(and like it that way). Feature writing, copywriting, website content, SEO: Meet your one-woman dream team!
FINALLY! A new Sparkle and Destroy podcast episode and some new live music news, too! I'll see you live for the free Play Like a Girl Showcase in LA this Nov. 30. Till then, listen to this behind the scenes podcast episode detailing the good, bad, and ugly of recording my newest album. Warning: It gets messy!
A dancing hot dog man, two car crashes, and "Wallmarting" through hell and back. In this final installment of Hayley and the Crushers' Crusher Confessions Tour, we come out the other side smelling like a couple of Las Vegas urinal cakes with a musky touch of ... is that Hennessy and Chinese food?
Warning: Tour memories are like photos from a crummy disposable camera. Some are pitifully undeveloped; some wildly overdeveloped, and some have my dumb thumb blocking the frame, so no one will even get it but me.
It was kind of a delightful surprise, really. We already knew we would be recording a few videos with our friend and Lost State Records label DIYer Trey Hanawalt (a SLO-Portland transplant), but we had no idea what that would really entail. We knew it would include a cool, inventive traveling drum kit called a Beatbox...
Tour ended last week, but it really started nine months ago. Way before booking began, way before desperately emailing bands I’d never heard of, and way, way, way before 3,030+ miles in a stinky van with two bearded partners in crime.
Featuring my big sister, Shakrah Yves, who recently went from working as a seamstress at Beach Blanket Babylon in San Francisco to a burgeoning computer coder in Berlin. To say I am proud would be a massive understatement. I am changed by HER decision to change.
Ladyfest is an example to our youth, a tangible view of what a woman can be, if she so chooses. There is nothing more empowering than unleashing your authentic voice from the very pit of your belly, legs agape and firmly planted on the earth, heart open. Add in an instrument, acoustic, electric or otherwise...and you have a spiritual and empowering experience.
I had always found Jenny Ashley's lampshade images eerily beautiful, haunting, and ultimately disturbing. But here's the most freaky thing. I wasn't 100 percent sure why. It's not often that I catch myself off-gaurd emotionally, but that's what good art does. It yanks you from your bubble and smacks you in the face.
Transition is hard for everyone. It is the necessary evil that takes us from who we are to who we're becoming. My friend Jordie Lynn Washburn understands this painful, uncomfortable, yet fulfilling leap of faith better than most.
