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Keri Noble should have called her new album "Changes." Since releasing her ballyhooed 2004 debut with the team that launched Norah Jones, the Minneapolis piano popster has changed record labels twice, managers twice, married and divorced, and changed her hair color several times.
She almost changed careers, too. "I thought I could learn something else," Noble said. "So I entertained a lot of ideas that were completely non-artistic. A physical trainer. A hairdresser, since I love hair. I even joked about being a waitress."
After a time with EMI-owned Manhattan Records, Noble was fed up with the music business. She didn't like being told how to make music, how to wear her hair and how to lie about her age. (She was 28 at the time, but the label's bio subtracted two years.) While she sold nearly 100,000 copies of her CD ("Fearless"), she asked to be released from her contract.
So she instinctively said "No" when a top executive at modest-sized Telarc Records called to offer a recording deal. Though hesitant, she flew to Cleveland to visit Telarc and -- surprise -- "I felt valued," she said. "It was genuine. And they don't have another pop artist." She decided to sign.
While her debut was heavy on ballads, "Keri Noble" is a more well-rounded collection -- R&B, gospel, ballads, pop, even a little rock. From the opener "Watch Me Walk," this CD exudes a more fully realized femininity. Noble will celebrate the new album with her band Monday at the Guthrie Theater, and then she'll hit the road solo next month.
In January, she did a brief tour of Japan, where she has enjoyed two hit songs. "My audience there is a huge female deal," Noble said. "What I hear them saying -- all the lyrics are translated on the CD booklet -- they feel some sort of empowerment from a woman singing songs like 'Watch Me Walk.'"
Japanese women seem to recognize Noble, whether her hair was blond (as on the cover of "Fearless") or dark red (the cover of "Keri Noble"). Last week, though, she favored sort of a blue/black.
"I'm naturally a brunette," she admitted. "This just happens to be the look of the moment. I can't ever go back to blond. I feel like every time I looked in the mirror, I didn't feel it was me. I'll probably go back and forth between reds and browns. I got a phone call from my guy at the label who was respectfully asking if I might keep the same look for a little while so that I look like I do on the CD. And I will."
- Star Tribune/Vita.MN (Jon Bream)
Keri Noble should have called her new album "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes." Since releasing her ballyhooed 2004 debut with the team that launched Norah Jones, the Minneapolis piano popster has changed record labels twice, managers twice, married and divorced, and changed her hair color several times.
She almost changed careers, too. "I thought I could learn something else," Noble said. "So I entertained a lot of ideas that were completely nonartistic. A physical trainer. A hairdresser, since I love hair. I even joked about being a waitress here because I was a waitress before."
After a big dance with EMI-owned Manhattan Records, Noble was fed up with the music business. She didn't like being told how to make music, how to wear her hair and how to lie about her age. (She was 28 at the time, but the label's bio shaved off two years.) While she sold more than 30,000 copies of her CD, "Fearless," she asked to be released from her contract with Manhattan.
So she instinctively said "No" when a top executive at modest-sized Telarc Records called to offer a recording deal.
The courtship took a while. "I'm not 18; I don't have stars in my eyes," Noble said she told Telarc. "I'm not going to be easy like I was before."
Though hesitant, she flew to Cleveland in 2007 to visit Telarc (refusing to even stay overnight) and -- surprise -- "I felt valued," she said. "It was genuine. And they don't have another pop artist."
Noble had already recorded her second album with then-husband/producer Jeff Arundel at their own expense, intending to release it on their own. Instead, she decided to sign with Telarc, home to Afro-pop choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo, blues singer Shemekia Copeland and jazz singer/guitarist John Pizzarelli.
From penthouse to tiny apartment
"She has become very independent artistically and in her life," said Minneapolis entertainment lawyer Ken Abdo, who has known Noble for nine years. "She's really defined her point of view, both artistically and personally."
For Noble, it has been a dramatic change as she literally moved from a penthouse to an apartment so small there's no room for her piano.
"It feels like it's taken a million years to get this album out," said the Texas-born, Detroit-raised Noble, who moved to Minnesota in 2000.
One unforeseen delay was having to deal with and eventually diagnose her reaction to mold in her abodes. "I have serious mold issues," she said. "Most people when they have allergy issues, they get more drippy [nose] and stuffy whereas I just get more dry so sound can't really resonate and then more of the delicate parts of my [vocal] range get blocked off."
Moreover, Telarc wanted time to develop a campaign for Noble's CD. So, last year, she put out two EPs -- one of holiday music, one of pop tunes.
While her debut was heavy on ballads, "Keri Noble" is a more well-rounded collection -- R&B, gospel, ballads, pop, even a little rock. From the opening "Watch Me Walk" to the gospelly "Go Proud," this CD exudes a more fully realized femininity.
Noble will celebrate her just-released album with her band Monday at the Guthrie Theater, and then she'll hit the road solo next month. The tour will include her first national TV appearance, CBS' "Saturday Early Show," on March 7. Meanwhile, her single, "Emily," will be heard Thursday night on "Grey's Anatomy."
Big in Japan
In January, she did a brief tour of Japan, her fifth visit there. She has enjoyed two hit songs there -- both in English ("Talk to Me" and "Look at Me") -- as well as a post-"Fearless" album on the JVC label. She wrote "Look How Far You've Come" as a theme song for a Japanese TV show about a female attorney. "Look at Me" also has been featured in commercials for Shiseido makeup and in the romantic film "Tokyo Tower."
