Sweet Soubrette Big Band End of Year Show @ The Living Room

 

Thursday, December 22, 2011

The Living Room

154 Ludlow Street, NYC

www.livingroomny.com

No cover / $10 suggested donation

10pm Sweet Soubrette
11pm The Ramblers

Sweet Soubrette is sending off 2011 in style, with a big band performance at the Living Room featuring an expanded backing band. (“What's better than a ukulele band backed by a horn section? Nothing. Not a thing.” -The Brooklyn Paper)

Expect to hear some original holiday numbers in addition to Sweet Soubrette's usual dark love songs.

Featuring Ellia Bisker, Heather Cole, Mike Dobson, Stacy Rock, Erin Rogers, Cecil Scheib, Bob Smith, and John Waters.

"Edgy, honest and sultry...Sweet Soubrette has quickly risen as one of New York's most intriguing songwriting forces... Bisker has charmed audiences with her rock star command and intelligently crafted music, generating a buzz for Sweet Soubrette that extends way beyond the borders of New York City." -The Deli Magazine

Don't Trust a Girl (With a Ukulele)

Back in the spring of 2006 I was in grad school studying arts administration.  I had recently (and accidentally) acquired a ukulele and I was writing a lot of songs I didn't yet know would take over my life, not to mention my arts administration career.  One of my buddies in the program, Craig, was a former professional opera singer with a home studio recording habit.  Every so often he would e-mail a new track he'd recorded to me and a few other friends: a deadpan cover of "Material Girl," some 80s synth pop confections, and a couple of originals (including the brilliant "Brizzing a Little Xmas...to Lockdown," a jailhouse holiday tune that must be heard to be believed).

Our difference of opinion was about something completely geeky and inconsequential -- the correct spelling of a word we disagreed on; I can't recall what the word was anymore.*  In any case, we made a bet.  The terms of the bet were as follows: the loser of the bet would have to write a song about the winner of the bet, as a tribute.  We looked up the word in the dictionary...and both spellings were listed.  And so we each had to write a song.

Craig's song was called "Don't Trust A Girl (With a Ukulele)," and, well, it speaks for itself.  Suffice to say it was a hard act to follow, so for months I picked at a couple of song ideas for him with no results.  Then Craig dropped out of arts administration school to go back to being a professional opera singer, which gave me some more material to work with, and I wrote "Cut-Up," which wound up on the first Sweet Soubrette album.  You can listen to both songs here:

Don't Trust a Girl (With a Ukulele) by Craig Phillips

Cut-Up by Sweet Soubrette

*Craig has reminded me that the word was straitjacket (or, as he would have it, straightjacket).

Peanut Butter Cinnamon Cookies

For the past few years I've attended an annual holiday recording party where the guests are all musicians and we're asked to write an original holiday song for the party and bring a bunch of charts with us so that others can play along (plus something to eat).  The songs are recorded during the party in a living room full of mics and people playing instruments, and a few weeks later everyone receives a CD with all the songs on it.  You can listen to the past two years of songs here, and mine are available for download here.  This year my song is called "The Littlest Reindeer" and I've baked peanut butter cinnamon cookies.  The recipe is below.  Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Cinnamon Cookies

This is a classic peanut butter cookie recipe with the addition of cinnamon (inspired by my love for PB&J sandwiches on raisin cinnamon bread). 

Dry ingredients:
1 1/4 c flour
1 tsp cinnamon (This is enough for just a hint of cinnamon; try 1 1/2 to 2 tsps if you want more cinnamon flavor.)
1/2 tsp salt (Probably not necessary if your peanut butter has salt in it.)
1/2 tsp baking soda

Wet ingredients:
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c (1 stick) butter (leave it out so it gets nice and soft)
1/2 c peanut butter (I used Smuckers natural creamy peanut butter. Crunchy would work too. Just steer clear of the hydrogenated stuff, and if your PB is so natural that it doesn't contain salt, don't omit the salt from the dry ingredients.)
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix dry ingredients and set aside. 
3. Using a fork or whisk or pastry cutter (or I suppose a mixer) cream together the butter, peanut butter, and sugar until it's a smooth paste, then add beaten egg and vanilla.
4. Thoroughly mix dry ingredients into wet (about 1/3 at a time).
5. Lightly roll dough into 1" balls and place on cookie sheet about 2" apart, then take a fork and press the tines into the top of each ball of dough in a criss-cross pattern so everyone knows they are peanut butter cookies.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown. 
7. Let cool on the cookie sheets until they harden, about 5 minutes, before removing them with a spatula.
8. Exchange for love and adoration.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

Show Report: Worcester, MA



After the Bethlehem gig, 2006



After a couple of minor hiccups on Saturday morning (Heather having spent the night in Staten Island; circuitous Google directions), Heather and Ari and I hit the road, Worcester-bound. Ari was subbing for Bob, who couldn't play bass on this show, but the new guy wasn't so very new. Heather knew him from a Canadian Klezmer festival a couple summers ago, and I knew him from a 2006 Cirkestra show in Bethlehem, PA where he played bass and a freshly minted Sweet Soubrette was the solo opening act.

