pale beneath the blue

If you are regular listener to my station, I am sure that you have gathered that I have an ear for all sorts of music. In one recent set, I managed to play the Elvises (both Presley and Costello), Interpol, Tortoise, Johnny Cash, Ennio Morricone, Cat Power, Sonny Sharrock and Pale Beneath The Blue's song "Inside"

Pale Beneath The Blue is the latest project of Rhonda Everitt. Much like Kate Bush before her, Rhonda is a great songwriter with a strong voice and an inclination to experiment. Her latest EP Hologram features six songs of lyrically oriented dance music with electronic beats and a strong, but not overwhelming, contemporary sheen. If you are a fan of female vocalists, downtempo electronic music or trip hop, definitely check this release out.

The song that really jumped out of me here was "Inside" and is currently in heavy rotation on the station. The lyrics are cryptic, sensual and evocative and the arrangement matches the lyrics. After a short ambient intro, the groove starts and a catchy lyrical hook is built around the word "inside" which is repeated like a mantra. It is constrasted with the verses which are sung slightly off the beat or in a different time signature. The lyrics start simply describing a scene:

my fingers touching her side
brought me to the reason why
her side was warm
her hair was soft

And builds until the scene cracks as Rhonda stops singing and begins reciting:

the visions plagued me, they were nagging. unanswered and
unanswerable, but on i forged...knowing that even though this
made no sense, there was an urging. a desire to see what was on
the other side of this...to find the answers and watch the story unfold

The song then returns to the original lyrical details, climaxes and slowly fades into a reverie and bliss as the keyboards almost imply simple jazz-like textures and sounds.

A truly great and original work. I hope to hear much more from Pale Beneath The Blue. (Mark Johnson)

- Mansion on the Hill Radio.com

Don't let the opening break-poetry of "Little Secrets" throw you. She might sound like Alanis Morissette's younger sister, but Rhonda Everitt (AKA Pale Beneath the Blue) flits more toward the light than the dark, carving a quaking aura of fantasy out of a reality-based life that never shows up on TV. Her most open strip of bare shoulder and soul comes from the quirky electro-acoustic "I Believed," which builds from cold and soon heats into passionate self-realization.

read full story: http://www.musicdish.com/mag/?id=9947 - Music Dish.com

I knew a girl in college who used to say "that's really... intriguing" after seeing/hearing any piece of art for the first time. She felt it necessary to say this because she wanted to sound perspicacious, even though she never had a follow-up when we grilled her with, "Yeah, but what the hell are you talking about?" I vowed to eliminate the word from my vocabulary. However, after several listens to Pale Beneath the Blue I'm... intrigued. I should probably qualify that point.
"Little Secrets" begins with a sly field recording of murmuring voices -- and then main-woman Rhonda Everitt launches a three and a half minute vocal attack. It's quasi-spoken word, almost rap; her innocent mention of "dirty, little secrets running, tripping, falling, quick and cunning / infiltrate the corners of my mind" doesn't sound particularly neat on paper, but she changes character repeatedly as she alters her choppy delivery, shifting rapidly from innocent to biting, to sultry, to fun, to deadly serious. The music is just as enigmatic, forged with acoustic and digital piano, and rhythms and beats borrowed from a mutant hip-hop record that an ad wizard might adopt to sell cleaning products to homemakers. "Inside" is similarly head-scratching; its gurgling synths, manipulated slide guitar and slithering backbeat could easily earn it a place on Depeche Mode's Exciter album. The song's coup d'etat, the point at which you'll ask "what the hell!?", is a few bars of beatboxing by collaborator John Althen. Though it's fairly subtle, comes in from out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly, it's exciting. It's one of many crafty details that demonstrate Everitt's efforts to keep her music fresh, clever and forward-thinking.

Just when you think you've got Everitt figured out, closer "In 2 U" reasserts her talent and ability to flip the script. Suddenly she's fronting Vanity 6, burning up the dance floor with string swells and house beats, inspiring sweaty, half-naked guys and girls to gyrate on each other while b-boys give props to the cool acid house accents.

Other than scribbling a picture of Everitt into my weathered Webster's, how do I define "intriguing" as far as Hologram's work is concerned? From beginning to end, Everitt avoids easy formulas -- a rare trait in the desperate world of obscure singer/songwriters. Each of Pale Beneath the Blue's six tracks has an element that denies easy labeling. The more I listen to the album, the more I want to hear it again.



