Joy Askew

CDBABY LINK for JOY ASKEW: The Pirate of eel Pie
YES - THE NEW CD "THE PIRATE OF EEL PIE" IS AVAILABLE TO BUY NOW!!! SONGS- DEEP AND DIFFERENT.... I grew up in the North of England and came to NYC in 1982. I played keyboards and sang with many artists including fellow Brits Joe Jackson, Peter Gabriel, Jack Bruce and performance artist Laurie Anderson. Catch me in Anderson's quintessential performance film "Home of the Brave". "Tender City" was my first major released CD in 1996, I made this with Shane Fontayne and other great musicians. Mixed by Mike Shipley. 3 independantly released CD's followed then I teamed up with jazz/electronic producer/ musician Takuya Nakamura and Echo was born (New Line records). A downtempo deconstructive vibe of Cole Porter and the like along with some originals. In 2002 I toured the UK with my band "Echo" on a sold out tour opening up for David Byrne. I wrote songs for Quincy Jones Music publishing company and Warner Chappell. This month I am releasing a new cd "THE PIRATE OF EEL PIE" that I began making 4 years ago with drummer Ricky Fataar( Bonnie Raitt, the Rutles) and just completed. Mixed by Malcolm Burn, the ten song album features personal and passionate songs written on the guitar and piano. A lot of them are drawing from my past growing up in Newcastle and being young in London in the 70s a time of bedsits, pirate radio, American draft dodgers from the Vietnam war, musicians, painters, cold gas fire winters and dreams of escape to America. THE PIRATE OF EEL PIE will be available February 19th!! Boomer BoxReviews for baby boomers that still listen to musicEven More New York TendaberriesBy Mark FogartyA Thing of JoyI first saw Joy Askew twenty years ago as the beautiful, Big Eighties-haired, mini-dress wearing keyboard player in Laurie Anderson’s wonderful concept-and-concert movie Home of the Brave. So I was delighted when I got an e-mail from her asking for a review of her latest CD, The Pirate of Eel Pie.I’m happy to report this transplanted Brit’s record is very fine, a wise, introspective, elegiac compilation of memories and rhythms from more than thirty years of being a professional musician. (She’s worked both as a solo and as a sidewoman for folks like Peter Gabriel, Joe Jackson and Jack Bruce.) She’s now a New Yorker, still quite beautiful (a thing of Joy is a beauty forever, apparently) as I found when we were able to get together for an interview in one of seven separate Starbucks on Seventh Avenue in New York. Our conversation ranged back to her first professional gig as a teenager back in Sixties London and up to the present day, which includes gigs the next five Wednesdays (starting April 25) upstairs at the Living Room in Manhattan.Image courtesy of Mark Fogarty. JOY ASKEW had a recent series of gigs at Joe's Pub in New York City. Let’s start in the present, even though The Pirate of Eel Pie works somewhat as a memory play of her time in London all those years ago. The ”pirate” in question is British pirate radio, where cutting edge jocks broadcast from out in the water to get around the monopoly of the BBC. (I guess satellite radio might be considered a modern-day descendent). This particular one broadcast from a place called Eel Pie Island.Askew had come to London as a teen from her home in industrial Newcastle to play with Paul Jones, late of the British Invasion band Manfred Mann (“Do Wah Diddy”) and fresh from a starring role in the movie Privilege. But she looked to America for her future, an America of freeform political protests, hippie freedom, and the legacy of Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets.So the record has songs like “Jack Kerouac,” which can join others like Natalie Merchant’s “Hey, Jack Kerouac” in the pantheon of tributes to this pioneering American spirit. There’s a somber/funny elegy for a badboy boyfriend from her London days, “Jimmy’s Gone Now,” which combines sober life lessons learned with a sneaking admiration for a guy with sinister tattoos and a ready supply of Peruvian Army marching powder. (Askew charmingly told me she’s actually not sure the real-life Jimmy is dead, which adds another wry level on.) “Walk Under Waterfalls” is another elegy, this one for three departed musicians: John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Jeff Buckley.There are other tunes that mine more current veins, but the retrospective ones speak most strongly to me. (I kind of wish the whole record had this theme, the way I wish John and Paul would have done a whole record from the energy which produced their greatest songs, “Strawberry Fields” and “Penny Lane.”) The title tune, for instance, has a stateliness to it, a slow-rhythm riff that sweeps along like a tide coming in. Adding to its London-calling memory to me is that Askew’s vocals here somehow remind me of England’s greatest folk singer of the day, the never-to-be-forgotten Sandy Denny. During a live show, this would be the song where you’d stand up to applaud and think, wow, I’m glad I came tonight!Askew finally did get to America, in 1982. A big Steely Dan fan, she was delighted that one of the first people she met over here was Donald Fagen. And she quickly lined up a year-long tour with Joe Jackson, who had just released Night and Day.A big thrill for her in the Eighties was gigging with Jack Bruce, the bassist and vocalist of Cream. As a kid, Askew was one of the first members of Cream’s fan club (I just “friended” Jack’s page on MySpace, perhaps that’s a modern-day equivalent!), and in 1988 she played keyboards for him at Madison Square Garden. In addition, her father once played in a band with Graham Bond, whose Graham Bond Organisation counted Bruce and Cream drummer Ginger Baker as members.But perhaps her best musical experience was with Laurie Anderson, who she remains friends with to this day. Askew confirmed my memory that the gorgeous Home of the Brave was filmed in a little theater across the Hudson River in Union City, NJ with sidemen like guitarist Adrian Belew, who was filmed playing a rubber-necked guitar in one of the film’s many playful moments.In the 1990s, Askew gigged with Peter Gabriel on his Us tour. The two met in an unlikely way, through a joint interest in Scrabble! And while touring with Gabriel, Askew wrote a suite of songs that became the center of her first solo album, 1996’s Tender City. Eel Pie is her sixth.The Eel Pie predecessor she speaks of with the most energy is called Echo, in which seven jazz standards are deconstructed. Done after she fell in love with the drum-and-bass style, and with the legacy of Miles Davis in mind, (she loves blues and jazz) she recorded this electronica work with Takuya Nakamura.Eel Pie took four years to complete, with sessions in San Francisco, Woodstock, and in her own New York City home studio, where she complements her performing and recording careers with vocal, songwriting and piano teaching, as well as producing other acts. (She is also an animal activist.) Bonnie Raitt drummer Rickey Fataar was her co-producer in San Francisco, and drummer Jerry Marotta in Woodstock. (Her websites are www.joyaskew.com and www.myspace.com/joyaskew)We compared enthusiasms for Miles (she saw him play live during the Jack Johnson days), and she grabbed onto something I said about Dylan and Miles being similar in being willing to play bad music along with their great stuff to make a statement about her future musical aspirations.“I think I haven’t been bad enough,” she said. “I feel I’ve got a lot to say. I need to get out there and say it.”