Off leash, I see dogs my size or smaller, and it’s my duty to fight ‘em. Who knows why? You had my balls cut off long ago, so it’s not testosterone anymore. It might be the alpha male in me, or maybe it’s my invisible Oakland pit bull genes expressing themselves. Or could it be my anger that you had my balls cut off?! Grrrr…

Anyway, if I lived in a world of dogs who were bigger than me, it’d be a different story. I don’t need to even pretend to want to fight a dog that’s bigger than me.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I weigh 80 pounds. I carry giant logs on our runs, because, like fighting, it allows me to display my manly strength. Some dogs try to interrupt me on my runs when my mouth is full. At that point I don’t even growl, because once I’m in log-carrying mode, I have a singular focus. I go, “Sorry, can’t talk now, it’s critically important that I drag this VERY LARGE LOG two miles back the car. Continue chasing your tennis ball.”

Smaller dogs need to be taught a lesson: I am powerful and easily angered, and if it were not for this leash I’m on, I’d have to hurt you. Larger dogs? They’re really very nice if you don’t look in their general direction.

Lisa Loeb and me

It’s hard to sing in a trade show booth — that is, without all the trappings. At NAMM, everywhere you walked there was a musician playing in a booth, showing off the wares of his or her corporate sponsor.  Some had a better set-up than others: A small wooden circle stage, just 8 inches off the ground, or full-on risers, or a smoke machine, or massive speakers, or a simple sign with their name and brand as an official artist for the company. I had none of these trappings, because it was only last-minute that we decided I should sing in the booth.

On the first official day of the trade show, our neighboring booth brought a guitarist. He played a tune, and then I walked over with my melodica and asked if he wanted to play a standard. I called Autumn Leaves in C minor, and played melodica, then sang the French lyrics. I didn’t have a mic. It was early in the day and not too loud, and n appreciative crowd gathered round.  Little did I know, several of the men listening were French! I ended up having a long conversation with one of them, Algerian musician Djamel Laroussi. He spoke French, I spoke Franspañol.

After that, it was decided that we should rent a mic, mixer and speakers so that I could sing on the other days, as well as save my voice when giving demos of Tiggzi by Exadel. Talking is always harder on my voice than singing, as I tend to strain my neck, talk too loud and also use a lower register than I should. I’m really a soprano, but I speak in an alto range.

So the next day, I dialed up TV tracks of my latest album, I Wanna Work For You, hooked them up to the speaker and started singing. People stopped and listened, but I can’t say the response was the flash mob  some performers generated. I cracked jokes in-between lines of the song about how this was ahigh point of my career, and people laughed. The thing is, music, showmanship, soul — these are only part of the equation when attracting a crowd. There are so many other factors, and the more you perform live, the more you learn about them. For instance: Volume. People who made more noise, sometimes got more attention. I say sometimes, because I did see some black-haired, eye-linered male rockers on electric guitar who were head-banging and thrashing but attracting absolutely no attention.

But comparing my experience on the first day, jamming with the other musician, to the second day, singing alone to tracks, revealed what I already know to be true: Audiences love watching the collaborative aspect of music. Now, if I were a famous person singing a hit song, they might be able to fill in the blanks from memory of other situations where they’d seen or heard the song, and be glad to hear it straight from me only a few feet away from them. But I’m not, and the song’s unknown. Even for people in the music business, they’ll turn their head when they hear something familiar more often than not.

This was also evident in the evening shows. I watched a rock duo playing in the packed hotel lobby. The singer kept apologizing for bringing just a duo. It was clear that even though she was thrashing on her various guitars and playing an exciting set of music, that crowd wanted the energy of a full rock band. She finally brought the whole band up for the last song, and then the crowd fully focused and basked in the mutual energy exchange.

