Andrea Gillis

ANDREA GILLIS IS AN ANOMALY on the local scene, on at least two counts. The songwriter-heavy Boston circuit has never put much of a premium on interpretive singers, least of all those who interpret other songwriters from Boston. What’s more, Gillis is one of a very small group of local singers (Barrence Whitfield and the Illyrians’ Eric Martin are about the only other obvious examples) who’ve come up through the local rock underground while remaining more of an old-school soul/R&B singer. Throw in the fact that she doubles as the main booking agent at Somerville’s Abbey Lounge — and displays an uncanny ability to get along with practically everybody — and you’ve got a performer who’s pretty much defined her own niche. Her solo debut, Want Another? (on the Gentlemen’s label, which was started by that band), just might be the ultimate Abbey Lounge album. The 10 songs embrace soul, pop, and garage rock plus a bit of singer-songwriter introspection.

And nearly all of the Abbey regulars are represented, either as players or as writers. The Gents’ Ed Valauskas produces; "Skinny Mike" Feudale (Coffin Lids), Evan Shore (Muck & the Mires), Jed Parish, Tony Goddess (ex–Papas Fritas), Emily Grogan, and Natalie Flanagan all contribute songs. (Gillis co-wrote six of the 10.) The players include most of the above plus guitarist Asa Brebner, Dents/Marvels bassist Michelle Paulhus, Rudds singer John Powhida, and the nucleus of Gillis’s last band, the R&B-oriented Red Chord.

It takes a strong personality to stand out in that company, and Gillis has one. The disc shows she has more tricks up her sleeve than just the brassy Joplin-esque approach she favored in Red Chord. (That sound does come out in the final two numbers, which were written with that group’s keyboardist, Andrea Gaudette.) The disc sounds like a party, but it also sounds like a singer hitting her stride. Of the outside contributions, only Feudale’s opening "Used Up" suggests something his regular band would do. Shore’s "Moonlight Eyes" is moodier and less Merseybeat than anything in Muck & the Mires’ sets. Tony Goddess wrote two songs with Gillis, but instead of being flat-out pop, they sound as if they would’ve fit comfortably on garage rock’s bible, the Nuggets box. The standout is Parish’s "Drowning," a tune the Gravel Pit used to do, but they could never pull off a full-fledged soul ballad this well. Gillis’s delivery is all the more effective for her never quite cutting loose; the tension underlines the yearning feel of the tune.

"I think a lot of people consider me someone who mainly sings ballads — those and the ‘tough rock chick’ songs," she notes over a beer at the Abbey. "That’s why I was excited about some of the songs that people gave me, because they’re different. I still love R&B, that’s my favorite, but I was always into a lot more than that — hey, I grew up with my uncles listening to Led Zeppelin. So I wanted to show that I could do anything, and I’m hoping that comes across. But I also didn’t want to be too presumptuous about it. That’s why I didn’t do something like put a picture of me on the cover with a guitar in my hand. I wanted to put the focus on me but not to have it all be about me."

She approached the disc the way she’d approach a good weekend at the Abbey: call up all the players she likes and make a party out of it. "I had the idea of doing it like a Motown record, everybody knows each other and plays together and it’s all incestuous. And with all these people, I love their music, and it’s not always the kind of thing I could write myself. I wanted to do some edgier rock, and I knew that people like the Coffin Lids are really great at that. Same thing with Evan — I wanted a song just like one of his." And in one case, Flanagan’s "Sexy Singer," the song was a bit darker than something she might write herself. "Yeah, she can say things like that really well. The song’s not really about being sexy, more about how men approach you when they see you on stage and how they’ll act a certain way around you. But again, I don’t want to be too presumptuous."

Gillis isn’t the only musician to work regularly at the Abbey, though she may be the best at dancing and running a sound board simultaneously. Is it a struggle to keep her life as a performer separate from her life as a booking agent? "I don’t know if I do separate it. If I’m in a band, that helps me to treat the people who play here with some respect. At least they can see that I’m just like anyone else who comes in looking for a show."
- Boston Phoenix- Brett Milano

As I wait for Andrea Gillis to arrive at the Abbey Lounge for this interview, I'm lost in thought. Teddy is behind the bar dispensing after-work beers to contractors and waitresses still in uniform, Robin Williams is on the big new TV eulogizing his dear friend Christopher Reeve, and the regulars are loudly debating Pedro's chances against Godzilla in Game 2 of the playoffs. It occurs to me that the table I occupy sits roughly in the spot where the old bathrooms used to be. Cramped, dark, and stinky. Quintessential dive cans. I think back even further to a time before the Abbey Lounge had music at all. I used to walk up Beacon Street from my apartment to Inman Square, wary of the grizzled locals milling outside this creepy-looking dungeon of a place with its one narrow window blocked with something black and fitted with a dusty neon sign. I try to pinpoint when it was that the Schnockered crew started to spread the word that there would be music in this unlikely place. I probably heard the rumor and dismissed the idea until, walking past one night, a hand-scribbled sign outside made an unbelievable declaration: The Gravel Pit, local pop powerhouse extraordinaire fronted by consummate showman Jed Parish, would be playing. At the Abbey Lounge.

