SG Radio feat. Kristeen Young & Dance Hall Pimps – Sunday May 80

by Blogbot

This Sunday (May 8th) our very special in-studio guests are the Dance Hall Pimps and Kristeen Young.

Originally from St. Louis, though now New York-based, Kristeen Young is more Kate Bush than Kate Bush (she has a staggering 4-octave vocal range). The insanely talented singer/songwriter has a new Tony Visconti-produced EP out called “V The Volcanic” and is in the midst of a 4-week residency at LA’s Hotel Café.

LA’s Dance Hall Pimps blend blues, rockabilly and Americana with punk rock and more than a hint of goth. Catch the 21st century show band’s eclectic electric mix at The Viper Room on Saturday May 14.

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About Kristeen Young

There are no small parts, only small minds, but Kristeen Young has never suffered from a deficit of imagination. For her just-released Tony Visconti-produced EP “V The Volcanic,” this one-of-a-kind singer, songwriter, and performer drew upon the cinema, writing original songs inspired by supporting characters – some of them quite unexpected. To promote “V The Volcanic,” the New York-based artist shot her first video for “Fantastic Failure” off the EP amid the landmarks of her hometown, St. Louis.

At the outset, Young intended the follow-up to Music for Strippers, Hookers, and the Odd On-Looker to be a funk record. Only at the time, she was in a bit of a funk herself. “I was going through a particularly dank depression,” she recalls. Mired in the midst of this protracted “blue period,” she sought solace through immersion in her favorite movies – and from that escapism sprang new inspiration. “I didn’t want to be me, so I decided to use what was killing my time and become other people.” Not real people, but her very real-seeming companions at the time: movie characters. Now she had a legit excuse to spend even more time disappearing into the world onscreen. And “disappear” is the right word, as that theme crops up throughout “V The Volcanic” – not just in the sense of getting lost in the alternate realm of movies, but also apropos of how the expanding virtual universe crowds out the “real” world.

The result became seven songs based on seven different films: Violet Bick in Frank Capra’s 1946 favorite It’s A Wonderful Life (“V The Volcanic”); the Angry Apple Tree of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz (“I’ll Get You Back”); Lucy Westenra in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (“Why Can’t It Be Me?”); Old Lodge Skins in 1970’s Little Big Man (“Now I’m Invisible”); the android Pris from 1982’s Blade Runner (“The Devil Made Me”); Sarah Jane Johnson in Douglas Sirk’s 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life (“Imitation of Life”); and Cleopatra in the 1963 Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton adaptation (“Fantastic Failure”), which is the exception to the supporting character rule.

Musically, “V The Volcanic” marks a departure from earlier Young releases. Having set out to restore the piano to its rightful place alongside the guitar as one of the most fearsome instruments in the rock music pantheon, and feeling that she’d finally met that goal with Music for Strippers (hailed by The Village Voice as “the kind of ‘commercial’ pop we need more of”), Young was now interested in going back to her roots, drawing on the electro-funk grooves she loved in her Midwest childhood: Prince, Rick James, Teena Marie and Cameo. Yet as the new material took shape, she began to lose interest in mining just one musical vein. “I started branching out into other styles a bit: opera, dark wave, and other sounds that felt cozy to me.”

“V The Volcanic” may not sound precisely the same as its predecessors in the discography, but it always sounds like Kristeen Young. Fans will be able to experience her new material at her upcoming residency shows in New York and Los Angeles, as well as at select dates this spring in San Francisco, San Diego and Philadelphia.

In May, she takes the stage at Hollywood’s Hotel Café every Monday. She also has an appearance booked at the Hotel Utah Saloon in San Francisco on May 18. In June, she’ll travel east for a run of residency dates at Pianos in NYC’s Lower East Side every Tuesday, and will appear at World Café Live in Philadelphia on June 19. A residency in London at Monto Water Rats is also in the works for July 6, 20 and 27, as well as a date at The Bowery on July 14. Look for mid-west dates to be announced soon for August.

About Dance Hall Pimps

Created in February 2009 by blues singer/songwriter RJ See and guitarist Jeff Jourard (formerly of The Motels), the Dance Hall Pimps are a show band playing original music that ranges from blistering blues to rockabilly, from groovy sinister rock to New Orleans-style stomps and a genre they like to call Gothspel. Their inspirations include The Kinks, The Cramps, Electric Flag, and the unseen dark side of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The killer horn section of “Brother” Bruce Mann and Steve Carr is inspired by the screaming sax in X-Ray Spex and the jumpin’ horns of the Louis Jordan Orchestra. Mann also plays organ, drawing inspiration from Alan Price and Baby Face Willette, but delivering a distinct Bruce Mann style that is both melodic and percussive.

Lakeshore Records signed the Dance Hall Pimps in 2010. The label anticipates a Fall 2011 release of the Dance Hall Pimps debut LP. The record is being produced by Grammy winner Matt Hyde (Porno for Pyros, Cypress Hill) and Rob Hill (Korn, Soul Assassins, Xzibit, Wu-Tang Clan, Cypress Hill, Queen, Jackson Browne).