My drummer, bass player, and guitar player sing backgrounds. They play and sing. I can sing all the harmonies, but I can't do it alone.
My brother Art was a doo-wopper. He had a group that sat out on a park bench in New Orleans and sang harmonies at night, and they'd go around and win all the talent shows and get all the girls, you know.
I like to be surrounded by harmonies and fullness and richness and vitality.
I like The Four Freshmen, anything with good harmonies, some Beach Boys. I like the girl groups as well, like The Dixie Cups and all that.
I'm trying to play tunes in a new way, using all the same scales, harmonies, structures, but twist everything a little bit so that it comes out sounding different.
Holiday Shores' ambition far exceeds its members' recording budget. The band's boyish vocal harmonies wash in and out with the tide, and reverb radiates from the guitars like heat off a sun-baked parking lot.
The albums 'Heaven On Earth' and 'Runaway Horses' and 'Live Your Life Be Free' were harking back to when I was a young girl and listening to Californian radio - lush productions, complicated melodies, harmonies like the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas. That's what those albums remind me of.
A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.
Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally.
I had to learn right away how to improvise behind Ornette, which not only meant following him from one key to another and recognizing the different keys, but modulating in a way that the keys flowed in and out of each other, and the new harmonies sounded right.
