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musicollage · 4 years

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Dominic Miller. Absinthe, 2019. ECM 2614. ( Manu Katché ) ~ [ Album Review | 1) ECM Reviews + 2) All About Jazz + 3) London Jazz News ]

1) The title of Absinthe, Dominic Miller’s follow-up to his 2017 ECM debut, Silent Light, harks to the early French Impressionists, whose all-in dedication to art is a philosophical touchpoint for the guitarist. To carry on that spirit, he could hardly have asked for a more eclectic yet integrated band. Bandoneon player Santiago Arias brings a sense of cross-continental shift that makes the world just a little smaller; keyboardist Mike Lindup adds a sometimes-surreal vibe that’s equal parts cry from the past and message from the future; bassist Nicolas Fiszman is the soil to Miller’s sunlight; and drummer Manu Katché, a remarkable impressionist in his own right, is time incarnate.

With such a massive scale to be reckoned with in theory, one might expect the results to be overpowering, when in practice the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic content is so evenly distributed between pans that by the end of each tune we’re left on an even keel from where we began. This is nowhere so true as on the opening title track, which spins a steady downtempo groove from the filaments of Miller’s solo introduction. The way his bandmates shuttle through the greater loom of the album’s concept is as intuitive as the compositions yearning for consummation. A certain feeling of inward travel continues in all that follows.

The quiet locomotion of “Mixed Blessing” and is as progressive as the tender “Christiana” is regressive, the geometrically inflected “Étude” as inviting as the open-ended charm of “Ombu,” the melancholy “Ténèbres” as dark as the transparent “Saint Vincent” is bright. The latter bears dedication to the late Cameroonian guitarist Vincent Nguini, a longtime collaborator with Paul Simon and something of a mentor for Miller. Even without such biographical details, these stories write themselves, unhidden, in real time. Binding their pages are shorter pieces, including the piano-rich “Verveine” and the haunting “La Petite Reine.” Into these we are afforded only fleeting glimpses, personal tesseracts whose potential for transfiguration can only be expressed in song.

All of which makes “Bicyle” quintessential in the present milieu. Its pedaling motion is more than a metaphor; it’s an actualization of life’s unstoppable flow. For there, woven between each spoke like a playing card, memories fade into new experiences, squinting into the glare of a setting sun as the world curls into slumber.

2) Guitarist Dominic Miller's 2017 ECM debut Silent Light was a low key affair that focused on his solo classical guitar (plus a bit of light percussion). The sequel features a full quintet with a rhythm section. A bigger sound, but with a similar impressionistic flavor. Miller's liner notes make that visual art reference explicit: as a resident of the south of France he has become fascinated with the French Impressionist painters, admiring their artistic daring.

The album opens with the title tune: Miller's acoustic guitar and drummer Manu Katche's swirling cymbals set the scene for the entry of Santiago Arias' bandoneon, the primary melodic instrument in the music. It is a significant new timbral color in the ensemble, as well as a nod to the avowed Argentinian influence in Miller's music. "Mixed Blessing" includes a synthesizer solo from keyboardist Mike Lindup, a contrasting sound that is favored throughout the set; although on "Étude" his piano playing is a foundational element.

The spare, low rumbling drums and guitar of "La Petite Reine" recall the sound of Silent Light. "Étude" and "Ombu" step up the tempo a bit, and the latter gives the drums a highlighted role as active rhythmic accompaniment for the whole band: no doubt very satisfying for Katché fans who have been waiting to hear him cut loose. Closer "Saint Vincent" is an upbeat tune that features the whole band, with solos from Miller and Lindup (on piano).

Miller has an expanded musical concept to go with the larger band. The tunes are still compact statements, but make use of the instrumental forces for greater timbral contrast. And he is a generous band leader as well: while his guitar is at the center of the arrangements, all of the players are given a chance to shine. It will be interesting to see where he goes next.

3) Absinthe is Argentinian-born guitarist Dominic Miller’s second release for ECM and his fourteenth solo album. The list of recordings with other people, however, is immense. Even if his name is unfamiliar you have probably already heard him. He has played with Sting since The Soul Cages in 1991 and masses of other musicians along the way, from The Chieftains to Youssou N’Dour, via Tina Turner, Lesley Garrett, Sarah Jane Morris and Manu Dibango. Some of the musicians with whom he has recorded make up the new quintet for this album.

Absinthe is an airy, atmospheric set of compositions inspired by Miller’s love of the works of the Impressionist artists, many of whom painted in the South of France where he now lives. The title came to him first, apparently – many of the impressionists drank absinthe, that potent anise-based spirit favoured by bohemians known as “la fée verte”. In a recent interview with German news site DW.com, Miller expands on the title:

“For me it’s about being out of it. And over the last few years I’ve really been into French paintings and thinking about this history of the early 19th century and how Lautrec and Van Gogh and a lot of these guys were tripping on absinthe but still coming up with amazing work. And because they were such highly skilled artists they could come up with these really outrageous trippy concepts with colour.”

Miller put together a quintet sympathetic to his ideas and wrote the music with the “sonic palettes” of his chosen musicians in mind. First up is young Argentinian Santiago Arias who studied under Dino Saluzzi at the Conservatoire in Buenos Aires. He plays the bandoneon, that concertina-like instrument associated with Argentinian tango. His sound is pure and extremely melodic. The combination of Miller’s lyrical guitar with Arias’ lovely lines is delightful – they are the perfect foil for each other. The other three musicians have all played with Miller for years.

On keyboards is Englishman Mike Lindup, best known for his work with Level 42, but a regular performer with Miller, who played with Level 42 himself back in the 80s. Lindup’s is a third melodic voice with the guitar and bandoneon – he also adds delicate ethereal tones, almost theremin-like in places.

On bass is Belgian Nicolas Fiszman. He studied guitar with Philip Catherine, then changed to bass. He’s played with Miller since 2005, but has accompanied Johnny Halliday, Angelique Kidjo, and Charles Aznavour in his time. Miller describes his playing and intonation as having “the nobility of a great whale”, which is a lovely description and also, I think, fair enough. His subtle and discreet bass underpins the whole endeavour.

Miller describes French percussionist Manu Katché as “an artist on the drums, especially with his cymbal work where he is like a great painter”. His presence is everywhere on this recording, and his contribution adds colour, as well as texture to the pieces. Katché is well-known as a session musician – having played with almost everybody. He’s also an ECM veteran. Miller has recorded with Katché as part of his band, and he’s another long-serving member of Sting’s band, so they know each other musically very well.

