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. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 