Lisa Ratner -Producer/Composer/Arranger

Robin Delorenzo is based in New Jersey, USA. She’s a singer/songwriter who describes herself as gutsy emotional and undeniable (on her website), which I have to admit had me quite curious as to what I was about to hear.
Her 35 minute debut CD entitled “Wanna Fly” was released in 2010 and begins with “I’d Change for You” The intro to this song, very cleverly lures you in with a bluesy acoustic guitar and heavily reverbed vocal, but before you think its going to go all Delta on you, you’re hit with a very modern sounding pop production including sampled overdriven guitar and filtered synthesizers. There are so many instruments flying in and out of the sound that it becomes a real onslaught of the senses with a maelstrom of different styles and genres making their mark. Robin’s voice is powerful and dominant, holding the piece together as being the only constant. Bizarrely, the song fades far too quickly and there is virtually no gap before the next song, the title track kicks in. This piece really shows off the talent of DeLorenzo as she performs some incredible vocal acrobatics. The Joplin influence seems very apparent here as the power and energy is delivered with passion and determination. The texture is exquisite and in perfect pitch, expertly counterbalanced with sublime guitar work from Dan Natelli. The third song “Soul Fire” edges further towards pure blues, including slide, acoustic guitar and bluesy lead, which is further augmented with harmonica and Hammond organ. The fifth song “Middle of the Day” shows a more sensitive side to Robin, as she serves up an accomplished ballad based around Ratner’s Piano. This is a breath of fresh air after all the energy of the previous material. There are some wonderful, well placed harmony vocals positioned effectively in the bridges and choruses of this song. Track 8 has the curiously acidic title “Screw U” and this fast paced country style tune features banjo sounds together with brass. An upright bass sound keeps the beat moving and the picking on the banjo adds in extra country flavour. Robin seems a little angry in this song (no shit!) but there is definitely an element of humour in the lyrics too, which helps take the edge off it all. The final track “Not for all the Money” is a slow ballad in 3-4 time which rounds off the album nicely – it slows the pace down beautifully. Again the country influence is very apparent and the song finishes with a nicely rounded ending instead of a fade.
The album relies heavily on the talents of Lisa Ratner, to provide the backdrop for Robin’s superb vocal, and whilst her performances are unquestionable, her choice of sound samples unfortunately is. There really is no question about the benefits of using real instruments over synthesized sounds. Where a synth is used to create a unique sound or mimic a keyboard instrument such as piano or organ these generally work well, however brass instruments and banjos stand out as being fake, and that’s a shame. Likewise with programmed drums, which never really come close in comparison to having a real drummer and all the subtle forms of expression he/she can bring to the recording.
That said, the songs are full of colour and the album stands out as an impressive debut for this very talented and expressive singer-songwriter. There are shades of Cher and Raitt in amongst these vocal performances and if you are a fan of modern country-influence female vocalists this could be a great addition to your collection. Her style of writing provides for some interesting lyrics and imagery. If this outfit can build upon the success of this album I’m sure that only great things lie ahead. I would be interested to hear any follow-up release from this artist and with a solid rhythm section and some further developed ideas this act could become a real force to be reckoned with.
Check out “Wanna Fly” from this bluesy and gutsy singer at her site, www.robind.com. Find reviews of other up and coming indie artists at the Indie Music Digest.
This review was written by Neil Thomas for the Rock n Roll View.
- Rock n Roll View

Artist: Robin DeLorenzo?CD: Wanna Fly
Label: Independent Artist
Website: www.robind.com
Genre: Rock, Power Pop, Alternative Rock
Sounds Like: Taylor Dane, Tina Turner, Melissa Etheridge  
Technical Grade: 10/10
Production/Musicianship Grade: 9/10?Commercial Value: 8/10?Overall Talent Level: 9/10?Songwriting Skills: 10/10?Performance Skill: 9/10?Best Songs Wanna Fly, Take a Piece of Me,  Sunshine
Weakness: Genera Identity Crisis ??CD REVIEW:
 
New Jersey based Singer/Songwriter/Robin DeLorenzo just released her debut CD entitled “Wanna Fly” in December 2011.
 