It’s an unconventional combo, but it works well – the range of timbres and harmonies is extremely agreeable. There’s an Argentinian tinge to much of the music, though think Gotan Project, rather than Astor Piazzolla, as there is a groove through many of the tunes, not just from Katché’s inventive percussion but the rhythmic qualities of the ensemble playing. On an initial hearing the CD appeared light and easy, bar some disjunct improv in the track Ombu, but this is misleading. I think that the limpid clarity of the production (by Manfred Eicher himself), the pleasant atmosphere, the sweetness of tone and the downright prettiness of the guitar and bandoneon sound just gives that impression. As is often the case with music which can be perceived as light or suave, like bossa nova, for example, on a closer listen, the complexity of the composition and the beauty of the ensemble playing comes through.

From the first track Absinthe, where the bandoneon, after a precise harmonious intro, starts sliding about into little patches of dissonance, and the spectral notes from the synthesiser twist around against a backdrop of precise strings and strangely colourful cymbal sounds, the listener is entranced. By the final track, Saint Vincent (presumably a reference to Van Gogh rather than the countless catholic saints, or indeed the American singer/songwriter of the same name) the sonic palette has been fully explored. Miller’s guitar playing is wonderful throughout, lyrical, deft and harmonious. Saint Vincent builds in layers of colour and light to a Pat Metheny-esque crescendo and then disappears as if blown away by the mistral.

This record will appeal to Miller fans, to Sting fans, to existing fans of any of the other members of the band, and to new listeners who are already aficionados of ECM’s fine output of chamber music. As usual, I now want to hear this live, and indeed a grand promotional tour for Absinthe of Central and South America, and Northern Europe was planned. Sadly it has had to be cancelled for health reasons. Wishing Dominic Miller a speedy recovery.

#jazz #jazz guitar #dominic miller #manu katché #ecm #2019 #2010s #2010s jazz #ecm reviews #all about jazz #london jazz news #review

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needsmoreresearch · 4 years

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Claret, cherry, rose quartz?

claret: do you play an instrument? do you want to learn to play any? The only thing I do currently at all is picking out tunes on the piano to sing along to. I’d like to get better at piano (the trouble with growing up learning the flute is that you don’t really get the hang of whatever the hell is going on down in the bass clef) and guitar, and I’d love to be able to play like a wee concertina? Things you can sing along to? I can sing a millionty folk songs. But I have to acknowledge that if I really wanted to learn an instrument I’d put in the effort to make it happen. (also, not to brag >_> but i am a pretty good whistler does that count)

cherry: YouTubers you enjoy watching? For a couple of days I was grooving on the soothing Scottish voice of the Hoof Doctor and the combination of beautiful scenery and cow shit, but I kind of lost interest. I don’t really follow any YouTubers. Oh--but Abby Franquemont is an excellent resource for handspinning videos.

rose quartz: rings or necklaces? Man, I love looking at jewelry, I love studying unusual necklaces--but I hardly ever wear anything but my wedding ring.

#color ask #montagnarde1793

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completeandrandomshit · 5 years

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Linda Ronstadt Has Found Another Voice

The singer on living with Parkinson’s, the perils of stardom, and mourning what the border has become.

It’s been ten years since Linda Ronstadt, once the most highly paid woman in rock and roll, sang her last concert. In 2013, the world found out why: Parkinson’s disease had rendered her unable to sing, ending a musical career that had left an indelible mark on the classic-rock era and earned her ten Grammy Awards. Ronstadt’s earth-shaking voice and spunky stage presence jolted her to fame in the late sixties, and her renditions of “Different Drum” (with her early group, the Stone Poneys), “You’re No Good” (from her breakthrough album, “Heart Like a Wheel”), “Blue Bayou,” and “Desperado” helped define the California folk-rock sound. Along the way, two of her backup musicians left to form the Eagles.

But Ronstadt, now seventy-three, didn’t rest on her greatest hits, experimenting instead with a dizzying range of genres. In the eighties, she starred in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” on Broadway, recorded a standards album with the veteran arranger Nelson Riddle, and released “Canciones de Mi Padre,” a collection of traditional Mexican songs, which became the best-selling non-English-language album in American history. The record also returned Ronstadt to her roots. Her grandfather was a Mexican bandleader, and her father had serenaded her mother with Mexican folk songs in a beautiful baritone. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona, close to the border—a place that has since become a political flashpoint.

A new documentary, “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice,” directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and opening September 6th, looks back on Ronstadt’s adventurous career. She spoke with The New Yorker twice by phone from her home in San Francisco. Our conversations have been edited and condensed.

What is your day-to-day life like these days?

Well, I lie down a lot, because I’m disabled. I do a lot of reading, but I’m starting to have trouble with my eyes, so that’s kind of a problem. It’s called getting old.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading Thomas Mann, “The Magic Mountain.” I somehow got to be this age without having read Thomas Mann, and I’m trying to make up for it. I read “Buddenbrooks,” and I fell in love with his writing. His books are nice and long, so it takes a couple of days to get through them.

Who do you spend most of your time with?

My son lives here. My daughter comes over. I have really nice friends; they come over and hang out with me. It’s hard for me to get out. It’s hard for me to sit in a restaurant or sit up in a chair. It’s hard for me to stand around, so if there’s a situation where I’m liable to be caught in a doorway talking to somebody for five minutes, I tend to avoid that.

What kind of music do you listen to?

I love opera. It’s so terrible—I listen to it on YouTube. I’m an audiophile, but I’ve just gotten used to the convenience of being able to hear twenty-nine different performances of one role. I listen to other music, too. I found this Korean band that I thought was sort of interesting on Tiny Desk concerts, the NPR series. They get musicians to come in and play live in a really tiny little space behind a desk. It’s no show biz, just music. They have great stuff. They had Randy Newman. Natalia Lafourcade, who’s a Mexican artist that I love particularly. Whatever’s new. The Korean band I saw was called SsingSsing.

Is it like K-pop?

No, it’s based on Korean traditional singing. It was kind of like David Bowie bass and drums, and then this really wild South Korean traditional singing. It’s polytonal. It’s a different skill than we use, with more notes in it. And a lot of gender-crossing. It looked like I was seeing the future.

When you sing in your mind, what do you hear?

I can hear the song. I can hear what I would be doing with it. I can hear the accompaniment. Sometimes I don’t remember the words, so I have to look them up. It’s not usually my songs I’m singing. I don’t listen to my own stuff very much.

