Nellie McKay Interview

Last night I met singer Nellie McKay at a listening party at Jazz at Lincoln Center for her new CD, a Doris Day tribute called Normal As Blueberry Pie. Besides being talented, Nellie is lovely. I hope you’ll check out my vanityfair.com interview with her.

And if you’re interested in books (e.g., The Rock & Roll Book of the Dead), movies (e.g., A Serious Man), and/or TV shows (Entourage, Californication), you may want to read my reviews and Bob Rosen’s on the Looseleaf Report.

Holiday Radio Interview

On December 23 I was interviewed on “The Louis Free Show,” a radio show out of Ohio, about my new song, “Things I Lost,” as well as my CD, Blue Lights, especially the two Christmas-related songs. If you get a chance, check it out; it will be archived at the link below for another week or so. The segment is in Part 1, a bit before the middle (once it’s downloaded, you can move the button); it starts with a mashup of “Things I Lost” and “Blue Lights.” I think I should mention that Louie is himself Jewish, since he starts ragging my husband, Bob Rosen, about not being into Christmas. Hope everyone had a good holiday, and happy new year!

Louie Free Archives

Things I Lost

Please check out my new song, "Things I Lost," on my myspace page. It was produced by my talented nephew Sean. I'll soon be singing it on the cable-TV show "The Looseleaf Report," which will eventually be streamed on the Internet. I'll be sure to let you know when that happens! You can also hear a sample above, on Snocap, and buy the track as well.

Here's some background on the song: It was inspired by the loss of my black leather jacket, seen in the picture above--that's at a bar in Santiago, Chile, called La Piojera, "the Lice House," where I'm having a Terramoto ("Earthquake," made with cheap wine and pineapple ice cream) with my husband, Robert Rosen, author of the book Nowhere Man and the original owner of the jacket. On the return from Chile, I left the jacket on a chair at one of the gates in the Mexico City airport; this led to a Kafka-esque hour-long try (at around 5 a.m.) to get back to the area to retrieve it. I finally gave up (I don't speak Spanish), but it's OK because I got a song out of it!

My Muse, Mallorca

Bob Rosen and Mary Lyn Maiscott in Fornalutx, Mallorca, photographed by Terry Bisbee.

If you’ve listened to my song “Midnight in California,” you may have gotten a sense of the beautiful Spanish island of Mallorca (where, in the song, an expat longs for her lover in far-off Malibu). In the lyrics, I tried to conjure up the intoxicatingly fragrant jasmine, the town squares with their bars and cafés, the ubiquitous lizards and sheep, the turquoise Mediterranean Sea—the special qualities of this Balearic Island (the other Balearics are Minorca and Ibiza, the celebrated destination of ravers and rock stars). I wrote the song in a 16^th-century house in Fornalutx, a Mallorcan village in the foothills of the Serra de Tramuntana mountain range. For our delayed honeymoon, my husband and I spent the month of June 2002 in that house—a friend’s—set at the top of a steep ancient street that ended in an emerald-green, stone-fenced meadow. The house led out to a courtyard with a separate kitchen, a wonderful little structure that looked out on a small garden. There each morning we’d drink strong coffee and eat blood-red oranges bought from a man who lived nearby, in a sloping section of town reachable only by wide stone steps—built for donkeys, not cars.

Fornalutx, with its sand-colored, green-shuttered homes—the big wooden doors generally left open so as to welcome guests—also inspired me to write a short story called “Pueblo Piedra” (stone village). The story is wholly fictional, but I could not have written it without experiencing the magic of the area. I’m happy to say that “Pueblo Piedra” was recently published in The Portland Review, a literary magazine, and is now accessible on its website. I hope that you will read it and that it takes you to a place even half as entrancing as Mallorca was for me.

Mexican Radio

The book that started it all in Mexico.

As my husband, Robert Rosen, just pointed out to me, John Lennon opened the door for us in Mexico, and we walked through it. The people of Mexico, Chile, and other parts of Latin America have been extraordinarily receptive to Bob as the author of the Lennon biography Nowhere Man. Now they’re beginning to extend to me the same openness: Guillermo Henry is featuring my CD, Blue Lights, on his Mexico City radio show, “Radio Etiopía,” on Radio UNAM this Monday, February 4, at 11 p.m. in Mexico City and Central time in the US—midnight Eastern time, 10 p.m. Rocky Mountain, 9 p.m. Pacific, 5 a.m. on Feb 5 in the UK and 6 a.m. in Western Europe. The program, named for the Patti Smith album, is free-form radio—talk (mostly Spanish, of course) mixed with poetry mixed with music of all kinds. If you’d like to tune in, follow the instructions below:

1. Click here

2. Click on FM

3. Click on one of the players: Real Player, Winamp, or Windows Media Player

If you’re in Mexico City or an outlying area, you can listen on your radio at XEUN 96.1 FM. (Si está en el DF, puede escuchar en su radio en XEUN FM 96.1.)

The station does not archive.

Getting back to John Lennon, perhaps Guillermo will play my version of the Beatles’ “You Can’t Do That,” which we just put up on my MySpace player. Muchas gracias to Guillermo and to all of you!

I Am Archived

If you read my previous posting then you know that last Friday I made my long awaited appearance on “The Louie Free Show.” The interview has now been archived and will be available for three weeks. If you’d like to listen, click here, then click on “Part 1” under December 14. When the file downloads completely, move the button on the player to approximately the ¾ point. My segment comes on just after the Mario Cuomo promo, begins with “Blue Lights,” and runs till the end of the show. Enjoy! And please let me know what you think.

The Louie Interview

Friday I was privileged to be on “The Louie Free Show,” which broadcasts weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. from Youngstown, Ohio, and also streams (and is archived) on the Internet. Louie is an amazing guy who exemplifies what this season—and all seasons—should be about: love, respect, idealism. He is a joy to talk to, and I feel very lucky that he is so passionate about my music, especially the song “Blue Lights.” He was quite taken with the pictures of my parents (who inspired “Blue Lights”) that are on the CD’s back cover: my dad in helmet and goggles stepping into an open-cockpit plane; my mom in a cheesecake self-portrait. We also spoke about other songs on the CD, such as “Midnight in California,” inspired by a trip to Mallorca, which he played along with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The show should be archived Monday or Tuesday; check back here and I’ll tell you where to find my segment (which lasted about half an hour). I’ll also let you know when I’ll be on again, perhaps as soon as one day this week. Thanks again to Louie!