The CD kicks things off with the title track “I’d Change for You” a dynamic yet catchy intro piece that serves up hip hop type rhythm against hard rock guitar accents & passionate vocals from DeLorenzo. Track 2 “Wanna Fly” serves up a slow moving blues rock ditty with impressive piano, solo guitar chops & heartfelt vocals making for an impressive follow up groove. Track 3 “Soul Fire” shifts gears a bit with slow moving acoustic guitar groove that combines the perfect balance of rock, blues & even folk. The CD gets off the ground solidly serving up 3 hot tracks in a row. As the CD slowly unfolds I can hear many different musical textures reminiscent of classic musical acts as Bonnie Rait, Taylor Dayne & Melissa Etheridge. The music itself combines classic elements of bluesy-rock with an aftertaste of R&B, country & even power pop. The musicianship of everyone involved is clearly above the bar. You will also notice lush layers musical instrumentation layered everywhere from harmonica, piano, horn sections, Hammond Organ & keyboard chops, sizzling solo, impressive slide guitar work, piano & lush harmonies layered everywhere. The CD has some truly impressive moments on it showcasing impressive songwriting, world class instrumentation via an impressive vocal delivery from DeLorenzo. Zeroing in now on DeLorenzo’s voice: it goes down smooth but has a classic raspy jagged edge to it, reminiscent of such singers Tina Turner, & Janis Joplin. She's got mojo & makes the vital (singer to listener) emotional connection with her vocals & charisma. From uplifting “Sunshine” to heartfelt “Middle of the Day” to grooving “Take a Piece of Me” & Screw U” this CD has something for just about everyone. The CD ends with “Not for All the Money” the perfect finale statement for a CD of this caliber.
 
A few of the tracks suffer from genera identity crisis combining elements of Hip Hop, Power Pop, Chill, Rock, Latin, Country & Folk thus spreading these songs way to thin. The best songs keep it in the fairway. I really don’t like how Track 4 ”Sunshine” Fades out.
 
From start to finish it's hard to find any solid weaknesses with “Wanna Fly” by Robin DeLorenzo. This CD showcases some fresh new music from New Jersey. It's an impressive catalogue of music that's easy to groove to, highly original, uplifting, & extremely entertaining. Note for note, song for song there isn’t a weak piece on this entire 9 song catalogue. All pieces are short & sweet musical experiences, each one possessing its own signature groove, & musical personality to call its own. The writing & playing abilities of this band are rock solid & the melodies & harmonies are well crafted, The lyrical content is mesmerizing, & last but not least the vocal presence from Robin DeLorenzo is simply infectious.  It’s obvious she’s just letting all hang out musically by being herself. This is why people can't help but like her - just the way I did.  
 
Cyrus Rhodes
- INDIE MUSIC DIGEST

Robin DeLorenzo: Gutsy
—by Michelle Tobon, December 8, 2010


Singer/songwriter Robin DeLorenzo is an entertainer who puts her all into her music. Her ability to combine the sultry of soul with blues, edgy rock tunes and country flair is enjoyable to a wide variety of music fans. With powerful vocals and emotionally confessing lyrics, she is able to serve as an inspiration to many. Catch Robin DeLorenzo at her CD release party on Dec. 9 at The Stanhope House in Stanhope. NJ. The party starts at 7 p.m. and the show begins at 9 p.m. For more information, visit robind.com.

