O' Hazel
Exclusive Interview by Peter Ashton

Hazel O’Connor fans will be pleased to hear that the feisty 80s survivor has
three gigs in the South of England this month. I caught up with her by phone
at her cottage in County Wicklow, Ireland, just before she packed to set off for Glastonbury Festival where she was appearing on the Avalon Stage. “I’m taking my camping gear, so I hope the weather’s going to be OK,” said Hazel.
After reassuring her (totally inaccurately as it turned out) that the weather
was going to be fine, I asked Hazel how she enjoyed living in such a remote part of Ireland.
“I love living here with my three dogs,” said Hazel. “The nearest neighbours are 300 yards away, but there’s a pub down the road. If your car breaks down you’re up shit creek without a paddle, but people are very kind here - you just stick your thumb out and eventually someone will help you.”
Performance-wise Hazel has recently been alternating between a stripped down acoustic act with Irish harp player Cormac de Barra and playing with her band The Subterraneans. “I enjoy both formats,” Hazel told me - “I only have a loose career plan. I just do something for so long until I feel I need to change gear and I’m enjoying what I’m doing now. We’re booked ahead for the next two years, which has taken a lot of hard work.”
Hazel famously got ripped off financially during her chart years. Despite
court actions she received very little return for the millions of records she
sold. “I reckon I got about 2% and everybody else got 98%,” said Hazel
without any apparent bitterness. “I’ve been through all that and learned a lot, but the way I look at it is that I wouldn’t have been living here if things had turned out differently. I don’t pay a mortgage, I got out of that years ago. I’ve been in Ireland since 1990 - when I first got the cottage I lived in a caravan while we worked on it. It still needs a lot of work. When I go off on tour a friend of mine comes over and dog-sits and that works well.”
Hazel has a number of other projects coming up, a new blues album with a specially invited set of world musicians to be recorded in the autumn when she will also tour Holland and Germany, a return to acting in a pilot for a drama-comedy series to be filmed in Scotland, and the possible realisation of a dream to have a second home in France. “Some musician friends of mine have moved to the Montpelier region of France and I dream of getting a place there,” says Hazel. “I’m very much into visualisation and I believe if you dream of something enough it will come true.”
Meanwhile Hazel’s album “A Singular Collection - The Best of Hazel
0’Connor,” containing newly recorded versions of her greatest hits is selling well, as is her previous album “Beyond The Breaking Glass” recorded in Dublin with Eamonn de Barra and other Irish musicians.
You can see Hazel at Tower Arts Centre in Winchester on Thursday July 8, ForestArts, New Milton on Friday July 9 and at Southsea Bandstand on the afternoon of Sunday July 11, all with her band The Subterraneans. The Southsea gig is free, by the way. (Photograph copyright Claire Edwards)

Mark Hill, the talented Southampton-based songwriter and producer behind Craig David and The Artful Dodger, introduces The stiX his new project at Talking Heads music venue in the city on Friday July 9. Slick, stylish and soulful, The stiX is a unique 13-piece band featuring an array of captivating
vocalists.
The project kicks off this month with a limited edition EP 'Gathering Dust' featuring the first four artists to collaborate with Mark; Michelle Escoffrey, Ivor Novello winner, writer of Liberty X's 'Doing It' and vocalist to Artful Dodger's 'Think About Me,' Lifford David, an R&B singer with a truly captivating voice who was featured vocalist on Artful Dodger's 'Please Don't Turn Me On,' Katie Holmes, a fresh and original singer/songwriter whose vocals feature on Craig David's 'Slicker Than Your Average’ album, and Corinne Bailey Rae, another young singer/songwriter with a clear, unaffected talent and a voice to match.
The title of the EP ‘Gathering Dust’ refers to the fact that Mark Hill has
a shelf full of recorded talent by the aforementioned artists. His bold
collaboration allows them to perform as an ensemble, but also to introduce their own individual talents. Mark describes the end result as “soulful, funky, beautiful, quirky, sometimes a little eccentric, but always fun!” He says that The stiX is not about release dates, public relations, expensive videos, radio play-lists or reality TV shows, but about entertainment, pure and simple. In other words, getting the band out there on the road to play live without commercial pressure.
Each of the four artists and a host of quality musicians will be playing
alongside Mark at Talking Heads on July 9. Tickets for the gig are £10 on the door and £8 concessions. For further details ring 02380 678446. If you like what you hear then you will want to experience The stiX again at the Garden Court and Hartley Room at Southampton University on Friday August 6, entry £10 on the door. By then you should be hooked enough to support the band at a London gig, Kindred Spirit @ The Rhythm Factory at 16 - 18 Whitechapel Road on Monday August 16.
This could be the start of something big, so get stuck into The stiX!

