YOU KNOW YOUR READY FOR A HAIRCUT WHEN...

Seems like old news, but I cut my hair this summer. Seems like we all cut our hair this summer. Something in the air?! If you followed me on vine (remember vine? do you still vine?)  six months ago I posted this silly six second ramble about my incurable urge to chop my hair... like a virus.  I battled that urge for six months, me against the scissors, and exhausting all my weak resistance, the scissors took the win. And I am okay with that...

I've had the same 'do for nearly a decade now, with the exception of a impulsive emotional chop to my mane that I gave myself in the first year of marriage. I admit it wasn't my finest look, but I was 21 and everything about life was changing. We often take it out on our hair when we feel like we are out of sorts with ourselves, or feel out of control. Being a beauty school drop-out I still have a pair of old shears in the closet just waiting to lop off some hair. Usually I just go for the bangs, once a year, every winter when my skin gets dry and my forehead gifts me a few extra wrinkles, it's cheaper than botox and more natural. But every once in a while those scissors give me a good stare down and I have to put them in a high place and walk away... 

JAMM: SOMETIMES LOVE...

Hello there! You have two options, you could either, one,  just watch the JAMM above and move along your merry way, the more time efficient option. Or two, you could watch the JAMM and read my 2 a.m. attempt at breaking down my productivity issues. Totally up to you, choose your own adventure : )

Sometimes Love, track 10 on High Hopes and Heartbreak, my full length post idol record. Can you believe that it's been over four years ago that I put it out into the universe? I love this old song, it's probably considered a B-side, it sits quietly near the end, those are always my favorites. I wrote it with Kelley Lovelace in Nashville. This song felt so right when we wrote it. It was a one take wonder in the studio. I remember sitting down at the piano with a microphone in front of my face, surrounded by the band. We hit record, I counted to four and played it and sang it, all of it happening all at once. One take, that was all it needed. I'll never forget that magic moment. Lucky to have had it. This song is special... listen to the words. Proud of these ones...

HOW TO SURVIVE A FRIEND BREAK-UP....

About six months ago I quickly scribbled a bunch of thoughts I felt inspired to share on a piece of paper, then I folded it in half and stuck it behind a box for a time I was ready. I found it tonight, so I think it's time. It's probably going to be long.

They say that breaking up is hard to do... there is a wealth of information out there on how to deal with the end of a romantic relationship, divorce or a separation with a lover. But what about when something goes wrong in an important friendship? It's a topic that I haven't seen a lot of talk about. I am ready to talk about it.

A friend break-up can be just as traumatic as the unraveling of a romantic relationship... we are left with a lot of loose ends, and the end of a friendship can dramatically change the landscape of your life, particularly if you live far away from your family...

JAMM: LEAVIN' ON A JETPLANE & JOHN MAYER

I've always wanted to sing this tune, but thought it was the predictable choice... but then I thought, whats wrong with predictable ? :) The late legendary John Denver wrote this song. My parents loved John Denver, therefore I love John Denver and his pure humble voice...  reminds me of being a kid. Peter Paul and Mary made it famous with their three part harmony, now I will attempt to sing it super simply from my living room. Everyone knows this song, everyone loves this song, feel free to Sing along! 

Oh, and This weekend Dave Ray took me to see John Mayer in Irvine... I'm a fan. I've been following John since "Inside wants out" and saw him perform at Mesa Amphitheater twelve years ago with my brother Tyler. From a glossy Room for Squares, to a poppy Heavier Things, to the bluesy John Mayer trio, to the perfect Continuum, to the transitional battle studies, to his California country Born and Raised and his upcoming Paradise Valley... John keeps evolving as an artist. And where ever he goes I will follow. Yeah I know he had his less than chivalrous moments, and has dated everyone from Simpson to Swift and Aniston to Perry... I don't give a whoop about any of that. (haven't said "give a whoop" since the 90's)But I do care about the music, the guitar playing and slaying, the soul, the dedication and persistence to artistry when not a lot of people seem to care about that anymore. 

