled “Believe II” and will feature four new songs including current single Shut Up & Kiss Me along with Courage, Missing You, and Addicted To Love, the latter of which was produced by RedOne. Believe II will also include several songs from the original Believe release including the hit According To You along with her Highly Strung collaboration with Steve Vai. Meanwhile, Orianthi will kick off her Glam Nation tour dates with Adam Lambert on June 4th.

Here’s what Orianthi told Beatweek about Believe back when it was first released.

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

Orianthi on Saturday Night Live?

Orianthi has had fans here at Beatweek for some time now, as th guitarist was our cover story interview all the way back in November of last year. But she has even bigger fans out there than us, including one named Nick who is so intent on getting Saturday Night Live to invite the Australian prodigy as their musical guest that he’s maintaing an entire Twitter account dedicated specifically to that goal. He asked us to help out the cause, and being fans ourselves, we couldn’t say no. So there you go.

Having previously been tapped for live performances by everyone from Michael Jackson to Carrie Underwood to fellow guitarist Steve Vai due to her blazing guitar skills, the twenty-five year old Orianthi recently played lead guitar on Mary J Blige’s studio recordings of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love and Stairway to Heaven, and will be headed out with Adam Lambert for the Glam Nation tour this summer. Beatweek’s cover story interview is right here.

As far as how Nick plans to get SNL boss Lorne Michaels’ attention in terms of getting him to tap Orianthi as a musical guest, we’re not sure – but we like the idea nonetheless.

Mary J. Blige covers Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven

Just four months after releasing her full length album Stronger With Each Tear, Mary J. Blige is back again with more new music – well, not exactly new music so much as a new take on a pair of existing classics. Blige’s latest release consists of covers of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love and Stairway To Heaven.

Backed by an all star rock band including Steve Vai and Orianthi on guitars, Randy Jackson on bass, and Travis Barker on drums, Blige’s take on Whole Lotta Love is a decidedly up tempo rocker with a pop flair, while Stairway is a largely acoustic ballad (with the appropriate upkick near the end of the song). Four word review: these reinterpretations work nicely.

The pair of songs are available in iTunes together for $2.49, or separately for $1.29 apiece.

Beatweek interviewed both of Mary’s all-star guitarists late last year – you can check out our Orianthi interview here and our Steve Vai interview here.

Orianthi to appear on Tonight Show

Orianthi, the virtuoso guitarist who released her own album Believe late last year after supporting singers ranging from Michael Jackson to Carrie Underwood, will perform her hit single “According To You” tonight on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Also scheduled to appear on the show are Janet Jackson (apparently not performing) and Clark Duke. Orianthi also appeared on American Idol earlier this week, and will be performing at the University of Illinois in April, according to her official site.

Orianthi appeared on the cover of Beatweek Magazine in November; her in depth cover story can be read in full on Beatweek.com.

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Tagged: According to you, Believe, guitar, guitarist, Jay Leno, Orianthi, Tonight Show

The risk well taken

December 27, 2009 by Bill Palmer · Leave a Comment 

On a day that found me a few thousand miles away from headquarters, and on one of the few days in 2009 that I didn’t have my mind focused on work at all, I actually learned the same lesson twice in the span of a few hours while attending a Dolphins game in Miami – and interestingly enough, that lesson applies squarely to what you can expect out of iProng in 2010. Allow me to try to explain.

Of the twenty-seven issues of iProng Magazine we released this year, the majority of them featured musicians on the cover who were widely considered household names at the time. It’s something we’re often congratulated for, but the truth is that even famous folks tend to make themselves available when they’ve got something to promote; our job, then, is to figure out which folks are worth talking to at any given time, based on the quality and significance of their latest project, how interesting the conversation with them is likely to be, and most importantly, how satisfied you guys are going to be after having read the interview. That last part might theoretically suggest that we go out and get the biggest name possible for the cover of each issue. But as it turns out, the relatively few times we’ve gone in the other direction have ended up netting us (and by extension, you) some of the biggest payoffs.

Some of these decisions have been very, very easy for us. The chance to interview Carlos Santana and put him on the cover? Your pet dog has enough IQ points to know enough to greenlight that one. Black Eyed Peas? Ditto. And sometimes you admittedly get a little lucky. Lady Gaga and Katy Perry were both pitched to me before their debut albums had even been released, the album advance I’d been sent having caught my ear in both instances, and in the relatively brief period in between conducting the interview and the scheduled publication date, each had risen quickly enough that putting them on the cover at that point was not that difficult of a decision – even though in both instances we were the first magazine to put either one of them on the cover.