Forty years have gone by since Dionne Warwick first hit the British charts with “Anyone Who Had a Heart” in 1964. Cilla Black may have stolen the glory with her version, but Dionne, who appears at Eastleigh Summer Festival later this month, has gone on to become a massive international song stylist.
The lady from New Jersey, USA, has become recognised as the ultimate
interpreter of the songs of composes Bacharach and David. Her versions of songs like “Walk On By,” “I Say A Little Prayer” and “Do You Know The Way To San Jose” set the standard which left other artists striving to reach. But one of the reasons Dionne has maintained her popularity is that although her music is basically MOR, she has never lapsed into cabaret-style or indulged in disco versions of the songs that made her famous. I think they call that integrity - a rare quality in a music business which nowadays requires artists to sell out to get a recording deal, then spend the rest of their career trying to reclaim artistic control.
Dionne, now in her early 60s, studied music from the age of six and first
sang with family gospel group The Drinkard Singers. After further training at the Hart College of Music in Connecticut she worked as a backing singer before linking up with Bacharach and David. Her classy, emotional delivery, Bert Bacharach’s subtle melodies and Hal David’s clever lyrics (who else could rhyme phone-ya and pneumonia, as in “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again”?) produced a string of classic hits.
Dionne plays Eastleigh Summer Festival in the Big Top on Thursday July 29 - tickets are £30 and available from: The Point Arts Centre, Leigh Road, Eastleigh S050 9DE. Tel. 023 8065 2333, Mayflower Theatre, Southampton, Tel. 023 8071 1818, www.ticketsouth.co.uk, The Brook, Southampton, Tel. 023 8055 5366 and Online via www.ticketweb.co.uk. Among a host of stars playing at the festival between July 23 and August 1 are Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, Aled Jones, Eric Bibb, Will Young, Shane MacGowan, The SAS Band and Rolf Harris.

Acclaimed violinist Nigel Kennedy has just announced his band for his
pre-festival concert at the renowned Larmer Tree Festival at Tollard Royal on Saturday July 10. The band members who will be playing music from Nigel’s highly acclaimed “East Meets East” album are all from Poland. The world's most famous violinist joins forces with the following gifted group of musicians to deliver a flamboyant and sensual celebration of music from Eastern Europe and North Africa.
Joining Nigel on the main stage will be violinist Jakub Haufa, a soloist
with the world famous Polish Chamber Orchestra who recently toured the world with Nigel performing Vivaldi’s Concertos for two violins receiving rave notices wherever they played. On accordion will be Maciej Inglot, a graduate of Krakow Academy of Music and leader of the Inglot Klezmer Trio.
On bass is Yaron Stavi, originally a principal player with the Mahler
Youth Orchestra before touring the world with Gilad Atzmon’s Orient House Ensemble. Yaron has just finished working with Robert Wyatt on his latest album which received five- star reviews in the music press. Completing the ensemble is percussionist Tomasz Grochot, an award winner in his Polish homeland including Best Instrumentalist in The Gdynia Music Festival. Tomasz has been in big demand from a wide range of musicians with an even wider range of styles. Next year he is planning to take a year out from live performing to record his first solo album of his own compositions.
The concert which promises vibrant dance tunes, simple melodies and
haunting solo pieces takes place in the beautiful Larmer Tree Gardens, an idyllic location surrounded by trees and dotted with romantic buildings from the Victorian era situated at the heart of the beautiful Cranborne Chase, on the Dorset/Wiltshire border.
Tickets are £32 adult, £26 youth and are available via the Larmer Tree
Festival Office +44 (0)1725 552300. For more details e-mail us at info@larmertree.co.uk or see the website www.larmertree.co.uk. (Photograph copyright Pawel Zuk)
 

