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Shari Pine Feature Interview March 2012
See Link for full Interview.
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Vents Magazine Interviews Shari Pine
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One look at Shari Pine, and you’d probably think, cute, eclectic, New Yorker, playing quiet Norah Jo...One look at Shari Pine, and you’d probably think, cute, eclectic, New Yorker, playing quiet Norah Jones songs behind a piano, but you’d be wrong, this woman can belt it out with the best of them. Starting out as a pop/R&B singer, she discovered ...
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Shari Pine 2010 Blues Battleground Winner!!
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This year's South Orange International Blues Festival "Battleground" winner is Shari Pine. She wins...This year's South Orange International Blues Festival "Battleground" winner is Shari Pine. She wins a spot on the Festival bill opening up for Michael Hill and the Blues Mob. The Festival is sponosred by Sam Ash Music.
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Shari Pictorial
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This month was all about the Girl Effect and the Woman Power. It unofficially became a Woman’s Mont...This month was all about the Girl Effect and the Woman Power. It unofficially became a Woman’s Month at Urb’l Remedy. Though I didn’t touch on it directly in last week’s R&R, what I was proposing was still in line with the idea of the Girl Effect. That is, that we all affect each other and can have a positive influence over one another with positive inter-connectivity. I think it was still in the spirit of this month’s posts. Featuring a female vocalist this week is in line with that.
I gave Joseph and Shari three concepts to choose from and Joseph added one to the mix. One idea I had was to emulate a scavenger hunt in New York featuring iconic locales, buildings, people, and places. Being in Austin, I figured that since they’re based in NYC we should take advantage of that. Joseph added to it that since Shari is a blues singer, that they be either “blue” locales or have some sort of “blue” connotation or connection. I liked that and we went with it.
I am showcasing six final photos from this shoot. They shot on location in and around New York's Times Square on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. I thank Mr. Silva and Ms. Pine for being open to this type of collaboration and to the creative process as it progressed. This is the first photo shoot for this feature by a guest photographer.
You can check out more of Joseph Silva’s photography at his official site, ‘like’ his Facebook Page, and follow him on Twitter.
Find out more about Shari Pine at her official site. She is scheduled to play the South Orange International Blues Festival (SOIBF), the largest free blues festival in South Jersey, on Sunday, September 18, 2011. She returns to the festival for the second year in a row and will be a special guest at the 2011 season kick-off on Wednesday, July 27, 2011. Go to the SOIBF Facebook Page for deets.
Follow me on Twitter! @freddiebeat
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Interview with ShariPine, NYC
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Q. How did the project come into existence?
My latest release, The Painter, was a pop project th...Q. How did the project come into existence?
My latest release, The Painter, was a pop project that I had to get off my chest. I carried it around in my head for a long time and had to get it 'down on paper' which meant going in the studio.
Q.Who are the members of the band if any and please tell us about it?
As of this interview I am still searching for my Dream Team. I have a pool to choose from and tailor my choices to fit the gig. It's not the ideal but.. As far as records, anyone can read the credits on The Painter and see who was on the session. I had some heavy hitters. We all do at some point. You'd have to come to a live show to see who's on a particular gig or you could hear about it later.
Q How would you describe your sound/genre?
Low down, dirty rip- the- room with- the -Teena -Marie- meets- Albert King -soul. It's funked up.
Q. What formal training or previous experience do any of the members have?
All the players that play with me (checkers, bridge) have either been out on the road with major label artists, are currently on the road in traffic, or will be hitting the road if they ain't hot. Some are graduates of prestigious music institutes and others are just natural born killers on their instrument - now they got the fire.
Q. Are you working w/ a producer on your upcoming album?
The Painter was produced, arranged and written by yours truly. I would really like to hand the reigns over to someone so I can just sing. Know anyone?
Q. Who would you say has been the biggest influence on the bands sound or that you have used as inspiration for your music?
Aretha, Tower of Power, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Burt Bachrach inspire me as do Herb Alpert, Jill Scott and Todd Rundgren. There's not much music that I dislike or that doesn't make it's way in to my heart and show up in my writing. We all do it.
Q.What advice would you give to others starting out?
Always have 3 tunes up your sleeve. Learn other perople's material and kill 'em with kindness.
Q. Where can people go to learn more about you and hear your music?
They can go to my live shows which are in/around NYC, and to my websites: www.cdbaby.com/sharipine or www.sharipine.com or www.sonicbids.com/sharipine
Q. If you could play anywhere in the world or with anyone you wanted where and who would it be with?
I've been asked this alot and I seem to always come back to wanting to play the more intimate venues like The Beacon (NYC) or The Paradise or Orpheum (Boston) and with a killer band which doesn't necessarily mean one with lots of bells and whistles as much as with groove and timing...and of course, horns!. Derek Trucks' Band, or Janis' Full Tilt Boogie come to mind.