Small sidenote: I gave birth to London while Born and Raised comforted my agonizing body and petrified mind. It will forever be the soundtrack of the biggest bestest day of our lives to date.

The show was nothing short of magical. The set was beautiful, the band was off the charts. There was a new humility about him, and he got pretty carried away in the music, his face was about to explode with happiness and he was so whitty. What can I say, the guy is talented. He was killing me softly, slaying my soul, blowing my mind, and melting my face off with his guitar.  I came home inspired, ready to write, ready to practice, ready to listen. 

Oh, one last super awesome thing! L.A. traffic was at it's gnarliest, It took us nearly three hours to get there, not so awesome. We missed Phillip Phillips who opened the show, also not awesome (that we missed him, not that he opened, that is so awesome). If only we could've pulled a chitty chitty bang bang over the 405. However as we were driving there, my manager brad was in the backseat, we were listening to the Mayer playlist I put together for the drive, we got to talking about who produced Born and Raised, he googled it and found out it was Don Was... the same Don Was that produced Carly Simon, and Bonnie Raitt and Dylan, and the Stones. I said to Brad "I need him to produce my next record"... he laughed "yeah". We arrived, and we could hear "paper doll" from the parking lot. It was the first song of the set. We ran to will call and got our tickets and then bolted through the pavillion to get to our seats, but I decided to quickly stop at the merch booth and pick up my new favorite "queen of california" t-shirt. I paid and ran with my JM Tee in hand... and just yards away from the ticket usher, we saw this guy with dreads and a hat and cool sun glasses. Brad said "I think that is Don Was"... 

He said, lets go talk to him, so we walked over... I was too nervous to approach him and so Brad said "are you Don" and it was :) I told him that he was awesome, we talked about Carly Simon, he seemed to know that I sing, he was beyond nice. I told him "I would love you to make my next record" like a big nerd. I asked him if he would take a picture with me. He did. True story. Later he went up on stage and played with John. Don Was is awesome.

Lastly, totally and completely unrelated... I put up a baby gate tutorial over on The Girls with Glasses blog. If you have a wild monkey adventure baby that loves to climb to the top of your hardwood stairs, like I do, then you need this gate. 

JAMM: FLY FLY FLY

You will notice a cute Londy Loo, waddling around the background in this one. Motherhood and Music must exist in the same room, as I always hoped it would, and I'm grateful that it does :) You will also noticed I said "forget" twice in the bridge, I mean't "regret" the second time. (important lyric distinction)

If you were to ask most singers, they would tell ya that they prefer to sing ballads. Why? 

Probably because they contain more emotion, and the slower pace makes it easier to give it the inflection and feeling it needs to really find it's soul and connect with the lyric. In a way, it's easier-ish, kind of. An up tempo tune with the wrong arrangement was usually the kiss of death on American Idol. That is why everyone is singing slow songs, if you were wondering:) It is deceptively hard to perform fast songs and pull it off.  I mean don't get me wrong, when it comes to listening to records, I prefer something peppy, something with a solid beat that makes me wanna dance and let my hair down. Yes I do love to rock. And if I am in the studio, putting together an upbeat track is the greatest! But making it happen live, different story. Be it fast or slow, singing really well while also connecting really well while also playing an instrument really well, and picking or writing a song really well... is well, really quite tricky! I just keep working at it... someday I might get "there"!

As I mentioned last week, I also wrote this song for Banner 4th of July. The inspiration was fully present in writing this one. It is definitely my favorite song of the two, and certainly my favorite scene in the movie with Christian Campbell. I am posting half of the scene below that mjsbigblog put up on Youtube, (thanks MJBB!). This was the song that she had written just before the band split. She was feeling the need to "go find her way all on her own". But it's never really that easy, leaving the familiar, the family, the place you've always known, and it almost always hurts the ones you leave behind, and that is the hardest part. We all go through this at some point in our lives whether it's a place, a relationship or even a job, sometimes you got to fly fly fly away... and yet those places and people and things will always be a part of who you are. 