Without a car and working hard all day, NAMM’s nightlife was not much of a temptation. I needed my sleep or my voice wouldn’t last five days. And the crowds on the upper floors were hard to take for more than an hour at a time. Some musicians later were criticizing the electric, gear-heavy rock vibe of the conference. Since it was my first time, I expected it and enjoyed it. I’ve only ever gone to jazz, salsa, Afro-Cuban or Brazilian music conferences where acoustic music is the norm. But I adore music stores, and this was like being in a massive music store filled with sublime inventions. I love the innovative ways musicians come up with learning music, or making new sounds. It seems like a very healthy business, and I’m in need of a very healthy business!

The Remo percussion booth was vast and very orange!

The most special moment of NAMM came on the last day, as I was power-walking through the floor Sunday morning. I had a flight to catch in just a few hours, and had coordinated with my taxi to have him pick me up straight from the conference and take me to Long Beach airport (love flying from Long Beach to Oakland — that’s the low-key way to travel!). I had just discovered an amazing sounding melodica made by Hammond and another by Suzuki (in fact I suspect they are both made by Suzuki). Now I was high-tailing it down the carpeted aisles trying to get to the Tiggzi booth to cover for my co-worker for a few minutes.

I came across a crowd and some burly security guards standing between me and a grand piano.

“Who would need security?” I wondered. I asked someone who was behind the guards. “It’s Stevie Wonder,” he whispered.

I moved to the right a bit and sure enough there he was, playing jazzy chords on the piano, testing it out. I stood there in awe. He began to play various snippets of his songs such as Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing (which I’ve sung for years on gigs). Then he broke into singing Ma Cherie Amour (with no mic, of course).

When he began to sing, tears started to roll down my face. I can’t explain exactly why. I never understood those films of young girls screaming and crying for the Beatles. Perhaps now I do. There he was, a genius, a man who has written unforgettable songs since before I was born. His voice is impeccable, unchanged. I aspire to that. His persona, unforgettable. There he was, 10 feet away, singing “You’re the only one that I adore, how I wish that you were mine…” Testing a piano.

It was a good show.

Alexa and the Giant DI Box

“I never struggled a day in this business,” said Steve Vai. “I’ve been so blessed. It was always, how can I do this thing on guitar, and you work until you can do that.” Vai was honored at the 27th annual TEC awards, receiving the 2011 Les Paul award for the creative application of music technology. 

I was the guest of Exadel, whose Tigzzi mobile app-building software I was endorsing at NAMM. The show took me back ten years to when I used to preside over the Jolt Awards for software development tools. There were similarly geeky and esoteric categories. A couple in front of us told us they’d been nominated four times for their software for real-time sound system measurement, analysis and optimization, Smaart.

We cheered loudly for them when their category came up; unfortunately they didn’t win. The show wasn’t nearly as glitzy as we’d imagined, but it was saved by the incredible quality of the band, led by Larry Batiste. Al Yankovic was a very funny presenter, and I was a bit star-struck by songwriter Lisa Loeb, who later told me she has a new record wrapped, some children’s music and a line of eyewear. She only told me this because I ran into her by the Blue microphone booth the next day and asked her partner to take a picture of us together, after which I thought to do my journalistic duty and find out what she was currently working on.

Me and Weird Al Yankovic

But the true surprise of the night was Steve Vai. I’ll have to be honest — I am not a rock-guitar-follower and I didn’t know who he was. But he gave a heartfelt speech that was genuinely inspiring. He started with some anecdotes about Frank Zappa, with whom he started at age 18, transcribing solos and later touring. “Most of us take equipment home, we find a few presets, and that’s it,” he said. Zappa, he said, took gear and squeezed and prodded it and then called the manufacturer and told them what it was missing.

“Zappa had a saying, and I look at it every day on my computer. He said, ‘There are two secrets to the music business: Don’t stop, and keep going.’”

He thanked many for the extremely long trajectories they shared, including his wife of 32 years and bass player Billy Sheehan. But in rock ‘n’ roll it’s accepted that a sentence or two later he referred to sex and drugs as perks of the biz.