Perhaps the biggest risk we took in all of 2009 came back in November when we decided to put a then-little-known guitarist on our cover by the name of Orianthi. It’s not like we discovered her or anything – by that time she’d already been tagged as the “next great guitarist” by Carlos Santana, Carrie Underwood, Steve Vai, and Michael Jackson – but I’d be willing to bet that at the time we published that issue, more than ninety percent of our readers looked at the cover and wondered who she might be.

Yet since that time, I’ve gradually received more feedback about Orianthi than just about any other cover we’ve ever done. And it was all positive; no one wrote in to complain that we’d finally put a musician on the cover who wasn’t famous. Instead, the feedback was along the lines of “Thanks for telling me about her” and “Glad I heard about her from you early on” and even “I wondered who that blonde guitar player was in the Michael Jackson movie, thanks for filling me in.”

Of course the Orianthi cover was greenlighted in the first place because we thought she’d probably be a household name eventually. And while I’m often too far on the inside of the industry beltway to be able to judge just how far into “household name” territory someone has or hasn’t reached, it was a fairly obvious indicator today when it was time for the national anthem at the Dolphins game and onto the field walked Orianthi with her guitar.

The payoff for you is that, as our readers, you get to hear about (and hear from) someone like that before just about anyone else does. And the payoff for us is that we get to make you happy. But it’s a risk, and while I’m very proud of what we delivered to you in 2009, that’s the kind of risk that we didn’t take as often this past year as I wish we had. Of course the only reason for not taking those risks is that you don’t want others looking back later on and second-guessing why you put someone on the cover who was ultimately never heard from again. But that’s nothing more than ego, isn’t it?

As I was chewing this over, as if on cue, the other half of today’s lesson presented itself near the end of the game. Football coaches are routinely lambasted by observers if they go for it on fourth down and don’t convert it; in fact one of the game’s most accomplished coaches was roasted earlier this season when he went for it in a scenario where all the math in the world said that it was the only logical decision. Punting would have all but guaranteed a loss, going for it on fourth down gave his team a greater than 50-50 chance of winning, so there was no way anyone could claim that he made the wrong decision – yet everyone did just that. And this is a guy who’s won several Super Bowls this decade.

So sure enough, the Dolphins coach finds himself in a situation late in the game today where going for it on fourth down would have given him a chance to win but punting basically guaranteed he would lose, and yet he punted anyway. How certain was it that this cowardly call cost his team the game? After the punt, half the fans in the stadium got up and left, because there was nothing else to watch at that point. It was a logicless enough call as to border on temporary insanity, one that effectively ended the Dolphins season today, and one that gained the coach nothing beyond being able to dodge outside scrutiny. If he’d gone for it on fourth down and failed, the armchair analysts would have lit him up for it. So instead he punted, knowing that he’d lose for sure, simply because he knew he’d take less blame for losing in that manner than if he’d had the guts to make the move that would’ve given his team its only chance to win.

My learned lesson for 2010, then: don’t ever be that guy. Don’t ever back down from taking an editorial risk worth taking, simply out of fear of looking foolish later on if the risk ends up not paying off. In the span of three hours today I saw someone else not have the courage to take a risk that needed to be taken, with the result being that a year’s worth of his team’s effort went down the toilet – and on that same field I saw evidence that one of my own relatively few major editorial risks in 2009 is going to pay off for us in spades. So if a risk is worth taking in 2010, and the only downside is the potentially wounded pride of guessing wrong, then we’re going to go for it. We owe you that much.

And it’s not just about who goes on the cover, either. One of the reasons why we began releasing issues on a more frequent schedule in late 2009 was so we could push more content out the door without making each individual issue too long. Our plan is to use that extra flexibility to bring you more kinds of content in each issue so that you’ll find the issue worthwhile and entertaining overall even if you’re not a fan of who’s on the cover – or perhaps haven’t yet heard of them

There’s more coming down the pike and it’s a long year, so I won’t tease you with too much future-speak that we’re not ready to put in front of your faces yet. Don’t worry, we’ve got interviews with plenty more household names, living legends, and super-hot artists coming your way throughout the year. But don’t be surprised if you see us doing more things that surprise you.

