Category - clients

What’s new with the Cohesion Arts clients

More “Joy of Making Music” – Ron “KrashOBang” Krasinski

Too bad he’s not Irish, then he could be “Krash O’Bang”

krashobang

Back in April, I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon at Azalea Studios in Brentwood photographing singer/songwriter Joy Zimmerman and a terrific group of session players as they laid down the tracks for Joy’s new CD.

Among the players was drummer Ron Krasinski. I got a good chuckle when Ron and I exchanged emails and I discovered that his email address starts with “KrashOBang@….”

I”m pretty sure “Krasinski” is not an Irish name..

More at TheJoyofMakingMusic.com

 

Sally Barris in Our Backyard

DSC_6264-EditAnn and I did a photo shoot last Saturday evening with the lovely and talented Sally Barris, aka “Sister Waymore” (when she travels with Pops and Willy). The light was perfect, and all we needed to get great portraits was one strategically placed reflector.

Here are some of the shots that we all think are among the best:

Not familiar with Sally Barris? Then please, avail yourself to her latest album via Spotify:

New Project: The Pam Rose Audiobook

Lately we’ve started to take a slightly different tack with our endeavors here at Cohesion Arts.

In what is often called a “pivot” we’re starting to focus less on long term ‘management’ propositions and more on on project-oriented enterprises. The 1861 Project is one such undertaking, and now we’re helping launch another. Here’s the press release:

Pam Rose Releases First of Its Kind Memoir
“In Story and Song.”

Pam Rose

Veteran Nashville singer, songwriter and performer Pam Rose has added a new dimension to her career with the digital release of a first-of-its-kind audiobook.

The project is unique in that each chapter of Ms. Rose’s spoken narrative is delivered with an audio recording culled from her extensive catalog, which now includes new tracks that have been recorded with this project in mind.

“If there has been a memoir recorded and released in this format before, we are not aware of it,” Ms. Rose says.

The digital audiobook, Pam Rose: In Story & Song, featuring “My Life” is being distributed serially through her website (pamrose.com) and to e-mail subscribers, beginning this week with the download and podcast versions of the Introduction and Chapter 1, Rockets.

“I was blessed to grow up near Kennedy Space Center, where my family, friends and classmates witnessed the dawn of the Space Age,” Ms. Rose recalls. ‘Rockets’ is the story of what it was like to grow up during such an energizing time, and there are stories about what Florida was like in the years BAC (Before Air Conditioning) and BD (Before Disneyworld).”

Several more sample chapters will be released throughout the summer, recounting Pam’s introduction to her mentor in the heart of the Atlanta music scene, her move to Nashville, her rise to international acclaim as one half of the duo Kennedy Rose, and her rich and varied experiences as a touring musician, which included sharing the stage with Sting on his “Soul
Cages” tour. A full outline of the book and chapter synopses are available on the website.

In another unique aspect of the project, Ms. Rose has formed a joint venture with Cohesion Arts. “I retain all the rights the material,” she explains, “but we’ve formed a partnership around the the sale and distribution of the product when it’s completed.”

“Pam provides all the words and music,” explains Cohesion Arts co-founder Paul Schatzkin, “and we’re helping her get the work into the digital marketplace and find its audience.”

Through e-mail and social media, Pam and her partners at Cohesion Arts hope to assemble a sufficient audience to launch a ‘Listener Supported’ campaign to finish the book and new music tracks, and further promote the hybrid project in the fall.

Pertinent links:

pamrose.com
Pam Rose: In Story & Song featuring “My Life”
Chapter Outline & Synopsis

About Pam Rose: Pam Rose is a Two-Time Grammy Nominee (Restless Heart’s “I’ll Still Be Loving You” and the classic “Ring On Her Finger, Time On Her Hands”). She enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership with co-writer Mary Ann Kennedy, with whom she formed Kennedy Rose. Sting signed the duo to his Pangaea Records, and they toured the world with him on his “Soul Cages” Tour. Pam presently appears on the National PBS TV Special “Tommy Emmanuel & Friends” scheduled to appear in national pledge drives through 2013, and performs “I’ll Still Be Loving You” and the title book track “My Life”.

About Cohesion Arts: Cohesion Arts is a Nashville-based startup that offers artists’ management, digital marketing and label services to a small but carefully selected clientele. Its releases include the highly acclaimed “The 1861 Project,” a collection of original songs about the U.S. Civil War. Founders and Principals in the firm are Alex Curtis, Michael Lovett and Paul Schatzkin.