I listen to Mexican radio—the local Banda station out of San Jose. I mostly listen to NPR. I don’t listen to mainstream radio anymore. I don’t know the acts and I don’t know the music. It doesn’t interest me, particularly. There are some good modern people. I like Sia. She’s a very original singer.

How do you cope with the frustration of not being able to do everything you want to do?

I’ve just accepted it. There’s absolutely nothing I can do. I have a form of Parkinsonism that doesn’t respond to standard Parkinson’s meds, so there’s no treatment for what I have. It’s called P.S.P.—Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. I just have to stay home a lot. The main attraction in San Francisco is the opera and the symphony, and I make an effort and go out, but I can only do it a few times a year. It makes me sick that I’m ever not in my seat when Michael Tilson Thomas raises his baton, because he’s such a good conductor, and I miss hearing orchestral music. My friends come over and play music, and that’s where I like it best, anyway: in the living room.

As you tell it, the first symptoms you noticed before you knew you had Parkinson’s were in your singing voice.

Yeah. I’d start to do something and it would start to take the note and then it would stop. What you can’t do with Parkinsonism is repetitive motions, and singing is a repetitive motion.

You broke onto the scene with such a powerhouse voice. What did it feel like, singing with that voice?

Well, I was trying to figure out how to sing! And trying to be heard over the electric instruments. I had no idea that I sang as loud as I did. I always thought I wasn’t singing loud enough, because in the early days there were no monitors. You couldn’t hear yourself.

In the documentary, you talk about growing up in Tucson, Arizona, and how culturally rich that was. How do the current politics around the border resonate with you?

They’re devastating. I feel filled with impotent rage. I grew up in the Sonoran Desert, and the Sonoran Desert is on both sides of the border. There’s a fence that runs through it now, but it’s still the same culture. The same food, the same clothes, the same traditional life of ranching and farming. I go down there a lot, and it’s so hard to get back across the border. It’s ridiculous. It used to be that you could go across the border and have lunch and visit friends and shop in the little shops there. There was a beautiful department store in the fifties and sixties. My parents had friends on both sides of the border. They were friends with the ranchers, and we went to all their parties and their baptisms and their weddings and their balls.

And now that’s gone. The stores are wiped out because they don’t get any trade from the United States anymore. There’s concertina wire on the Mexican side that the Americans put up. Animals are getting trapped in there. Children are getting cut on it. It’s completely unnecessary. In the meantime, you see people serenely skateboarding and girls with their rollerskates, kids playing in the park. And you think, We’re afraid of this? They’re just regular kids!

I spent time out in the desert when I was still healthy, working with a group of Samaritans who go to find people that are lost. You run into the Minute Men or the Border Patrol every five seconds. The border is fully militarized. You meet some guy stumbling through the desert trying to cross, and he’s dehydrated, his feet are full of thorns, cactus, then you see this Minute Man sitting with his cooler, with all of his water and food and beer, and his automatic weapon sitting on his lap, wearing full camouflage. It’s so cruel. People are coming to work. They’re coming to have a better life. You have to be pretty desperate to want to cross that desert.

You were talking about this back in 2013, when your memoir came out, before it became such a national wedge issue. Were people not paying enough attention before?

Well, they didn’t live close to the border. They’d just go back to chewing their cud about it. It wasn’t their problem. I lived at the border then. I lived in Tucson for ten years. I saw what was going on. Putting children in jail—that’s not new. That was going on in the Bush Administration. Barack Obama tried to get immigration reform and Congress wouldn’t allow it. So people have been caught in this web of suffering, dying in the desert. They’re incredibly brave and resourceful, the people who make it. A C.E.O. of a big company once told me—when I said, “What do you look for in hiring practices?”—she said, “I look for someone who’s dealt with a lot of adversity, because they usually make a good business person.” And I thought, You should hire every immigrant who comes across the border.

Why did you decide to move to San Francisco from Tucson?

My children were coming home repeating homophobic remarks they heard at school. And they’d also heard other things, like, “If you don’t go to church, you’re going to go to Hell.” I thought, You know, I don’t need that. So I moved back to San Francisco. I wanted them to have a sense of what a community was like where you could walk to school, walk to the market. More of an urban-village experience. In Tucson, I was driving in the car for forty-five minutes to get them to school and then forty-five minutes to get them back, in a hot car. I didn’t want that life for them.

I can tell that you have a real sense of mourning over what the border used to be.

People don’t realize that there’s Mexican, there’s American, and then there’s Mexican-American. They’re three different cultures, and they all influence eachother. And they all influence our culture profoundly. The cowboy suit that Roy Rogers would wear, with the yoke shirt and the pearl buttons and the bell-bottom frontier pants and the cowboy hat—those are all Mexican. We imported it. We eat burritos and tacos, and our music is influenced a lot by Mexican music. It goes back and forth across the border all the time.

How did growing up in that hybrid Mexican-American culture shape you as a musician?

I listened to a lot of Mexican music on the radio, and my dad had a really great collection of traditional Mexican music. It made it hard for me when I went to sing American pop music, because rock and roll is based on black church rhythms, and I wasn’t exposed to that as a kid. I could only sing what I’d heard. What I’d heard was Mexican music, Billie Holiday, and my brother singing boy soprano.

So what drew you to folk rock in the sixties?

I loved popular folk music like Peter, Paul and Mary. I loved the real traditional stuff, like the Carter family. I loved Bob Dylan. And I tried to copy what I could. When I heard the Byrds doing folk rock, I thought that was what I wanted to do.

How did your recording of “Different Drum” with the Stone Poneys in 1967 come about?

It was a song I found on a Greenbriar Boys record, and I thought it was a strong piece of material. I just liked the song. We worked it up as a kind of shuffle—it wasn’t very good with the guys playing guitar and mandolin. But the record company recognized that the song was strong, too, so they had me come back and record it with their musicians and their arrangement. And I was pretty shocked. I didn’t know how to sing it with that arrangement. But it turned out to be a hit.

Do you remember hearing it on the radio for the first time?

Yeah. We were on our way to a meeting at Capitol Records, in an old Dodge or something, and I was jammed in the back with our guitars. Then the engine froze, and the car made this horrible metal-on-metal shriek. We had to push it to the nearest gas station, half a block away. The man was looking at the car saying it’ll never run again, and we were saying, “What will we ever do in Los Angeles with no car?” And from the radio playing in the back of the garage we could hear the opening of “Different Drum.” We heard which radio station it was on, KRLA, so I knew it was a hit, if they played it on the L.A. stations.

