a brokeheart pro

A BROKEHEART PRO is not your average release that you would find reviewed in these pages, and not necessarily the type of music people seem to expect me to listen to; as a matter of fact, it just might be all the kinds of music I listen to wrapped up into one amazingly diversified arrangement of 11 tracks. Before I get too deep into the CD, you’ll need a lesson on the mastermind behind this project…Jeanette Louise Kantzalis. Yes, I said mastermind
in the singular and not the plural for a reason. A Brokeheart Pro’s first release, The Kitten Next Door, is performed, written, recorded,
and released by Jeanette, and Jeanette alone. Getting interested
yet? Then read on.Jeanette began her adventure in Southern California’s Inland Empire, holed up in her grandmother’s
garage with a four-track and every instrument she could get her hands on (or whatever wasn’t in the pawn shop that month), none of which she was formally trained in. After being offered a few demo deals, but later passed on by the three C’s, (Capitol, Columbia, and CBS records), she kept working at two full-time jobs, going to school, and writing her music at night until eventually she was discovered by Steven Rosen of the Peer/Southern Publishing Company. After being signed as a songwriter, she proceeded to get turned down by the likes of Taylor Dayne, Sheryl Crow, and Madonna because her lyrics were too personal and too dirty (yes, too dirty for Madonna). Peer then decided to recoup on their investment by selling her as a singer/songwriter in her own right. After one of her tracks ended up on the soundtrack for Fathers and Sons, she found herself in the middle of a bidding war between five major labels and decided to roll with A&M.After rejecting the advances from the president of her label, she was unceremoniously
dropped following the release of her first album. Broke, broken, and disillusioned, she returned home with the clothes on her back, her Suzuki Samurai, her beloved 8-track, and $57.00 to her name. The punk-rock peers she had left behind didn’t take kindly to her homecoming,
and they met her with cold shoulders and icy stares as she sold her new demo packages (a cassette tape with a patch in a Ziploc bag) at the local punk clubs. Opportunity came knockin’ again when a demo baggie found its way into the hands of anti-mogul “Long Gone John” of Sympathy For The Record Industry, whose stable has included The White Stripes, Hole, Veruca Salt, and Bad Religion. A mere 15 seconds into the first song, LGJ asked her what she wanted to do. She simply responded, “I’d like to do an album,” to which he immediately agreed. “The problem is,” she explained, “I don’t have a band. Nobody around here wants to play with me, so it would just be me doing it all on my 8-track.” John told her that was fine by him and that he liked the songs just the way they were anyway, and her next project, The Chubbies, was born.She went on to release 11 albums and 14 various compilations and singles with LGJ and recruited her best friend Christine Kings for drums and backing vocals and toured worldwide in a yellow short bus over the next seven years.After giving birth to her son and recording another five releases in the time she was pregnant, she decided she wanted to try another sound. Something of a rockabilly, rootsy, alt-country-type thing. She started recording on the very same 8-track right about the same time a new website by the name of myspace was about to grab hold of the music industry and everyone else with an Internet connection for that matter. So she created a myspace page just to see what would happen for her new project entitled, A Brokeheart Pro. She continued to post her demos on the page, receiving 500 hits a day with no promotion, no touring, and no album. Once her collection of demos reached 11 tracks, ABP’s first album, The Kitten Next Door, was born.Somewhere between here and there, Jeanette requested our friendship on myspace, and since I get about five pages of requests a day, I try to check out each one of them before I add them. When the track “You Don’t Know” ripped through my speakers, I was immediately captivated. I listened to all four songs on the page and just had to let her know how badass I thought the stuff was, so I sent her an email. She fired right back at me, and here we are with this interview. I warned her that I would probably get a ration of shit for promoting a non-Seattle-based act, but hell, it’s my magazine, I’ll take the risk. But before you crucify me for it, I dare you to go listen to it yourself. Before I even knew the real story behind Jeanette, I was already sold on A Brokeheart Pro. It had a very dark, moody, passionate feel to it where each song makes you feel like you’re reading someone’s diary when they’re not looking. The first two cuts sound like something from a soundtrack of one of Quentin Tarantino’s wet dreams. The closing cut has the painful, beautiful,
and emotional feel reminiscent of the work Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti collaborated on for David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Take those two comparisons, add the vocal stylings of a Gwen Stefani meets Chrissie Hynde, add some brutal honesty, a kick-you-in-the-nuts attitude…and you’ve got The Kitten Next Door. The tracks range from rockabilly, country, punk rock, and pop ballads to concoct the perfect mixture.When chatting with Jeanette, I couldn’t help but ask if she was a bit of a control freak like me, since she seems to do everything herself. Her answer was, “I like doing exactly what I want to do. People don’t usually move fast enough for me, so it’s nice to keep it going at a racehorse’s pace.” When asked about her inspirations, she gave me the same name I just heard last month when interviewing Charlie Drown: “I heard Prince in beauty school, and he just did me in. He had that honesty and humor about his sexuality and that darkness. He spoke to me. I didn’t want to be with him, I wanted to BE him! I wanted to be that free. And from there I was open. I listened to punk, metal, pop, power pop, Beatles, Beach Boys, Material Issue, Elvis Costello…anywhere
a good song was lurking,
I was there.”Jeanette is the perfect example of a songwriter and entertainer, driven with hellacious
commitment and passion for her music. I honestly don’t think anything can stand in her way. Just check her out at myspace.com/abrokeheartpro to see for yourself. - Erotic Underground