Posts Tagged ‘Hen House Studios’
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
Excerpt from article:
MJ: What about something totally outside your genre?
GM: I like to think there’s no outside; that I can hear whatever has a claim to make, but if you’d asked me if I were interested in poetry set to music, I’d probably say no. When I heard Ellyn Maybe’s “City Streets” on KALX in Berkeley I had no idea what it was, just that I was transfixed. I called up the DJ, went to Amoeba Records, couldn’t find it, wrote away—and after listening to Maybe’s album Rodeo for the Sheepish (Hen House) half a dozen times, I had no idea who the people behind it were—a poet, and a musician/singer who sounds like many of himself, or for that matter her-himself. But there’s a pathos cut with self-lacerating humor that makes this the most surprising and painful music I’ve come across.
Tags: Amoeba, CD, ellyn maybe, Greil Marcus, Hen House Studios, KALX, Michael Mechanic, Mother Jones, poetry, Pop Poetry, Rodeo for the Sheepish
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Friday, October 15th, 2010
Tags: Chinatown, ellyn maybe, Hen House Studios, Los Angeles, Music Video, nisey jay, Performance Art, poetry, Pop, riccardo spinotti, Slam, spoken word, Sylvia Plath, venice
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Thursday, October 14th, 2010
Tags: baba alade, Beyond Baroque, ellyn maybe, Eve Brandstein, Events, Hen House Studios, Jaimes Palacio, Literary Arts, Live, Live Music, Los Angeles, Michael C Ford, October 22, poetry, Rex Weiner, Rich Ferguson, Slam, spoken word, venice, Venice Beach
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Saturday, October 2nd, 2010
Tags: Beat Poetry, ellyn maybe, Hen House Studios, Live, Marin, Northern California, poetry, San Francisco, SF Gate, Slam, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, spoken word, Tour, Zvents
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Thursday, September 30th, 2010
Tags: Beyond Baroque, Ellyn Maybe and her Band, Events, Hen House Studios, LA Weekly, Live Music, Los Angeles, Open Reading, poetry, Poetry Rodeo, September 30, Slam, venice, Yo Venice
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Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Definitely, it’s Ellyn Maybe
September 30 kicks off a monthly series with Ellyn Maybe and her Band performing songs from her acclaimed pop poetry album, Rodeo for the Sheepish (Hen House Studios) as well as other works. The readings will feature guest musicians and an open reading where poets can bring up to five minutes of poetry and the band will improvise with them.
Hen House Studios is proud to host Maybe and her band September 30 at 7:30pm. The series will be held at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center at 681 Venice Blvd. in Venice Beach. Tickets are $7, $5 for students, seniors and children, free for members with free parking in the lot next to Beyond Baroque.
Maybe is the author of The Cowardice of Amnesia, The Ellyn Maybe Coloring Book, Putting My 2 Cents In, Walking Barefoot in the Glassblowers Museum, Praha and the Poet and A Talk With Nature. Rodeo for the Sheepish was featured as the top album of 2010 in famed critic Greil Marcus’s column for The Believer magazine. Ellyn opened the MTV Spoken Word Tour in Los Angeles and has read widely, from Bumbershoot, the Poetry Project and the New School to South by Southwest, Lollapalooza, all over Europe and on the BBC, just to name a few. Writer’s Digest named her one of ten poets to watch in the new millennium.
Tags: Beyond Baroque, ellyn maybe, Events, Hen House Studios, Los Angeles, Moontide Press, Performances, Poetry Rodeo, spoken word, venice
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Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
Viggo Mortensen‘s imprint Perceval Press is a small, independent publisher specializing in art, critical writing, and poetry. They were gracious enough to feature Ellyn Maybe’s Hen House release Rodeo for the Sheepish as one of their recommendations! Check out the spotlight and all the great content on their site.
