Posts Tagged ‘Hen House Studios’

Greil Marcus on Rodeo for the Sheepish in Mother Jones!

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

— By Michael Mechanic Mon Oct. 18, 2010 4:00 AM PDT

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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.

New Video! Ellyn Maybe – Sylvia Plath

Friday, October 15th, 2010


Video by: Nisey Jay and Riccardo Spinotti

Next Friday, October 22 I’m participating in Hen House Studios Presents…a night of Poetry and Music at Beyond Baroque!

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

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Press for Upcoming Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts NorCal Tour

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010

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Join Us Tomorrow Night for the Start of Poetry Rodeo!

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

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***Read about the Gig in the LA Weekly, Experience LA, RentFoodBroke, YoVenice, and VenicePatch!

Thank you Moontide Press!

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

moon_tide_hen_house_iconDefinitely, 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.

Rodeo for the Sheepish Recommended by Perceval Press!

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.

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Ellyn’s Poetry Rodeo in the LA Weekly!

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

LA_Times_Hen_House_Studios_Events_IconEllyn Maybe

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

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

681 Venice Blvd.; Venice CA

Check out Ellyn’s profile on Last.FM

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Picture 6Watch 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.

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Poetry Rodeo Rides on at Beyond Baroque!

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

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