What are your memories of the Troubadour, in West Hollywood?

That’s where you went to hang out. We would go to hear the local act that was playing, or there’d be someone like Hoyt Axton or Oscar Brown, Jr., or Odetta. Nobody was anything particular at the time. We were all aspiring musicians. The Dillards were there. The Byrds hung out there. And then it started to be people like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor. Carole King would play there. When Joni Mitchell played, she played two weeks. I think I saw every single night.

In your book, you talk about being with Janis Joplin there and trying to figure out what to wear onstage.

Oh, I never could figure out what to wear. I grew up wearing Levi’s and a T-shirt or a sweater and cowboy boots or sneakers. And that’s what I left home with, and that’s what I wound up with. In the summer we’d cut the legs off the Levi’s and they were Levi’s shorts. When I got my Cub Scout outfit, that was a real change for me.

You say that you and Janis Joplin couldn’t figure out how to fit in—you didn’t know whether to be earth mothers or whatever.

We didn’t know whether we were supposed to cook and sew and embroider. Roles were being redefined. There were a lot of earth-mama hippie girls who knew how to do that stuff.

There’s a clip in the documentary of you being interviewed in 1977, and you talk about how rock-and-roll stars become alienated and are surrounded by managers who are willing to indulge them, and that’s how people wind up with drug problems.

They got involved with drugs because they felt isolated. Stardom is isolating. There are a whole bunch of people that you’re hanging out with who are trying to become musicians. And some were chosen and some were not, and it becomes a difficult relationship with the people who weren’t chosen. Sometimes they’re resentful, sometimes you feel uncomfortable. It’s like Emmylou Harris has in a song: “Pieces of the sky were falling in your neighbor’s yard but not on you.” The adulation made people feel disconnected. I also think that some people’s brain chemistry is more vulnerable to addiction. I was lucky. Mine was not.

David Geffen says that you had an issue with diet pills.

I had no issue with that. I just took them when I needed them. I didn’t like it. If I ate, I’d have to take a diet pill. It wasn’t something I did for pleasure.

There’s been a lot of looking back this year at the summer of 1969, with these big anniversaries of the moon landing and Woodstock and the Manson murders. What do you remember about that summer?

When Woodstock happened, I was in New York. I remember getting all the reports from people like Henry Diltz and Crosby, Stills & Nash. They’d come back with stories of everybody being in the mud. It sounded like a good thing to have survived, but I’m glad I didn’t go up there. Overflowing toilets and no food is not my idea of a fun time. I was playing some club—probably the Bitter End.

When the Manson family came through, they managed to murder my next-door neighbor, Gary Hinman. I was lucky I wasn’t home that night—they may have come for me. We knew those girls, Linda Kasabian and maybe Leslie Van Houten, too. I lived in Topanga Canyon at the time, and they would hitchhike, and they would talk about this guy Charlie at the Spahn Ranch. But I didn’t know him personally. We knew it was kind of a bad scene. But, when we found out how bad of a scene it was, we were horrified.

People must have been really scared before they were captured.

Oh, everybody was freaked out. We weren’t sure at the time whether the Gary Hinman murder was connected to the other murders, but we found out soon enough.

The music of that era was so intertwined with politics. How do you feel that compares with popular music these days? Is music addressing political upheaval?

Oh, I think so. Especially hip-hop. But I wish there was a little bit more political activism. I’m waiting for the Reichstag to burn down, you know? Because I was interested in the Weimar Republic, I’ve always been aware that culture can be overwhelmed and subverted in a very short time. All of German intellectual history—Goethe and Beethoven—was subverted by the Nazis. It happened in a thirty-year span and brought German culture to its knees. And it’s happening here. There’s a real conspiracy of international fascism that wants to defeat democracy. They want all the power for themselves, and I think that suits Donald Trump right now. He’d like to be a dictator.

In going through your history, I’ve noticed you’ve been selectively outspoken. There’s an interview from 1983 where a talk-show host in Australia asks you about deciding to perform in South Africa under apartheid, and you give this speech about how if you didn’t play anywhere with racism you wouldn’t be able to play in the American South or Boston. You also take shots at Ronald Reagan and Rupert Murdoch. As a popular performer, was there a cost to speaking out?

I never talked onstage for about fifteen years. But there were certain causes that we as a musical community united against, and one of them was nuclear power. We did a lot of No Nukes concerts—James Taylor, me, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt—and if it was a particular cause that I was in favor of. I did what I could to help, but I don’t think my focus was particularly political. If somebody asked, I was perfectly happy to give my opinion.

I also found a clip from 1995 where you confronted Robin Quivers, Howard Stern’s co-host, on the “Tonight Show” about her association with Stern. Do you remember what upset you so much?

Well, first of all, I never heard Howard Stern on the radio. I had no idea who he was. I didn’t have a television. I didn’t know who Robin Quivers was. But it had just been on the news that day, what he had said about—oh, the girl singer.

Selena? He said “Spanish people have the worst taste in music” and played her music with gunshots in the background.

Selena, yeah. And it just offended me. As a Mexican-American, it just offended me that he would say such a horrible thing about someone’s dead daughter. I didn’t realize that Howard Stern made a career out of making unfortunate remarks about other people. And I didn’t know what Robin Quivers was like. I didn’t know anything about it. I just went, “Hey, that really offended me.” It made me angry. I didn’t realize what kind of a hornets’ nest I’d stepped into.

Did you get any reaction from him after that?

Oh, yeah. He said horrible things about me.

Going back to your performing career, in the documentary, your former manager Peter Asher says that you would see people whispering at your concerts and imagine that they were saying, “She’s the worst singer I’ve ever heard.” Were you really that insecure?

I just didn’t feel like I could quite sing well enough. It was best when I forgot about everything and just thought about the music, but it took me a long time to get there. I didn’t want to see people that I knew in the audience. I didn’t like to see the audience, actually. I couldn’t understand why they’d come. It’s a different relationship than singers like Taylor Swift have. I think it’s a little bit healthier that they embrace their audience and sort of feel like everybody’s on the same team. We were encouraged in the sixties to think of us and them. The hippies started that whole tribal thing, and it was the straights against the hippies. It was unhealthy.

How did you overcome your self-doubt?

I’d just say, “Breathe and sing.” As long as I pulled my focus back to the music, I was fine.