He went on to cite Einstein’s “Thoughts are things” and the idea that what you imagine and the positive thoughts you project become reality, with his career as a perfect example. What inspired me was that I think we tend to view the music world along two axes: celebrity and virtuosity. It showed me another side to the business — and not a seamy underbelly but a passionate, irrepressible creative desire to invent new sounds, technology and instruments. And it also was about to be very clear that the man could play the shit out of the guitar.

The stage was soon populated by guitarists — I’ll have to go back and get the names of the all the musicians. One new face was Orianthi, the blond female guitarist who was in Michael Jackson’s last tour and movie This Is It. But Vai simply riffed in every possible way on the guitar, in ways that seemed not schticky or cheesy but, along the lines of the Zappa experience, merely the result of 30 years of squeezing and shaping the guitar beyond its humble beginnings. Whether it was switching hands on the neck or playing two handed on the frets as if it were piano keys, or bending a note impossibly long, Vai embodied the words of another of his heroes, Tom Waits: “Be good at something, and then exaggerate it.”

I gave the demo of Tiggzi mobile apps builder to many amazed folks, who were impressed that they would not have to learn XCode, Apple’s iOS development environment, or Objective C. One guy told me he’d already spent months learning the language. But most agreed that this was a way better way to build an app — and then get back to making music!

I also did an impromptu jam with Scottish guitarist Martin Taylor, who was the artist working with the booth next door to us. I played melodica on a standard, then sang in French. Luckily I didn’t know three of the men in the audience that spontaneously formed were French! One of them ended up visiting with me for quite awhile, and I understood all his French! My French vocabulary quickly ran out and I kept trying to Franc-o-phy Spanish.

I tweeted a bunch of pictures and fun moments (giant bass stomp box, a stylist who looked like a Russian Dita von Teese, a famous drummer, crystal-clear molecular drums, my wardrobe malfunction). Follow me on Twitter for all the fun!

I walked the floor a bit… It’s more massive than anything I’ve been to in recent history. In my first magazine job years ago for a Spanish- and Portuguese-language publication, I used to attend a vast radiology conference at McCormick Place in Chicago every November. This seems bigger. There are floor after floor of exhibits. Every instrument you can imagine. Gear you can’t imagine!

Today I wanted to buy some retractable XLR cords, a cord wrapping spool with storage compartments and a cool extension cord for gigs. Also saw an amazing-sounding Remo pandeiro with an interesting rough skin (reindeer something or other?) that made it very easy for me to do a roll. Their orange booth made me think, “And they say there’s no money in music!” Some nice maracas. Lots of books I’d like to buy. A bust of Chopin. Total iPad envy, app after app and Bluetooth page-turning pedals for iPad gig books.

I’d like to see keyboards and melodicas.

Meanwhile there were interesting performances both large and small. Watched a heavy metal soundcheck. The drummer was shirtless with black-rimmed eyes and a crazy headscarf. I realized that the way people play bass in heavy metal is not ergonomic.

I took a massive haul of magazines back to my hotel room. Makes me happy to see so many magazines about the business I love!

Now I’m going to practice before I get my sleep. Today was a bit hard on the voice and it’s only going to get louder tomorrow!

Tiggzi will be unveiled at the NAMM show (that’s the National Association of Music Merchants) on Wednesday, January 18 and put through its paces through Saturday! Come find me at E16 in the Apps and Gaming Pavilion at the Anaheim Convention Center! 

More pictures here:

http://www.idyll.com/alexa/slideshow

“I Wanna Work For You certainly blends a healthy helping of jazz harmonies and rhythms from across Cuba and Brazil, but there’s also bits of funk, pop, rock, and more. It’s a fantastic album that truly does explore the outer edges of the Latin Jazz world while making a serious nod to tradition.” ~Chip Boaz

Here’s some airplay from Chip, too! “In our second segment, we take a look at the new album from Alexa Weber Morales, I Wanna Work For You. There’s a snippet of an interview that I did with Morales as she was putting together this album, where she talks about the idea behind the album and we listen to a track from the recording, Catastrofe De Amor.”

http://www.chipboaz.com/blog/2011/12/20/latin-jazz-corner-podcast-2-sammy-figueroa-interview/

And I LOVE this review by Chip:

“During times of discontent and social unrest, ferocious jazz will explode from musicians, filled with tension and passion….Vocalist Alexa Weber Morales tapped into a collective feeling of discontent around the current economy and job market while creating material for her new album I Wanna Work For You….Morales’ keen awareness of the world around her, coupled with her strong sense of musicality and experience in the Latin Jazz world makes I Wanna Work For You a great listen. It’s a wonderful example of an artist expressing the struggles and desires of her generation through her medium.”