-- Dave Madden
- Splendid Zine

Dayton's Rhonda Everitt debuts her solo act, dubbed palebeneaththeblue, and her Electronica/Dance-flavored EP Hologram (produced by Washington, D.C.'s Blake Althern) on Friday. A lot of Hologram was written while she was recovering from a life-altering motorcycle accident that shattered her leg two years ago. The EP is not only a real departure from Everitt's usual band, A Pretty War, but also a departure from the area's many and varied musical genres. Not a lot of people do Electronica/Dance around here (Hungry Lucy, as well as some of Abiyah's more recent work, spring to mind as exceptions), but Everitt finds real freedom in those genres and takes the opportunity to inject a heart and smarts into the mix. The songs on Hologram are sometimes angry, sometimes philosophical and very, very literate. One cannot help but make the connection between her near-crippling accident and her move toward dance music: Everitt simply wants to shake her ass again, and she wants you to shake your ass along with her. But she also wants you to think. She ably accomplishes both goals as she possesses a musical and lyrical vocabulary that most dance divas only wished they possessed. (Dale Johnson)

- City Beat (Cincinnati)

Rhonda Everitt ditches the band thing and digs up some beats for her new Pale Beneath the Blue project

Interview By Dale Johnson



Photo By Dale M. Johnson
Pale Beneath the Blue
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"I want to do a CD of nothing but Billy Idol covers," says Rhonda Everitt, guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist of Pale Beneath the Blue. I think she's only half-joking, but you never know quite what to expect from Everitt.
Pale Beneath the Blue is Everitt's latest band in her interestingly-named oeuvre. Her first band, Rhe (pronounced "ree") released the highly regarded, piano- and guitar-laden Fairytales and Happy Endings CD (on her own Reach For The Sky label) in 2003. Then, sometime last year, Rhe morphed into A Pretty War ("Everyone had trouble pronouncing 'Rhe' correctly and it was hard to search for on the Internet," says Everitt on the name change). Then, because the music she had been writing didn't quite fit the beats of A Pretty War, Everitt formed Pale Beneath the Blue as a solo project. But, with difficulty getting her Pretty War band members to tour, Pale Beneath the Blue became her full-time gig. The band's name comes from Everitt mistakenly hearing the line "There beneath the blue suburban skies" (from The Beatles' song "Penny Lane") as "Pale beneath the blue suburban skies."

A few years ago Everitt was involved in a horrific motorcycle accident that shattered her lower left leg. "I had a blind date with destiny ... and destiny ordered the lobster," jokes Everitt, who recently moved to Mason from Dayton, where she was a staple on the local music scene for years. She's still recovering but, as her friend Jenny Schmidt (founder of the local Chicks RockFest) puts it, "Rhonda rocks like a chick with two good legs."

The accident taught Everett a few life lessons. "I discovered I didn't have to do everything," she says. Coming to terms with delegating some of the work is part of what shapes PBtB's sound. In fact, she was able to pretty much just take it easy while recording Hologram (released last summer as PBtB's first recorded outing) with Washington, D.C., producer Blake Althen. "If I wanted to take a nap, I could take a nap," says Everitt on the trust she built with Althen. "It was great."

Hologram leans heavily toward singer/songwriter Electronica (with cello provided in live shows by bandmate Patrice Schlick), while still retaining the Rock edge Everitt brought to the table with Rhe and A Pretty War. The disc proves that dance music doesn't have to be dumb. Quite the contrary, in fact. Her smart, confessional lyrics slide over the top of the beats in a very organic way. It's not a cold technician overseeing her latest sound experiment in a clinical way; it's more a kind-hearted inventor that made a robot with human emotions in order to have a friend.

For someone who doesn't get around very well (Everitt recently broke the reconstructive hardware in her leg; "I have no idea how," she says), Hologram is a very danceable album. So much so that the track "In 2 U" was remixed by renowned New York DJ Twisted Dee and is spun nightly in a couple of large New York City dance clubs and in the Apex club in Washington, D.C.

Everitt's goal (apart from maybe recording that Billy Idol covers CD) is to compose music for films or television. That's not too surprising though when you find out she's written an as-yet-unproduced screenplay.

"I scored the scenes in my head as I wrote the script," she says. However, Everitt isn't ready to leave behind live performance just yet. "I really love playing live, but one of my regrets is that I can't haul gear around," she says.

All she has to do is bring the songs and the rest will take care of itself.

- Cincinnati's City Beat

"Lyrically and musically, this ep is Rhonda's most diverse disc yet. A
song like "In 2 U" is much different than anything I've heard her
perform before, but the stylistic gamble pays off in spades. An
impressive release."

