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Money spent on good food and music is money well spent 7/7/07 A letter from Motema Music our new Label Parteners Dear Motéma Community, As leader of Motéma, I am probably the greatest appreciator of all of the wonderful people artists, managers, indies & fans who make up our fine and growing community. So today, I salute you, and send you the very best of wishes on this auspicious date. In case you haven't been following the numerological hoopla, many events coincided today. To name a few ... not in any particular order of importance: - The 7th book of Harry Potter showed up in stores. - According to the Urban Dictionary Tupac Shakur is supposed to have had a second coming ... Are you back Tupac? - The NY times reports that more than 31,000 couples tied the knot today, some of perhaps because the Bible refers to 777 as numerological perfection... I do hope that also translates to marital bliss for these happy couples! - MSN has announced that more than 10 Million viewers have so far tuned into the LIVE EARTH - Concerts for a Climate in Crisis concert. More viewers than have ever participated simultaneously in any social event in history. - Not to be outdone, we at Motema, have our very own 7/7/07 event to report.... I feel very lucky to announce that negotiations have just been concluded for LUCKY 7, the seventh album by the Award-winning NYC Urban Folk and Jazz Artist: KJ DENHERT tp come out on Motema this fall. KJ is and wise and funny woman whose velvet voice both stirs and calms the soul, and who can plays the bejesus out of the guitar. Many know and love her from her long time residency at Bar 55 in NYC, and I for one, look forward to helping the rest of the world find out what a great gift she has to offer the world. The release campaign for LUCKY 7 will coincide this Fall with many wonderful things for Motema-- the launch of our new website, the release of fine new albums by AMY LONDON (9/18/07) & RYAN COHAN (10.2.07) (more to come on both of these soon) as well as on-going live performances and upcoming recording sessions planned by our other fantabulous artists. I send a big thanks out to all who participated in and/or partook of the June, Jazz & Cognac Festival. Especially to our sponsor, Cognac Ferrand, to Roni Ben-Hur and Rick White of the JVC festival who inspired the whole shindig and to Kaitlin Doorley and Larry Robinson, and all the folks at Motema & Hughes House who made it all happen, and to Shon "Chance" Miller of Hughes House. The festival was a rousing success in many ways, and I for one, thoroughly enjoyed myself at each and every concert. It's an honor to be surrounded by so much talent. Eugenia Morrison photo documented it all, and we will soon' post some of her great pics on the web for you all to see. Video may take a little more time to process, but we'll get that up ASAP, too. So that's the Motema 7.7.07 report ... Hope you are all feeling as lucky as I am. Jana Herzen President & Recording Artist - Motema Music. June 13 2007 Back from Denver Colorado where we played two shows at Dazzle. There are some major thank yous first off to Carrie Morgridge, for selling out our 9 PM show with her circle of friends and adopting the band for two nights at her spectacular home. It was there that we discovered that Mamdou is a fierce Foosball artist, Carrie may be the loudest Foosball opponent but Mamadou was the standout leader at Foosball besides the debonaire Aldo who spent his childhood in Italy playing. We were wined and dined in style and comfort making this the miracle tour of 2007. My next major thank you has to go to Martini on The Rockies 101.5 Denver for some fabulous ads and supporting the show. giving away tickets and being the first station to officially add Lucky 7 to their playlist. Morning personality Freddie Colon introduced the show and Jackie Selby had me in for an on -air performance of Lucky 7 on Thursday before the show. Thanks to all there. The favors didn't stop there, the drum kit for the evening was provided by Steve Spencer whose hand made drums looked and sounded fantastic. Steve donated a kit for the evening, adding once again to making this the miracle tour. I don't know the day whe this will happen but I predict that Ray will be playing a set of Steve's drums before the year is out. When the show was done as I was packing up, after selling about fifty CD's a blue eyed blonde was standing around watching me pack and helping with directions to I285 South for our 6AM departure. Her name was Shott, after a little conversation it turned out that Shott