Again, thank you to Chip for all the support this year, and thanks to all the fans who voted for I Wanna Work For You!

The set list ranged from standards such as Salt Peanuts, Body and Soul and ‘Round Midnight to more modern fare such as Pat Metheny’s Song for Bilbao. Saxophonist Jean Fineberg is the assistant director and was the M.C. for the evening. Two of her compositions, Coulda Woulda Shoulda and Tattletale, were showcased, each boasting catchy riffs and bluesy chutzpah.

The show was well-paced and fast-moving. Other stand-out moments included trumpeter Christy Dana whistling on her own composition, It’s Time, and trombonist Sarah Cline’s rich tone and luscious vibrato on her lead work on Star Eyes. Trombonist Becca Burrington sang a version of Proud Mary she should be proud of (though a subtle-yet-cute dissing of female vocalists was used to set up her move to center stage). Saxophonist Mad Duran has a gorgeous, breathy, deep and languid sound on the sax, evidenced on her version of ‘Round Midnight.

Veteran trumpeter Ellen Seeling, interviewed not long ago by Marian McPartland on NPR’s “Piano Jazz,” is the director of the group, which was founded in 1998. Her gruff persona, unerring tempos and wry chagrin when she announced, mid-show, that the lead trumpet part (sheet music) would need to be retrieved by Yoshi’s staff from a locked dressing room were enjoyable to watch. Previously, I had only seen her in combat mode dealing with sexism against female musicians.

Unfortunately, female singers and even pianists have been caught in the crossfire, as I witnessed when she excoriated SF Jazz director Randall Kline at a 2010 musician town hall meeting for not including enough women-led groups or musicians in past lineups. Further, she clarified that singers or pianists did not count towards upping the female performer quota at the admittedly overwhelmingly male lineup of SF Jazz, even if they were bandleaders like myself. Women playing non traditionally female instruments such as horns or drums were her focus. And hey, I commend her mission. I myself was also on the losing end of a Facebook exchange with Seeling where I had the temerity to assert (as a thought experiment) that vocalists might be considered the most important part of a band, not the least. Due to this history, I was too timid to go up and say hi after the concert — though I’d gladly shake her hand out of respect for the work she’s done with MWBB and elsewhere.

I wholeheartedly agree with Seeling that women musicians should be encouraged, but having worked in two fields that have a predominant gender bias (magazines, which are very female-run, and software, which is very male), I don’t think there are easy answers to diversification, nor that reverse stereotypes of those women who do predominate in a given field (say, singers in music or project managers in software) is a pragmatic way to create an effective feminist coalition.

The view that female singers aren’t “real musicians” (pernicious in jazz) is no more helpful coming from female instrumentalists than it is coming from men. An opposite approach is found in the powerful Eve Ensler talk “Embrace your Inner Girl,” which celebrates those stereotypically female characteristics society calls weak. (I wrote the song “I’m Your Man” after watching that video.)

Onstage, Fineberg said that all female musicians knew what it was like to be asked, when saying she was “with the band,” if she was the singer. I believe it. But strangely enough, while I’ve experienced occasional sexism as a female bandleader, when I say I’m with the band (which does mean I’m the singer), they always ask me “what do you play?” The point is just that minorities often succumb to the crabs-in-a-barrel mentality; to be sure, their experience as instrumentalists is not the same as my musical journey, and this digression should by no means be taken to imply that the show itself was anything less than a joyful musical experience.