At this point in the story, years have passed, feelings are hurt, a brother and sister damaged by the distance and a misunderstood past. This song is the healer. As it always does, the music is what says what she has never been able to say, and it speaks to him what he's never been able to hear. It transcends who's wrong and who's right... it's the language that the heart can understand.

We usually never intend on hurting the ones we love, and yet so often we do... it's a bummer. Life is complicated, and so much get's lost in misunderstanding. How do we make it right? Time? Saying a sincere I'm sorry? Letting go of pride, failed expectations? Sometimes we just let it be. 

In this case, Desiree Banner makes it right with a song. And in many of my own cases, I do too... or at least, I try.

PS- Thank you and happy birthday to the lovely miss Priscilla Chang for capturing this video for me, and for helping me get my JAMM back!

PSS- Oh and yes, FLY FLY FLY is available on itunes! yay!

THE RETURN OF JUST ANOTHER MUSIC MONDAY: SUN UP SUN DOWN...

Well my friends, it's been a few Mondays since I last posted my lil' homemade iphone music videos. You know I intended on it, but...

Too much, not worth the explanation, but the good news is I'm back in business with JAMM... and yes I am just going to shorten it to JAMM because Just Another Music Monday just takes too long to type:)

Apparently I have this reputation for being... long winded, chatty, descriptive, redundant and possibly over communicative. Now, I'm not saying that I am going to go drastically changin', cause I like the details, however I am going to attempt to say more by saying less. I know we don't have time to scroll down through my novelish length posts all the live long day. I mean, who reads these days? (ha!). So If there is a way to write with heartfelt efficiency, and for you to read and connect with heartfelt efficiency then that would be super duper for all of us. 

Back to JAMM... I've been a'waitin' (in the words of Buddy Holly, needless side note? totally needful in my book, this less is more thing is gonna be tricky) to play you this song that I wrote back in March just after I got the call to play the roll of Desiree Banner, however I had to wait till the movie aired (Btw, a big thanks to all of you that tuned into the Hallmark Channel to watch Banner 4th of July. Also a necessary sidenote. I want to say more, resisting). Any who, I read the script before I was officially casted, thought it was cute,  hoped I would get the part. Weeks later I had a conference call with the director, producer, writer and EP of the movie, and they informed me that they would like me to write a few original tunes that I would also sing. With great excitement they explained that I need to write "the Banner Project's big hit" they would really love something "kinda mumford & sons-ish meet's Phillip Phillips Home and a little bit Lumineersy". I had to chuckle, if I knew how to write songs like that I'd probably be wearin' a rolex and drivin' a Rolls, but let's be honest, I'm wearin' a timex and driving a Honda (which is honestly my preference) By my own personal standards, I'm successful, but not that successful! :) Sarcasm aside, I really wanted to take on the challenge, and the reference was quite helpful, so I told them, YES! I will do it! Oh, and I supposed that meant I got the part? :)

When it comes to writing songs, I rarely sit down with such a specific concept, or think "write a song that sounds like this". So I felt like maybe this wasn't something I would be able to pull off. Generally I feel at the mercy of whatever song wants to present itself to me. People always ask me "how do you write a song", and I always give a confusing long non-answer, cause I really don't know. Obviously I write lyrics, and pair them to a melody that sings over an arrangement of chords, obvious I know, but how? The songs write themselves, I just try to make myself available when they are ready. Cause believe me, I try to write songs all the time, and a lot of times it is a lot of staring at a blank sheet of paper. I put in the time, I write down stuff, I play a lot of stuff, and a lot of that stuff is, pretty much crap. However, I do wonder if all that stuff is just necessary priming for the real thing. The work precedes the inspiration? Like I said, I really don't know. Honestly, every time I finish a song, I wonder "will I ever be able to do that again?". Writing a really good song sort of feels like winning the Lotto. It feels lucky... that being said,  I've never played the Lotto, so I definitely have never won the lotto... lame comparison?! 