was in fact an angel. She was at our door at AM sharp and drove all 270 miles form Denver to Pagosa Springs. She was a fountain of information about the roads the history of Colorado, pointing out antelope in South Park and the best place to find agate along the roadside on CR160 on the drive in. A physical therapist by trade, she has missed her calling as a road manager! I simply could not believe what an exceptional help she was to us all with as much drive charisma, initiative as one could ever want. When we arrived at 12:30 at the Folk West Independent Music festival, on stage was festival founder Dan Appenzeller and his band. Featuring bassist Sue whose last name has run from my head and the talented Mr. Bob Hemenger. I couldn't see Dan from where we pulled our Dodge Grand Caravan. All I remember thinking was - oh man this guitar player is killing. I'm going to have to wake up and focus to keep that level of play going on the stage or it'll be a drag! When they came off stage and i realized that I was listening to Dan Appenzeller's (Folk West founder ) band it all came full circle, No wonder this festival treat musicians like we'd just arrived in Utopia. Great food and catering not withstanding, the guy is a musician and a super writer and performer- suddenly I felt even more honored top have been chosen from the huge number of Sonicbids applicants. Bob Hemmenger sat in with us on Saxophonetwo years ago and did us proud once agin and a broght in a student film crew tocapture the event- stay tuned for when some more stuff get's delivered to You Tube. More tales of the hot springs in Pagosa and our return to Denver coming soon. Jan 5 2007- 2006 At a Glance 2006 was the best of times and the worst as well. We weathered a cancer diagnosis in our immediate family, that turend out OK in the end despite a grave beginning. There was a death in one of our families. I played a funeral for a man my own age in January 06 on Shell beach in St. Barth's. In the same week I received news that I would be going to the Umbria Jazz Festival as an artist in residnece for 10 days. The CD "Another Year Gone By" received the Independent Music Award for Best Live performance CD, and I was pleased to be a finalist in the Kerrville New Folk Songwriting Contest and wound up among the six co winners of 2006. This led to a wild ride in which I played the 55 bar, our eight year West Village residency, finishing at 2 AM and flew to Texas arriving with 15 minutes to spare to perform in the winners concert Sunday at 1 PM in Texas. We moved our July appearance at the Cape Cod Jazz Festival in order to appear at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy, which was simply a dream come true. Sheryl Bailey, renowned bop guitarist happened to be teaching a Berklee Clinic at the Festival, so when Sheryl was not teaching and we had evening shows I actually had the six piece band on the Umbria Stage. The audiences were great and gave me a taste of celebrity, in a most lovely way. Each day on my way for coffee or a phone card- I would be stopped by folks with cameras who asked politely for a photo and said "Complimenti" or "Brava". I signed hundreds of CDs and programs after each show thinking how lucky I was to be enjoying this "celebrity light!" I met Dr. Lonny Smith and a harp player from NY named Edmar Castenada each with great trios- I've seen them both in New York since then. Also appearing with my band on that tour was keyboard player Bennett Paster whose work I knew from the Jen Chapin band back in the day. I had waited nearly ten years for a chance to play with Bennett and this was our moment- which led to Bennett performing co- production and preproduction duities on my new CD, Lucky 7, that was recorded and mixed bewteen Sept 26 and Nov 11 2006. Bennett recommended the talents of Ben Wisch as our engineer and mix engineer, and what a pleasure that turned out to be. The CD included the new songs mostly from last years St. Barth's season. There were a number of special guest appearances from the likes of Manolo Badrena (percussion, Micheal Franks, Weather Report and many more) Steve Hass, (John Scofield , Manahattan Transfer, Ravi Coltrane), Tony Mason (Jim Campolong and so many more) and the incomparable Richard Hammond played both acoustic and electric bass. The unparalled Mr. Richard Bona made an appearnce in part one of a suite of tunes called "What's My Name". Longtime guitarist John Caban (now touring with Richard Bona) made two stellar contributions and Mr Whynot Jansveld found time to return to his respected place on bass for a few tracks as well. Sheryl