A Tale of Two Cities
Current mood: optimistic

It seems like this next record is taking forever.  I started recording it on the day after Thanksgiving in 2006 and it’s only halfway done.  But I have to remind myself that the last one took almost three years, and the finished record was a much more complete piece of work than it would have been if I’d gone in and banged it out in six months.  I would not have had some of the songs that came late to the party, nor the incredible gift of musicians who came on board during that last year as we were finishing up.  And, that I’ve been reading ’A Tale of Two Cities’ for almost a year and it’s a pretty darn good read no matter how long it takes.  Don’t tell me how it ends.

So, that said, I’m very exited about continuing to record, the direction it’s taking and the incredible musical souls who are working on it with me.  Spending the day in the studio with Nelson, Shawn, Jonny, Carl and Steve is better than food (even really good food!)  I’m inspired by their talent and ideas, and touched by their enthusiasm, and I can’t wait for you all to hear the next wave of music we’re making.

A.

Currently reading : A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin Classics) By Charles Dickens Release date: 27 May, 2003

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NEW SONG up for this year only!

Right now you can be listening to a brand new song from my upcoming CD, "Tangle-Free World."  It will be up only through my IPO performance of 2008 and a few days after.  I was very lucky to snag these guys (and gals) to help me record the track:  Nelson Bragg of The Brian Wilson Band, The Now People and The Mockers on drums, Phil Parlapiano of Dead Rock West and John Prine's band on mandolin, Dave Sutton (currently touring with Lucinda Williams) on bass, Jon DuFresne of Legal Weapon on guitar, and my son Ivan Pyzow of The Tritones on trumpet.  Adam Marsland did the vocal arrangement and that's Adam, Evie Sands and Teresa Cowles on backing vocals.

Look for the new album to come out in 2008 and tour dates to follow!

Anny

Currently listening : Day Into Night By Nelson Bragg Release date: 11 December, 2006

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RIP - A special person who touched my life once
Current mood: thankful

In 1992, Bruce Springsteen was filming his "MTV Plugged" show on a soundstage in Hollywood, promoting his "Human Touch" album, and I was lucky enough to be there.  The venue was only big enough for a few hundred people, and the show was as intimate as a Sunset Strip club date, with Springsteen's band at the time only a few feet away (including guitarist Shane Fontayne, who later became a friend of mine)!.  At the time, I was six months pregnant with my son Ivan.  I've heard that a pregnant woman can't lose in Vegas – I never tried it myself, but I've seen it happen.  And I aced every game of Trivial Pursuit I played during those months.  But this might have been the luckiest night of my life. 

Because of my status as a future mother, I was escorted to the side of the stage by none other than Terry Magovern, Springsteen's long-time personal assistant, bodyguard, road manager and man so respected in the Springsteen camp that he went by the title of "Terry Magovern."  Terry personally delivered me to the care of another bodyguard, who was charged with making sure that Ivan and I were not damaged by the crowd in any way.  It was an incredible show, full of all the rock n roll energy you could ever hope for, and except for the acoustic portion, hardly unplugged!  At the finale, Bruce led a conga line around the studio then pulled a bunch of people onstage to sing.  You can't see it in the video because the credits roll over that part, but I was standing next to Bruce, singing on the same mic, with my future son fully present and very much in evidence.  Afterwards, Terry made a point of asking if I was okay, if I'd had a good time, and if they had taken good care of me.

I was brought back to that experience this morning when I learned that Terry Magovern had died this week, at the age of 67.  I read an obituary in the New Jersey Star Ledger (http://www.nj.com/deaths/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-43/1185944509217440.xml&coll=1) that talks about Magovern's life, his role in the Springsteen world, and his founding of the Joan Dancy and People with ALS Support Group, to raise money for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis research.  And I want to add that, in a very small way, he touched me as well, by being part of one of the highest evenings of my life and an experience I will never forget.