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Tagged: football, iProng, Miami Dolphins, national anthem, NFL, Orianthi

Steve Vai interview

December 15, 2009 by Bill Palmer · 3 Comments 

An invitation to guitar legend Steve Vai’s house is bound to conjure up images of instruments and amps piled sky high. But when Steve and I sat down this month at his place, the mad scientist vibe was decidedly more futuristic: there were more Apple products in the room than there were people, and a glance at Steve’s iTunes library revealed that he’s got more iPhone apps than I do.

Having just returned home from tour, and not long after the release his “Where The Wild Things Are” concert DVD, Steve was happy to broach any topic that came up – but the vibe of the room we were sitting in dictated that we start with Apple, a topic which has been a part of Steve’s life for three decades…

When did you first find your way into the Apple stuff?

The very, very beginning. I’ve had every version of Apple desktop, from the first one. Before that I bought Commodore computers. It was very thrilling. You know it’s kind of funny, just for nostalgia it would have been nice to have kept at least one permeation of each generation, but then again, I’d have to build another house to hold them all. But I’ve always taken information and moved it forward.

Were you an early adopter with the iPod and iPhone?

Absolutely. I was late to use a cellphone in general. But as soon as iPods were available, my only problem was getting past the inferior sound quality of the audio. It’s improved quite a bit once the lossless came out, and now you can buy much better resolution. If I had to go find a CD player right now, I wouldn’t know where to look.

But I was very unhappy with using cellphones. I avoided them my whole life. And I’ve had them, you know, the cellphones where you’ve got to open them and then type the three letters before you get to the letter you want, and they were just so user unfriendly and unintuitive and such a pain in the ass to navigate through that it was like a nightmare every time I would open up my cellphone. So I never used it. And the reason why I finally got a cellphone was because Apple came out with one that I knew would be intuitive and user friendly, but still I was very apprehensive. But my kids live in a new generation. If I call them and leave a message they don’t return the call. If I email them they don’t even return emails. The only way that I was able to communicate with my kids was to start texting them. So I had to get something that I could text with, cause I wasn’t gonna go through it with these idiotic cellphones. And as soon as I got the iPhone I realized that the texting was a great way to communicate, but forget it man, now the iPhone has got everything. It’s like a conduit for me, and a lot of people, to my everyday activities.

It looks like you’re enjoying it. I see you on there with Tweetie, posting on Twitter.

I tweet, I keep track of exercise routes and bike rides. I just got the Starbucks app, there’s so many apps that I use constantly. The flashlight app is just priceless.

I have these apps that when I travel they’re priceless. When I travel, I wake up in a city, I don’t even know where I am sometimes. The first thing I do is turn on my iPhone, I see where I am, I see what time it is in that location, I hit “Map” and I find out exactly where I am, and I can look at the surroundings to see where I can go jogging. I just type in “Starbucks” and it gives me everything I need to know about that. I see where the venue is. I see what the temperature is. And I have a complete lay of the land before I leave the bus. This is valuable.

I see you’ve got Guitar Toolkit on there.

I’ve got Guitar Toolkit, if I’m in Europe I have language converters, I have money converters, feet and inch converters, everything. Dictionaries that I use constantly. I have this fitness program that I really like. I’m constantly using G-Park. I’d be doomed without it. I’m losing my spot constantly. And there’s all these great music programs for ear training and composing. One of my favorites is a Woody Allen quote book. I’m always looking for films.

For recording song ideas it’s absolutely priceless. That’s how I write songs. I take my iPhone and I just sing a melody, or I play a melody, and I have hundreds of them in there right now. And then I have notes for song ideas constantly. I never did this before. Before, whenever I would come up with an idea, I would have to scramble to try to find something. It’s really a wonderful tool. And the really great thing about it is if you lose it, no problems. You just buy another one, they’re cheap, and you’ve got everything backed up on your computer.

I have my quibbles, you know. When is the Flash coming out? What up with that? Come on.

You’re on both sides of the whole iTunes platform, though, because you make a living selling your music, and you were doing that for quite awhile before the iTunes Store came out. Did you have to be convinced to put your music into the store when it was first coming out?

No, not at all. I was waiting a long time for this to happen, and I’m looking forward to the future generations of the development of music delivery, for higher quality, quicker delivery, and more secure financial transactions for intellectual property. And I know it’ll happen. I’m sure it’ll happen, because there’s too many people who make a living creating music, and if they don’t get paid for what they do, they can’t do it. And it’s not as bad as a lot of people think, you know? People still buy music online.

But I was very excited when it became available, because I saw it before it even came out as an evolution into the future.