Ah! Trying to make this short(er), so I wrote this song, I was very surprised. The whole "write a song that sounds like this" thing totally worked! And no it doesn't sound like M&S or PP, but it was my best original interpretation that felt right for this story.  Best of all, they were happy, and I was happy. And let me tell you, I love acting, it is really interesting and challenging and fun, and I don't do it very often for complicated reasons, but being able to write the songs as a songwriter, and then sing them in the movie as an actress was really really rewarding. In the final scene of the movie, we (the banner project, me and my bros. Mitchell and Johnny) sing this song to our hometown. It was about 30 degrees that "4th of July" night and it was raining, you could see our breath, and we literally sang sun up sun down, from sun down to sun up. We pulled an all nighter, along with a couple hundred of the most enthusiastic group of extras I've ever seen. Seriously the  citizens of North Bay Ontario deserved an academy award for their level of commitment to being the most believably energetic, excited crowd I've ever seen in all my time on stage. Granted they were "acting" but they sang along to every word, and danced and shouted so joyfully, to every single take. It was pretend, but it was real. It was kind of amazing. 

So here it is, this is how every song begins, just a guitar (or piano) and a voice...

Oh, If you like it, you can find it over on the iTunes. Up next Monday... Fly Fly Fly, the other song I wrote for the movie. 

*A shout out to Christian Campbell (who plays Mitch) for singing a great vocal on this track. And one more shout out to Kevin "Kedge" Haaland for producing and playing a lot of instruments on this record, so great. 

BANNER 4th OF JULY...

ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK EP AVAILABLE ON ITUNES TODAY!!!

Oh yeah, so did I tell ya that I went to North Bay Ontario Canada a month and a half ago and made a Hallmark movie? Yeah, so, I did.

If you follow me on instagram then you probably saw this picture of me standing in the snow... in May. See, the movie is supposed to take place around the fourth of July, but looked like a White Christmas, as you can imagine, this was quite the predicament. I thought, hmm, maybe they'll reschedule, but you know what they say, the show must go on! And go-on we did, in temperatures roughly 6 degrees celsius, which in fahrenheit translates to, Cold. So imagine standing outside with bare leggies, and a gust of icy wind comes a bustin' through my silk summer dress,  you could see my breath and every hair on my arm was standing tall, teeth chattering... remember, I hail from Arizona, and reside in California where we exist in one season pretty much all year long, I'm basically a lizard, and yet there I stood, a human ice cube... it was an intense practice in mental toughness, I've never had to act so hard in my life! We all anticipated that glorious word, CUT.. when they would instantly throw floor length parkas on us. It took a few weeks for me to defrost, or shake the chill in my bones. Watching it back you'd never know it, thanks to movie magic, a snow blower and some pretty flowers, it looks just like a beautiful summers day in Pinewood Hills! 

Just a few days later after shooting most of our outdoor scenes, the sun came out, melted away the snow, the trees sprouted leaves and revealed probably some of the most gorgeous weather and scenery I've ever seen, the sky was blue and the bay was pristine... andouldn't ya know we headed in to shoot all of our indoor scenes. Isn't it ironic?

It was a fast and furious shoot, however I loved every minute. Acting is really fun hard work. The days are long, but I just didn't mind. I think what I love so much about making a movie is that it is a true collaborative effort. The cast and crew become your fam for a few weeks, they are there to support you and catch you when you fall. From our incredible director Don, to our camera guys Rod and Andreas, to wardrobe, hair and make up, AD's and craft services. Everyone plays an important role, and you grow to love these folks that you will likely not see again. It was wonderful to have my London close at hand, who would come to visit me on set and sit in my lap and eat (my) lunch with me everyday... everyone got to know my Loo. Even Dave was there for the final week of filming.