Matt Shiv, Music Director, woxy.com - woxy.com

Local singer and songwriter Rhonda Everitt endured a severe motorcycle accident in July 2002. While the crash shattered her lower left leg, prompting 18 surgeries and more than a year and a half of rehabilitation, it didn’t dampen her creativity.
During her recovery period, Everitt turned to the piano and crafted a series of powerful, introspective songs. Many of the new tunes made it onto her stellar 2003 full-length Fairy Tales and Happy Endings, but there were others that didn’t fit thematically with the CD.
Everitt wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the excess material until she met producer Blake Althen, who proposed a project that would match her piano songs with funky drum loops, samples and subtle electronic touches. Hologram, released over the summer under the4 moniker Pale Beneath the Blue, is the result of that collaboration. The engaging six-song collection positively recalls Bjork’s early solo albums, Portishead and Esthero, while still retaining the purity of Everitt’s expressive singing and piano playing.
Washington, D.C.-based Althen is obviously a fan of Everitt’s material. It shows in that his musical backdrops never overshadow the melodic core of the songs. In fact, he softens the canned beats and synthesizer shadings with nylon-string acoustic guitar, live percussion, upright bass and other warm sounds.
Everitt admits it’s a different direction for her, but she is happy with the results of the new opportunities it has created. “It’s even getting a little weirder because we opted for a dance track, and now that has been remixed by New York DJ Twisted Dee,” she said, referring to the song In 2 U. “that’s really unusual since normally get thrown into the Kate Bush category. But it’s all good.”
Disc opener Little Secrets is a dynamic, modern- piano rocker that’s as good as anything currently being played on the radio. In 2 U is an upbeat dance-floor number that marries house-music grooves with the dark overtones of British trip-hoppers Laika and the bubbly disco of early Madonna. Piano ballad One I Open, colored by cello and spare, rolling cymbal fills, wouldn’t have been out of place on Fairy Tales and provides a harmonic link to her early material.
“A week after I released the Hologram EP, I went back to Washington, D.C., to record another track, 23 Shades,” Everitt said. “That song has been turned into a video that premiered at the Deogracias Lerma Photo Gallery on Main Street in (the Cincinnati neighborhood) Over the Rhine in August. Other than that, I’ve been playing as much as much as I can. Cellist Patrice Schlick and I have been driving around the country a bit playing to anyone who will listen.”
- Don Thrasher

Stuck with a slew of tired old Christmas tunes pa-rum-pa-pum-pumming through your head? Just in time to bust revelers out of a rut, two local artists have wrapped up sparkly new holiday records.

Jake Speed and the Freddies' album, "Losantaville," and Pale Beneath the Blue's EP, "Snow Emergency," both present fresh renditions of holiday favorites and playful, Cincinnati-centered original numbers.

"Christmas is the one time of the year that I feel OK singing really goofy songs," says Rhonda Everitt, a Mason musician who performs under the moniker Pale Beneath the Blue.

Here's a look at each:

"Losantaville," Jake Speed and the Freddies

The covers: Speed, who lives in Clifton, and his bandmates bring their gleeful spirit to such evergreens as "Here Comes Santa Claus" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

The originals: For the just-silly-enough "Santa Loves Bluegrass," Ed Cunningham and Jeff Roberts of the Comet Bluegrass All-Stars get in on a score of inside jokes; Speed's brother-in-law, who served in Iraq last December, inspireda poignant song called "A Soldier's Christmas Lament."

The live show: Jake Speed and the Freddies will perform Saturday in the Southgate House Lounge, 24 E. Third St., Newport. For information about other upcoming shows, go to www.freddiesmusic.com.

"Snow Emergency," Pale Beneath the Blue

The covers: Everitt pays tribute to two Ohio heroes by giving a gossamer gloss to the Ass Ponys' "Last Night it Snowed" and offering rendition of the Pretenders classic "2000 Miles."

The originals: Anyone who has put off a breakup until after the holidays will relate to the deliciously snarky "Christmas Break"; those in more fulfilling relationships might prefer to bop along with "The Snow is Falling," an ode to the joys of getting snowed in together.

The live show: Pale Beneath the Blue performs with Jake Speed and the Freddies among others at Festivus Maximus Saturday at the Southgate House. For more information about other upcoming shows, go to www.palebeneaththeblue.com.

by Cynthia Hanifin

- Cincinnati Enquirer