We’re kind of at a crossroads here because we’ve got the iTunes Store and it’s got video and everything, and yet here you’re releasing a DVD, which you’re still putting out as a physical medium. They’re still very popular.

Yeah they’re still very popular, there’s still a big market and there always will be some kind of a market for physical product because it satisfies a certain tactile kind of need that a lot of people have. I love physical product. But I just don’t get it these days unless it’s something special. There’s a few artists that when they release something I go out and I get the physical product. If Tom Waits releases anything, I always have the physical product because I want this book in my hand. I don’t care about that idea for a lot of other artists, but there’s a handful.

How do go about saying “I’m going to make a DVD of this show”? How do you decide it’s going to be this show and this town and this date?

Well the first thing that I do is I come up with an idea that I can pretty much put into a sentence or a few sentences. And when I decided to do this DVD, I had just finished a double live orchestra project that took two years of intensive work, and I wanted to get out on tour but I didn’t have any new product. So the idea was to put a band together that was unique instrumentation, so that I could go out and do a relatively short tour and just kind of satiate the playing thing, and bring a little bit of a different dimension to some of the tracks. So I hired two violinists, and it turned out phenomenally well. And I always like to capture a tour or a band at their peak. So the idea is to do a tour with a unique band and get a DVD and a CD out of it that’s… I put a string of adjectives together: uplifting, musically interesting, unique to my catalog, and it just happens. You have to have the picture first, and then everything else falls into place.

Then I have to put the repertoire together, and I just went through the catalog and picked songs that I knew would work with this instrumentation, and then we scheduled a month, thirty days, of fifteen hour a day practices, six days a week. And then we rehearsed, then I booked a month in Europe, a month in America, and we went to South America. And usually, you can rehearse til you’re blue in the face, but going out on tour and actually being in an environment where people are there and the lights are out is a while different world. So it takes probably about a week or two weeks of being on tour for the band to blow out the bugs, you know, and really start getting ripe. Usually the six week mark is when they’re at their peak performance. And so that was during the American leg, and so I thought where is a really great place to film it and record it? And the State Theatre in Minneapolis was the pick because I love Minneapolis, the State Theatre is gorgeous, it’s historical. It’s got a big wooden stage, which is really nice.

Everybody likes to talk about you taking lessons from Satriani back in the day, and the baton being passed and such. When you come across someone like Orianthi, do you feel like there’s almost an obligation, because of the position you’re in, to help foster the next one?

You can’t really help but to feel somewhat nurturing to a young artist that has potential, and finds you one of their inspirations. It’s very nice to be able to give them some advice or to help them out in some way if you can. You never know what they’re going to turn into. I mean, I’ve worked with very young artists that had a lot of potential but just didn’t know how to cultivate it. Being a great musician isn’t about how well you play. That’s about being a good player. Being a great musician is how well your intellect can turn your imagination into reality in the world.

When I saw Orianthi she was fifteen, and she was opening for me in Adelaide, Australia, and she showed tremendous potential. She played really well. It was obvious. You can’t play an instrument like that unless you love the instrument, and that’s always really nice to see. So through the years I just stayed in touch with her. She had a lot of potential to be a pop goddess, pop rock goddess, if she wanted to, and that’s what she’s chosen. And I think she wears that badge very proudly. And actually for my taste she brings a new dimension to that whole kind of thing. But she also had a lot of great guitar finesse and ability. And how that’s going to be displayed in the future is going to be up to her. But she can play. She can really play.

Now that we’ve got these new tools like Twitter and Facebook, do you find that that’s adding to your ability to relate to your fans?

Absolutely. It’s like you’re stalking them, because if they’re interested they can know what you want them to know, and you can let them into a particular part of your life. And you can do anything, you can fabricate a whole different kind of a character. If I want, I could lie to my fans and create fantastic things. I’m not comfortable doing that. But frankly, when I look at all my posts that I’ve tweeted, they’re very interesting. I don’t tweet things like “Well I’m gonna go to the store now and get some food.” I know there’s a sector of people that would be interested in hearing all that, but I just don’t want to take the time to do it. It’s kind of narcissistic too in a way, you know? So I try to give them things that I believe they would find interesting, something that can relate to their life or just peering into a little portion of my life. I’m relatively private though. There’s things I just don’t discuss.

One thing I saw you mention on Twitter was something about renting a warehouse and going underground for four months. Is that a project you can talk about?

