Singer/songwriter Jenny Lewis has played Coachella with her previous bands, but she’s there this year as a solo artist; the Alvin Ailey dance troupe shows middle schoolers how turn emotion into motion (pictured); talking books with two of the more acclaimed narrators of audio books, lyana Kadushin and Kevin T. Collins.
Coachella 2015: Jenny Lewis tells us the song she'll never, ever play live
Jenny Lewis is an indie-music veteran who has been playing music for over 15 years and has been on the road touring for about the same amount of time.
Lewis started as a frontman in the Los Angeles-based folk-rock band Rilo Kiley in the late '90s. During the band's 12-year career, she also helped start the short-lived indie-electro band the Postal Service with Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard.
Currently, Lewis is going solo and recently released her third solo album, "The Voyager." She performed most of the album at Coachella this past weekend. The Frame's James Kim talked with Jenny Lewis about her 15 years on the road, what songs she doesn't like performing and what her favorite show she's ever played was:
Jenny Lewis on the first time she started touring:
When I first started touring, we had a crappy van and we would all share rooms. So for many years as a grown adult woman, I would share a bed with a bandmate, whether it would be Jimmy Tamborello from the Postal Service or Pierre De Reeder from Rilo Kiley, just a pillow barrier between us sleeping on the same bed. I mean, it was really fun though.
Favorite places to take a break on tour:
I love waking up in a new spot every day. Anywhere is fun though. My favorite days off on the road are typically nowhere, like Bismarck, North Dakota, and you find yourself in a mall and you're like, 'This is awesome!'
What Lewis is thinking when she's performing on stage:
What am I thinking when I'm on stage? It sounds like [expletive] up here, or at least that's always my first thought where I'm like, 'Oh my god. It sounds terrible and everything is always broken.' Some shows suck, but I always-- the show must go on. I learned it from my past as a child actor. The show must go on. You have to just keep on with it.
Least favorite song to play live:
There's a song called 'Glendora,' an old Rilo Kiley song that gets yelled out at every single show I've ever played. It's a weird song that has a lyric about 'The Silence of The Lambs' in it. It's a really weird song. Weird words written by a 19-year-old, and for some reason all the Kiley fans always yell out 'Glendora.' So I will never play it, but I invited a fan up on stage the other day and she sang the first verse flawlessly.
If you're in the right environment you can pretend that you want the audience to sing it. I have a lot of lyrics, some of my songs are really wordy, so I feel like people are pretty forgiving and I do great like 85 percent of the time.
Best live performance:
My Coachella experiences have been really amazing over the years — the Postal Service two years ago on the main stage — that's the biggest show I've ever played, maybe the biggest show I'll ever play, and it was pretty magical because I love those songs so much, and whenever the first notes of 'The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,' I was just moved, true goosebumps.
Alvin Ailey dance troupe teaches 'blood memories' to disadvantaged Los Angeles school
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is in the middle of their five-month-long tour and will be performing this week at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Before the iconic modern dance troupe takes center stage in downtown L.A., they made a stop at Rancho Dominguez Prep School in March. As part of their annual tour, Alvin Ailey works with local schools like Rancho Dominguez to teach students about modern dance and the company itself.
Middle schoolers learn the dance steps and also learn about Alvin Ailey, who was black, as well as being one of the most prolific dancers and choreographers of the 20th century. He grew up in the Great Depression in segregated Texas as a black man, and in 1942 he and his mother moved to L.A., where he met choreographer Lester Horton. After joining Horton’s dance troupe, he moved to New York, starred on Broadway and established Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.
The troupe itself serves as another inspiration for the students. Alvin Ailey Dance Theater was one of the first all-black modern dance troupes in the U.S. The world-class company fundamentally changed the American dance landscape.
“Especially in ESC South, we have a really high number of really diverse students, and I think it’s important for young children to see these role models and the impact they’ve had in the world,” says Ruth Torres, the arts integration specialist for the L.A. Unified of the ESC South.
The teachers and dancers hope the students will look to the dance troupe and Alvin Ailey as role models, which these students may need. Rancho Dominguez Prep is a Title 1 school, meaning it receives federal assistance. At the school, 81 percent of the students are economically disadvantaged in some way, and the school has had a history of fights breaking out and teacher misconduct allegations.
But according to Nasha Thomas Schmitt, the national director of the Alvin Ailey Camp and the master teacher in arts and education, that makes it even more necessary for Alvin Ailey to be here.
“Alvin Ailey did not let his circumstances determine what he wanted to set out and accomplish," she says. "And a lot of kids are used to being shuffled around. But it is about taking advantage of the resources you have in your community — the resources you have in your school."
As part of the residency, the students are learning Alvin Ailey’s iconic dance "Revelations." It traces the African-American experience from slavery to freedom.
Ailey called these struggles his blood memories — memories that run through your veins. For Ailey, going through these pivotal experiences can create lasting impressions and form you as a person.
“There’s nothing like meeting a child and having a 90-minute interaction for four days, and that last day, they’re saying ‘I love you.’ And you don’t want to leave, and you know you’ve made an impact. And you have made a change, and you have created a blood memory just like Alvin Ailey had his blood memories,” Schmitt says.
Even in their short stay at Rancho Dominguez Prep, Alvin Ailey has already created those blood memories. For 13-year-old Sherod Brown, Alvin Ailey’s choreography delivered “moves that I’ve never seen throughout my life — ever before, and I feel inspired, proud and fantastic, because their moves were just mind blowing, to be honest."
And the blood memory continues. The students at Rancho Dominguez Prep School will get to see an exclusive performance of Alvin Ailey's national tour this week.