"My audience there is a huge female deal," Noble said. "What I hear them saying -- all the lyrics are translated on the CD booklet -- they feel some sort of empowerment from a woman singing songs like 'Watch Me Walk.'"
The Japanese women seem to recognize Noble, whether her hair was blond (as on the cover of "Fearless") or dark red (the cover of "Keri Noble"). Last week, though, she favored sort of a blue/black.
"I'm naturally a brunette," she admitted. "This just happens to be the look of the moment. I can't ever go back to blond. I feel like every time I looked in the mirror I didn't feel it was me. I'll probably go back and forth between reds and browns. I got a phone call from my guy at the label who was respectfully asking if I might keep the same look for a little while so that I look like I do on the CD. And I will."
Jon Bream • 612-673-1719
- Star Tribune (Jon Bream)
Discography
2002 Lullaby
2005 Fearless
2007 Let Go
2008 Leave Me in the Dark
2008 Winter Comes Again
2009 Keri Noble
Photos
Bio
Given her roots in Detroit, it would be easy to assume that Keri Noble grew up in the ‘80s surrounded by the rich musical history and culture of the Motor City. But things were not quite that way.
The daughter of a Baptist pastor in a small, Spanish-speaking church on Detroit’s southwest side, Noble was raised in a strict household where secular music was generally frowned upon. “I was home-schooled from first through third grade,” she explains. “And then I was put in a Christian school. My high school was predominantly black, and the church that I went to was all Hispanic. The environment I grew up in was definitely multicultural, but the music I listened to was not. It was primarily church music. There was no R&B or soul or Motown. I missed all that.”
By her late teens, though, she’d heard enough bits and pieces of R&B, hip-hop and other urban sounds – on car radios or MTV videos playing at friends’ houses – to realize that there was an entire world waiting outside the walls of the church.
But it was the voice of Joni Mitchell, more than anything else, that steered Noble toward songwriting. One listen to Mitchell’s 1971 album, Blue, and she suddenly had a sense of direction.
“I love the idea of one artist and their instrument,” she says. “That album is pretty stripped down. It’s pretty basic. There’s not a lot of production there to date it. That record just felt so pure to me, and those songs are so powerful and expressive. I don’t know why I was so open to it at that moment in my life, but I played that CD so much I wore it out.”
And so began the songwriting, more as a means of personal expression than as an attempt to launch a career as a professional musician. “I had already been journaling a lot, and I had taken eight years of piano lessons,” says Noble. “At that point, I thought maybe I could try to put my words to music and see what would happen. I didn’t start out by saying, ‘I want to be a musician.’ It just sort of evolved. I had felt pretty lost up to that point, and I had a lot to say.”
After a few years of writing and polishing, Noble put together a demo and gave it to guitarist Billy McLaughlin on one of his tour stops in Detroit. The two musicians became friends, and McLaughlin eventually invited Noble to open for him at a show at the Fine Line in Minneapolis. While there, he introduced her to some members of the local music scene. At 24, Noble left Detroit and made the permanent move to Minneapolis.
In 2003, she signed with EMI/Manhattan. Her debut album, Fearless, was released the following year and met with high praise from the press. “The CD got picked up in so many worldwide markets that I got to do a lot of touring in Europe and Asia, which was great, because I had never traveled before in my life,” says Noble. “I got to open for some great people, like Cyndi Lauper and B.B. King. I got some exposure that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”
The downside was that Fearless enjoyed far less exposure in the States than it did elsewhere. “The guys who signed me had also signed Norah Jones,” Noble says. “So they had a girl who played the piano who was a raging success, and they wanted to get another girl who played the piano in hopes of having another raging success. But there’s really nothing I do that’s the same as what she does, other than the fact that I’m a female and I play the piano. Fearless was very ballad-heavy, but I tend to not be that ballad-heavy. But that’s what they wanted.”
The whole experience prompted Noble to ask herself some very basic questions about whether she wanted to continue to pursue music professionally. “Did I really want to be a part of this machine?” she says. “And if I did, why? It’s not like someone can take the artistry away from you. I could go play in coffee houses and bars if I wanted to and still be happy doing it.”
In the end, she decided that “there was still more to be done, on a scale whereby I could actually make a living.” She signed with JVC and released Let Go in Japan in November 2007.
In addition to the success of Let Go, she has also branched out into other media. Her music has been used in popular TV series on either side of the world, So You Think You Can Dance in the U.S. and Handsome Woman in Japan. Her song “Look At Me,” was featured in the Japanese film, Tokyo Tower. In addition, her music is currently part of an 18-month TV commercial campaign in Japan for Shiseido cosmetics.
In the U.S., she signed with Telarc in the spring of 2008, and has recorded two EP's, one that was released in conjunction with U.S. tour dates scheduled for that summer, and one of holiday songs. A full length Telarc release was released in February 2009.
Since then, she has toured the East, Southeast, West, and Northwest. Other highlights include her song Emily being featured on the February 12 episode of Grey's Anatomy, a national television appearance on March 6 on the CBS Saturday Early Show, and her song If No One Wi
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