I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RENÉ MARIE-Tiny Desk Concert #557 (August 12, 2016).

René Marie has a classic jazz singer’s voice.  She has the tones and bounce perfectly.  In fact, her entire performance is timeless–one would be hard press to guess when this was recorded (if you didn’t know).

Her first song “Colorado River Song” was inspired by an NPR coincidence:

René Marie was answering phones at Denver’s jazz radio station KUVO when she sat down across from a fellow volunteer fundraiser. He would soon invite her on a canoeing trip and, without yet having seen the eponymous river, she wrote the giddy “Colorado River Song” on the way there.

She said had never been canoeing before and she was so excited that wrote this song on the way to the river.

Her voice sounds great, especially when she does some mild scatting in the middle of the song.  There’s a great jazzy piano solo, too.  She accompanied by her Experiment In Truth band (John Chin on piano, Elias Bailey on bass, Quentin Baxter on drums).

“This is (Not) a Protest Song” covers serious topics, but sing in a gentle and caring way.   She sings of her homeless brother and her crazy Aunt who fell through the health care cracks (not sure if these are actual relatives, but it doesn’t matter).  This song is a bit less jazzy (although it has some cool jazzy bass lines).  It’s a surprisingly upbeat song although none of it is in a hurry to get anywhere, it just sounds great.

“Sound Of Red” is a bit faster with a pretty wild (relatively) piano solo. She also has a lot of fun teaching everyone to do her dance moves–put your weight on it.

And the sweet canoeing trip has a very sweet ending:

In the audience [for this Tiny Desk Concert] was the bold KUVO volunteer from that day 10 years ago. His name is Jesse, and they’re now married and live in her home state of Virginia;

[READ: April 1, 2016] Sunny Side Up

The Holms siblings are responsible for the Babymouse series.  It took me a little while to get used to their artistic style in such realistic story (no mice or amoebas), but it doesn’t detract from the story at all.

I especially loved this story because it reflected my childhood in the settings (although not the story).  I loved seeing the images from the 1970s (like Tab in the soda machine and going to the iron-on T-shirt store down at the shore).  There’s even a Polaroid camera!

The story is told in flashbacks, and I have to say that if I hadn’t been told that there was a sad element to the story, I wouldn’t have guessed that at first.  But once I knew there was a sad section, my anticipation of the sadness proved to be worse than what the actual sad part was, so phew.

As the story opens, we see a young girl (she’s ten) in 1976 landing on the tarmac in Florida.  Her Gramps comes to pick her up at the airport and says they are going to have a great time that summer.  Although as we see Sunny looking out the window, she doesn’t seem quite so sure.

Things aren’t super fun at Gramps’ house.  He lives in an over 65 community (and all of his friends are way over 55).  They are several hours from Disney, and the pool is totally lame.  I also got a kick out of them going to the early bird special and then pigging out.

The story flashes back to Pennsylvania, where Sunny lives.  She and her best friend are planning an awesome summer down at the shore.  We compare the pool at Gramps’ house to the one in Pennsylvania.  I got a huge kick out of the “adult swim” panel in which the whole pool is bordered by kids just waiting to get back in while one old man swims.  And that’s where we meet her brother Dale who has long hair and is a rule breaker (he jumps ion the pool).

Sunny meets a boy her age (the custodian’s son) and they bond over comic books.  So that’s fun.  But things aren’t great with Gramps.  In addition to being bored, she keeps finding cigarettes all over the house.  And he’s supposed to have quit.  It’s really sad for her.

And then in flashbacks we see that Dale’s long hair and Kiss shirt mean something less than savory–he’s been drinking (and gets drunk on Bicentennial night) and perhaps is even doing drugs.

Things aren’t great for Sunny, but they do manage to pick up by the end of the summer.   And as the title says, it helps to keep your sunny side up.