Gina French
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| Introduction |
| “Music is my sanctuary, singing is my passion”
Those are the words that the Utah-based musician and singer/songwriter Gina French uses to sum up her musical vision. Hers is a voice that has been variously described as “volcanic” and “an angelic instrument” by different reviewers. (more info)
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| Location: |
Salt Lake City, Utah |
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French is not a newcomer. She’s been around, spending years performing both in bands and as a solo act, gradually learning the basics and paying her dues along the way. Long ago she came to realize that she had almost literally been born with music in her blood, but it has taken her time (often while life intervened) to nurture and cultivate her natural gifts through a patient and gradual growing process which has brought her to where she is today.
GINA’S RECORDINGS
The twin cornerstones of her musical resume to date are a pair of critically-acclaimed and award-winning albums, Sacred Ground (1997) and Of Rapture (2004).
The first of these, Sacred Ground, is primarily a solo acoustic album filled with deceptively complex and colorful multi-layered songs which weave tapestries of visionary poetic images of surprising scope and depth. There is a striking cohesiveness inherent in the album, framed by French’s own spare and precise acoustic guitar playing which fits nicely with the warmly pastoral jacket art. But it is French’s sustained display throughout of the most remarkable of vocal capabilities, with a delivery that ranges from the most subtle nuances on some numbers to a carefully measured intensity on others, which really makes Sacred Ground an exceptional album. When Sacred Ground came out in 1997 critics agreed that it was a stunning debut, especially for an unpretentious independent, self-produced album.
There followed a gap of nearly seven years before Gina French finally released her second album, Of Rapture. This album represented a radical departure from her earlier release and may have come as a bit of a surprise to listeners who might have expected it to be another colorful and poetic acoustic outing. Of Rapture is a highly ambitious offering that is characterized by the kind of intensity one would expect to find on the most mature post-modern rock album.
A key element to the new direction this second album would take was manifested by French’s decision go primarily electric and use a solid backup band on most of the new material. This intensity reflects to what degree French’s artistic talents had grown during the intervening years that followed the release of Sacred Ground as well as her strong desire, in a musical sense, to reach out and conquer new territory. A key element to the new direction A key element to the new direction this second album would take was manifested by French’s decision go primarily electric and use a solid backup band on most of the new material. Notably, the musicians she brought on board for this project were some of the best session players in the greater Salt Lake City area, including Bill Frost (a.k.a. “Mr. Bill”) on guitar and Lance Lee on bass, and former Salt Laker-turned-New Yorker Adam Sorensen on drums. Other key performers included fellow singer-songwriter Stacey Board doing backup vocals and veteran session man Phil Miller playing saxophone. Interestingly, one standout track, “November Days,” features a different band entirely, which represents a reunion of members from the short-lived band known as November that French had been a part of in the 1980's, including Mike Doran on guitar, Sean Meade on drums, and Melissa Warner on bass and doing backing vocals.
Like Gina French’s earlier release, it is also a highly cohesive work. While the cohesion of her earlier album may have revolved around a rather abstract acoustic and subtle, almost dreamlike theme, it would appear that the theme found in Of Rapture is most overt, and that is clearly an intense Passion. Its colors are hues of red, which are implicit in both the cover artwork as well as in French’s songs, which range from hard-driving, sensual and fiery rockers to hypnotic, world-beat tinged numbers and then all the way to strident atmospheric homages to a special child as well as to a band and a place in time when one’s course in life was set. She says that right before the year 2000, when she started planning the album, she thought it would be “sort of a bluesy rocker, and the world music concept was not part of the mix because I hadn’t written those songs yet.”
“Then I wrote the song “Of Rapture” in 2000. It was a fluke that came from out of the blue. So then I thought, this album’s going to be a bit different. And so, synchronicity again came into play.”