Your relationship with Jerry Brown is covered in the documentary and in your book, but not your relationships with some other prominent people, like Jim Carrey and George Lucas. Is there a reason for that?

I was writing about the music. They didn’t have anything to do with my musical process.

What did Jerry Brown contribute to your musical process?

Well, he was there when Joe Papp [the founder of the Public Theatre and Shakespeare in the Park] called saying that they wanted me for “H.M.S. Pinafore.”. But Jerry [gave me the message] wrong—it was actually “The Pirates of Penzance,” which I didn’t know.

Do you keep in touch with him?

Yeah. We’re friends. We’ve always been friends. He came over last Christmas.

What do you talk about?

Water in California. He said when he retires he wants to study trees and California Indians. I gave him my tree book, “The Hidden Life of Trees.” There’s a new history of water use in California that’s fantastic. It’s called “The Dreamt Land.” It’s like John McPhee-level writing. It’s really worth it for the writing alone.

The press always made such a big deal about the fact that you never got married.

I didn’t need to get married. I’m not sure that anybody needs to get married. If they do, I’m on their side. But I never needed to get married. I had my own life.

I have to admit, I was born in the eighties and I discovered you through “The Muppet Show.” What can you tell me about working with Kermit?

I had a crush on Kermit, so it was a problem because of Miss Piggy. He was her property. But we had a really good time on that show. There’s something extraordinarily creative about puppeteers. They’re fascinating, because when they do all their acting, they can’t let it go through their own body. I think they’re just loaded with talent. I loved watching them. It was a very coöperative experience. They let me help them with the story and the songs.

What was your contribution to the story?

This crush that I had on Kermit, they developed into a little storyline where Miss Piggy and I have a confrontation.

She seems like a very formidable rival.

She was. She was nasty! She locked Kermit in a trunk.

Because you’re a singer but not a songwriter, so much of your artistic expression comes through your choice of material. How did you choose songs for “Heart Like a Wheel,” including the title song by Anna and Kate McGarrigle?

I was just ambushed by that song. I was riding with Jerry Jeff Walker in a cab, and he said, “I was at the Philadelphia Folk Festival and I heard these two girls singing—they were sisters. They sang a really good song. You should hear it.” He sang me the first verse—“Some say the heart is just like a wheel / When you bend it, you can’t mend it / But my love for you is like a sinking ship / And my heart is on that ship out in mid-ocean”—and I just thought they were the most beautiful lyrics I’d ever heard. I said, “You have to send me that song.” And I get this tape in the mail, reel to reel, with just piano and a cello and the two girls singing their beautiful harmonies. The manager I had at the time said it was too corny. Somebody said it would never be a hit. And I don’t think it was ever a radio single, but it was a huge song for me. I sang it all the way through my career.

Were you surprised by the songs from that album that became hits?

I was surprised anything of mine was successful, because it always seemed so hodge-podge. I just tried different songs that didn’t necessarily have anything to do with each other, but which expressed a real urgent feeling that I just had to express. “You’re No Good” was an afterthought. We needed to have an uptempo song to close the show with, and that was a song I knew from the radio.

What were the biggest challenges in becoming a public figure?

Not having the ability to observe other people, because people are observing you. I had to keep my head down all the time. It was kind of excruciating. I still feel that way. I don’t like to be on the spot. Also, relationships were hard, because I was always on the bus.

In an interview from 1977, you said, “I think men have generally treated me badly, and the idea of a war between the sexes is very real in our culture. In the media, women are built up with sex as a weapon and men are threatened by it as much as they are drawn to it, and they retaliate as hard as they can.” Do you remember what you were talking about?

No, I don’t! I have to say that when I look at my whole career, over all, what counted the most was whether you showed up and played the music. I saw it happen with Emmylou, and I saw it happen with Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell was threatening to everybody. She could play better. She could sing better. She looked better. She could just do it all. But it’s true, there was a certain amount of chauvinism.There weren’t a lot of girls in the business who were doing what I was doing, so my friendship with Emmylou Harris became so important.

Did you find that there were things that were harder for you as a woman than for your male contemporaries?

Well, I had to do makeup and hair. That’s a lot, because that’s two hours of the day that you could spend reading a book or learning a language or practicing guitar. Guys just shower and put on any old clothes. And then there were high heels. I have extra ankle bones in each foot, and high heels were agonizing. I used to wear them onstage, kick them off, hide my feet behind the monitors, and find my shoes again before I had to leave the stage.

At the height of your rock-and-roll fame, you decided to do Gilbert and Sullivan. What drew you to that?

My sister, when she was eleven and I was six, I guess, sang “H.M.S. Pinafore” in her junior high school. My mother had a book of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas on piano, and somehow I learned the songs. I heard my sister practicing them. So, when I heard of “The Pirates of Penzance,” I knew what Gilbert and Sullivan was.

Was part of you tired of being a rock star?

Part of me was very tired of it. I was singing loud in halls that didn’t sound like they were built for music. I liked the idea of a proscenium stage. I think a proscenium has a lot to do with focussing your attention. A theatre is a machine built to focus your attention and allow you to dream. You’re hypnotized, in a way, and the person onstage is your champion, is telling your story. You find emotions you didn’t realize you had.

Throughout the eighties, you experimented wildly with genre, everything from Puccini to the Great American Songbook to Mexican canciones. I’m sure your record label was surprised when you said, “I want to make an album of Mexican folk music.”

Well, before that, I wanted to do American standard songs, and they said, “No, it won’t work.” In fact, Joe Smith [the chairman of Elektra/Asylum Records] even came to my house to beg me not to do it. He said, “You’re throwing your career away.” I’d been away so long working on Broadway.

Were you worried that your fans wouldn’t go along with the standards, either?

I didn’t worry about it until after we made the record [“What’s New”] and we were opening at Radio City Music Hall. And I realized, all of a sudden, people might not show up. They really might hate it. I was ordering matzo-ball soup from the Carnegie Deli next door, and it gave me the shakes so bad that I could barely stand when I got onstage. I was holding hands with Nelson Riddle in the wings—he was nervous, too. He said, “Don’t let me down, baby.” I said, “I’ll do my best.” He was the best of those arrangers—worked with Rosemary Clooney and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. He wrote beautiful charts for me. I was really lucky to have him. I went back to my apartment that night and just smiled, because we had gotten away with an evening of American standard songs.

When I see something now like Lady Gaga recording a standards album with Tony Bennett, it seems like she owes you a debt.