- The Acquarian

Music straight from the heart
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Music straight from the heart
Written by Gerri Lewis
Friday, 08 January 2010 15:44
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Carol Miller doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve. Instead, she displays it in the hauntingly memorable music on her debut CD, Take A Breath. Eleven original songs give her ample opportunity to sing about love, loss and moving on in a way that only someone who has experienced all can do.
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Carol Miller. —Photo by Tony Bocchetta.
Carol, who has lived in Ridgefield since 1986, grew up in Darien. She spent her early career operating The Red Petticoat Antique Shop where she not only helped her parents, Ralph and Gloria Perschino, but also had her own shop upstairs. For the past 10 years, she has also been part owner and principal sponsor of CPM Motorsports, an auto racing team based in Ridgefield. The team regularly races throughout New
England and the North Atlantic states and has won numerous SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) championships. Carol is married and has two stepchildren and what she calls her three fur children — two cats and a dog. So her life is full.
But as full as it is with other things, the one constant has been her music, which keeps resurfacing into a priority. Carol first tickled the ivories when she was five years old and her father brought home a piano. She began teaching herself to play and still today never writes her tunes to paper. She began composing as a way of expressing her own emotions. During high school and college, she performed in local and school productions and played in coffee houses. But while she was writing and composing her own things, she said she always played other people’s “stuff.”
It was about four years ago that Carol decided to take a singing class at Norwalk Community College
“It was kind of a glorified karaoke class. People brought music to sing along with. I wasn’t prepared for that, but they had a piano so I sat down and played one of my songs,” she said. “The people in my class were so supportive. Finally a friend in the class put me in touch with Lisa Ratner. It was a big step and a little risky because it’s a part of yourself you are putting out there.”
Lisa Ratner is owner of Fastax Music and Audio Studios in South Salem, N.Y. Carol and Lisa began working together and it wasn’t long before a new sound emerged.
“It was fun working with Lisa and hearing my songs taking on a new life,” says Carol. “It took us a year to complete and when I was done, I thought, of course — how could I not have done this before?”
The song Carol played and sang during that first class in Norwalk was “Take a Breath,” one of her favorites, which became the theme song and title of her CD. It’s a song about realizing that when love is not working, you need to move on. Carol’s songs are all about emotional challenges that she has experienced and they are her way of dealing with her most heartfelt thoughts in a poetic way.
For example, “Took A Rose” was inspired by the sudden loss of her 25-year-old sister. It was a time before support groups became lifelines and Carol said she and her family felt isolated. When each of them was left to deal with their loss in an individual way, Carol turned to song.
“Master of Disguise” is a lively tune touching on anxiety and panic — when you find yourself in situations where you’d like to be anywhere but where you are. In “I Guess You Could Say,” Carol talks about realizing that some dreams are just too big to be realized.
—Album photo by Paul Korker
- HersamAcorn.com

