Spotlight Artist: GrooveLily
GrooveLily Grows Smart Pop
By R.A. Lindquist
As their music blossoms, the group focuses on the bigger picture
GrooveLily is a most interesting amalgam of backgrounds, approaches and styles. Lead vocalist and violinist Valerie Vigoda was classically trained. Keyboardist Brendan Milburn was a rock ‘n’ roll rebel. Gene Lewin was a schooled and purist jazz drummer. As GrooveLily, these three diverse and very experienced musicians have combined their influences to create an intoxicatingly powerful sound that is tight and sweet.
GrooveLily is on a mission to bring their music to as many people as possible. “We write a lot of songs about coping,” says Valerie, “about dealing with the vicissitudes of life, and when what we do can help other people get through a difficult time, then we’ve really succeeded.
For each member of the trio, the greatest joy of accomplishment comes in a different way. Valerie relishes the feeling that comes from writing a really perfect lyric, or finishing a really worthy song. Brendan loves recording and is co-producing the group’s records now. Gene is enjoying his first success as a songwriter and gets the biggest kick from performing.
Of the new live release, to be called Just The Three Of Us, Vigoda says, “I wish we’d had the opportunity to record a bunch of shows and cull from a vast catalog of tapes. In actuality, most of the tunes are from a single show in a packed coffeehouse in Virginia and the rest of the tracks were recorded live (but with no audience) in a beautiful barn in Old Lyme, Connecticut. The major challenge was learning to let go of perfection. The trio decided early on to limit the “fixing,” and to record with no overdubs.
During 2002, GrooveLily is taking their unique brand of “Smart Pop” to over 150 audiences. In the November 2002 issue of Singer Magazine, Valerie talks about how the group stays in shape on the road, the vocal warm-up regimen she learned while touring with Cyndi Lauper and Joe Jackson, the group’s ambitions for the next year and a half and how they turned their 5-song EP into an effective promo piece.
GrooveLily Live http://www.groovelily.com/