Fineberg noted to the audience that there were five women in their 20s in the group, meaning it has now become a multi-generational band. One musician told me she envied how many of these young women have come up in a much more supportive environment than Seeling or Fineberg or she herself knew starting out, when women were steered toward specific instruments or told they just couldn’t cut it at professional levels. We need look no further than the famous discrimination of the Vienna Philharmonic, where only blind auditions succeeded in ending the age-old perception that female musicians were of lesser quality than males.

The show ended with the fantastically rousing 1936 tune by Louis Prima, Sing, Sing, Sing. Russ Gold played riveting drumset that drove the whole band, locomotive-like, on a journey of irresistible fun. A few couples leaped to their feet and began swing dancing. The show ended with an encore to a standing ovation.

Montclair Women’s Big Band: Pianist Tammy Hall; trumpeters Ellen Seeling, Marina Garza, Tiffany Carrico and Ariel Vento; saxes Mad Duran, Jean Fineberg, Kasey Knudsen, Annelise Zamula and Carolyn Walter; trombonists Sarah Cline, Mara Fox, Crystal Bryant and Becca Burrington; bassist Ruth Davies and drummer Russ Gold.

Sam Bevan, Mara Fox, Vince Mansel, Braulio Barrera, Carlos Caro, Colin Douglas, Steffen Kuehn and Jonathan Alford join Grammy-nominated vocalist Alexa Weber Morales in performing originals from her latest album, which was fan-funded on Kickstarter. Tickets for the 7 pm show on Sunday, December 18 are $15, or $25 including CD. Special guests include Brazilian jazz pianist Annie Sajdera and gorgeous Oakland soul singer Terrie Odabi. Yoshi’s is an all-ages venue.

Founded in 1973, Yoshi’s has become one of the world’s most respected jazz venues and won a reputation as the Bay Area’s premier location for Japanese food and jazz. Yoshi’s has hosted legends such as Betty Carter, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Williams, Diana Krall, Branford Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Harry Connick Jr. and Oscar Peterson among hundreds of others. The location in Jack London Square is perfect for a venue steeped in Oakland soul and the Bay Area’s relaxed refinement.

I Wanna Work For You is Alexa’s first all-original album. It melds funk, jazz, Brazilian and salsa grooves; the theme is the search for work, for purpose, for justice, for love, for anything real in an artificial world. The 10 tunes on I Wanna Work for You ruminate on a hole in the ocean and naked grabs for power, misguided love affairs and tired marriages, stratospheric self-actualization and gender-bent blues.

“My concept doesn’t come from sitting in some sweet-ass studio, it’s from being in the trenches making mistakes,” says I Wanna Work For You associate producer Sam Bevan, an accomplished bassist and Oakland native who arranged the tunes and played acoustic and electric bass, keyboards and guitar on the album.

Alexa received funds from 90 backers on Kickstarter to finance her third solo effort. Previous albums were produced by multi-Grammy-nominee Wayne Wallace, for whom Alexa contributed original lyrics and lead vocals on The Reckless Search for Beauty. Alexa performs with other bands including the rising phenomenon known as Pacific Mambo Orchestra, a one-year-old, 19-piece salsa band that plays Monday nights at Cafe Cocomo in San Francisco as well as at Yoshi’s and many festivals.

In April 2011, the singer-songwriter decided to try her luck at fan funding for I Wanna Work For You, choosing the popular Kickstarter.com platform. With three prior solo projects under her belt [produced by 5-time Grammy nominee Wayne Wallace], she knew exactly what she was doing — and what would be different this time.

“We gigged all these tunes out before recording. We called them ‘convertible tunes’ because they sound good with just a quartet or with the full horn and vocal sections.”

She still had no idea if she could raise the thousands she’d need to record and manufacture the album. “While fundraising, I had a sign on my wall that said NEVER GIVE UP. It was hard. I made a lot of phone calls and promises, but in the end I was humbled by the support from fans and friends. Whether it was $1 or $3,000, I was equally grateful.”

Click here for more about Alexa’s Kickstarter experience and the story behind I Wanna Work For You.