When we pulled into the Worcester Polytechnic Institute campus we saw a drum kit through the front window of one of the buildings: Dobson had already arrived, en route from a concert in Connecticut. We lugged the bass amp and the rest of our gear inside. The Goat's Head (or, as Dobson kept calling it, the Goat's Nest) is a campus dining facility festooned with WPI sporting gear and uniforms and things. A low platform stage at one end of the room allows students to listen to (or ignore, as the case may be) live music as they enjoy their chicken tenders. The opening act was on, a guitarist playing to an attentive crowd of fellow grad students and fraternity brothers. Dobson and Ari sampled the $3.50 beers. Jess, our contact and campus radio station WWPI's publicity director (also the DJ who interviewed me when we were in town in April), told us about the different departments (Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics...) and her project to make a disability-accessible motorcycle. These kids are basically rocket scientists. 

Unfortunately, no electrical engineers volunteered to come to our rescue during sound check when Ari's amp, the big monster he'd lugged all the way up to WPI, mysteriously did not produce any sound when the bass was plugged into it.  It seemed like a disaster, but our sound man Connor plugged the bass straight into the board and it sounded pretty decent.  The Goat's Nest had just opened for dinner and it was starting to fill up. We were ready to play.

Our set was an interesting experience.  If you've ever tried to musically engage a large room full of college students who are just trying to eat their dinner, for god's sake, you will know that their attention is devoted primarily to their meal, secondarily to their dining companions, and lastly and leastly to whatever band happens to be playing in the room. Our first college gig, and no one but the radio station kids and a weirdly attentive janitor seemed to be listening. I'm not sure what I could have done differently, but there must have been something. As challenging as bars and clubs can be, with some exceptions people are still there at least theoretically to hear some music, so once you go onstage they'll generally meet you halfway. I suspect this venue required more brute force, more high energy, and I wasn't prepared. 

But we played what felt like a good set overall, and a few people bought CDs at the merch table, and afterwards we went out for middle eastern food with the radio station kids, who were funny and great.  One of them told us about his radio show, which is all epic poetry read out loud over the air. He's doing Paradise Lost right now. We put Ari in Dobson's car for the ride back to NYC so Dobson would have some company and caravaned back to NYC. The boys beat us there because Heather was driving, and she tends to decelerate when she's talking, and we like to talk a lot. 

Gorgeous drawing of the big band!

Check out this gorgeous drawing of Sweet Soubrette at Jalopy by Robin Hoffman (from her wonderful blog Ukulele Chicken)! Here's a video from that night so you can compare:

Love Poem to Lady L.

Before I wrote songs, I wrote poems.  On Lady Liberty's 125th anniversary, I thought it seemed appropriate to drag this one from the vaults. 

Love Poem to Lady L.

Longing for her thighs
As long as city blocks
For her hammered skin
Once the color of a new sun
One of her knees is slightly bent
The sandaled foot upraised
And balanced on the toe
As if she's waiting to be kissed.

Overproud, alone
She is remote and guarded
Stately in her exile
Silent, stranded
A giantess
In a land of tiny people.
The closer I get to her
The less of her I see:
She is too great
For the naked eye to handle.

She says:
Give me your tired, your poor
And I am drawn
To her battered island
To the vaulting heights
Of bolted metal girders
To the sculpted features
Of her graven visage
To the framework of her
Thin-worn copper structures.

I stand before her
In the wind that makes her
Resonate like a bell.
Everything smells of salt
And ancient pennies:
Metal, sea.
Lady, I swear this to you
By the birds that wheel above:

I am yours. 
I am like you. 
I am yearning to breathe free.

Ellia Bisker, 1999

New review! "One of New York's most intriguing songwriting forces" -The Deli Magazine

Holy cow, The Deli Magazine just published a very awesome review of Sweet Soubrette in their new CMJ-themed issue!  (We will be performing in the Deli's CMJ showcase at the Living Room next Wednesday night.)  Check it out below:

For the fine-print-impaired, here's what it says:

"Edgy, honest and sultry in deliverance, Sweet Soubrette has quickly risen as one of New York's most intriguing songwriting forces to come out of Brooklyn. Featuring the vocal and musical talents of Ellia Bisker, whose first album Siren Song was released on the indie label MH Records in 2008, Sweet Soubrette hit the ground running with their sophomore album, Days and Nights, three years later. Both albums encompass Bisker's fantastic incorporation of poetry and life in her sweet-yet-sassy lyrics, and Days and Nights features the addition of band members Heather Cole, Mike Dobson and Bob Smith. An enigmatic performer, Bisker has charmed audiences with her rock star command and intelligently crafted music, generating a buzz for Sweet Soubrette that extends way beyond the borders of New York City."  (Christina Morelli, The Deli Magazine)