Q. What has been your greatest experience so far either individually or as a whole?
Rehearsing a piece at The MET with the Paris Opera's piano soloist a few years back. The Paris Opera Ballet was in town and I met their pianist who knew I was a trained coloratura and asked me to sing a piece during his rehearsal time. I think we did "Ozzitre Nicht" from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute.) It was gorgeous. As entertainment goes, it doesn't get any grander than opera.
Q. Do you have any upcoming events or news you would like to tell our readers about?
I'll be at The Bitter End, NYC for a Nov., 27th show. Showtime is 8PM tickets are $10. www.BitterEnd.com
Q. Where do you see yourselves or hope to be in about 5 years?
A place that's not too high and not too low.
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Artist of the Month May 2010
By Isaac Davis Jr.
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Magic Slim features Shari Pine, NYC Terra Blues
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On a winter night in New York, guitars and gin speak no secrets
Magic is why we are here, Magic Sl...On a winter night in New York, guitars and gin speak no secrets
Magic is why we are here, Magic Slim, one of last of the best.
Take his measure and stand alongside him. It’s like using a Kodiak bear for a yards
tick. He even growls -- if from the stage -- where he plays feral licks with a smile, Chicago mojo that stabs deep.
Wizardry begs the question. How did Slim come to be Magic?
He’s an ace on the Les Paul or Fender Jazzmaster but he didn’t grow up playing the guitar. His ax was the piano until a gin mill accident took the small finger on his right hand. He was about fifteen when he took up the six-string.
He didn’t start with the blues either. His métier was bluegrass and C&W and it’s on a Nashville radio station that he first hears John Lee Hooker. It resets his compass. “When I heard it, I caught it – that night,” he says.
From Mississippi to Chicago Slim falls in with his Grenada school buddy, Magic Sam. Sam gives him the name ‘Slim’ but not the handle ‘Magic.’ Despite malarkey on the Net, Slim never plays in one of Sam’s bands. More pointedly, when Slim and Sam play together, even as kids on green Mississippi grass, it’s Sam on lead and Slim on bass.
Chicago gets too hot for Slim. He has to go because he says, “A Lot of ‘em wouldn’t let me sit in. They said I couldn’t play, wasn’t old enough.”
Slim gives up on Chicago but he doesn’t give up. He takes a sabbatical, heads for Ole Miss and home schooling. Whatever he taught himself, it shut up the other guys when he returned to Chi-Town. With no small measure of authority he says, “When I come back, nobody want to mess with me.” There’s an argument to be made that Slim came back from Mississippi with more than fast hands – he came back with character. We’ll get to hear what Slim learned when he takes the spotlight for the first time at New York’s Terra Blues.
What will he play? It’s a mystery to members of the band. Hazard a guess? They’re amused by questions about a set list. Unspoken words can be read on their faces: you gotta be kidding! There is no set list. There never is and never was. Just too many rabbits Magic can pull out of his hat. At our first meeting earlier at the Holland Tunnel Motor Lodge (doesn’t get any better than this, does it?) Slim is quizzed about the catalogue of songs he can call up, reputed to be vast beyond measure.
“Do you know dozens of songs or is it scores?”
“More”, he says.
“Do you know hundreds?”
“More,” says Slim.
Crossing the 1,000 mark, a suspicion begins to emerge that the song vault in Slim’s head may be less of a library than it is a trough.
We follow Slim in a car through the Holland Tunnel to Greenwich Village and at the club, he parks at the bar. Beneath the shade of a broad-rimed cowboy hat, he sips Remy Martin, “The good stuff,” he says. He welcomes strangers and talks to old friends. Both will end up on stage before the night is over.
Slim’s band, The Teardrops (Jon Macdonald on second lead, Vernal Taylor on drums and Danny O’Conner on bass) have been warming up the house propitiously with “Hoodoo Man.” It’s a crowd pleaser. It also makes a generations-old claim on music as the shaman’s gris gris, in other words, magic.
Conjure hoodoo, shadows may follow.
The Teardrops’ next song is Junior Wells’ “Come on in This House.” Slim’s tour manager, Michael Blakemore happens to be Wells’ nephew. He plays harp which raises a question about what Junior taught him. “Not a thing,” he replies. “Can you believe that?” Blakemore can’t. Even now it threatens to be a loose wire in his emotional circuitry. Junior did offer some advice. ‘If you want to learn to play, go out there and do it yourself.’
Blakemore might as well be explaining Slim’s own Chicago crossroads. It’s what Slim did. He left Dodge. He came back sheriff.
“Are you ready for Magic time!” is the cry from the stage. At 73, Slim takes Blakemore’s hand to ascend the short steps to the microphone. For three generous sets, he rests on a stool but when he wants, he summons the kick of a young mule.