– – – – – – – – – – – –

There’s quite a bit in that final paragraph that’s being reassessed as I type…

Ready for Launch: The 1861 Project

Past Meets Present in The 1861 Project

I have always been fascinated with American History. It was one of the few classes I actually paid attention to in high school. Over the past decade, I have spent an inordinate amount of time studying early American history, mostly by listening to podcasts of The Thomas Jefferson Hour. I am just intrigued by that whole period, and the improbable convergence of forces and remarkable people who made it possible to create a new nation out an idea.

It’s amazing to how much the Founders got right. But given the tenor of their times, there was plenty they got wrong, too.

This year, we begin observing the 150th anniversary of the brutal conflict that set about to correct the most egregious of all the mistakes that were included in the nation’s founding.

And I am very excited to be involved in a project that somehow manages to fuse my equal interests in Americana/acoustic music and American history.

The 1861 Project was initiated by songwriter, guitarist and producer Thomm Jutz, who I met last year after he’d produced Dana Cooper’s CD, The Conjurer. Thomm has assembled an outstanding cast of songwriters, singers and musicians, and has written and recorded nearly two dozen songs that imagine the stories of the real people who fought and lived through the American Civil War. With the original music providing a catalyst, the project hopes to stimulate online discussion of what that long-ago conflict means to us today.

Hoping to take advantage of the Internet and social media networks that were not around when the centennial was observed (egads… fifty years ago!) we’re billing this as “Facebook meets Ken Burns.”

Visit The 1861 Project website and listen to some of the tunes, and follow the links to Facebook and Twitter.

Bonfield Syncs

Today, for your listening and viewing pleasure, we offer the following the trailer for a documentary called “Out of the Ground,” which explores “how Pittsburgh and its neighboring regions in western Pennsylvania have been profoundly shaped by coal mining for over 100 years.” Pay close attention to the music that accompanies the narrative:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkB0ux5dfvA[/youtube]

That’s our friend and client Ken Bonfield, playing a track called “Requiem” from his digital-only EP, Harbortown.

“Out of the Ground” looks like a very interesting project, as it appears to document one of the pivot points from America’s agrarian past to its industrial future, a shift in which coal was one of the dominant forces. Congratulations to Ken for getting his tunes placed in such a worthy project.

Dana Cooper with Lyle Lovett in KC and St. Louis

Over the weekend of August 1, Ann and I were privileged to accompany our friend and client Dana Cooper as he opened two shows for his old friend Lyle Lovett in Kansas City and St. Louis Missouri. During both of his shows, Lyle brought Dana back out on the stage to join him a duet of Dana’s song Needless to Say (from Dana’s 1992 CD Stone by Stone).

Click the photo below to open a window with a slide show compilation of photos from both nights; Click the “play” button in the lower right of to start the slide show and play Dana’s recording of Needless to Say.

Dana Cooper joins Lyle Lovett for "Needless to Say" - Kansas City, Aug 1, 2010

Click the photo above to open the slide show window; click the player button in the lower right corner to start the slide show and music (Needless to Say, from Dana Cooper’s 1992 CD “Stone by Stone.”

All According to Plan…

Nice photo, huh?

As I start to write this post I keep seeing that scene in one of the Star Wars movies where the evil Emperor tells Darth Vader that “it is all proceeding precisely as I have foreseen…”

Because, you see, this is how it’s going to work, as the monolithic networks of the past give way to the niche networks of the future. It’s all revealed between the lines of this feature story about Dana Cooper that appeared in today’s Tennessean, as we get ready for Dana’s appearance tomorrow night on WSM radio’s Music City Roots – Live from the Loveless Barn broadcast from the outskirts of Nashville. Peter Cooper gets the essence of it the shift when he writes:

Dana Cooper has been working at this music thing for more than 40 years now, and in that time he’s managed to move from auditorium stages to living rooms.

“I had a duo with Shake Russell in Texas (in the late 1970s and early ’80s), and we had roadies, a light guy, a sound guy and a guy to keep people away from us,” said Cooper, sipping from a coffee cup at Flatrock Café on Nolensville Pike.

“It’s the most financially successful I was in music, and also the most unhappy I’ve been,” Cooper said. “Now, I love playing small places, and I love playing house concerts. It’s about community, potluck, and people talking in the kitchen. They feed you, put you up and give you directions to where you’re going, and it’s interesting to me to see what kind of characters are out there and what they have to say for themselves.”

I think that defines the “new troubadour tradition” as well as anything I could possibly add. Now we just need to use the tools that we’re learning to get more people into those living rooms and kitchens… and then, who knows, concert halls again as well…