Chuck-a-ling
Preview by Peter Ashton

Chuck Berry has attracted some bad press, both personally and professionally over the years, but nobody can deny he is one of the seminal characters in the history of rock.
Everybody from Elvis to The Beatles to The Rolling Stones admit to being
influenced by the man who appears with another legend, Jerry Lee Lewis at Portsmouth Guildhall on Tuesday July 6.
Snappy lyrics, trademark guitar licks, memorable tunes and a dash of wit
are the basis of the enduring popularity of the great Chuck, not to mention the
famous “duck walk.”
The man from St Louis, born Charles Edward Anderson Berry, is a staggering 78 years old this year. A bright pupil as a kid, Chuck developed a love of poetry and blues early on, winning a high school talent contest with a guitar-and-vocal rendition of "Confessin' the Blues."
With some local tutelage from the neighborhood barber, Berry soon
progressed on the local East St. Louis club scene, sitting in everywhere he could and singing everything from blues to Nat King Cole songs to hillbilly music. But Chuck yearned to make records, and after a short conversation with his idol Muddy Waters in Chicago he was encouraged him to approach Chess Records. Upon listening to a demo tape of "Ida Red" the label president quickly scheduled a recording session for May 21, 1955. During the session the title was changed to "Maybellene" and Chuck entered rock and roll history.
His overall influence at this time was massive - a young Elvis Presley
still a full year from national stardom, quickly added it to his stage show.
Helping to put the record over to a white teenage audience was the highly influential New York disc jockey Alan Freed who had been given part of the writers' credit by Chess in return for his spins and plugs. When Freed went to Hollywood a year or so later, he made sure that Chuck appeared with him in “Rock! Rock! Rock!” and “Mister Rock'n'Roll.”
The hits came thick and fast over the next few years - "Roll Over
Beethoven," "Thirty Days," "Too Much Monkey Business," "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," "You Can't Catch Me," "School Day," "Carol," "Back in the U.S.A.," "Little Queenie," "Memphis, Tennessee," "Johnny B. Goode," and of course, "Rock and Roll Music." Chuck was constantly on the road promoting his hits, but his career was stalled when he served time in prison for transporting a minor over state lines. He emerged from prison a moody, embittered man. But two very important things had happened in his absence. First, British teenagers had discovered his
music and were making his old songs hits all over again and second, America had discovered the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, both of whom had covered a number of his songs.
He bounced back with more hits "Nadine," "No Particular Place to Go," and "You Never Can Tell" and toured Britain in triumph. After a disastrous stint with Mercury Records he returned to Chess in the early '70s and scored his first No 1 in the UK with probably his worst record, a live version of the salacious nursery rhyme, "My Ding a Ling." But once again, troubles with the law saw Berry headed back to prison in 1979, this time for income tax evasion.
Upon his release he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but
steadfastly refused to record any new material. Meanwhile his live performances became increasingly erratic, with Berry working with inferior backup bands and producing sloppy, out-of-tune performances that did much to tarnish his reputation.
In 1987, he published his first book, “Chuck Berry: The Autobiography”
and the same year appeared in the rockumentary “Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll which included live footage from a 60th” birthday concert with Keith Richards of The Stones and restored his reputation.
Just what you can expect from Chuck these days is anybody’s guess but a double bill of Chuck and “The Killer”, Jerry Lee Lewis has got to be worth seeing. Tickets are £40 via 02392 834773.

In just a couple of years Zoë Schwarz has made a major impact on the jazz
scene. The Dorchester-based singer‘s career seems to be on the ascendancy with a great new album earlier this year, “Dancing for Miles,” and bookings all over the  place, including one at the prestigious Pizza on the Park in London and Swanage Jazz Festival.
Classically trained and a graduate in the Performing Arts from Trent Park, Middlesex University, Zoë has performed in many guises over the years, mostly in modern improvisational and classical music, and intermittently in rock and pop bands. She turned to Jazz in the autumn of 2001 having been invited by Keith and Julie Tippet to sing at a jazz evening at Dartington International Summer School, where Zoë had been selected to take classical master-classes with Estha Salaman. Keith advised Zoe “stick with it.” Inspired and enthused she returned home in search of fellow jazz musicians and was soon introduced to guitarist Rob Koral, after which there was no looking back.
There’s clearly been a steep learning curve – as Zoë herself says you
can’t learn to sing jazz in school – you learn by singing over and over in a live situation and making lots of mistakes on the way. Several hundred gigs over the last two years have seen to that.
Zoë expresses her attitude to her job by saying: “Performing jazz is about having a conversation; the same song is different every time, totally
depending on the mood of all the other musicians involved and the atmosphere around.
The spontaneity is tantalizing; creativity personified. I adore performing;
the communication thing is addictive. I adore recording, and love the
pressure of wanting the sound to be perfect, the discipline required for the production, and calling on an even more creative and open mind for mixing. But to top it all I am thrilled by the challenge of writing songs, what a privilege (of which all of us could do – there’s no remit) to have an open forum to be able to express opinions and emotions.”
You can see Zoe all over Hampshire and Dorset this month - she has a
residency at the Jazz Cafe Fleur at Canford Cliffs, Poole on July 1, 8 & 29, another residency at Bella Italia in Bournemouth on July 4 & 18, plus appearances at the Lainstone Hotel, Winchester on July 3, Sandbanks Hotel on July 15 and Custom House Summer Jazz Festival, Poole on July 23rd. And if you fancy a pizza while you listen to Zoe she’ll be at the Pizza on the Park in Knightsbridge, London on July 11. A review of her album will appear in our Reviews section shortly.

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