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Bremner Duthie

bremnerduthie

About Me

First, start with great songs. If you need to borrow something, make sure it’s the best. None of them is less than beautiful. Listen, sing, ask… what if I believed in everything? … Take some ideas, some concepts: Rock and Roll, Poetry, Country, Surfing at night on dark beaches, romantic fifties soundtracks of Italian films, deep night in Texas on a dusty road, sweet radio pouring out the open windows of Mexican sharecroppers … beautiful, ugly noise…. the sound of sex, the sound of violence, the sound of hope... whisper and croon and snarl.. torch music? … looking for a flame to start a fire, looking for a way forward through the song… Evoke the superheros with sharp edged, velvet lined ballads and raw, dirty pop.. Sinatra, Cohen, Cobain, Ginsberg, Sammy…. Why not be beat… be beautiful, brave, strange, adventurous, untouchable… Swagger, duck and dodge through big band riffs and fall into a feather bed of Motown soul with a fluffy pillow of country twang… Those classics just go on and on…

www.parislovesjazz.com or www.bremnerduthie.com

I’m finally getting around to editing some footage of the concert with my quartet at the 7 Lezards in Paris. This first video is the great song ’Some of These Days’ adapted from the ancient Charlie Patton blues song... the 2nd video features the gorgeous ballad ’Again’, taken from a rather seedy gangster movie of the 40’s. It’s a gorgeous tune but not too well known... it hit the top 10 three times in the 40’s and 50’s...


The new album should be out and about at the end of June. Meanwhile BREMNER SINGS KURT WEILL (the Weill/Brecht album that came out on Skylark Records in 2004) is still available. Critic’s have loved it:
"Duthie’s remarkable voice interprets the songs of Kurt Weill better than anybody since Lotte Lenya! His rendition of ’Speak Low’ will break your heart" - Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

"one of the best renditions of Mack the Knife you’re likely to hear. Extraordinary. " - The Winnipeg Sun

"For many of us, our first exposure to Kurt Weill was on Bette Midler’s early albums and Ute Lemper and Teresa Statas have become great interpreters of his music. Add Bremner Duthie to that list. He delivers a stunning, stirring rendition of "What Keeps a Man Alive? and his ’Mack the Knife’ is done slowly and seductively, because it’s a song for a bad boy. Duthie tells us that Weill’s music is both sacred and profane at the same time..." - Steven LaVigne, Minneapolis Star

Contact me here and we’ll mail one out to you!


Né à New York avec un nom de famille d’origine française, Bremner Duthié le doit à un bateau français qui fait naufrage au 18ème siècle près du petit village écossais de son père; son prénom original lui vient de la langue écossaise. Enfant, Brem voyage entre New York, Glasgow et le Canada, où il rencontre des musiciens Punk avec qui, plus tard, il a commencé sa carrière en tant que chanteur. Après une carrière ponctuée d’opéra et de musique contemporaine, c’est en 1999 qu’il sort un premier album, ’Whiskey Bars’ dédié à la musique de Kurt Weill, en ton jazz avec des sonorités cabaret et comédie musicale des années ’40. Son nouveau projet ’The Sky Was Blue’ reprend des grands classiques de Billy Holiday, Little Jimmy Scott, Frank Sinatra et Nina Simone mais aussi, façon jazzy, des titres de Talking Heads, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen ou encore le Velvet Underground, dont la mélancolie urbaine convient admirablement à sa voix sophistiquée. The Sky Was Blue réunit des musiciens aussi éclectiques que talentueux: Rémi Amblard - piano, Thierry Tardieu - batterie, Tommaso Montagnani - contrebass e, et Benôit Gil - guitare.


I edited my profile with Thomas Myspace Editor V4.4 (www.strikefile.com/myspace)

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 1/16/2007
Band Website: parislovesjazz.com
Band Members: Rémi Amblard - piano, Thierry Tardieu - batterie, Tommaso Montagnani - contrebass, et Benôit Gil - guitar.
Influences: Sinatra, Pere Ubu, Little Jimmy Scott, Klaus Nomi, The Ventures, Jimmy Rushing with Count Basie, Tom Waits, King Pleasure, Louis Armstrong, Prince, Ute Lemper, The Dead Kennedys, Gang of Four, Betty Carter
Type of Label: None

My Blog

Out of the studio and back to real life... cultureshock!!

Well, that was....great! Three long days of work with the musicians in the studio. They were amazing: creative, hard working, inventive... they rocked! (ok...sometimes they rocked too much) I'm comple...
Posted by Bremner Duthie on Sat, 02 Jun 2007 05:32:00 PST

Damn the sniffles

Well, thank god for France's amazing medical system... came down with a terrible cold this week (8 days from going into the studio).  My nose is plugged, my throat is raw, my head is pounding, my...
Posted by Bremner Duthie on Thu, 24 May 2007 11:30:00 PST

Two weeks and counting

Two weeks before I go into the studio and I'm wrestling with keys and tempos and arrangements.  The song list is still adapting as we find out what players have an affinity for& in principle the ...
Posted by Bremner Duthie on Tue, 22 May 2007 12:33:00 PST

Remi and the Jets

So I go for a first rehearsal with Remi, the pianist who'll be playing for me on the recording, and we go through the songs and then get to chatting about some songs he's working on. We head into his ...
Posted by Bremner Duthie on Tue, 22 May 2007 12:27:00 PST

Blue Skies

The studio is booked, the rehearsals are on track, the arrangements are down on paper, some demos are up on My Space--which means I'm up & running for the recording at the end of May. There are fi...
Posted by Bremner Duthie on Tue, 22 May 2007 12:26:00 PST

Standard

I've been trying to find some new ways into old songs. Swopping back and forth between a mic and recording and arranging software... trying new sounds, new tempos, new orchestrations...singing them, p...
Posted by Bremner Duthie on Wed, 24 Jan 2007 07:33:00 PST

Out of the Snow and into the Studio....

So now I have the little side studio at the Berton house set up as a portable studio. A Tascam usb audio/midi interface (US - 122L) with my laptop, a nice little Tascam condensor mic that came bundled...
Posted by Bremner Duthie on Wed, 24 Jan 2007 06:43:00 PST

should be an interesting flight

and as I walked across the dark and snowy tarmac to the 20 seater Hawker Sidley (that had seen slightly better days) the air steward leaned down and yelled to us: 'this is the first time we've flown ...
Posted by Bremner Duthie on Sun, 21 Jan 2007 07:37:00 PST