Yeah, it’s my next project. And I basically approached it like I approach all my projects, I set up some parameters, and I’ve just started to put the parameters together. One of them was you have to do something unique that you’ve never done before, and perhaps something that no one has ever done. I don’t know what that is, but I started to get excited about the idea of it. And what happens is it just unfolds. And it did. And it requires a warehouse. But unfortunately I really don’t want to discuss the particulars of it yet. But my goal is to make it very musical, very uplifting, melodic, accessible, entertaining, and my goal is to evolve my potential into areas that I’m not even aware that I’m capable of. And that’s very important for an innovator. You have to be conscious of going to places that you’re ignorant of.

Can you say whether or not it’s guitar oriented?

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that’s in my prerequisite is guitar up front on a silver platter through the entire thing. So I’m not going to be doing a lot of overdubs. Very intimate guitar.

You’re coming up on fifty. Is that causing you to rethink or reevaluate, professionally or personally, or is it just another number to you?

Well, both, you know? I’m very satisfied and content with all I’ve achieved. I never thought I’d ever achieve so much. And I’m very happy where I am. I don’t have any burning desires or regrets for things that I should have accomplished and I didn’t. Sure, I wish I had ten more records, it would be nice, but I don’t really care. I’m one of those people who feel that everything is evolving as it should. Having said that, one of the things that I’ve realized is that it’s great to have tons and tons of ideas, but in reality, a small percentage of them are going to be made real because it’s impossible with the amount of time that’s left. So what it’s caused me to do is prioritize. I like the idea of being fifty. I don’t mind growing old. I don’t want to be forty-nine again, or thirty-five again, or twenty-one or none of that shit. But I do understand that I’ve come face to face with the reality that you have this many ideas, and when I was twenty-five that was great. But really, from the time I was twenty-five to now, maybe I’ve only accomplished three percent of these ideas. So it’s a very rejuvenating process to take that list of ideas and try to burn it, and just pick the handful of the most important ones, cut out all the fat. So that’s what I’ve been in the process of doing. And turning fifty next year has helped me to come to grips with letting go of nonsensical projects.

Are you going to keep the long hair?

I grow it and then I cut it, then I grow it, then I cut it.

I always do that, and every time I grow it out I say it’s the last time.

I do too. Then I cut it and I go “Man, you look like such a dork. Grow your hair.”

Learn more at Vai.com

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Filed Under: Interviews, Musician interviews
Tagged: 2009, Apple, apps, concert, DVD, guitar, interview, iPhone, Orianthi, Steve Vai, Where the wild things are

Orianthi Interview

November 2, 2009 by Beatweek · 15 Comments 

Editor’s note: this interview is from 2009. If you’re looking for our June 2010 interview with Orianthi, it’s right here.

Beatweek Magazine talks with guitar virtuoso Orianthi about her new album Believe, her iTunes Single of the Week, and her starring role in the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It, in the cover story interview for our November 3rd issue…

interview by Bill Palmer

“I’m actually going to have another coffee very soon, so that should lift me up for awhile,” Orianthi says lightheartedly on a day in which she’s been up since four in the morning. If she hasn’t been getting much sleep lately, perhaps it’s because the twenty-four year old guitar virtuoso, whom Carlos Santana has anointed as his successor and Carrie Underwood tapped for her Grammy performance, is not only promoting the release of her new chart-climbing pop album “Believe” but also finds herself as the unwitting co-star of Michael Jackson’s “This Is It” documentary, as she spent months rehearsing with MJ for what would have been his comeback tour. Sounding surprisingly relaxed considering the whirlwind that her life has recently become, the Australian prodigy filled me in on, well, pretty much everything.



“I picked up a guitar when I was six,” Orianthi says of how it all got started. “My dad had guitars around the house, and I started strumming. I think I was singing then too, but then I sort of stopped doing that and just took the guitar more seriously. I really didn’t take up singing again until about fifteen, when I started playing in a cover band and playing out three nights a week in Adelaide, in different pubs and stuff, and singing cover songs every night. I kind of earned pocket money that way.”



“Believe” finds her melding both talents together into a collection of guitar solo-laden pop and rock tunes. “With this new record I’m singing on every song, bar one, which is Highly Strung, which is an instrumental I did with Steve Vai.” If the pairing of virtuosos on the track seems arbitrary, it’s not; they first toured together when she was fifteen.