Well, she owes me nothing. She’s got enough talent to make it on her own. But, up until then, attempts by female pop artists to go back and do standards had not been successful. And Joan Baez had tried to record in Spanish, and that didn’t work. It depends on what the audience is expecting of you. When I did Mexican songs, I brought in a whole new audience. I played the same venues, but it was grandmothers and grandchildren. People brought their kids. And the standards audience was older—they were in their fifties and sixties, which seemed impossibly old to me at the time.

Is it true that you recorded “Canciones de Mi Padre” at George Lucas’s recording studio, Skywalker Sound?

The second album, “Mas Canciones.” I chose it because they have a big scoring stage. It has good acoustics that you can tune with the wooden panels on the side. There was a lot of room ambience. Mariachi’s a folk orchestra, and it was a good orchestra sound. It’s hard to find.

You also collaborated with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton. Do you keep in touch with them?

Emmy comes out to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, which is a bluegrass festival here in San Francisco, so I see her about once a year. She comes over to my house. We used to sing together. Now she brings her laundry and we talk. When you’re on the road, you always have extra laundry.

Have you kept up with Dolly?

Emmy and I presented her an award recently, and I hadn’t seen her in a while. I don’t think she realized I’m as disabled as I am. She threw her arms around me, and I kept saying, “Dolly, watch out! You’re going to knock me down!” She thought I was kidding. I nearly fell down. I grabbed onto the podium that her award was on and knocked it to the ground. It was made out of glass and it broke. “Congratulations, here’s your award—smash! You get to take the pieces home.”

If you could wave a magic wand and record one more album, what would be on it?

It would be an eclectic mix. There’s a song called “I Still Have That Other Girl,” written by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach, that I always wanted to record. And there’s a Mexican song called “Paloma Negra” I always wanted to record. I’d record all those songs that I didn’t get around to.

THANKS TO MIHCAEL SCHULMAN AND NEWYORKER.COM FOR THE ARTICLE.

#linda ronstadt #michael schulman #the new yorker #the new yorker magazine #real music #classic rock #newyorker.com

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doomandgloomfromthetomb · 6 years

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Bob Dylan - Memorial Coliseum, Portland, Oregon, August 20, 1993

Aw yeah, it’s Bob and Carlos together again! Alas this isn’t Real Live redux -- Santana doesn’t pop up during Bob’s set. But the pair were touring the U.S. together in the late summer / early fall of 1993. (I caught a show at the Hollywood Bowl a little while after this Portland gig, and I have a memory of arguing the next day with a fellow student in Mr. Mancilla’s Spanish class about who was better. Her: “At least Santana was happy to be there!” Me: “At least Bob didn’t put the entire audience to sleep!”)

Carlos’ presence gives us the opportunity to talk about Dylan’s lead guitar, er, skills, which really come to the forefront in ‘93. Nervous noodling! Atonal skronks! Frantic riffage! Interminable repetition! I mean, these really are some of the most batshit solos that have ever taken place in front of crowds of thousands. I’m not going to make any crazy claims for Bob’s six-stringing, but his playing guarantees that things are not going to get slick -- his band members know that their leader is going to take a bizarre solo at some point, and they’re going to have to DEAL WITH IT. Bob wants to jam!

And jam they do. The songs here are stretched out, occasionally to the breaking point. The apex is the rough-n-tumble, well-nigh funky “Tangled Up In Blue,” which is almost 12 minutes long and features plenty of Bob’s inimitable instrumental scrawls. Sometimes it’s awesome, sometimes it’s not (John Jackson sneaks in some nice Garcia-esque fills). Whatever, it’s definitely an experience. Something that’s definitely not awesome is Bob croaking his way through “Emotionally Yours,” which sounds like a dude making a booty call from his death bed. Yuck! I do like the two deep cuts that close out the main set -- a vicious “God Knows” and a radical “I & I,” powered by new drummer Winston Watson’s thunderous fills. Watson can be bit too flashy / splashy / crashy / bashy at times, but he’s mainly a pleasure, giving the NET a buoyancy it’s lacked up to this point.

Choice Cut: Bob delivers the goods on a stormy “Boots of Spanish Leather” -- a passionate, focused vocal that’s matched by the closing harmonic solo. Take heed of the western wind!

Bob Dylan (vocal, harmonica & guitar), Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar, electric slide guitar & concertina), John Jackson (guitar), Tony Garnier (bass), Winston Watson (drums & percussion)

1. Hard Times (Stephen Foster) 2. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again 3. All Along The Watchtower 4. Just Like A Woman 5. Tangled Up In Blue 6. Emotionally Yours 7. Silvio (Bob Dylan & Robert Hunter) 8. Little Moses (Bert A. Williams/Earle C. Jones) 9. Boots Of Spanish Leather 10. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right 11. God Knows 12. I And I 13. Maggie's Farm

#bob dylan #the neverending tour #Santana

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focsle · 10 months

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youtube

Like…god…listen to it. It makes me wanna take my heart out.

#I WANT A BASS CONCERTINA SOOOOO BAD #Youtube

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thestarsshone · 3 years

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I play drums & bass & the concertina but I WANT to learn how to play bagpipes (uillean only, no great highland) & the accordion. Perhaps organs... much thinking to do. I baked and ate focaccia SHES A COOKED FOOD. However I also fractured a rib and learned that it prevents one from mastering the rasputin dance. Otherwise I did absolutely nothing interesting. Please don’t fuck your hot ho music teacher. Actually live your life, do it. Can we have a cover of never gonna give you up on violin after you’re a master. My canine teeth are sharp bc my orthodontist tried to file them flat as a kid due to them being sharp and I got VERY angry at him and refused to open my mouth so now it’s like those egg teeth. Good for cracking eggs on.

in love with the band kid that sent me this <3 like just totally and completely obbessed. i am currently sending psychic signals to my music teacher to make her fall in love with me and continue to correct my form like...hiii maam<3 i would love to cover that and i will <3 you are stronger than me when it comes to the denist thing bc whatever drugs they give u there always make me so fucked up like i lose my free will. they will tell me to do something and ill just do it. im still wondering WHY you ate them raw. are you some sort of freak gym rat?

#Begging crying screaming sobbing what happened to your RIBS?? I feel like u are more fucked up than me <3 #Like I have collapsing disorder or whatever n my body does something new everyday but my God… ribs…#Anyways not even in a weird way but I love ur teeth. I hope u bite people <3 and do u know that my music teacher has HANDS…#I see hands and im like sheesh. Hey there.#anyways. just wondering. like whats ur deal n stuff u know?