Bailey whose work with the band ws featured on the CD Girl Like Me, made an appearance on Lucky 7, by way of a stellar live recording from the Bose performance space in Framingham Mass. I am pleased to announce that Girl Like Me can now be found at Pandora.com, if you've never heard of this service, it's a great way to learn about new music. Please visit pandora.com, join up for free and create your own radio station using my name. The software will automatically create a playlist of my music along with other artists, known or barely known whose music has been empirically quantified to create the Pandora project. Please have a visit. I wil also receive royalties through Sound Exchange, one of the new ways that independent musicians like my self are getting paid for our music in the dynamic new frontier of independent music. I was thrilled to be invited back to Umbria Jazz for the 14th annual Winter Festival in the ancient town of Orvieto. The band spent the New Year performing nine shows in five days finishing on New Years Day, 2007. It was a grand time. This was the first concert where the CD Lucky 7 was available for sale off the band stand. Our official US release date looks like April 30th. We return to our regularly scheduled 55 bar shows on April 7th, appearing every other Saturday. We will be in St. Barth's for the month of January for the sixth year in a row. I am pleased to note that two of my favorite artists, Darian Cunning and the duo Causeway are beginning to do an annual rotation at our island paradise, as well as Adam Falcon who has been appearing for years as well. Award winning vocalist Nicole Henry has released her third CD with a version of my song, I Found You. Documentary film "The Pact ", winner of the Boston Independent Film Festival featured my reprise of Bob Marley's Three Litte Birds, produced by Daniel A. Weiss and me. I was happy to serve as a judge in the Mountain Stage New Song Contest this year and make several appearances along side some favorites like "The Dreamsicles". It was a year of firsts and exciting travel, beginnings and endings. Mostly I would like to close by thanking these longtime members of my band and mention the number of years they have each been a part of the Mother Cyclone Records family. Mamadou Ba-bass, ten years. Ray Levier-drums, eight years. Peter Vitalone-keys , eight years. Sue Hadjopoulos-percussion, three years. Sheryl Bailey-guitar, eight years. John Caban-guitar seven years. Etienne Stadwijk-keys, two years. plus Andy Galore-bass, two years, and Phil Gaita-bass, six years. "They call me Lucky Seven, lucky thing is I never give up!" KJ Denhert (Lucky 7) December 4th 2007- Twelve songs recorded and an advance copy of Lucky 7 will soon be available at shows. We won't be performing here in the US after Dec 16th, so it could be until spring before one can get a copy on line or here in the US. We'll head out the day after Christmas and play daily at the Umbria Jazz Festival - held in Orvietto Italy. Orvietto is about an hour from Rome. We'll saty on through New Years day performing every day. We'll return and have a week off followed by a four week stay in St. Barth's performing at the Baz Bar in Gustavia harbor, playing weeknights, except Sunday from Jan 8th to Feb3rd. I will be forced to take an 8 week hiatus once we return from St. Barth's to have surgery and recuperate. My condition is not life threatening but will include major surgery to remove an exceedingly large fibroid tumor. According to my doctor it's the largest one that the radilologist has ever seen. I asked for some sort of award or medal, you know something to commemorate my position of leadership- but as yet they had no existing award show or system of judging. So you'll have to take my word for it. It's really big. I'm not looking forward to that but the tumor is benign and I should recover feeling quite a bit lighter or so they tell me! I'll get plans together to celebrate the release of Lucky 7 and the 10 year anniversary of the band and lots of great stuff starting this spring. My first show wil be a coffehouse apperance at the Peekskill Coffehouse on March 31 followed by a return to our 55 Bar scheduel on April 7th. I have many plans for how to use that time, I'll either be writing a book that I hopefuly will have mostly comepleted in St. Barth's called What's My Name. The book is slated to be a bit of a companion book to the CD Lucky 7. Something between picture book and celebration of ten years as the head of my label Mother Cyclone Records. Stay tuned for more news soon! July 23 7 PM- Mountain Stage New Song Festival