“I love playing guitar so much that when I first started singing I was really scared,” she says of the transition. “I didn’t want to sing, I didn’t want anyone to hear me. And so I always thought ‘I just want to play guitar.‘ But it gives me something else to do when onstage. And also, you connect with more people when you start adding lyrics to your songs.”



Before finding success with American audiences, Orianthi first had to find her way to America, a trip to Los Angeles that she documented in a song called Feels Like Home. “I’ve got some amazing friends, they’re like my American family. The people that I’m surrounded with now are just great. The experiences I’ve had over the past three years, it’s just been at times really trying, and at other times being awesome. It’s been ups and downs, yin and yang. You just appreciate the great stuff that comes along, getting the opportunity to play with some amazing people.”



“I Skype my parents, that’s how I see them,” she says of the fact that she hasn’t been home to Australia in over a year.



The lead single from the album, According To You, which was just tapped as the iTunes single of the week by Apple, initially sounds as if it’s just going to be yet another broken-hearted tale, but the lyrics are eventually reversed into the story of a woman who knows when to leave. “It’s just a really empowering song. It’s about moving on from a bad situation to a better one and being treated well and not putting up with crap.”



For a pop song, however, According To You has as many scintillating guitar runs as a Santana tune might. “We definitely rockified it with all the guitars that were put in there in the recording. I have a lot of fun playing it, and I hope it connects to a lot of people.”



A decade of performing with some of the most popular and talented musicians in the world didn’t keep Orianthi from feeling her nerves, however, when the King of Pop came calling. “Auditioning for Michael Jackson, I’ve never been that nervous in my life,” she says of landing the gig that had her rehearsing with Jackson for the final three months of his life. “And meeting Carlos for the first time I was so nervous, and when I was fifteen and I opened for Steve Vai I was really nervous, and I also got to jam with Prince and I was really nervous then, and Carrie Underwood playing the Grammy awards, that was crazy. But then for me, I just think well this is what I’m meant to be doing. I love playing guitar, it’s what I chose to do with my life and just never stopped learning. Playing with these people I love so much, I really admire and look up to all of them. So it’s a journey, you know, and you’ve just got to not let nerves get in the way and just believe in yourself.”



Getting hired by legends is one thing, but Carlos Santana is on record as having said that Orianthi would be his “first choice” in terms of who he’d like to pass the Guitar God baton to when he retires. So does such high public praise increase the pressure to raise the bar? “He’s one of my idols. I picked up electric guitar when I was eleven, after seeing him play. He inspired me to pick it up, and so to have him say really supporting things about me, encouraging things, is just amazing. I hope that every time I get to jam with different people and just play, that every year I progress and get better. I never stop learning. When I’m eighty, I want to look back and actually see that I’ve moved forward.”



While her own focus is on her new album, there’s no escaping the fact that Orianthi is currently in the public eye for more than one reason. She can be spotted on television multiple times per day in ads for This Is It, which is currently playing at most movie theaters, and the publicity has already landed her gigs on shows like Good Morning America.



“I really wish that MJ was still around. We were rehearsing for three months to do the show, and it was a dream come true to be part of that and work with such an icon. Just incredible, how much was going into the show, and how much I learned from the amazing musicians that were in the band, with [stage director] Kenny [Ortega] and the choreographers and dancers, everybody just felt like such family. When he passed, everyone was just so devastated, and we didn’t see it coming because we had performed the night before and he was so full of energy and just really wanting to do it. I really wish that he was still around, and the shows would have gone ahead and that all his fans could have seen what we saw and gotten as excited as we were when we saw him for the first time when he danced in front of us. It was just incredible. It just feels like a dream, like a crazy dream from the start. This whole year has just been crazy.”

The Twitter universe has seen Orianthi’s name mentioned as often as multiple times per minute over the past week (she’s replied personally to hundreds of them), and her number of followers has more than doubled since the release of her album and the movie. But her own self-scribed Twitter bio simply reads “I like to play guitar and cook!” So what dishes are her favorite to concoct? “I love making pizzas from scratch,” she says. “I make the base and then I make the topping and everything. And then I love making vegan cakes, you know, just healthier kinds of things. I love cooking. It’s like a meditation for me.”

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“Believe” is now available in iTunes. Learn more about Orianthi at Orianthi.com.

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Filed Under: Interviews, Musician interviews
Tagged: Australian, Believe, Carlos Santana, Carrie Underwood, guitarist, interview, Michael Jackson, Orianthi, Orianthi Panagaris, Steve Vai, This Is It