And so it was. And then there was music. And it was good. And that once creepy-looking place feels like home now.

These days, the Abbey has new bathrooms that are bigger, brighter and better-smelling. There are two TVs, a wine bar and a slick illuminated sign behind the stage. The sound is awesome. A park bench outside consoles expelled smokers. The booze is still cheap, the locals still hang out, the rock 'n' roll beckons and so the Abbey is everybody's favorite dive. To prove it, last year's annual Award for Best Club went to the Abbey, edging out the snootier Middle East for the first time in eleven years.

"Sorry I'm late," says a breathless Andrea Gillis, breaking me from my reverie. "Ginger ale and lime?" she asks with a smile, her inner bartender showing as she gets me my favorite non-booze drink from the bar. Over my shoulder I hear Andrea talking to Teddy and to some of the regulars. Her voice is warm, her exuberance genuine. She says something and a hearty laugh rises up. Everybody here loves her, it's clear.

There's no other way to say it. Andrea Gillis is one seriously rockin' chick.

Part of the Abbey's rise to local legend can be attributed to Andrea, who's worked behind the bar, at the door, at the sound board, and in the booking office of this beloved little place for years. She's at her sizzling and sultry best, though, on stage. Her band, Red Chord, made local history in this place and then took their show on the road to New England and New York, then crossed the pond to woo Ireland.

Red Chord was a six-piece blues rock band founded in 1999 when Andrea, having just been let go from her job, met Andrea "Flower" Gaudette at a bar. Almost immediately the duo began performing Christmas songs together. As it turned out, the pairing of the two Andreas was pure magic. Flower was a classically trained New England Conservatory musician, while Andrea, though she loved to sing, never even got into the choir at school.

"I got an N in Music."

An N?

"Needs Improvement!"

In no time, the Red Chord ensemble had hit the ground running. Andrea sang, Flower played keys, J. Grimaldi played bass, Emily Grogan added both sax and acoustic guitar, Eamonn McKeever held down electric guitar, and Ken Schopf did drum duty. It was practically a supergroup with all members already well-respected for their prior projects. Ken's old band, Slide, even has a CD in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

With Red Chord, Andrea carved a niche for herself on the local rock stage. Her rich, soulful voice put her in the running for Best Female Vocalist in various polls and contests, and earned her the 2003 Maxie. Red Chord became a local favorite, and their song "Taxi" featured on Dawson's Creek, generated even more buzz. They put out a ten-song live CD, Wicked... Live at the Abbey, and that proved a fitting format for this edgy blues-rock band that could whip a room into a gyrating frenzy, largely due to Andrea's compelling stage presence. "I love being on stage. I love it more than anything. Except cooking. And one other thing I won't mention," she says with a wicked grin. Red Chord's repertoire included some killer covers, including "Summertime," which Andrea caressed and sculpted into a dynamic show stopper.

"You know what? It's very easy to sing a good song. It's very hard to sing a bad song." It is that basic belief in the power of a good song that led to Andrea's newest endeavor. With Red Chord's members busy with other projects, Andrea was positively bursting to get back on stage and into the studio. She was too antsy to get started to begin at square one writing songs and finding band members and rehearsing. "I said to myself, wow, I am surrounded by all these talented people. I could do something to show people how talented my friends are!" So she decided to start collecting songs from various songwriters she respects and head into the studio to record those. The more musicians she talked to, the bigger the project grew until she had so many songs to choose from that it was almost impossible to narrow it down. "Evan Shore (Muck & the Mires) alone gave me five! If I could have, I'd have recorded all of the songs."

In the frenzied year and a half since getting the idea, Andrea and crew wrote, rewrote, recorded and produced enough songs to make for one hell of a CD. Three of her Red Chord bandmates contributed, and a couple of Red Chord songs are included. "Those songs are like my kids. They have to be in my life. To tell me those songs could never be performed again would be like telling me I couldn't see my kids again." When the dust settled, songwriting credits included Skinny Mike Feudale (Coffin Lids), Evan Shore (Muck & the Mires), J. Grimaldi, Natalie Flanagan, Jed Parish, Tony Goddess (Papas Fritas), Andrea "Flower" Gaudette, and Emily Grogan.

