Today I’m talking to funkadelic singer/songwriter and Jersey Girl, Laura Cheadle, who has been kicking off the new year with sev real performances. As a matter of fact, tomorrow, Friday, January 18th she’ll be appearing at the Union Firehouse in Mount Laurel, NJ. For more information and to get the skinny on all of her upcoming gigs, go to laura cheadle.com and click on DATES in the MENU.
I first “discovered” Laura Cheadle back in the MySpace days – on Myspace of all places. She had released a video of a song she had written called The MySpace song which, although wasn’t at the level of Rosetta Thorpe or Bonnie Raitt, you could hear her blues funk influences even then And of course this was a novelty song so yeah, there’s that.
So me, I’m completely into Photoshop at this time. A friend of mine in the animation department at Hannah Barbera had shown me a Christmas Card he created of a guy with his leg impaled by a Christmas Tree. It looked pretty real, so naturally, I was hooked on Photoshop immediately!
Anyway, I thought it would be cool to Photoshop this girl, Laura, onto the body of a performer receiving a Grammy Award. Thank God – Laura took it in the spirit it was intended because in retrospect, that was kind of a stalky thing to do. I mean, I didn’t really know her and doing that probably has a creep factor of about 8.5.
Anyway, sometime later, she was promoting a show in Ardmore PA at a pace called Milky, a very good listening room for original acts, so I went with a few friends of mine to see her and the band which consists her Dad and her brothers, although now she also includes a couple local blues musicians, Mo and Dave, a very seasoned old school bass and drums rhythm section, that really fills out the sound and anchors the band perfectly.
I’d like to take this opportunity, btw to apologize to Laura for hogging the conversation. The was one of my first podcast recordings and I was a bit nervous. So there were times where I may have been taking when I should have been listening or helping to elicit more conversation from Laura.
(BTW – The group you opened for at Abington, whose name you couldn’t think of was – Simple Minds)
If we ever get to a part 2, I promise it will go much better. You also should know, her dad, Jim Cheadle has quite a musical history himself, so maybe we’ll get him to participate next time as well.
Right now, this is where I’d like to say, “Today, our conversation with Laura Cheadle is brought you by BLANK, but since this podcast is in its infancy, I don’t have a sponsor yet. Hey potential sponsors, that was a HINT.
So, I guess there’s only one thing left to do. Let’s talk to Laura Cheadle…
More Laura Cheadle
Music from the Show
Intro (most epsiodes): Playa del Spain by Joe Walla
Joe Walla music availble on Broadjam
Outro (most epsodes): I’m Goin’ For a Drive by Hal Cohen
Produced by Barry Keys for Xenon Records
Piano: Barry Keys
Lead Guitar: Aaron Wolfson