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jumphq · 6 years

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Ask Matt: What’s up with All Those Instruments?

In this new (and hopefully interesting) “Ask Matt” series of posts, I’m going to be answering questions from the public at large. Some of these questions might be directed to other members of the band, but I’ll still be the one answering them. Sorry.

Tonight’s question comes from Alison Kendrick, of Charlotte, NC, and hopefully answers a query from Lindsay Badeaux of Chicago, IL:

“Why do you play so many instruments? How did you learn to play them all? And when have you had time to do so?”

Thanks, Alison & Lindsay! Great question(s), and ones that I have been asked a lot, so it’s great that I’ll now be able to send people this handy URL for the answer!

The “Why” of this topic is easy to answer: I “suffer” from ADHD. I was officially diagnosed in my 30s, but of course have had it since I was little and my way of coping was to try and get my hands into as many things as possible. ADHD can be great. You’re never bored. You seem to know lots and lots of things. You can’t really become the master of anything, because focusing is extremely difficult and – ooh! Shiny! – but it makes you great at parties because you never have a lull in topics you know a tiny bit about. Side note: if anyone reading this knows of and trusts an ADHD coach, please send ‘em my way.

I can make decent noises on: the tin whistle, the recorder, the Irish flute, the accordion, harmonica, clarinet, guitar, mandolin, 5-string mandolin, ukulele, banjo, and a few others. How did I learn these instruments? Probably the easiest way for me to answer that one is to break things down by instrument.

Tin Whistle/Recorder:

I start here because the first instrument I ever played was a plastic recorder, given to all the kids in my elementary class to teach the very basics of music. You might have gotten one, too. I loved it, and was the only kid in my class that stuck with the recorder. The recorder is a flute that evolved from the tin (penny) whistle, a simple wind instrument that is tied to Ireland and Scotland. If you can play the recorder, you can make sounds on the tin whistle. I got my first tin whistle in Virginia at an “old timey shoppe” and it sat on a shelf for a long time. In college I started playing traditional Irish tunes on the whistle with my Irish roommate Christopher. I fell in love with Irish music and it’s still my go-to practice when I just want to play.

Harmonica:

My grandfather gave me a box of harmonicas one Christmas when I was around 11. It was the kind of weird gift John Frank (our name for our very tall, very austere grandfather) would give us: after all the flashy, fun toys there was one completely unwrapped thing that we were supposed to open. Usually pottery, or Russian stacking dolls, or other trinkets from he and my grandmother Honey’s trips around the world. Stuff that little kids didn’t really appreciate, in other words.

And I didn’t especially appreciate the harmonicas, to be honest. A box of harmonicas is such a strange thing to give a little kid, but I love that he didn’t just give me one. He gave me close to a dozen, in a bunch of different keys. The harmonica is a diatonic instrument, which means that you can only play a range of keys with one. If you’re in a band you need quite a few to be able to play songs in many different keys. I have about twenty accessible at any given time: major and minor tunings.

It’s normal to give a kid a harmonica in the key of C, say. They can learn how to play, see if they like it, and if so, they can buy any other key they need. But John Frank gave me a full set. It was as if he knew that I’d grow up and use all of them all the time.

Melodica:

The next year John Frank gave me a melodica that had belonged to him. It was a Hohner, but a very old one, extremely well made. Very little plastic on it…the thing had a gorgeous wood frame and Bakelite keys. It was still working (mostly) when we recorded Licorice Tea Demos, but the reeds finally gave out, and I spent a LOT of pre-internet time trying to fix it, to no avail. The new melodicas, honestly, are extremely disappointing. Cheaply made, cheaper sounding, not in tune, and they don’t last very long. As the US president says: “Sad!”.

Clarinet:

I thought that the clarinet was similar to the recorder, and I had to choose an instrument that I wanted to play in middle school. It isn’t that similar to the recorder, but the clarinet ended up being a big part of my life for many years. I know now that it was just a “gateway instrument” to the rest of my life; playing it allowed me to get on stage and perform. I was accepted into art school for clarinet. I don’t think I was ever really in love with it, and never miss playing it, but I’m grateful to it for setting me on a very interesting life path. And I still get psyched when I hear a recording of Mozart K622. That adagio is sweet as hell!

Accordion:

I asked to have piano lessons when I was small. It looked fun to me. I had a great teacher until she moved away and then I had a sexy but unpleasant teacher that replaced her and I stopped taking piano. My left hand is shit but you don’t really need a good left hand when playing piano accordion. Note to people that want to play the accordion but are scared of the left-hand bass buttons: don’t worry about ‘em. Find a bass player instead and get on with your life.

The first accordion I bought was during the making of the Licorice Tea Demos, and I bought one because my grandfather’s melodica was falling apart (see above). Buying accordions can be a sickness; I have owned a total of four in my time and they’re really hard to give away. Would anyone like to buy an accordion?

Mandolin:

Jay and Ward played guitar. I wanted something to play that would allow me to “jump around” and “rock out”. They didn’t want to have another guitar in the band, so I picked up a mandolin. Of all the instruments I have learned, this was the toughest, because I had no concept of stringed instruments. But you work through it. Later I commissioned a fellow in the depths of South Carolina to build me a custom electric mandolin with five strings (hot pink, SG style) and I still love that abomination. People always wonder what The Abomination is. Based on the way it’s tuned, I suppose you should rightly call it “an electric piccolo cittern”.

You may notice some patterns forming. Playing an instrument is like learning languages. If you learn one, fine. Learn two pretty well, and the third one is easier to pick up. Four, five, six…they’re all variations on a theme.

My love of playing the recorder led to picking up the tin whistle easily. Clarinet isn’t that similar, but once I learned how to play it, I was able to play other reed instruments like the saxophone and oboe. Taking piano let me be competent enough on the melodica, and the accordion is basically a melodica that you don’t blow into. The harmonica was tough. But you can fit one in your pocket and I had a whole box of them lying around. The good news is that I can pick up a button accordion or concertina and get around based on what I know about the harmonica. Mandolin was also a stretch, but once I developed some calluses I’ve been able to play the banjo, guitar, and bass guitar.

The best way to learn a new instrument, especially if you have ADHD? Make it hard to ignore. Put it in a pocket, on the living room table, visible on a shelf. You’ll find that you’re practicing way more than you think, just picking it up and playing for a minute or two. A minute or two can lead to half an hour, or six. You can trick yourself into learning things! This is how I finally cracked the embouchure for the Irish flute.