presents KJ Denhert with anje Duvekot and Devon Sproule - don't miss see home page for link and details July 7-16 KJ and band perform twice daily at the Umbria Jazz Festival, Perugia Italy see schedule page for complet listing May 28th 2006- KJ is Grassy Hill New Folk Winner! *********************************************************************************** 2005 was a winning year, first the Mountain Stage new songs contest, and then the Independent Music Award 2006 Album of the Year /Live Performance category went to Another Year Gone By Live. Congratulations and thanks to Leslie Bloome of DTG productions for making that CD happen. My Space.com - The KJ Denhert page is now appearing on My Space click here - checkout a new release of Rivera, recorded at the Bose performance space, earlier this year with Sheryl bailey, Mamadou Ba, A.T.N., Ray Levier and me! We'll try to get new material there as ofetn as possible. I've got a number of friends from the West Coast and UK and a some super friends like Darian Cunning, check this guy out and Jose Gonzalez from Sweden with an acoustic sound thats lovely. It's more fun than I thought I'd have doing one more thing at the computer! ------------------------------------ Going West!!We are adding out-of- town shows all of the time and the latest city added is Denver Colorado, at Dazzle on August 31st 2005- where will do two shows at 7 & 9 PM located at 930 Lincoln St, Denver CO tel:303 839 5100. From Denver we will proceed Southwest to The Folk West Festival in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where I will appear with a four piece band on Friday afternoon at 4:30. www.dazzlejazz.com www.folkwest.com ------------------------------------ August 28th 2005 WINNERS ANNOUNCED in 2005 NewSong Festival Contest, presented by Performing Songwriter Magazine. The 2005 NewSong Contest, presented by Performing Songwriter Magazine, came to a close in grand musical style on Saturday, Aug. 27, with a Finals Contest at the NewSong Festival featuring 12 performers from around the country. The finalists competed before a panel of four judges and a live audience in the Frank Center at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Five co-winners were chosen based upon the songcraft demonstrated in the two original songs they performed, plus the live performance qualities in the delivery of the songs. A sixth award was given for 'Best Song,' based solely on the crafting of the song, irrespective of its performance. One co-winner was then chosen by "Mountain Stage " host Larry Groce to perform on the festival-concluding Mountain Stage Newsong Show, Sunday, Aug. 28. at Shepherd University's Frank Center. The 2005 NewSong Contest Co-Winners are: K.J. DENHERT, Ossining, New York. She was also picked to perform on today's Mountain Stage NewSong show. DANIEL LEE, Oakton, Va. MICHAEL SHERIDAN, Portland, Oregon MEG HUTCHINSON, Cambridge, MA. CLINT COLLINS, Bluefield, W.Va. 'BEST SONG': "Washington Street," by JONATHAN POINTER, Los Angeles. Congratulations to all who entered the contest from across the country and the world. Stay tuned for news of 2006 NewSong's Festival and Contest news by subscribing to the NewSong e-mail newsletter by clicking on 'Mailing List' in the column at left on this page. Come out and here some great music at the last day of NewSong 2005. For directions or a map or a schedule of today's acts: MOUNTAIN STAGE NEW SONG FESTIVAL WINNERS ANNOUNCED-KJ Denhert was an Advanced Round New Song Finalist with the song Little Mary. KJ was unable to make her regularly scheduled 55 bar appeaarance on August 27th- sorry.However, the great news is that KJ placed as one of the five co-winners in the contest that judged both songwriting and performance.Out of the five co winners, KJ was thrilled to perform Little Mary on the nationally syndicated radio broadcast Mountain Stage that closed the week long festival on Sunday Aubust 29th.The radio show is broadcast to a wide network of NPR stations - appearing on the 29th were Alison Brown, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Maggie and Suzzy Roche, John Doyle and from Itlay Fiama Fumana.The show was superb and electric, click here to check the Mountain Stage website - Broadcast times vary by region when we recieve more information on broadcast times we will try to get it posted asap. Everyone at Mother Cyclone Records wishes to express congratulations to the 12 Advanced round Finalists- the Five Co winners. Special thanks to the New Song Festival Co founders Gar Ragland Tom Sewell and all of the amazing volunteers who made KJ and Sue