E ntertainment
if You Go
Photos courtesy of Robin DeLorenzo
Robin DeLorenzo CD Release Party
Where:
Stanhope House 45 Main St., Stanhope
When:
December 9 Party starts at 7 p.m. Performance begins at 9
Cost:
No cover charge, free food
Hopatcong musician to Celebrate CD release
Party set for Dec. 9 at The Stanhope House
Listen to
PoDCast LHWeeKLY.CoM
Robin DeLorenzo said she writes her best music when “I’m miserably, unhap- pily sad. It gets triggered by some kind of event that’s gone on.”
was written by Jeff Steel, who writes for a lot of country western folks in Nashville.” She has also performed in wedding bands. Professionally, she was employed for AT&T in advertising and event planning for 15 years.
By tim Sohn, editor
DeLorenzo, a Hopatcong resident and blues singer who grew up in Fairfield, will release her latest CD, “Wanna Fly,” at a party on Thursday, Dec. 9, at The Stan- hope House (45 Main St., Stanhope) – no cover charge.
Her life took a turn in 2007 when she had a baby and took some time off to focus on motherhood.
“This CD is definitely from a lot of per- sonal stuff I’ve gone through the last 10 or 11 years. My dad died in 1999. Sometimes a song will start about me and end about someone else.”
“The first two years I totally focused on her, and then I started getting the itch again,” DeLorenzo said. Next, she put to- gether blues cover band Instantly Blue, “but that wasn’t enough.”
Robin DeLorenzo said Lake Hopatcong provides her with inspiration for her music.
DeLorenzo, who plays piano, violin and guitar, said, laughingly, that she was prob- ably born singing. She first got interested in music around age 6 and participated in chorus classes throughout school. DeLo- renzo, who attended and graduated from West Essex High School, briefly attended Hopatcong High School.
She got her big break after talking to the wife of the original drummer of Instantly Blue (she’s a talent agent who works in New York and Los Angeles and knows pro- ducer Lisa Ratner, who has worked with Barbara Streisand and Vanessa Williams). Ratner works at East West Music Inc. and FastTrax Studios in South Salem, N.Y.
DeLorenzo’s musical influences in- clude Pat Benitar and Janice Joplin, but she said she listens to everything from Lincoln Park to Faith Hill. “There really isn’t anything I don’t like.”
Her CD, “Wanna Fly,” will be available on iTunes, CDBaby and Amazon.com on Dec. 9.
She said she went through a “too- cool” stage during high school and didn’t return to music again until she attended Adelphi University (Garden City, N.Y.), where she studied theater design and communications.
“We’ve [Ratner and I] pretty much written one song every two weeks. It flows. I go in with my melody and my lyr- ics, and we create a drum beat together and kind of figure out where we want it to go. Then I go home and leave her with a very basic skeleton. Then she does her magic. She is so talented. I come back the next week, and she usually has a really great foundation of a song with the keys or piano or guitar, and she does every- thing on her synthesizer,” said DeLoren- zo, adding that she’s looking at a variety of showcases to market her album. “Ulti- mately, I want a record contract. I want to go on tour, maybe warm up for somebody big. We hope. We hope.”
“For the independent artist, the In- ternet has made it really easy to almost be your own record label. I chose to put my money into the recording aspect so I could put together a really solid CD to then market it,” said DeLorenzo.
“I met this girl who’s still one of my best friends. She’s a singer — Jeanne. And she got me back into it,” said DeLorenzo.
When asked what she likes about Ho- patcong, she said: “I’ve met a lot of really great people,” adding that a month-and- a-half ago a man who owned her house in the 1920s and ’30s knocked on her door. “They wanted to just kind of see it. They ended up staying for two hours ... I real- ized that from a people perspective, not much has changed. People are still doing the same stuff, just in a different era. But what has changed is it was so much more family-oriented back then.”
From there, in 1988, she did some training and got involved in a three-girl group (they had the same management firm as Color Me Bad). After that, she did some more training and some solo work. “I recorded a song for IMG Publishing that
More info: www.robind.com
18 / LH! Weekly / December 3, 2010 / www.LHweekly.com - www.LHweekly.com

Home : Top Stories : Woodcliff Lake - Top Stories

Musician explores city life on debut
album
Thursday, January 13, 2011
LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY JANUARY 13, 2011, 1:22 AM
BY STEPHANIE SCHWARTZ
PASCACK VALLEY COMMUNITY LIFE
OF COMMUNITY LIFE
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She looks like Stefani Germanotta – the woman who became Lady Gaga. She has the dark hair and dark eyes, the sultry Italian looks and the pouty lips that marked a pre-famous Gaga. Like her, she plays piano, writes and performs her own music, and is a working songwriter for other artists. They both have songs with lyrics in French. They both have spent time living in New York City.
Jodie Levinson, however, performs a blues-and-jazz- influenced pop. Her first full-length solo album, "In the City," explores familiar themes of being young and living in a city – heartbreak, growing up, and loneliness amongst a lot of people.
Recapping the past two years of her life in New York City, it showcases "what it feels like to be a little lost. You want to stay in the present and you want to enjoy it, but then you're constantly banging your head, thinking 'I need to make money, I need health insurance.'
"There's so much to write about in the city. There's so much that happens — on the street, on the subway, in the workforce, in relationships, roommate situations, and friendships. Everything is so different; it's a totally different world."
She calls one track, "You Make Me Smile" a "city song," though the city life gets the real spotlight on the title track, where, mentioning Central Park, she shakes off sex in the city and the boys that go with that: "I'm about to be done with it."
In her album thank yous, she not only gives credit to New York City but to "Metro North and their off-peak train fares," as she's spent many hours commuting from the city to her hometown of Woodcliff Lake and to Katonah, N.Y., which is near where she recorded much of the album with producer Lisa Ratner.
Ratner, whose Fastrax Studios employs Levinson as a songwriter and lyricist, suggested they cut an album together. Ratner directed the sessions and co-wrote the album with her. "I could never have done it without her, she's brilliant, she's really brilliant. I was thrilled that she wanted to use her time to do that."
Levinson, 25, cites old soul and blues artists like Etta James, Nina Simone, and Bonnie Raitt as inspirations, although she also is a big fan of folkies like Paul Simon, James Taylor, and Ricki Lee Jones.