Anny

Currently listening : In Concert: MTV Plugged By Bruce Springsteen Release date: 26 August, 1997

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No News Was Harmed During This Broadcast
Current mood: exhausted

In one of my seventeen lives, I sub for the morning news producer on 89.3 KPCC FM in Los Angeles.  That's how I'm spending this week, and it's a very strange life indeed.  I wake up at 2:00 am to get to the radio station at 3:00 and sort through news stories to plug into the local broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition.  At 5:00 am the host goes on-air live and life is ruled by the seconds and minutes that it takes them to read a story, play a sound clip and give the traffic report before we turn things back over to Steve Inskeep and Renee Motagne.  If anything exciting happens in the news, I write a thirty-second story about it, which you may hear if you're negotiating morning drive-time here in L.A. The shift is over at about 10 in the morning, and then I go into a weird limbo of not-really-sleeping, but too tired to actually do anything useful (like operate heavy machinery), for the rest of the day, until it's time to take a sleeping pill so I can get up again at 2:00 am.  So now I'm wide awake, it's 10:30 am, and I'm wondering if I could get on a plane and go someplace where it's Happy Hour...

By the way, the new CD is going great thanks to my many talented friends, and I hope to have new songs posted very soon! 

Anny

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My apologies...I'm a Bad MyFriend

Hey there...it's been weeks since I've been able to log into my page.  First there was a rudely blatant hacking experience thanks to the inscrutable Snocap machine, which balled everything up for a week or so, and then one by one every computer that I used began refusing my login.  So if I haven't answered your message, granted your friend request, showed up at your gig, listened to your new song postings, left any giggly flirty comments on your page or noticed it was your birthday, I deeply apologize.  My next excuse is that I'm brutally slammed by my seventeen or so jobs not to mention the weekend I spent doing the hair of two dozen thirteen-year-old boys for a middle-school production of "Guys & Dolls".....well, that was actually really fun.  If you want to know what pre-teen boys are thinking about these days....okay, stylists code of honor, I'll never tell.

Anyway, one day soon I'll have some time to be a good MyFriend again.  In the words of David Soul, don't give up on me, baby....

Currently listening : Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration By Various Artists Release date: 13 March, 2007

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Direct from South Africa...
Current mood: creative

..> ..>

...there is a lovely review of "Little Black Dress & Other Stories" on the Cabin Essence blogsite: http://surfermoon.com/blogs/?p=123 ...also closely linked at that site you will find reviews of three really fantastic CDs that came out recently, Nelson Bragg's "Day Into Night," The Smithereens' "Meet The Smithereens" and "Songs of Carl & Dennis Wilson" by Adam Marsland's Chaos Band, as well as an analysis of Brian Wilson's "Caroline, No" and a thoughtful remembrance of Carl Wilson. Let me say I am most pleased to be the gaudy little toothpick in this meaty musical sandwich! Visit, read, listen, love. Anny

Currently listening : Sunflower/Surf's Up By The Beach Boys Release date: 18 July, 2000

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But seriously, most of it was really great!
Current mood: grateful

All right, now that I've returned from the UK and had a chance to wash all my new duds from Asta, get some conditioner into my hair and fill out all the insurance claim forms for the rental cars, I want to send out a hearty thanks to the good folks of England for such a warm welcome and for making the gigs so much fun.  The promoters were especially wonderful, helping us get the word out through local press, sometimes finding us places to stay or even putting us up in their charming English homes and cottages (or as on one occasion, the flat above the club...)  There were also folks who lent us PAs and backline gear so we could actually play the shows...people who cooked us meals and plied us with sandwiches...poured us a glass of wine or a pint of ale....hosted us on their radio shows...bought CDs! Thanks!!!  and let's not forget the dozens upon dozens of brave UK residents who attempted to help us with directions the many times that we found ourselves rudderless in the heart of London or motoring through the wild heather and yon of the midlands.

Much like a Sergio Leone movie, I felt the experience to be a many-tongued odyssey of the old west, and for that, many thanks are due to The Gunslingers, Markus, Felix and Clemens, for riding shotgun over the whole strange unfurling musical ribbon of highway...as they say in German, you dudes rock! 

And as they say in Austrian, I'll be back...!

check out my photo page for a picture of the four of us at The Bassment in Chelmsford.

Currently listening : Essential Elvis Presley By Elvis Presley Release date: 02 January, 2007

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Who's the tour manager? They're fired. Oh yea, it's me...