Slim opens with a galloping version of “I Got the Blues.” It’s signature Slim and a template for the evening which is not about reinventing the blues but preserving it.
Don’t look for prayers. Expect defiance. Bet on stomping feet.
This is where mystery leads us. Slim, who got shown the door in Chicago, has become Chicago incarnate. We’re getting more than a show. We’re getting Slim-ology 101. And at the University of Slim, like the boast of one of his album titles, anything can happen. It pretty much does this February night.
After saddling up with “I Got the Blues” Slim eases up on the reigns for “The Man You Need” and for a brief moment, but not the last, another specter is in the house, that of Howlin’ Wolf. Slim has adopted Wolf’s peculiar Mel Blank- helium- on-motor oil voice as his own, as an alter ego, wryly telling the audience, “I ain’t lyin’ to ya.” From a guy who sat in with Wolf (and just about every other legend) it’s a gas, gas, gas.
“D’ain’t no problem,” he says later about Wolf-speak. “I practice that stuff, especially for the girls.”
Bobbleheads to the beat we are as Slim and the band settle into the groove for “Older Woman.”
Slim is firing notes as if he was striking a match with each string.
For “Look On Yonder Wall,” the band reaches a summit, a crescendo of raw instinct and power. Slim’s fingers are running the show. At the Motor Lodge Slim avers, “You never learn everything about a guitar. You always learn something when you pick it up. “
The first set ends with an instrumental. It’s well-played but what was it? Nobody knows. The members of the band don’t have a clue and Slim doesn’t have a name for it. It’s brand new.
Over the course of the rest of the evening, Slim rolls out “Honey Bee,” “Mind Your Own Business,” and “I’m a Bluesman.” ‘Round midnight, during the second set, the joint is packed. Slim brings out Philly harp-meister Bob who fronts his own posse (SlimBob and the New Electrics) for “You Can’t Lose What You Never Had.” It’s loose but not sloppy.
Open house is pretty much the agenda because out of nowhere, Slim calls to the bar for Shari Pine. Not just caught off guard, this is a shock of klieg light-magnitude. She has never played with Slim in her life. Think test for which you never studied. Think siren-blaring smokey driving up your tailpipe. Pine sucks it up and soldiers on to the stage to join Slim for “Dr. Feelgood.” It sounds pretty good.
On a roll, Slim goes for the trifecta, bringing out Gordon Meier to play lead. He’s aggressive, knows his tunes and knows Slim who yields the role of ringmaster. Gordon calls the tune and goes way back to Coleman Pettis (also known as Daddy Rabbit as well as Alabama Jr.) who played not only with Slim but with Wolf. He said it, “felt good to keep his (Petitis’) spirit alive.” The song is "Got A Little Woman."
It’s a country mile beyond today’s cookie cutter conventions and it’s another reason why we’re here. We get history with Slim. We get respect for elders. Meier says he’s known him for nearly 30 years but, “he still hits me with stuff I never heard before.” Slim even hits him with stuff that has never been recorded. “Amazing,” he says.
Even with a guide through Old Testament Blues, there remains the ceremony of the unknown. No Book of Revelations here. Lips are sealed. The band’s a barnburner and their secret is now our secret.
So it seems. A few days later, our quixotic quest is met with a blessing and Slim explains the origin of ‘Magic.’ It’s sui generis. “I named myself,” he says.
Then again, calling yourself Magic doesn’t mean you are magic. In a way, we are left where we began. The Hoodoo man is mystery. Like moonlight on water, you can see it but you can’t touch it.
After all, it’s Slim’s magic emporium, amulets in song, spells for heart and heartbreak. And one thing is certain. When it’s gone, there will be nothing to take its’ place.
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Rising Blues Lady
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"... I met a young woman who has been enthusiastically endorsed by father dan - he produces the blue..."... I met a young woman who has been enthusiastically endorsed by father dan - he produces the blues / rock concerts out of the ukrainian american hall in whippany - Blues Rev Productions - Shari Pine has a rising blues band that is making tsunamis around the area..." - John Muller, former Vice President of Blues Power Blues Society and Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Foundation media correspondent.
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CD Release "The Painter"
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"New Yorker Shari Pine mixes traditional and contemporary blues with an upbeat, poppy vibe. She dubs..."New Yorker Shari Pine mixes traditional and contemporary blues with an upbeat, poppy vibe. She dubs her sound "Hip-pop," making pop music cool again. With her 2008 debut album, "The Painter," Pine's audience has grown to love her songs, reminding listeners at times of Aretha Franklin or Janis Joplin with original, storytelling lyrics. For live shows, Pine doesn't stray far from New York venues, but her fans say her performances are worth the trip." - Jewish Advocate