This role was different from my last, although I play yet another musically inclined lady, this gal is more conflicted, and has a few more walls built up around her and her heart that has been broken by the business and her past. I got to rummage through a bunch of feelings to be her and relate to her story, I maybe even yell a little... :)

Probably the most rewarding part however was writing, recording and then performing the songs for her and the band to sing in the movie... obviously music is a bit more familiar territory for me.  I wrote two new originals, Sun Up Sun Down which is the bands big hit, which has a more up beat, clap your hands, stomp your feet, americana vibe. Then there is "fly fly fly" a more raw emotional ballad that I play on the piano, with Mitch accompanying me on the guitar and singing harmony. I co-wrote songs for Change of Plans, but have never really written with such a specific purpose or theme on my own, I usually just write whatever I am feeling in the moment and allow the song to dictate itself. However I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly they came and how inspired I felt... it was kind of a break through for me as a songwriter. I can't wait for you to hear them, as a matter of fact the songs are available on a four song original EP as of today, as in RIGHT NOW! You may also recognize XYZ and VOICES that Jack and I released last year. I was excited that they also placed these songs in the film! Feel free to take a listen over on itunes :)

The cast was a small but super talented bunch. Mercedes Ruehl plays my mom... if you don't know much about Mercedes, you should google her. Academy award...check, golden globe... check, tony... check... basically she is an Emmy shy of an EGOT. She is rather legit you could say, and for being so successful and distinguished in her craft, couldn't have been more generous to a mere rookie like myself on the set. This isn't my first rodeo, but it's my second. She gave me some truly valuable advice to help me level up to the task of a lead role. This lady is a riot and it was an honor and a privilege to be under her tutelage. As it also was with Christian Campbell, who plays my older brother and former bandmate, who also has an extensive body of work. He really makes acting look easy, which it's not. Like a real big brother would, he took me under his wing and ran lines with me, we broke down the script and figured out subtext. Preparation equals confidence, and  I came to set feeling like I knew my scenes, thanks to the kindness and talents of Christian. Then there was Mike Barbuto, who plays the drums, and our brother as the third member of the "the Banner project" band. Nicest guy ever, and also helped me discover the art of crying on demand. You'd think this would be a slam dunk for an uber sensitive emo weepie like me, but it's not! Unless you're Mike, then it is, it's a real skill. Of course this is a Hallmark movie, so there is a hint of romance, and Chad Connell, brought it with his symmetrical features and super debonairness (totally expected that word to not really exist, however I see no dotted red line, so I am going with it) Yes, I said DEBONAIRNESS!!!

But really this movie is about the family. I play Desiree Banner, former singer and songwriter for the Banner Project, a small town band that she and her two brothers Mitch and Johnny started over a decade ago. Just as they were about to make it big time with their smash hit single "sun up sun down", she was swept away from the band by a producer from LA who convinced her she needed to make it on my own, leading her into a doomed marriage, and breaking up the band, causing bad blood between her and Mitch. Fast forward to now,  when they hear the sobering news that their mom, Rosalind has had a heart attack, bringing them all home to exist under the same roof together for the first time in ten years to look after her while she recovers. Now she finds herself forced to face the music (budum-ching). While she tries to deal with Mitch and the angry elephant in the room, she also discovers that her hometown of Pinewood Hills is in extreme economic distress potentially forcing them into bankruptcy. Her mother, who also happens to be the Mayor however, who has been known to always have a plan up her sneaky sleeve, secretly schemes up a way out of all of this mess while on bedrest...

and with all that, you're just gonna have to watch the rest to see what happens :) you could also watch a little trailer right HERE. 

Ahhh! So set your DVR's my friend, SATURDAY, JUNE 29th 9p/8c on the Hallmark Channel! Join me on twitter while I'll be nervously watching this movie for the first time!

PS- If you live in Los Angeles, I will be performing "sun up sun down" on Good Day L.A. this Thursday morning! 

And then on the Home and Family Show on the Hallmark Channel on Friday... Woohoo!