Finally got to spend some quality time in London today after what may have been one of the most intensely harrowing days of my life.  Woke up in Swindon yesterday after a gig at The BeeHive, which was lots of fun.  It's great to be far from home, see posters for Tony Gilkyson and I See Hawks in LA on the wall, I know I'm in good company.  The folks there love their American music and we had them singing along to "That's All Right, Mama," "Midnight Train to Georgia" and "Summer Fling" alike.  Next morning more shopping and then the fun began, starting with a 30-pound parking ticket and some damage to the rental van (details to be forever shrouded in the unfailing Code of the Road...)  More Alamo bureaucracy, loaded up our third Vauxhall Zefira and we finally hit the M4 to for the 90-minute drive to London at about 5:30...at 7 we were sitting in a roadblock just onto the M25 which circles London...after a few hours of that diverted off the motorway and into central London.  There followed a drive directly through the city during Friday night traffic, grinding between first and second gear, several narrow scrapes with double-decker busses, taxicabs and pedestrians, many wrong turns and undisclosed street signs, and finally we arrived at the motel in Barking at about 11 pm, which is where I said goodbye to Markus, Felix and Clements (otherwise known by their British band name, The Tesco Boys).  I then took the M25 north circling around towards west London to meet a friend for what I hoped would be a stiff drink...but since every pub in England closes at 11pm that was impossible, so we just took a long walk, saw Keats' home and George Martin's studio while I decompressed and tried to get some feeling back into my manual-shifting left arm.  When I finally got back to Marylbone, where I was staying with friends, I spent a couple of hours looking for a legal place to park before giving up and driving back to the Alamo office in Marble Arch to drop off the car then took a cab back to the flat...finally in bed by 4am.  Total driving time (counting time spent at mechanics, Alamo offices and Welcome Break freeway stops):  12 hours.

Yea, England swings.

10:48 AM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

This is supposed to be music...but it feels like carpool....
Current mood: exhausted

My new rule of travel -- take the amount of time they tell you it will take to drive someplace, and add four hours.  For each additional musican in the car, add another hour.  Last night's "easy" drive to Manchester from Liverpool (38 miles)ended up adding up to about six hours of driving, due to factors like motorway stoppage and several trips back and forth across Manchester to fetch gear.  We had a little help from our borrowed GPS unit -- which the boys have named Fraulein Behrengelt for reasons they find hilarious....  until she ran out of juice and left us directionless.  The gig went well otherwise, and I have many Manchestians (Manchians? Manchurians?) to thank for our cobbled together PA and gear situation...Dave, Jeff, John, John and Oliver (check out Oliver's band at myspace/thereveres...) 

The good news is I found a great shop in Liverpool yesterday afternoon and bought a bunch of fabulous new clothes for what passes for dirt cheap in England, plus acquired two shopping buddies and new best friends, Marina and Karen, who found their way to the show that night.  The boys were only mildly impressed with my new outfits but unabashedly gaga about the birds from Liverpool, as was Oliver and it seems every other bloke in the place.  They did invite us to go cage dancing later in Manchester, but I was busy with gear shuffling and had to leave them to entertain half the band while I drove the bass amp home.  Next time, ladies, it's a date!!

Currently listening : Madeline By Randy Weeks Release date: 14 March, 2000

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Dont Call Me Mommy
Current mood: cheerful

After driving the length of England three times, surviving a three-hour queue through a motorway tangle, a U-turn on the expressway, several dozen roundabouts and transversing London during rush hour traffic, I feel ready to sign up as a cabby.  Turns out I am the only one who can drive the rental, so just like back home, I am designated soccer mom for the trip.  One of the stricter tour rules, however, is "Don't call me Mommy."

Most everyone in England is pretty nice, including the cops who stopped by late Monday night after the rear window of the van was bashed in during our gig at the Slaughtered Lamb.  Fortunately all our gear was in the club and I had already changed into the one pair of jeans I own which cost more than my guitar, so all I lost was a suitcase full of clothes.  A night of drama and a day of hassle via Alamo's brand of British bureacracy, and we were back on the road.  Now we're in Liverpool at the home of Mark Whitfield,, maybe the nicest, sweetest guy on the planet, who not only has put us up three nights out of the tour but has offered to let us use his brand-new GPS toy. 

Currently listening : Pet Sounds By The Beach Boys Release date: 13 July, 1999

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