PHOTO BY JAMES KREIGSMANN, JR., COURTESY OF JODIE LEVINSON
Jodie Levinson's up-tempo blues- and-jazz-influenced pop, as heard on her debut solo album 'In the City,' is reminiscent of Norah Jones.


Her music at times recalls another Jones – the bestselling Norah. She has a sweet, clear voice, the easy laziness of a girl singing without expending much effort. Her lyrics read like that too, light rhymes that come easy. "Lazy Sunday" embodies this ethos, the type of music put on as background while tidying up or reading a book.
Levinson crafts her songs on piano, though she also plays keyboard and a little guitar. She's been taking voice lessons since she was a child, and now teaches, too, making her the rare young artist actually making a living through music. She writes songs for other singers, singing the melody for them before they rerecord it, usually taking in the person's own experience and personality when writing.
"It's like anything else, it's a skill to build," she says of writing songs. Working with Ratner, she learned that she needed to make her writing simpler, so that listeners could follow the story. It's a fine line to walk when crafting metaphors, she explained, since you have to make sure it works.
She's noticed a difference over time with her songwriting. "Books, Tea," one of her early songs, has a very different lyrical style than some of the others, with longer lines and prose, instead of cute couplets that characterize songs like "You Make Me Smile" and "In the City."
"If Lisa wasn't on this it would be very different," she said, crediting her with simplifying her songwriting. "Great songwriting is simple. Carole King is a great, great, great example of that, both music and lyrically. And because of that, everyone can sing everything back. It just gets caught in your brain. She has such a way of making it stick like few artists can do."
Levinson frequently cites artists – from Sting to Sheryl Crow, Josh Ritter to Josh Rouse — who personify some element of songwriting or singing that she loves. Artists as divergent as Taylor Swift and Janelle Mona´e each do brilliant work, she says.
So what makes a great song?
"Obviously the hook. It's true, if you can sing it back, it's one of the most important things I've learned from Lisa. You don't want a riff that's so complicated that you can't get through one listen. You want to hear and sing the same thing back. Doesn't matter if you can sing or can't sing. And si - NorthJersey.com

Jodie Levinson & The Jodie Levinson Band
NYC Musician and Songwriter - Rock, Bluesy Soul with an edge
Plays several venues in NYC region incl: Sidewalk, Mercury Lounge, Bitter End,
North Star (Westchester) 92YTribeca, and Lower East Side Club scene,
Ms Levinson, with her defined bold vocals reminiscent of Bonnie Tyler and outgoing stage presence captures a willing audience into her performance and moves them to their feet to dance with joy. We saw this at The North Star Inn when we had the utmost pleasure of experiencing her show. Backed up by three incredible talents on drums, guitar and bass; Chris, Vin and Bryan, along with Jodie's keyboard and lyrics, bring a full combination of rock and soul songs to the level of an A list band that could have been together for years, although they recently formed last winter. A perfect mix of in sync talents to pack the house and shake it up with rousing applause. Jodie is Produced by Lisa Ratner of Fastrax Production.
Go see this Band and see for yourself the Jodie Levinson Band
- Starliner Events.com