Spinner

Rachael Yamagata Takes Control of Her Destiny With New Album and Label

Alanna Nash — 2011-12-20T14:00:00 00:00

Laura Crosta

"Now that I'm not working with any record labels, I just want to have fun and be with people that I love and trust and make whatever feels right in the studio," says Rachael Yamagata, her smoky voice wafting over on the phone from Easton, MD., where she recorded her new album, 'Chesapeake,' in the home of her producer, John Alagia.

'Chesapeake' may not feature the kinds of desperate piano ballads that made Yamagata's 2004 debut, 'Happenstance,' such a favorite with doomed lovers, but in some ways, the new disc picks up where that much-lauded earlier effort, also produced by Alagia, left off. The album is a return to form after 2008's splintered, two-disc 'Elephants... Teeth Sinking Into Heart,' which ended Yamagata's relationship with major labels but cleared the way for her independence.

Yamagata, who is currently enjoying sold-out shows, spoke to Spinner about the making of 'Chesapeake' and her musical odyssey.

How do you think 'Chesapeake' compares to your first collaboration with John Alagia?

This was very much a live record. We didn't have the luxury of time or even room separation in a lot of recording respects, so we built it differently than we did 'Happenstance.' Musically, I feel like it's more spontaneous. There's still sort of a classic sense to some of the arrangements, but we're playing on different influences. There was a lot of Carpenters being played [around the house], and Beach Boy harmonies. I did some co-writes with Mike Viola, and he certainly has like a Burt Bacharach/Todd Rundgren influence in his progressions. So I think the time period is familiar, but maybe a little bit different than the first record.

Elvis Pal Jerry Schilling Reminisces About His 'Big Brother' for Reissued '72 Tour Film

Alanna Nash — 2010-08-03T17:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Video, Exclusive, Spinner Interview

On Aug. 3, as part of a yearlong commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley's birth, Warner Bros. released the Golden Globe-winning film 'Elvis on Tour,' the King's 33rd and last, on DVD and in a dazzlingly packaged Blu-ray edition, and as part of 'The Elvis 75th Anniversary DVD Collection,' a box set of 17 of his movies spanning three decades. Upon the film's theatrical release in 1972, Variety called it "a bright, entertaining pop-music documentary detailing episodes in the later professional life of Elvis Presley, the pioneer Pied Piper of rock music."

Newly restored and remastered, 'Elvis on Tour' chronicles the entertainer's 15-city US tour in April 1972, when his entourage included Jerry Schilling, who went to work for Presley in 1964 but first met the 19-year old Elvis playing touch football. Now 68, Schilling spoke to Spinner about his friend and the making of the documentary.

You're a former creative affairs director of Elvis Presley Enterprises and worked as a producer of Elvis-related projects. But did you have a role in the production of 'Elvis on Tour' at the time it was filmed?

Yes, I did. I was on tour with Elvis and had met the filmmakers, Bob Abel and Pierre Adidge, and was really impressed with these young, hip filmmakers. I had left Elvis once before to do film editing, and I asked him if he would have a problem if I went to these guys for a job. He wasn't thrilled about me leaving again, but he said, "If you really want to do it, it's OK." I think Bob and Pierre were a little leery at first, because I could have been the perfect Colonel [Tom Parker]/Elvis spy, right? But they realized I was serious, and I started out as an entry film assistant, coding film.

Marty Scorsese was the montage supervisor.

Yeah. Which is kind of mind-blowing, isn't it? I think he was editing 'Mean Streets' at the same time. He put together a beautiful montage of Elvis's life in still pictures, and then the kissing montage of moving pictures. I loved going into his editing room, delivering film, and I would always hang around a little bit and watch what he was doing. Marty was very intense. He wasn't a guy who'd just sit around chatting. He worked very hard, and he didn't say much. One night we worked very late. We were waiting for the guys to lock up, just sitting on the floor. And he said, "Jerry, you know what I've got?" I said, "What?" He said, "I've got 'That's All Right, Mama.' 78. Sun Records." That was his way of letting me know he knew Elvis's music and he liked it.

Rachael Yamagata Haunted by Ghosts on New Album

Alanna Nash — 2008-10-10T15:00:00 00:00

Filed under: News, Exclusive

Rachael Yamagata is talking with Spinner on the phone, driving from the Chicago airport with her band, when suddenly she makes a jolting discovery: Once at the hotel, everyone else is off in a thousand directions, and Yamagata is locked inside the van. Finally, familiar faces appear. "Hey, guys," she says, tapping on the window glass, "can someone get me out of here?"

If Yamagata, 31, seems a bit contained for the moment, overall she's poised for what she sees as a creative breakout. Four years after her first full-length album, 'Happenstance,' a Best of 2004 release that established her as a formidable new talent, Yamagata returns with a surprising record in two parts, 'Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart.' While 'Happenstance' laid a vaguely dangerous stalker vibe over lyrics of romantic obsession and a wildly eclectic music bed of pop, blues, jazz, and Dixieland (shades of Laura Nyro), its successor goes poetically deeper and darker, the atmospheric nine ballads ('Brown Eyes') morphing into five samples of guitar-driven rock ('Sidedish Friend') by end of disc two.

Throughout, Yamagata eschews the traditional song-by-song format, and in spots, the orchestral transitions make the album seem like a film score. Elsewhere, particularly on 'Sunday Afternoon' and 'Pause the Tragic Ending,' repeated references to blood bubble up, underscoring a morose feel that turns on wind, rain, fog and, yes, vampires.

Plant and Krauss Kick Off 'Raising Sand' Tour

Alanna Nash — 2008-04-21T14:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Concerts and Tours, Exclusive

On Saturday, the opening night of their 'Raising Sand' tour, rock royalty Robert Plant and Americana goddess Alison Krauss turned the brilliant and bizarre musical songbook of their platinum-selling pairing into an evening of chill-bump performances and extraordinary musicianship.

Audience expectation was high from the moment Krauss and Led Zeppelin's front man entered from opposite sides of the Louisville Palace stage and joined hands briefly before settling at separate microphones and launching into 'Rich Woman,' the opening track from their 2007 album.

Though some fans appeared to want more Plant and less Krauss ("Sing 'Stairway to Heaven!'," cried one woman, which prompted a hearty laugh from Plant), others preferred their octane a bit more un-Led-ed. What they got was nearly the full repertoire from the haunting and atmospheric 'Raising Sand,' two songs from producer T-Bone Burnett (who also served as guitarist and bandleader), Krauss' 'Down to the River to Pray' (done a capella quartet style), and a ouhonkin' George Jones encore ('One Woman Man') that seemed to go with Plant's white cowboy boots. But the biggest surprise was the handful of radically folk-configured Zeppelin tunes ('Black Country Woman,' 'The Battle of Evermore' and 'Black Dog'), the last of which, laced with a spooky and spellbinding banjo, brought down the house.