Toot Toot

http://www.hipchick.com

Yikes Gal! Do you believe this? I have been transformed into "serious band leader" through aligning my band with an organization called STITELY ENTERTAINMENT. Run by Jeff Stitely, a most excellent dude, the company represents a group of high-level party bands in Chicago. They have an office in Evanston and have been on the scene for over a decade. I've worked for them as a singer a bunch and now they are enlisting my band to be one of four in their roster.

Ah, how these people are sitrring up my world of contentment and ennui!!! 

Of course, I've been a willing bandleader at parties for many years, but I've only provided music for people I know - or for people who've been referred to me by people I know - and I've never actually promoted myself as Miss Party Band Thang before. Yet, when I met with Jeff Stitely and his posse a few months ago to discuss the prospect of working with them, I felt that I was finally ready to take it awn and become La Chick Leader.


So...I have spent the last two months cranking out recordings, photo shoots, music charts, blurbs, song lists, bios, and Everything Else these fine people require for my band to become one of their select few. Lots of meetings, calls, sessions and rehearsals have ensued, in preparation for our official entree into the intensosity of rawking party music. What an upstanding disciple of business acumen I've become!!!

Do I look a little freaked underneath the smile? 

I know I am an artist above all, but to get to play music for a living is a true privilege. I love giving people the gift of music and doing it well. Plus, I am not going to be singing anything heinous! This band is for groovesters. Obviously we will play whatever they want to hear, but we're heavy on the indie and acoustic pop rock and that which might be a little under the pop culture radar. It's a pretty fresh thing, combining very familiar stuff with cool, semi-popular or less known tunages...and my keyboard player is also a dance/re-mixer/dj, so he can jam the mashups at the end of the night for the clubber types.

So, here begins a new adventure. I'm pretty proud to be able to do this and I'm very proud of the musicians with whom I work and to be a part of a really honorable, cool company. I have been approached before by other bandleaders to lead a second or third band for their organization, and the timing wasn't right. Now, it feels just perfect. 

I am still doing my singer-songwriter thing, of course! I'll never stop cranking out rebel-cry tunes in dingy, late-night bars (BTW, I am concurrently producing my third cd of original music right now with the guy from Sons of The Neverwrong).


In continuation of this horn tooting campaign, I am also back on the audition trail for commercials with a hotshot Chicago agency. Oh, the lucky life of an Artsy Fartsy Soccer Mama!