Hadjopoulos so very welcomed everystep of the way. Special thanks to Mountain Stage artistic director Larry Groce, Co Producer Andy Ridenhour and the entire Mountain stage crew for showing us how it get's done, when it's done really well. Very special thanks to Mountain stage band members Bob Thompson, Julie Adams and Steve Hill and the entire band who impressed all - WOW! The song Little Mary has advanced KJ to the final round of the Mountain Stage New Song Festival being held in Shepherdstown West Virginia on August 27th. Once again it is nice to be nominated, also in the category is my good friend Ina May Wool. Sadly,this honor means that we will not be at the 55 Bar as planned on August 27th 2005. www.newsongfestival.com ------------------------------------ 55 Bar Schedule interrupted Our 55 Bar schedule will be interrupted in the next three months to accommodate some out of town shows. In August, September and October we will make only one appearance per month on August 13th, Sept 24th & Oct 22nd. We will resume our every other Saturday Schedule in beginning October 22nd- throughout November and December. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Artist on the Rise Go NYC magazine just released an information packed Music Issue and included KJ in a section entitled Ten Out Artists on the Rise. PLEASE NOTE they printed that KJ appears at the 55 Bar every Saturday, which is not true. KJ & The NY Unit appear every other Staurday at the 55 Bar. There is another artist, she is practically my 55 bar sister, in that we have alternated these Saturday late shows for the last seven years, that’s right kids, seven years of Saturdays! Her name is Sweet Georgia Brown, last of the red hot mamas- is what she calls herself- so we thought it only right to set the record straight. We think that this residency is a great honor. We loved the mention in Go NYC even with the typo!! www.gonycmagazine.com ------------------------------------ FREE LEGAL DOWNLOADS AND A SWELL NEW REVIEW Performing Songwriter Magazine has posted a lovely review of Girl Like Me in their July/August 2005 issue. The review appears in their Top 12 DIY (Do It Yourself) section that reviews releases from independent labels like, Mother Cyclone Records. But wait, theres more! For a limited time there are free downloads available, one song was selected from each of the twelve DIY artists including Little Mary from Girl Like Me and That Front Porch Song from Vance Gilbert. Since you have been so kind as to visit the website, we thought we would mention the free download- Everyone was very pleased with the review and the download feature is nice- many of you probably have Little Mary on CD by now but there is a complete CD (one song from each artist) worth of free music to be discovered thanks to Performing Songwriter Magazine at this link http://www.performingsongwriter.com/music/. ------------------------------------- Yesterday's news**** begins here- some posts dating back through the epic journey of our Mother Cyclone Records heroine ,KJ, the kajer, Princess Big hair, kajemesiter, kajeroni KJ Denhert was nominated for Outstanding New Recording -Female in this year's Out Music Award. She performed at the awards show on Sunday at The Knitting Factory and tore it up. We are going to try to get audio from the show and post it online. Check back for that. Listen to KJ's archived interview from John Platt's show, "City Folk Sunday Breakfast" which aired on WFUV, Sunday, March 7th. John's program airs in New York at 8AM-11AM on 90.7 on FM dial. Listen to the station on the web at www.wfuv.org. Check out the latest review from Acoustic Guitar Magazine. On newstands now! --------------------------------- KJ is back from her month long stint in St. Barth's. (I am not jealous!) She resumed her residency at the 55 Bar on Valentine's Day where she blew the roof off the joint and showed off her divine tan. See her complete schedule. Girl Like Me is currently in the listening stations at Borders Stores nationwide. Please drop in and pick up the headphones. Better yet, pick up the CD. --------------------------------- New CD, The Songwriter's Notebook, is now available at CD Baby! The CD contains 10 tracks featuring the dynamic duo, KJ and Adam Falcon and their acoustic guitars. Click here to purchase now. Cyclone Records PO Box 1316 Ossining NY 10562 --------------------------------- The latest CD, Girl Like Me is available at www.dustygroove.com, search by name or in Nu Soul- CD. Best price on the web, they're running a sale!! Available at other online outlets including, www.woodstockcd.com and |