French had been struck by the images in the Oscar-winning movie, The English Patient, and had been especially moved by the effect of the plaintive and ethereal, Eastern-sounding quality of the ethnic singer whose voice was featured at crucial moments (Hungarian folk singer, Marta Sebestyn) of the film soundtrack. So that sound was on the back of her mind, where it eventually made a cerebral union, of sorts, with another bit of music that had also struck French in a similarly profound way, the sound of the exotic Middle Eastern vocalist (the famous Algerian “Prince of Rai,” Cheb Mami) in Sting’s 2000 world music hit, “Desert Rose.” So after that, unbeknownst to her at the time, these two elements began a subconscious incubation in Gina French’s mind, with the end product down the line destined to become the award-winning title track to her new album.
Of Rapture was the end result of four years of intense studio work and demanding songwriting.
GINA FRENCH: HER BACKGROUND AND HER STORY
Gina was born on January 4th, in Salt Lake City, Utah. As for music in her life, Gina gives much credit to her Utahn father, who loved the arts with a passion despite his disability, and was especially fond of singing and opera, as well as classical music in general. “At an early age I learned about the importance of music. My dad was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. There was a gradual decline in his ability to walk and in his coordination. Although this must have been devastating at age 37, he always maintained his love for music. He’d been an opera singer in San Francisco. I grew up watching him listen to and appreciate his favorite styles, opera and classical. Music was always playing in his room.” She believes that music gave him comfort and hope as he dealt with the debilitating disease. “I’ve become aware that my inspiration and love of music were learned from his example.”
But she also recognizes a significant musical influence coming from her Nicaraguan mother as well. “She always knew that I had an interest in music, but I’m not sure she was too thrilled with the rock songs that I’ve created or liked,” she says, adding that “she’s always preferred for me to sing the Carpenters or Dolly Parton!” But to be fair, Gina also says that her mother “does play piano and always had a great voice, and I grew up hearing her play and sing Spanish songs, which I am sure had some influence on me, plus she’s never been a shy person, so whenever she would perform, it was with a lot of confidence and charm. Somehow I must have learned from watching that, just what a performer can do to capture their audience.”
Gina found herself encouraged to start to write and perform her own songs later on in her 20s. Shortly after graduating from high school and then starting in college, she responded to a “Rock and Roll Singer Wanted” ad and soon became the newest member of a band called Driving Sideways, where she found herself singing a lot of wailing and screaming hard rock tunes, usually covers of songs by Pat Benatar, Lynyrd Skynyrd and other rock bands. A short time later she became the singer in the Crazy Jane Band, where she did more covers, sometimes of country tunes but also some Led Zeppelin-type numbers, before she finally ended up joining a more innovative alternative band known as November, in 1989.
Since the members of this band preferred to do original material rather than cover old ground, Gina found herself encouraged to start to write and perform her own songs. But she really did not have any formal training in the art of songwriting. Instead, she learned it by doing it in the context of her part as a band member and singer, which she augmented through listening to the work of other singers. Of course, her list of influential singers features a broad array of talent, including the likes of Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne, Earth Wind and Fire, and Annie Lennox. And she feels a particular debt of gratitude to Bono of U2 whom she considers to be her biggest single influence.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS, ACCOLADES AND THE NEW INDIE MUSIC NETWORK
So Gina French has released two excellent albums to date and each one has rightly earned critical acclaim in the press, mostly in her home state of Utah . But if we take a step beyond the traditional realm of journalistic musical exposure we suddenly discover that there is a virtual “brave new world” of music in cyber space, one that is redefining a big chunk of the music industry. And the way that this new realm is exponentially expanding it seems to be obvious that this is one wave of the future that is happening here and now. This is all happening on the internet, where an exploding number of independent artist sites are springing up, literally making the old major labels seem almost like dinosaurs headed down the road to extinction, or at least threatening to bypass them and make them as such, practically irrelevant to the breaking and promoting of real talent on the cutting edge of contemporary music. It is a world that French has embraced with ever increasing confidence. And that is simply because it has opened all sorts of new doors to greater exposure, with vastly greater