Because they were culled from a cross-section of local songwriters, the songs on the new CD range from pop to garage to blues to classic rock and "there's even a few ballads. 'Jar' is an old Red Chord ballad I wrote with Flower. The amazing thing about Flower is, I'll write a song---and remember I don't play an instrument---and I'll sing it to her and she'll play it so I can hear what I'd had in my head." Another ballad, "Fainting," is an old Gravel Pit song written by Jed Parish and is one of the many songs produced by Ed Valauskus. "Ed is fucking amazing," says Andrea. "One of the most super-talented people I've ever met. I needed someone like him for this. I'm very lucky."

Luck may have something to do with it, but not all. Collaboration is a cornerstone of Andrea's musical life, and not every performer is able to collaborate well due to egos getting in the way or need for creative control. For Andrea, a social animal, collaboration feels natural. "I like to have people around me. It's a choice you make. On this CD, I can honestly say that every song is a great song."

One very powerful song was inspired by the bartender, Teddy, who'd just made my ginger ale and lime. At the time of this writing Teddy was about to head to Iraq. It's called "Another Woman," and Andrea wrote it with Tony Goddess. "It's about a guy who's sitting there wondering, should I get involved with someone? Should I not, when I'm about to go off to a war torn country?" It's a heavy subject, but the song is rooted in sixties pop.

Andrea's passionate vocals certainly stand out on the CD, but the musicianship is stunning. And, the line-up is a veritable Who's Who of Boston rock. Once you realize how many musicians put their iron in this fire, it's clear why Andrea chose to do a CD release in the form of a weekly residency this month at the Abbey featuring different musicians each week. On drums, Ken Schopf and Bruce Caporal. On bass, Jeremy Curtis (Elbow/ Sticky), Joe McMahon (Señor Happy) and Michelle Paulhus (The Dents/ The Marvels). Guitar is supplied by Asa Brebner, Melissa Gibbs, Jason Landry, Eric Saulnier, and Tony Savarino. Matt Beaudoin helped out on piano, and John Powhida and Seth Davis contributed additional vocals. Andrea revels in the local rock community's support and friendship, and acknowledges that her job booking the Abbey Lounge has helped shape her insight into, and attitude about, being a performer. For this direct, guileless woman, it all comes down to a concept so simple that Bill and Ted even had a slogan for it: be excellent to each other.

"If you're gonna treat people like jerks," she says matter-of-factly, "you'll get treated like a jerk right back."

Definitely catch Andrea tearing it up at the CD release residency, every Wednesday in November at the Abbey Lounge. Some of the bands helping celebrate the new CD are Triple Thick, Heavy Stud, Asa Brebner, Coffin Lids, Muck & the Mires, and The Dents. redchord.com

- The Noise- Lexi Kahn

Don't expect a shy, retiring night of music from Andrea Gillis. "I like the primal side," she says. Gillis, who has been knocking people out with the power of her voice, adds, "I like to get up there and sing from the gut and scream."

The South Boston native has been churning up emotions with her new album, "Want Another?" It's a rock-em, sock-em mix of R&B, soul, and punky garage-rock that defies categorization -- just the way she likes it.

"People make a record today and all the songs sound the same," she says. "But years ago there were more records that blended rock and soul and ballards and rootsy songs. I saw the Ray Charles movie ("Ray") and remembered how he did everything from gospel to soul to country. That's what impressed me."

Gillis's all-time favorite singer is Etta James. "Her album 'Etta James Rocks the House' is definitely the best live record ever," Gillis says of the 1964 recording. "And what I like about Etta is that she also sang a lot of men's songs, by people like Otis Redding. And she also did a beautiful job on standards."

For her new album, Gillis, 30, co-wrote some numbers (two each with bandmates Andrea Gaudette and Tony Goddess) and covered tracks by Boston tunesmiths including Natalie Flanagan, Jed Parrish, "Skinny" Mike Feudale of the Coffin Lids, and Evan Shore of Muck and the Mires.

Nearly 20 Boston musicians play on the album. "We've got Asa Brebner on it, Melissa Gibbs (of Heavy Stud) and Michelle Paulhus (of the Dents)." Gillis says. "And Ed Valauskas (of the Gentlemen) produced it. I decided "Hey, I'm paying for it myself, so I'll do what I want to do."

LENGTH OF TIME PERFORMING: Seven years professionally. Her previous band was Red Chord.

MUSICAL INFLUENCES: Etta James, Rolling Stones, various Motown Artists, and Led Zeppelin.

WHO SHE THINKS SHE SOUNDS LIKE: "I've listened to enough, so I'd have to say Etta James."

SHE'LL KNOW SHE'S MADE IT WHEN: "My grandmother knows my songs."

QUIRKY FACT ABOUT HER: "When I was 18 or 19, I'd get free cab rides because I'd sing like Billie Holiday for the drivers."
- Boston Globe- Steve Morse