patrick o'heffernan | Music Junkie Press

INTERVIEW: GLASS MANSIONS STOPS TO TALK IN THE NEW MEXICO DESERT BY PATRICK O’HEFFERNAN

March 31, 2018

INTERVIEW WITH GLASS MANSIONS 3.30.18 GLASS MANSIONS STOPS TO TALK IN THE NEW MEXICO DESERT Patrick O’Heffernan (Los Angeles) We caught up with the South Carolina-based Electropop Duo Glass Mansions – vocalist Jayna Doyle and multi-instrumentalist Blake Arambula – on their 13th USA tour in the middle of the New Mexico desert. The duo and their friend and co-manager Erin were in a van stuffed with their equipment on their way to Albuquerque for a concert promoting their new EP Ritual when we reached Jayna’s cell phone. Patrick. Jayna, where are you right now? Jayna. Somewhere in New Mexico in the desert. Patrick. In listening to your music from the early album Gossip to Ritual, it seems like your sound is evolving fast. How do you think your music has changed in the past 2 years? Jayna. Since Blake and I started this band we have had several lineups and different players in the band. Our sound started out heavily influenced by the 90s and dance music and electronic music We [Read More]

Interview with Dree Mon: sassy and ironic and hard to miss. By Patrick O’Heffernan

March 15, 2018

Patrick O’Heffernan (Los Angeles) Dree Mon has a unique talent for making people feel good with her videos and her music. She is kinda’ funky, kinda’ rocky, kinda’ silly, and kinda’ really incisive – and always a lot of fun. She has been called the sardonic valley-girl love-child of David Bowie and Wonder Woman, which does not mean that she isn’t a prolific talent. That she most certainly is. In addition to racking up a shelf full of awards, her debut song Rebel Soul will be in the upcoming Netflix film “High Strung: Free Dance”, plus she also has songs in the TV shows Parenthood and White Collar, as well and films and web series. Her new single No Chill, was just released. Not a bad record for a woman whose career in music was an accident – literally, in a car. We were lucky enough to snag her for a quick interview as she dropped the new single. Patrick: Dree Mon. Is your name an intentional play on words – dream on, [Read More]

ZZ Ward wraps up The Storm tour on a sea of love in LA. By Patrick O’Heffernan

March 14, 2018

Patrick O’Heffernan (Hollywood) Pure, unconditional love. That is the only way to describe the sold-out crowd at the last concert of ZZ Ward’s Storm Tour in the Fonda Theater Thursday night. Many of those fans had traveled hundreds of miles to see her and they let her know how much they loved her. And Ward returned the love many times over. Striding on stage after a killer set by Black Pistol Fire, rocking her signature Fedora, studded black leather low rider pants and a skin colored sleeveless top, Ward launched into “Let It Burn” with an intensity that got the audience screaming in the first verse. When she pulled out her harmonica the screaming went nonstop. Moving from “Let it Burn” to “Ghost” and then onto “Put the Gun Down” with her acoustic guitar, the blues rock goddess’s country-curl rock voice vibrated all the way to the back row of the packed balcony. Power and confidence flowed from the stage and loved flowed back. That love has been building since 2012 when she [Read More]

Uniquely Reckless. Eric Zayne’s latest single and video. By Patrick O’Heffernan

October 7, 2017

(Los Angeles) The word “unique” is thrown around a lot these days. Every artist wants to be “unique”. Every promoter gushes how “unique” a band is. Every festival is creatively “unique”. So before I sat down to write about Eric Zayne’s new single and video, Reckless, I took a look at the word “unique” because, as I have gotten to know him, that word keeps popping up. Eric was born in Montreal in a South Indian family. They moved to the Indian community in Congo when he was very young and that was his world — South Asians living and prospering in a former Belgium colony now an African nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This was not unique; there were South Asian communities throughout Africa and still are. But it meant Eric was raised listening to the Indian music of his parents, the Bantu rhythms of the Congo, and western music on the BBC. A combination that can be legitimately called unique. What wasn’t unique was that Congo was unstable. Congo (later [Read More]

Latinas Out Loud at The Hammer. By Patrick O’Heffernan

October 7, 2017

Patrick O’Heffernan (Westwood, CA) The Hammer Museum in Westwood Friday night opened is Pacific Standard Time:LA/LA art exhibition, Radical Women: Latin American art, 1960 -1985, with Latinas Out Loud”: ¡Párriba! a wild concert led by Lido Pimienta and introduced by LA’s own joyful punk, funk Latin rock band, Sister Mantos. It was the perfect combination of musical and plastic arts to showcase the power of Latinas in our culture. The Hammer Museum –“The Hammer” — is a blocky edifice that could be an office building. Other than the word “Hammer” on the side in large letters it is pretty much like the office towers around it. Opened free to the public in 1990, The Hammer was founded by Dr. Armand Hammer, the late Chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, for his collections of old masters plus traveling exhibitions. Four years later everything changed. UCLA took over The Hammer’s management and operations and launched programs that encompassed the entire Los Angeles Community with film, theater, music and dance as well as static art. Latinas Out [Read More]

Interview with Francisca Valenzuela by Patrick O’Heffernan

September 30, 2017

Patrick O’Heffernan (Los Angeles, CA) Singer, songwriter, poet, designer, entrepreneur and unstoppable force of nature, Francisca Valenzuela is a phenomenal multifaceted artist who has commanded stages in Latin America, Europe and the US. Born in San Francisco, USA, of Chilean parents, Francisca’s career includes platinum and gold albums, world tours, a Latin Grammy nomination, and founding a major music festival. She has shared stages with U2, Café Tacvba, Ximena Sariñana, and many others. She received the 40 Principales América Award and the Best International Artist at the MIN 2015 Independent Music Awards in Madrid, Spain. She designed and launched two clothing lines with the Chilean retail brands: Work it! and Look Sharp! Currently, Francisca is an ambassador for the It Gets Better Foundation and has been selected as a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum. Last year Valenzuela founded and organized the Ruidosa feminist festiva. Her most recent album is Tajo Abierto. I interviewed her 9/20/17 in Spanish and English with Dianna Carolina of Gypset Magazine. This is the English interview. The [Read More]

Shouting “Hep Hep” Parlor Social blows the roof off at The Mint with neo ragtime. By Patrick O’Heffernan

June 20, 2017

LOS ANGELES The Mint LA was packed shoulder to shoulder when Dessy Di Lauro, resplendent in a brilliant white dinner jacket and her red hair exploding out from beneath a black skullcap took the microphone and called out to the audience, “Are You all ready to have some fun?” As “Yeah!” echoed around the venue, she and husband piano player-accordionist, Ric’key Pageot danced in a tight circle on the stage leading the audience in clapping, finger-snapping and singing their signature song “Let Me Hear You Say Hep Hep” . The party was on and the room was lovin’ it. The band was opening for New Orleans-based Big Sam’s Funky Nation, whose horn-led, jazz rock rhythms kept the momentum going as part of the Hunnypot Live Music night at the Mint. Max Nickou opened the evening, warming up the growing crowd with sky-high guitar chops and solid rock with a twist. Proving again why Parlor Social is the undeniably best live act in Los Angeles if not the nation, their “Feathered Fro-hawk- Futuristic-Art-Deco-Centric-Harlem-Renaissance-Hep-Music” [Read More]