interactive contact opportunities between musicians, deejays, and music aficionados of all sorts. In short, it is like a revolution, and artists like Gina French are at the forefront, riding the wave. Her website at the Independent Artists Company (IAC) site is impressive, to say the least. She says, “I feel that IAC in particular is at the forefront of the many Indie sites that have sprung up in the past few months. They do nothing but provide great exposure for many independent artists. I do not think this sort of opportunity would exist without the availability of these sites, and they have used the internet to integrate such positive stepping stones for Indie artists like myself.” The IAC site runs charts with regular updates, and Gina found her song, “Of Rapture,” hit the #1 slot on the week of October 10, 2005 on the KIAC Big 50. This song also received the prestigious Golden Kayak Award for best World-Beat genre in April of 2006. She was also nominated, along with seven other women, in the “Best Female Artists” category. Other accolades she has garnered in the past couple of years include recognition from other internet sites, including being chosen as Artist of the Week in March of 2005 at Music75.com; Best Female Vocals in World Fusion, all-time Garageband Reviewer’s Picks Awards, at garageband.com in December 2004 and February 2005. The same site had picked her as Best female Vocals in the Blues genre for three straight weeks. Her song, “Child of War” is currently posted at Neil Young’s “Living With War Today” internet website. Also, Gina’s song “ Hard Way ” has been chosen to be included on the Project For Warchild, a new landmark compilation DMD release which also features a number of other IAC artists. All proceeds of this project will go to benefit the work of the charity War Child International, which is a network of independent organizations whose purpose is to aid children across the world who have been affected by war. The project’s page at the IAC website describes the fundamental goal of War Child as being as being to “advance the cause of peace through investing hope in the lives of children caught up in the horrors of war.” French feels that it is such an honor to appear on such an important project and “alongside some of the greatest Independent artists on this planet!”
DREAMLIGHT - CREATIVITY BORN FROM LOSS
On Sunday, August 29, 2004, Gina French lost her father, James Gilbert Smith, who finally passed away from complications from his long and debilitating struggle with Multiple Sclerosis. Of all the people who had influenced her pursuit of music, she ranked him as her personal #1. “I learned early on from him that music has a healing quality, which was something I didn’t really process until I was in my 30's, but when I was a child it was something that was always there, intrinsically, and I always knew that my dad went to music for his own kind of refuge or sanctuary. I knew that because he was always in his room listening to music, confined as he was with his MS. You could tell that his music was calming and it helped him to get through.” “His death had a profound impact on my life,” she says, “and then, two weeks after he had died, it was strange how the music started flowing out, and I suddenly found myself writing song after song, about one per week.” The sudden surge of creativity caught Gina by surprise. “That’s never happened to me before - I’ve never written that many songs! It usually seems to take me forever, but here, seven songs in two to three months, just one after another. It was like the “Of Rapture” experience - they just flowed out, an incredible songwriting experience which I know is linked to his love of music.” The creative surge brought forth four songs in the first month, and then more songs continued to come at a slower pace of about one or two per month. “About six months after his passing, I found that I had a full album.” Gina describes this as a personal cathartic experience, as she says that, “writing the songs helped me to unload a lot of my deepest grief and they also helped me to heal and realize what a special place he is in now. I also felt as if he was helping me to write the songs, since he was such a music lover and also an opera singer in his past. This would be very fitting that any of this material was coming from him. I know deep in my heart that these songs are a part of his soul. It’s been an incredible gift to me.” “It seemed that once these songs were created, it had to be turned into an album, and for me, it brought me so much healing to realize that it could be a tribute to my dad, which is something I think that he deserves so very much, especially after living for 40 years with such a debilitating disease. It will be my way of praising such an unsung hero and courageous man who tried to live the best way he knew how and trying so hard to deal with such physical limitations, I just think it is such a great way to express my tribute, through music, which was his passion and source of healing for as long as I can remember” She will be hard at work in the studio for the next few months, to complete this project and bring it to fruition. |
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