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Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Interview by Dan Kimpel
Produced by Denise Bradley
Cinegrill at Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
7000 Hollywood Blvd
8pm Dishwalla
9:30pm Wendy Waldman, Dave Merenda, Dillon O'Brian, Jon Ernst
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Listen closely to Dishwalla, and you discover there is blood on these tracks. Twelve years and five albums after the band from Santa Barbara, California made their debut, Dishwalla endures. Together the group - lead singer JR Richards, guitarist Rodney Browning, bassist Scot Alexander, keyboardist Jim Wood and drummer Pete Maloney - have survived record company musical chairs, countless musical trends, and even the curious challenge of having their very own smash hit right out of the box. Through it all - the good, the bad and the ugly - Dishwalla have emerged stronger than ever, and in the process have established themselves as that rock & roll rarity: a real, working band that stays together to play together. Fittingly, then, Dishwalla (a self titled CD) is very much an album about survival and transcendence - an inspired song cycle about rising "Above The Wreckage" to borrow a phrase from one of the album's numerous standout tracks. . Released by The Orphanage - a progressive company founded by manager Leo Rossi as a nurturing, welcoming home for bands orphaned by the current record company turmoil - Dishwalla finds the band taking full control of their destinies.
The new CD is, in the words of the group's JR Richards, "very representative of our whole journey." It's a journey that, for many, began with Dishwalla's 1996 platinum debut Pet Your Friends that included "Counting Blue Cars," the compelling hit track that would define the band for its more casual fans. Dishwalla enjoyed less commercial success with their second album, 1998's "And You Think You Know What's Life About", at least partially the result of record company downsizing and its resultant turmoil. Leaving their label, A&M Records, the band proceeded to release the lovely, introspective Opaline on the small Immergent label in 2002. Having released "Live. . .Greetings From The Flow State", their first live album on Immergent in 2003, the band realized they wanted to record an album that brought the drama of their live shows into the recording studio. "Putting together the live album made me realize that there's a lot more excitement than I realized the first time around. It made us want to record a record that had the same kind of energy that we have live. We played the new songs hundreds of times before we recorded them. We wanted them to be roadtested and ready before the release," explains Richards, "and that translated onto the record!" For Dishwalla, one of the keys to the new album was casting the right producers for each song. "It's funny because each person gravitated towards material they were most excited by," says Richards. "They all had different approaches. Bill basically pushed us to give the strongest live performance we possibly could. Sylvia was all about creating and capturing a great vibe in Weed, a city in Northern California where she works in this old theater that has been converted into a studio. Ryan, known for great punk recordings, used a lot of very modern techniques and pushed us to use our chops more. All of them brought out the best in us in their own particular way. Of course, we went through three mastering sessions because each producer had they're own way of capturing things." They call their latest CD simply Dishwalla because the album represents a fresh start and their name has become such a badge of honor.
www.dishwalla.com
Artist/Songwriter/Producer Dave Merenda took home a Grammy Award for the Best Pop Vocal Performance with Sarah McLachlan at the 2000 Grammy Awards for "I Will Remember You". The song obtained Triple PlatinumRIAA Certification (3 million units sold) for it's appearance on Sarah McLachlan's live album, Mirrorball. That same year he was awarded a SOCAN Award and an ASCAP Pop Music Award for the for "I Will Remember You".
Kenny Rogers went on to cut the song and his version of "I Will Remember You" from his release, She Rides Wild Horses, is honored with a Platinum award for sales of over 1 million units.
As a producer, Dave produced and recorded a 14 song CD for Nicole Gordon which was released on the independent label Klover Records."Lost In My Head" the album produced by Dave for Nicole Gordon on Klover Records gets TOP DIY Spotlight in June, 2004 issue of PERFORMING SONGWRITER magazine
His pop trio CHOCOLATE SEASTORM recently released "Dive In" and he also produced the album and wrote all of the original songs.
Merenda's song, "Breakout" is now the theme for the Speed Channel show, TRACKSIDE and another one of his penned songs, "Get Going" was selected as theme for AFL WEEKLY on Fox Sports Net.
www.davemerenda.net
is a critically acclaimed recording artist, as well as a writer of multi-platinum songs for other singers in musical genres ranging from country to pop, film, jazz, children's music and R&B. She is also a teacher, and one of the first woman record producers to have a major impact in the music industry. Wendy Waldman's career in the music business started with her band, Bryndle, in the late 1960s in Los Angeles. Bryndle was made up of Wendy Waldman and her friends Karla Bonoff, Kenny Edwards, and Andrew Gold.