Tags: Art, ellyn maybe, Hen House Studios, Independent Music, Independent Publisher, Los Angeles, Perceval Press, poetry, Rodeo for the Sheepish, Santa Monica, venice, Viggo Mortensen
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Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Thu., September 30, 7:30pm
MAYBE BABY
By Falling James
In her song-poem “There Were Two Girls Who Looked a Lot the Same,” the local poet Ellyn Maybe celebrates her titular subjects with a profusion of succinct details and a steadily rhythmic accumulation of playful phrases, such as “One wore lipstick/One bit her lip” and “The astronomy was tangible” and “They had eyelashes that looked like a hula skirt made of coal.” When Maybe declared, “They wanted a bite from each world,” she was marveling about how the girls appreciated both Gidget movies and Tennessee Williams plays. However, the L.A. wordsmith could have also been describing the sinuous way she moves between the worlds of poetry and music on her new CD, Rodeo for the Sheepish . Maybe’s homages to Picasso and Sylvia Plath are infused with beat-driven, soulful trip-hop moods from her simpatico band, who’ll not only back her tonight at this monthly event but will also whip up cool grooves for adventurous poets in the audience, who’d like to marry their words with this mysterious thing called music.
Location
681 Venice Blvd.; Venice CA
Tags: Beyond Baroque, ellyn maybe, Ellyn Maybe and her Band, Falling James, Hen House Studios, LA Weekly, Literary Arts, Live Music, Los Angeles, poetry, Poetry Rodeo, Pop Poetry, Rodeo for the Sheepish, venice
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Friday, September 3rd, 2010
Watch videos, listen to tunes, comment, add photos! Check her out!
Last.FM Bio: Of Ellyn Maybe’s new poetry/music CD, Rodeo for the Sheepish, the legendary rock critic Greil Marcus wrote, “I heard half of the long, quietly mesmerizing “City Streets” on the radio—what was this? A woman with a poem, with music and a sung chorus not behind her but circling her, and the poem neither exactly recited nor sung, but spoken with such a lilt, in a voice so full of miserabilist pride—at forty, a woman is still getting high-school insults tossed at her (“Hey Mars girl,” a man shouts on the street, “get off the Earth”)—that it’s music in and of itself. There is no bottom to Maybe’s inventiveness, to her adoption of Nirvana’s Oh well whatever never mind as an artistic tool, to a confidence that allows her to toss off a bedrock statement on the American character (“There are people / who know the cuckoo is the state bird / of most states of mind”) in a throwaway voice so that its humor hits you not as a joke but as an echo. There is nothing like this album except for the real life it maps.”
Author of eight books of poetry but even better known for her engagaging personality and performances, Ellyn was convinced by fans from the music world to adapt her spoken-word prowress to a musical format. Their delight at the results can be seen from a few typical reactions:
- Jackson Browne – “I have started to write something about you…several times, and each time I am struck by my inability to describe what you do in terms beautiful enough, original enough to do you justice. … Who has ever been able to say in other words what a song says? Maybe it’s why I like your poems so much; they say what can only be said in exactly the way you say it. The best way of turning someone on to you is to play you for them.”
- Henry Rollins – “Ellyn Maybe is an irresistible force. To…listen to her poetry is to be gently and completely crushed while simultaneously inspired and charmed. The honesty with which she so exquisitely reveals her vulnerabilities, desires and pain is beautiful and rare. … Reading Ellyn’s poems from the page is one thing but hearing…them just the way she meant them to be heard is something else altogether. … The musical accompaniment on the album is not mere background filler but a true collaborative effort between Ellyn and the musicians that really works.
(more…)
Tags: Ellyn Maybe and her Band, ellyn_maybe, Greil Marcus, Harlan Steinberger, Hen House Studios, henry rollins, Jackson Browne, last.fm, los_angeles, new york city, prague, Robbie Fitzsimmons, Rodeo for the Sheepish, tommy_jordan, venice
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Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
Tags: Beyond Baroque, ellyn maybe, Event, Harlan Steinberger, Hen House Studios, Live Music, Live Show, Los Angeles, Open Reading, poetry, Rodeo for the Sheepish, Slam, spoken word, Tommy Jordan, venice
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