Post by the Scribe on Jun 29, 2023 6:02:27 GMT
FANNY: The Right To Rock - Official Film Trailer
Linda Ronstadt flip side list connects Ali Sperry interview and Fanny documentary
www.goldminemag.com/columns/linda-ronstadt-flip-side-list-connects-ali-sperry-interview-and-fanny-documentary
Fabulous Flip Sides connects Linda Ronstadt B-sides via Nashville’s Ali Sperry's new album 'In Front of Us,' Fanny’s June Millington new album 'Snapshots' and the documentary “Fanny: The Right to Rock”
Warren KurtzUpdated:May 17, 2022Original:May 16, 2022
Photo by Fairlight Hubbard
Photo by Fairlight Hubbard
PART ONE - ALI SPERRY
GOLDMINE: Congratulations on In Front of Us which includes a couple of songs where I am reminded of Linda Ronstadt’s Don’t Cry Now album. For both Linda Ronstadt and Fanny, there was a gap of time between an early 1970s Top 40 hit and the next one in the middle of the decade. In Linda Ronstadt’s case, her solo Top 40 debut was “Long, Long Time” and then years later she returned to The Top 40 with “You’re No Good.” Don’t Cry Now is an example of a great album during that gap. “Love Has No Pride” was released as its first single with the opening song “I Can Almost See It” as its flip side.
ALI SPERRY: I grew up listening to Linda Ronstadt. I was a child of the 1980s, so I became familiar with her songs from that decade first. When I got a little bit older, I delved into her 1970s work, which I also love. Both “Love Has No Pride” and “I Can Almost See It” are such solid songs and great examples of how she is a master interpreter of other people’s compositions with such ownership, even though she didn’t write them.
GM: In the U.S., “Love Has No Pride” received airplay for Linda Ronstadt but in Canada, which I lived near, I heard Susan Jacks’ version of the song on Canadian radio. Susan also had a beautiful voice. Sadly, she passed away in April.
GM: On “I Can Almost See It” I hear the steel guitar from Sneaky Pete Kleinow, so that leads me to the steel guitar that I was immediately drawn to on your song “Hope” from your new album In Front of Us.
Ali album
AS: Ah, yes. That is Rich Hinman who is a fantastic steel player.
GM: Your vocal vibrato is wonderful. I know your song was inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem. Was it “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers?”
AS: Yes, that is right. When I wrote the song, I had been thinking about that poem. In my mind, I had it wrong as “Hope Is the Thing with Wings,” which was running through my head. I latched on to that phrase and kept exploring it for the song. I brought some of the imagery from Emily Dickinson’s poem into the song too. I learned the poem in 7th or 8th grade, growing up in a small southeastern Iowa town about an hour away from Iowa City. We moved there because that is where the transcendental meditation capitol was, and my parents were very involved in that. I went to a school based on transcendental meditation. It was a unique place to live and grow up. It seemed normal to me at the time, because I had nothing to compare it to, but after I moved away, I realized that foundation was very different.
GM: The Beach Boys’ M.I.U. Album from 1978, which is so beautiful and was in my Top 10 albums for that year, had its basic tracks recorded at the Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, near where you grew up. In my review of the album, I called it a new classic, and it is still one of my favorites. On your album, my favorite song is
AS: That is so cool, and I really appreciate that. I like her songwriting and singing a lot.
"I grew up listening to Linda Ronstadt. I was a child of the 1980s, so I became familiar with her songs from that decade first." — Ali Sperry
GM: I love your lyrics, “If you find your head filled with doubt, look up and see the stars too vast to count.” You gently deliver a taste of your TM roots.
AS: Thank you. I started with the verse, and it felt like it needed a soaring lift for the chorus.
GM: In the 1990s, when we were living in Virginia for a second time, I wrote about regional artists. Because Aimee Mann was born in our prior Virginia city of Midlothian, I considered her a Virginia native and wrote about her soundtrack to the film Magnolia and her album Bachelor No. 2 from that same era. With your songs “Safe” and “Lucy” I am reminded of her voice and treatment. “Safe” is beautifully sung plus there is a warm viola sound.
AS: The viola takes center stage in the arrangement with a heartbreakingly sad sound.
GM: You also share a mother and child relationship in the lyrics of taking a child to school and to not be afraid.
AS: I wrote that one with my friend Jill Andrews, who is a great Nashville singer-songwriter. She is a mother of two and we wrote it shortly after the concert shooting that happened in Las Vegas in 2017.
GM: I can imagine its impact on you as a concert performer. When my wife Donna and I watched that on the news, we looked at each other. We lived in Nevada before we moved to here to Florida and I had just been to a similar country music festival in Daytona Beach that year. I stated the obvious, “You know if we lived there, I would have been there.” Jason Aldeen was on stage in Las Vegas when that happened and Donna, our daughter Brianna and I had been given autographed Jason Aldeen items in Nashville from a DJ friend for a Nevada fundraiser about a decade prior when Jason was just starting out.
AS: Wow. It was just so scary. We knew some people who were there, and it felt so close to home that it was at a music event. When got together to write we felt that we could not ignore what just happened and had to write about it in some way.
GM: Going back to the strings on the song, let’s talk about your Grandma Gladys and let me offer my condolences on losing her this year.
AS: Oh, thank you. It is always so sad to lose someone, but I felt so lucky to have had her in my life for such a long time. Looking back, I am so happy that she lived such a long and full life and that I got to know her for all those years. She played cello in a symphony in Mexico and played in .
GM: Let’s also talk about Natalie Schlabs, who tells wonderful stories with her music.
AS: Natalie and I have written many songs together. We have a wonderful writing dynamic where I feel so comfortable writing with her. We wrote a couple of songs on her latest record and now we have our song “Lucy” on my album with Jen Gunderman playing piano on the song and a lot of the tracks. She’s phenomenal and plays with Sheryl Crow, so I am lucky to have borrowed her. Kristin Weber, who played strings on the album, and Ruth Moody delivered the harmonies on the song. Ruth has moved back from Nashville to Canada and is in a group called The Wailin’ Jennys.
GM: In 2019, we watched then Senator Kamala Harris debate and deliver a strong performance which I know inspired you.
AS: I was so impressed by her in that debate with her presence and her insistence on being listened to. It felt groundbreaking to me to watch a woman calmly own her space and basically say, “Be quiet. I’m talking now.” It was an incredible moment to watch. It was a great example to pave the way for the next generation, and that inspired me to write “Cool Under Pressure.” The songwriting grew to be about women having a cool confidence, to be able to do what women may be told not to do, that it isn’t our realm. This exemplified being a groundbreaker and being a leader to me. I was lucky that my parents and family were supportive of what I wanted to do, with Grandma Gladys and both of my parents being musicians. If I was born into a different family, they may have expected me to go in a more traditional route and find work that is more stable.
GM: Well, that takes us to our next performer for this article, June Millington from the band Fanny, and her new solo album Snapshots. The theme of “Girls Don’t Dream (The Big Lie)” certainly highlights what you just mentioned.
AS: Yes. Thank you for sharing her music with me.
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