Wendy Waldman went from Bryndle to a career as a solo artist and respected songwriter and producer. She has made eight critically acclaimed solo albums and toured extensively as well. In 1996, a "best of" collection was released on Warner Brothers. More than 70 other artists have recorded her songs in fields as diverse as pop, R&B, jazz, country, Latin and cowboy music. Among her biggest records are "Save The Best For Last" and "The Sweetest Days" by Vanessa Williams; "Fishin' In The Dark" and "Home Again In My Heart" by the Dirt Band; "Baby What About You" by Crystal Gayle; "I Owe You One" by Aaron Neville; and "Heartbeat" by Don Johnson.
Her songs have also been recorded by Maria Muldaur, Kim Carnes, Randy Travis, Randy Meisner, Edgar Winter, Jesse Colin Young, Percy Sledge, Juice Newton, Linda Ronstadt, Judy Collins, Melissa Manchester, Rita Coolidge and Bette Midler to name just a few. Waldman became the first woman to produce country music extensively and was responsible for Susy Bogguss' award-winning debut album, as well as albums for the Forester Sisters, Jonathan Edwards, Matraca Berg and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Among other things, she also currently tours doing clinics for Taylor Guitars. www.wendywaldman.com
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once a singer-songwriter playing the L.A. club circuit and fielding offers from various record labels, has become the go-to composer for reality, game, talk and documentary television. Jon's credits include work for MTV, VH1, NBC, the WB, TV Land, GSN (Game Show Network), A&E, FX, TNN and Twentieth Television. Born in Chicago, student of Boston's renowned Berklee College of Music, Jon paid his way through the University of Florida playing standards at piano bar gigs. In June 1995, Jon performed at the White Knights Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia - the largest cultural festival in all of Russia and eastern Europe. The event drew a record-breaking crowd of 300,000, while the TV audience exceeded 10 million viewers worldwide. When MTV was looking for "Generation X's Paul Shaffer", Jon landed the gig as musical director on "Singled Out", which during five successful seasons brought him international recognition for his on-air role as "Pianoboy." This job was the first of many projects ("The X Show," "MTV Bash: Carson Daly") in which Jon not only composed but also appeared on camera as musical director and/or regular cast member. Following "Singled Out," Jon began scoring episodes of VH1's top-rated "Behind the Music" series and ultimately worked on most of the episodes produced. Jon's original songs have been featured in several independent feature films as well as in the Fox drama "Boston Public" and many other network series. Jon was also featured on Fox's classic prime-time soap "Melrose Place," in an episode in which he performed two of his songs and acted in a key scene, playing himself. Recently Jon scored and music supervised "Laguna Beach: The Real OC" for MTV, in the fall of 2004 and provided all music for "Live Like a Star," to be syndicated by Twentieth Television, and "Family Forensics," a one-hour reality show for A&E.
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a stunningly original songwriter, multi-faceted vocalist, and talented pianist, whose startlting '95 debut Scenes From My Last Confession for RCA records, was self-produced. He garnered praises for having "the makings of a legitimate superstar", comfortably poetic lyrics and mainstream sensibilities, without sacrificing any integrity, Dillon's . Well schooled in the rock, classical, jazz and Broadway canons both instrumentally and vocally. his range will astound you. Take the best of Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, Elton John, and Jackson Browne, combine it with the jazz sense of Steely Dan, the skewed maturity of Lyle Lovett, and the blue-eyed soulfulness of Van Morrison and you've got Dillon O'Brian.
As a songwriter, he recently wrote and produced the theme for a new Disney/ABC cartoon, "The Buzz on Maggie", due for a June release featuring the voices of Hilary Duff, Brad Pitt, Lisa Kudrow. In addition, his song, "Just The Way I Am", recorded by Skye Sweetnam will also be released as a pop single in May. Bonnie Raitt's version of Dillon's song "Fearless Love" was featured in the Oscar winning film "Sideways", "Smile" will be the first single released to radio from Irish legend Paul Brady's latest CD "Say What You Feel" and South African star, Ringo Madlingozi, will release Dillon's, "Before My Day Is Done", as his first single from his new CD "Baleka".
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one of the media's foremost authorities on pop music and songwriters, contributes to a variety of print and electronic mediums, including LA's Music Connection. 14 million monthly passengers hear Kimpel's interviews with songwriters and recording artists on United Airlines flights. Author of the best-selling book, Networking in the Music Business, Dan has taught a course based on this text at Sir Paul McCartney's Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts since 1998 Dan has produced concerts and events with Sheryl Crow, Sting, Paul Simon, Joii Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Quincy Jones, Tom Petty, Burt Bacharach, Kenneth Babyface Edmonds, Glen Ballard and Diane Warren.
www.dankimpel.com
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