That should be the “why”, “when” and “how” of your question! If you have any follow ups on this topic, or actually do know an ADHD coach, you can write me at [email protected] or [email protected].

Next question!

#askMatt

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houkuaichuii · 7 years

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Trust Me

It all started out with me listening to a song and getting the vibes. So here you go, children! The Tango Fic that I was entirely too invested in to ignore! Also the fourth theme to my RoyAi 100 Themes Challenge!

Can also be found on ff.net and AO3!

His breath was a whisper on the shell of her ear; warmth spreading throughout her body just from his touch on the small of her back.

“You know you can trust me, Hawkeye,” He started, “Just follow my lead.”

As if she had ever done anything otherwise.

In the middle of the floor was where they stood, amongst the crowd of so many other couples. Hesitance was written in her posture, however, the lack of confidence making itself rather known. She may have been a skilled shooter, though she was far from being a skilled dancer. And yet no matter how much she protested as the man tugged on her arm earlier, he heard none of it.

The strings started to play their tune and she huffed, glaring at the other from behind the mask she wore.

He took a step forward, and her foot clashed with his.

A chuckle escaped his throat, echoing in her ear and she had to resist the urge to quiver.

Damn him.

“It’d help if you would relax, you know,” The man started, his smirk heard by the judgement of the tone used, “And don’t look down--- it’ll just distract you.”

Without a word of reply, Riza took another deep breath, his ever so familiar cologne engulfing the entirety of her being. She paused then, maintaining her composure as she lifted her chin slightly, nearly brushing the contour of her jaw against his exposed cheek. She felt his sharp intake of breath, his grasp around her hand tightening just a tad.

She did not bring herself to grin at the reaction.

Then finally, on the reset of the beat that was accompanied by the piano, they truly began.

Her heels clicked on the marble flooring, her steps counted as her mind remained conscious of where they were placed and when they were to be moved. Besides that, she could barely ignore the way she was held against his form; so close the two were, the essence of intimacy being their ambience. There was the feel of the broadness of his chest in contact with hers, the span of his shoulder just underneath the palm of her hand. His fingers were around hers tenderly, as if she were made of glass.

He breathed out, she breathed in; he stepped out, she stepped in; they had soon fallen into a flow, and it soon became a routine that was entirely too familiar. They followed steps that they had done so many times before, years of experience flowing through her veins. But rather than having her watch his back, she merely observed the way he regarded her through the holes of his burgundy mask, failing to hide the enticement he thought her to be.

It was a silent note made, one that finally graced a smile upon her tinted lips. It was also at that moment when the man spun them in the midst of a stride forward, avoiding those who danced around them. Though with the way things were then, the crowd was quite forgotten and the music played for them alone.

She was light on her toes, nearly gliding around the floor as her partner led the dance. “Trust me,” He had told her, so trust him she did.

Her left foot slid back as his right stretched forward, his arm settling itself just above her waist. He pulled her into him, keeping her steady all the while as he stepped back with the other. Somewhat unconsciously, she wrapped her leg around his, skin revealing itself through the slit of her dress. Exhilaration was caught in their eyes, his gaze darkening as their noses touched, although not quite. The music went on, and their position was straightened, distance non-existent. A quick glance to her mouth, and Riza could very well see the thin line that the man dangerously treaded on. She should have pulled away, knew to do that better than anyone else, but how could she? His hands left a burning sensation through the chiffon fabric of her dress—breathing nearly became a challenge.

A sharp turn in line with the changing note of the concertina, one they had flawlessly executed without reluctance or hesitation. The man smiled, looking at her with a glint of pride.

Charmer.

They motioned through momentum after momentum; freely moving around the space they were given. There was also the undeniable tension within the silence between them; eyes locked together throughout the passing of each second, minute—forever. However, time was of no heed and the two individuals merely basked in the closeness they shared; all in consideration of its rare occurrences.

One, two, he twirled her out, only to tug her back in not a second too soon. Their lips nearly grazed as they dared to turn their heads marginally, his temple resting against hers. She felt his fingers slide up her back, understanding what was to come next after a count of eight. But even so, she could not stop the shiver sent down her spine.

He dipped her backwards and she went along, knowing that she was more than safe in his arms.

After all, she trusted him as much as he trusted her.

She trusted him with so much more than this dance.

She felt his chest expand as he pulled her back up flushed against him. Emotions rode through the way he peered at her, and she could feel them all the way into her bones; the want, the need, the ecstasy of having the heat of her body coincide with his. Her curves, her edges, all beneath his touch, and she knew that he had wanted nothing more than to have her right there, right then. But what a lie it would have been if she were to deny the fact that she, too, mirrored all of those things as well.

Hers were said in the air she breathed out, in the manner of her heel inching its way up his calf smoothly as they rotated in a circle; she being the centre of gravity. It was so bold, an act so audacious that most would have questioned the clarity of her mind and of her thoughts.

Ultimately, the Riza Hawkeye that most knew would have never allowed herself to touch the sun, knowing the risks of losing her wings alongside being burnt. But she had been burnt before, and she was still burning in his hold, albeit the flame ignited inside of her was entirely different to the flames that had set her back alight. She hadn’t so much minded the fire growing in her soul, readily embracing its warmth.

His warmth.

But that night, she was not the Riza Hawkeye most knew, and was simply the woman who fell in love with her father’s student once upon a time.

The sound of the strings and bass continued on, the depth of piano keys drowning the murmurs and whispers amongst those who witnessed the bare performance of seduction. Unbeknownst to the two, so many had taken notice of them as they manoeuvred across the floor with what could have been nearly described as finesse. And it was such irony for a person who did not acknowledge herself as a fine dancer; who’s only ever shown art through the use of guns and bullets. Numerous times she had claimed that dancing was not her forte, yet there she was, gathering attention unknowingly.

Romance filled the hall, as such was the aim of the orchestra that played for the night.

And perhaps it was also the aim of the Fuhrer, who requested the song to be played in the first place. No one really knew.

A step out as his reach stretched.

A turn.

Her back collided with his torso, his mouth so close to her ear once more.

He inhaled her scent, all the while caressing the smoothness of her arm; of her skin.

She exhaled.

The final musical note resonated in the air around them.

#RoyAi #Roy Mustang #Riza Hawkeye #RoyAi fic #FMA Fic #Chie writes.#god knows how much I struggled with this one :'))))#but I hope you guys enjoy!!

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