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MP3 Tiger Zane - No Matter What
11 MP3 Songs in this album (40:22) !
Related styles: POP: Folky Pop, ROCK: Acoustic
People who are interested in Sheryl Crow Joni Mitchell Sarah McLachlan should consider this download.
Details:
My family of four (mom, dad and one younger brother) moved around quite a bit so it is difficult to answer the question, "where are you from?" I was born on the south side of Chicago and lived there until I was six. Then we moved to Minneapolis and stayed there for seven years. At the age of thirteen, the family moved again to Philadelphia where I completed private Quaker high school. Summers I spent on my paternal grandmother''s farm in upstate New York.
My grandmother introduced me to music...one of my first musical memories is the sound of her high sweet voice singing British ballads, accompanying herself on a small, blonde upright piano in her living room. My grandmother was British although she came to this country just before World War ll. She always saw and encouraged the performer and musician in me-- sent me classical music records and my first instrument-the recorder. Later this developed into classical flute.
From age ten to twelve, I attended the Minneapolis Children''s Theater School. This was a special program. I spent mornings in junior high and afternoons in theater school. Here is where my longing to perform really developed. Seeing the magic of theater-the darkness, color, and wonderful costumes struck a deep chord. I read an enormous amount and seeing theater was like watching the imaginary world of books coming alive.
Although I played the flute for nearly ten years, it was never magical for me. When I was about ten years old, my mother on some romantic whim bought my father a classical guitar for his birthday. I have no memory of ever seeing him play it. However for me it was fate coming to visit. I used to sneak upstairs to my parent''s bedroom when no one was home and try to play it. I fell in love! I have never considered myself a guitar player (I''m really a singer/songwriter), but the guitar is definitely the first instrument that I felt a deep, creative ecstasy with. I am still a sucker for a really good guitar player!
I graduated from high school a year early and went to France for a year. In a tiny village about 2 miles above Evian, nestled in the Alps above Lake Geneva I found the inspiration for my first songs (who wouldn''t?). France, freedom and self-discovery were an intoxicating combination. Somehow I got a hold of an old classical guitar and played it for hours and hours writing melodic, deeply dramatic, romantic teen-age songs! I listened to a lot of Neil Young at the time. He is still an influence that I recognize now in my music-his sense of melody and song structure. When I came back to the US, I moved to Seattle and experienced harsh culture shock. Life and the parental argument that music is a terrible way to make a living and be happy, convinced me to let music fade into
the background.
Although I pursued other creative endeavors, (interior design, photography, relationships...) something was always missing; my heart wasn''t engaged. In 1996, it all came to a crashing standstill when I was laid off from work and found myself desperate to find what the big IT was! I realized that I would never be happy until I jumped wholeheartedly into music full time.
Saying yes to music was the most profound and life changing decision I have ever made. The song writing faucet started as a trickle and the more I put time into it, the bigger the stream became. In the next several years, I began to perfect my guitar playing, perform first at open mics and then at better venues, wrote more than 75 songs, began to play with other musicians, formed a band, recorded first a 5 song EP called "The egg" and then my debut CD, "no matter what". I directed and produced a local music showcase in Seattle called The Tiger Show. Doing music always challenges and excites me. My learning curve has been steep-- more of a straight line up than a curve! I think when you find your true work, it makes you humble. You can see how incredibly much there is to learn and yet you are inspired to keep going because you love it so much.
My debut CD, "no matter what" reflects a lot of the growing and changing that occurred in the first couple of years of doing music. My relationships with family, significant others, friends and God shifted and metamorphosed as I did. These kinds of changes were sometimes tough! Overall the experience of making the album was very positive. There was a serendipitous quality to the coincidences and experiences that kept me inspired. The woman who played viola was my bank teller, the saxophonist was a coworker at the restaurant where I was working. All the musicians who put their time and vision into the CD were generous and instrumental (no pun intended) in the overall sound of the album. Richard Belgard (the guitar player) and I met when he sold me my acoustic guitar-- a Martin. We worked together very closely during recording with the producer/engineer.
One of my favorite moments during the recording was during the instrumental section in the middle of "silver buttons". I had been inspired by some of the sounds I heard on Sheryl Crow''s "Globe Sessions" CD and wanted to try some mixing of electronic noise with really beautiful flowing music. The producer wanted strings involved too. Richard played some keyboard organ through a small tube amp turned up really loud. He wanted to erase stuff and come up with better--I wouldn''t let him erase anything. There was a voice inside me that knew exactly what I wanted and between the three of us a kind of power started building...the final touch was the acoustic guitar arpeggio floating over it all and Richard''s incredible electric guitar solo...this section ended up being one of my favorites on the album.
Another great experience was the first recording session for the album. A friend of mine was in the process of building a living space in the pyramid shaped top of The Smith Tower-a 47 story building in historical Pioneer Square (Seattle). This building was at one time the highest structure west of the Mississippi and was built around 1913. The producer had a fascination with pyramids and their effect on sound and wanted to experiment with the acoustics of recording in the space which still had no furniture in it. So one blustery fall day we hauled all of our gear and recording equipment up to the top. The elevator only went to the 45th floor so we had two steep flights of stairs to conquer. We hung mics everywhere--from right near us to the triangular top of the pyramid (3 stories higher). We wanted a really big natural sounding reverb. The band played live and we ended up using a lot of the drums from this session. What a view...basically 360 degrees...all of downtown Seattle, the Puget Sound, the mountains. It was a great way to start!
The CD was released in fall of 2000. I was 6 months pregnant(I performed all the way through to 9 months)! The CD Release Party was at The Showbox in downtown Seattle and was an amazing collaboration of all the women I have met and performed with in town; they have become dear friends. We transformed The Showbox into a flower filled, candle lit paradise. Beautiful food, lots of people and performances by my band as well as solo performances by all the women artists made the evening perfect. (check out their websites too: Holly Figueroa (indiegrrl), Willow, Kellee Bradley, Nikol Kollars, Kerry Lauder, Mary Shokes and Alicia Dara)
2001 was a turning point in a lot of ways. First because my baby girl Lucy was born in December of 2000 and life with a child is very different! I didn''t perform as much. My band dissolved when Richard Belgard the guitarist was accepted into The Blue Man Group and moved to Las Vegas in May. Later my drummer Ben Ruhl went to join Blue Man too,
The next few years I spent taking care of my daughter, writing and performing solo and duo. I did quite a bit of recording at a small home studio called Tango City in Seattle.
In 2006, a band kind of organically reformed around me. Since then we have played at The Bite of Seattle, The Tractor and various other venues. We are bass player Jeff Tolbert, drummer Michael Alex (Hart & The Hurricane) and myself. Sometimes we add keyboards and electric guitar to the mix! We just recorded 3 new songs this past spring(2007) 2 of which you can hear on https://www.tradebit.com
The material we are currently working on reflects some trips to Europe-- adding accordion, some French songs and who knows even other languages may show up!
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