Patrick O'Heffernan | Music Junkie Press

Interview with Doe Paoro on LA, her music, a new album and what she hears when she meditates. By Patrick O’Heffernan

April 7, 2015

I met Doe Paoro recently at a SofarLA concert in Culver City. The room was so crowded that I stood literally right next to her as she sang –any closer and I would have been dodging her elbows. Turns out that was a great place to be because I got the full range of her impressive voice and clearly heard every word of her magical lyrics. As a songwriter and vocalist, Doe Paoro moves easily across genres and creates new ones on the fly. Her 2012 debut album Slow to Love was influenced by her study of Tibetan folk opera. Her follow up album, After, as she puts it, “built an entire world with the sonics alone.” Her videos, “Walking Backward” and “Born Whole” are visual enchantment. Paoro has travelled the world by herself, studied in India, moved from Brooklyn to LA, released her first album at the age of 15 and at one point, quit music altogether. Fortunately for us, she is back in front of the microphone and the video camera making stunning music and [Read More]

Fusion fission: Mitre’s Mexican-Gringo mix at Gypset’s Los Globos night. By Patrick O’Heffernan

April 7, 2015

Mitre’s performance at the Gypset Concert upstairs at Los Globos in Silverlake, Los Angeles, Friday night, was smoother and bit more polished than his introduction to the LA music scene at a BMI-sponsored CD Release party at the Gibson Showroom last December. He co-headlined the evening with Rana SantaCruz; the opening acts included Iliza Rosario and Sharin. Mitre’s flair for fusion fission – the blending the color and form of traditional Mexican music with modern rock and pop instrumentation and sensibilities was on full display from Los Globos’s stage, thrilling the hip bi-lingual audience that makes the Gypset Magazine’s music events so interesting. Introduced by sets from Sharin and Ilza Rosario, who joined Mitre on stage during his set, Mitre also continued his custom of collaborating with other singers, alternating leads and backup vocals with his guest singers. He was also joined by Alih Jey and Ximena Muñoz, who brought different colors to the rainbow that Mitre conjured from the stage with eight songs from his Lloro and Mitre EP’s and new songs, at least [Read More]

Kaleidoscope by Joanna Borromeo: a must for jazz/ R&B fans and a delicious dessert for the rest of us. By Patrick O’Heffernan

March 27, 2015

Joanna Borromeo is an enigma – a good one. She can make you think, cry and dance , sometimes all at once, sometimes s on different songs on a single album and sometimes in a single song. She writes and sings what is best described (and how she describes it) as alt. blues and R&B. She combines blues, rock, hip hop, gospel and jazz in a way is comfortable in a blues venue, a jazz club, a hip hop scene or a rock showcase as well as in the studio. In live performances, she centers the stage with her keyboard and wows audiences and critics with a cream- smooth voice and lively songwriting. Her recorded songs equal the live shows in intensity and wallop. Awesome is an overused word, but listening to Joanna Borromeo is exactly that – and awesome experience with an awesome talent. It is not surprising that this album was nominated for a Juno Award as the best R&B recording in Canada and that her very first album hit the top ten [Read More]

Toby Lightman: a Supernova of ivory and anger at the Hotel Café. By Patrick O’Heffernan

March 26, 2015

Quintessential New York singer-songwriter Toby Lightman held a packed and adoring LA audience in the palm of her hand last night at Hollywood’s venerable Hotel Café with the ivory-sheened sophistication of her voice blended mystically with the anger and grit of the street. Lighthouse’s 11-song set clearly demonstrated why she is loved by both fans and critics across the country. She thrilled a standing-room-only crowd with songs ranging from her earliest releases to the title song from her new album, Every Kind of People. The audience knew the words to many of them and were ecstatic at the opportunity to sing along as they watched a supernova move toward critical mass. Toby Lightman first entered my musical attention last summer when I heard her singing at the end of a television show, adding an aching depth to the final scene. I was blown away by her powerful, smooth voice that elongated with emotional pain and anger. She had recently left Atlantic records and was stretching out as an independent. Her recently released album, Every Kind [Read More]

Interview with Denny Tedesco, Director of “The Wrecking Crews” documentary. By Patrick O’Heffernan

March 21, 2015

Interview with Denny Tedesco, Director of “The Wrecking Crews” documentary on the session musicians who brought the world rock and roll. Patrick O’Heffernan (Los Angeles) The film The Wrecking Crew, is the story of guitarist Tommy Tedesco and the session musicians who played on hundreds, if not thousands of the hit records of the 60’s and 70’s. Eighteen years in the making, The Wrecking Crew features interviews with the group members, stars like Cher and Nancy Sinatra and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, plus the music of the times. Few fans realized that the people playing on the 45’s they bought were often not the bands shown on the cover, but a fluid group of session musicians, some of whom did not originally like rock and roll but made a good living playing it in the studio. When Tedesco was diagnosed with cancer in 1996, his son Denny, a TV producer, started taping interviews to record that era and the people who made it happen. With the help of family, friends and [Read More]

The Wrecking Crew: without a doubt the best music documentary made to date. By Patrick O’Heffernan

March 12, 2015

In the late forties and early 50’s, thousands of men who had returned home from World War II found that the Midwest farms and Southern towns and even the Texas oil patch could not support their families. So they headed to Southern California to work in the burgeoning aircraft industry, often with guitars and drum kits strapped on top of their cars. When they got there they found year-round sunshine, surfing, bikinis, an auto-obsessed culture and an attitude of openness and risk taking. So when songs like Shake Rattle and Roll, Rocket 88 and Rock Around the Clock began breaking down the barriers against the new rock music form, they embraced it, popularizing what was first called the “California Sound” and then simply, “rock and roll”. Unknowingly, they kicked off a musical revolution that spread around the world. At the center of that revolution was a group of twenty to thirty men – and one woman – who were the unknown and uncredited session musicians on thousands of the recordings from the 50’s to the [Read More]

Crying and dancing: the magic of Steps of Doe’s debut album, “On Returning” by Patrick O’Heffernan

March 7, 2015

Take two talented California women in a summer program at Cambridge university, add guitars, mandolins, dulcimers, banjos and laughter and you get Steps of Doe, also known as Keena Batti and Molly Falck. Harking back to the high point of American folk rock in the 60’s, Steps of Doe deliver a magic music with lush harmonies, rock guitar riffs and electronic sophistication so good, you can’t tell it’s there.. Sometimes they sound medieval with fast-picked dulcimer and mandolin strings that paint images of castles and unicorns. Sometimes they bring in some funk and rock rhythms and distortion unicorns have never heard. Their debut album, “On Returning” pulls all that together into an achievement that will catapult them into the first ranks of folk and rock. The 8-songs on On Returning often sound as if they started in 12th century England and ended up on stage at the Roxy in Los Angeles last week. Each song has deep harmonies sung in a perfect fifth deftly embroidered with modern rhythms, guitar riffs, pop hooks and minor keys [Read More]