Audiobook acting: What goes into their roles and how a woman can be Edward from 'Twilight'
Heard a good book lately? Monday, the Audio Publishers Association announced its five finalists for the best audio book of 2014. The narrators were mostly celebrity authors, with people like Amy Poehler, Oprah Winfrey and Nelson Mandela nominated for reading their own books.
But the thousands of other audiobooks recorded every year are performed by the literary equivalent of character actors — you may not know their names, but you'll recognize their voices.
We invited two of the more acclaimed narrators of audiobooks to talk with the Frame: Ilyana Kadushin, who has recorded Stephenie Meyer's best-selling “Twilight” novels, and Kevin T. Collins, who has read the Navy SEAL story “Lone Survivor” and the teen romance “Beautiful Creatures.”
Lone Survivor audiobook excerpt
Audiobook sales now top $1 billion every year, and Amazon’s recorded books division, Audible, hopes soon to have nearly 200,000 recorded titles for sale.
How an audiobook actor prepares
When it comes to recording an audiobook, Kadushin says the publishing company might only deliver a book to the actors/narrators days before they record. She says you'll usually get one pass through the book where you can identify storylines and character voices while making goals for what you want to do with the book, then you have to take that preparation and make decisions in the moment.
Collins says that he's relaxed as he's done more audiobook work, going from marking up his script a lot and deciding how everyone would sound to learning to trust his own instincts.
Sometimes, actors get extra direction from the authors, Collins says — Audible has policies where they encourage actors to contact the authors, especially on smaller projects. Collins says you're probably not going to call up James Patterson, but the project's director or producer can contact him.
One way that the industry has changed, Kadushin says, is that there's more isolation of the actors and narrators. More projects had a whole team behind it, including a director and an engineer producing the book, who you could go to with pronunciation questions and story questions. Now, Kadushin says, you're more likely to have to do your own research, often emailing authors or getting them on the phone. She says they're happy to do so, though — they want their books to be great too.
The Twilight Saga
One of the strangest compliments Kadushin has received: She says that she used to get letters from Twilight fans telling her they liked how she read romantic lead Edward better than Robert Pattinson's take in the films. Now, this may come off to some as a shot at Pattinson's acting, but Kadushin says that she thinks her success reading that character comes from how she would focus on how the female character was experiencing the male character. She said it made for an emotional narration that listeners could tap into, being inside the interaction between the characters Kadushin having a distinctly feminine voice.
How they became audiobook narrators
"I think great acting makes great narration," Kadushin says. She said that she was brought into the world of audiobook narration when she heard Jeremy Irons narrating "The Alchemist," letting her realize that there were high-level film and theater actors doing audiobooks.
Meanwhile, Collins says that he "Forrest Gumped" his way into being an audiobook actor. His mom is a retired musician who listens to audiobooks "whenever she's conscious," and she's the one who told him he should be in this field. Collins landed his second audiobook audition, which was for "Lone Survivor," and that launched his career.
Where they find inspiration
Both Kadushin and Collins say that their biggest inspiration comes from listening to other people, and that living in New York City makes it easy to come across a diverse group of people.
"I love listening to people, and I'll imitate them. Not to their face!" Kadushin clarified, "But if I hear an accent in the street, I'll kind of capture it and play with it."
"Occasionally I'll walk around with my voice memo and just do kind of crazy voices, and just do weird things, and try and make myself laugh. And I copy things from movies," Collins says.
However, he added that he takes most of his cues from the writing itself and from his own instincts, finding how it sounds in his head and trying to make it sound like that.
Listen to the audio to hear Ilyana Kadushin tell Frame host John Horn what groceries to pick up — in her sexiest vampire voice. You can also hear Kevin T. Collins do the same in his best aircraft carrier commander voice.
Percy Sledge's greatest legacy: 'When a Man Loves a Woman'
R&B and soul singer Percy Sledge has passed away at 73. He had a number of hits, including 15 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, but the piece of his legacy likely to be remembered by most fans is his 1966 No. 1 hit, "When a Man Loves a Woman."
Sledge started out working in the cotton fields, later working at a hospital and finding his way into a record contract when a former patient introduced him to a producer. He discussed his early career in the documentary "Muscle Shoals," which focused on FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. (The "Muscle Shoals" documentary is available for streaming on Netflix.)
"I was an orderly, working with the sick people," Sledge recalled. "I'd sing a song for them, and they'd go to sleep. I got such a big kick out of that, when I could see my patient laying up there smiling and feeling better."
"When a Man Loves a Woman" was the first song he recorded while under contract, and has proven his longest lasting. Sledge co-wrote it with his bassist and organist after being inspired to write the song after he was laid off from a construction job, and his girlfriend left him for a career in modeling. He ended up giving full songwriting credits to his bandmates who wrote the song with him.
Sledge said in the "Muscle Shoals" documentary that "When a Man Loves a Woman" was the "same melody that I sang when I was out in the fields. I just wailed out in the woods and let the echo come back to me." He had little experience with singing professionally, and said that he was shaking in the studio. It helped lead to a memorable take of the legendary song.
The song was covered several times, the most notable version being when Michael Bolton took the song to No. 1 in 1991, 25 years after the original, which also won Bolton a Grammy.
Sledge and Bolton eventually teamed up to perform the song together.
Michael Bolton/Percy Sledge: When A Man Loves A Woman
Listen to more of Sledge's classic songs below.
"Warm and Tender Love"
"It Tears Me Up"
"Take Time to Know Her"
"Love Me Tender"
"Cover Me"
"I'll Be Your Everything"
"Ain't No Sunshine"
"My Special Prayer"