Laura A and The Bad Grades
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Laura A and The Bad Grades

Band Rock Soul

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"Touring The Indies"

This is a bluesy rock music with a lot of soul and a spat of jazz that combines with Laura Azzarello's lush and somewhat deep voice to form an almost familiar 70's sound but with a 'less pedal busy' contemporary feel.

There's a character to her songs and her soulful voice that commands the music like someone who's been belting it out on stage a decade or two longer than this girl in her mid twenties. I was very surprised when I found out how young she is.

The ensemble is rock solid. The guitar work is nearly edible -- electric liquid blue to light shades of fuzz. I'm easily drawn to rhythm and it was the well thought out snappy percussion of "Case of Daniel" that first sucked me in. Plenty infectious from the outset and then I got the knockout punch from Laura's killer voice -- I was hooked.

Yesterday I got the album 'Laura A and The Bad Grades' in my mailbox. I'm almost jealous of myself.

It's an album of wonderfully catchy songs featuring a singer that could make any band sound good and a band that could make any singer sound good.

From the album - the songs "Case of Daniel', "Can't Please 'Em All", "Senselessness", "Manhattan", "Marlboro Man", "Dixie" and "Outro for MJ" were written by Laura Azzarello who also plays keys. The Bad Grades are Andy Ellis, Mark Azzarello and Caleb Dolister.

The Laura A and The Bad Grades myspace profile adds Pia Paulamaki to the crew and says "and you if you want".

I want. - Frank Gualtier


Discography

self titled EP

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Bio

"I have the musical taste of a 50-year-old man." This is what Laura Azzarello, the 24-year-old singer and songwriter for the folk-rock/soul/indie duo Laura A and the Bad Grades, says about her musical influences. Perhaps her passion for bands like the Zombies and the Beatles, and songwriters like Tom Waits and Smokey Robinson is what sets her aside from most writers her age. The often shy singer from North Carolina does not hold back onstage. Laura’s bluesy and boisterous voice developed after years of singing and writing alongside her father, who was a touring drummer in the '60s and '70s. In 2002, Laura took her voice to Boston when she became a recipient of The World Scholarship at Berklee College of Music. There, Laura was introduced to jazz harmonies and learned how to apply them to her music, and this is what makes her songs sound unique. Laura moved to Nashville immediately after graduating from Berklee and soon hooked up with guitarist Andy Ellis, a longtime editor for Guitar Player and Frets magazines, and another Berklee alum. "My infatuation with the baritone guitar lets me fill a twangy role that's somewhere between bass, piano, and lead guitar," he says. Working in a small studio, the Bad Grades are exploring Laura's voice and writing with the goal of developing a sound that's fresh and unexpected, yet strangely familiar, like a half-remembered dream. Sometimes accompanied by other musicians, the duo is now actively performing in the Nashville area.