Speaker 1: Ephemeral is a production of I Heart three D audio
Speaker 1: for full exposure, listen with that phones. One of the
Speaker 1: biggest struggles for an artist is how to capture an
Speaker 1: idea that is originally different, new. But sometimes that creative
Speaker 1: energy comes from peering into the past, perhaps a pastor
Speaker 1: you've never known. For someone like Lorie Theresa, finding that
Speaker 1: inspiration is an integral part of daily life. My name
Speaker 1: is Lorie Theresa, and I'm a musician, a composer, and
Speaker 1: a performer. At this point, a lot of influence has
Speaker 1: come to Laurie from her grandfather, Tony Rice. Tony Rice
Speaker 1: is kind of a mystery, even after seven years of research.
Speaker 1: I really only know about him through what my mom
Speaker 1: remembers and the songs he saying. But knowing what I know,
Speaker 1: I had introduced him as a gentle soul, a gentleman,
Speaker 1: a romantic, a funny guy, a jokester, but ultimately a
Speaker 1: totally resilient man who never let the most inconceivable tragedy
Speaker 1: affect his kindness and his creativity. Like Laurie, Tony Rice
Speaker 1: was a professional singer, whereas Lourie resides in twenty one
Speaker 1: century New York. Tony's scene was post war Greece were
Speaker 1: two styles of music. We're competing for prominence. Greece is
Speaker 1: undergoing this musical Enlightenment period. There was so much musical
Speaker 1: and artistic influence happening from all over the globe. One
Speaker 1: of this I was of music that emerged from that
Speaker 1: era is the rebetica music, which has influences from Asia
Speaker 1: Minor and uses traditional instruments like the buzuki and the
Speaker 1: ba lama. Buzuki is like a smaller mandolin. Blama is
Speaker 1: like an even smaller buzuki. Rebetica music you associate with
Speaker 1: Greek music nowadays, like if you ever go to a
Speaker 1: Greek restaurant or the nather, is some sort of music
Speaker 1: going on, and you're like, that's Greek music, right. This
Speaker 1: kind of music was initially associated with the working class,
Speaker 1: the social outcasts, criminal life. It was bad boy music, right,
Speaker 1: was like the blues, the blues of grief yea. When
Speaker 1: it was first introduced, it was kind of stunned by
Speaker 1: mainstream society and often bands because of the content of
Speaker 1: the songs. Many songs like this woman, We're simply are
Speaker 1: you smoking? Songs describing in detail the pleasures of sharing
Speaker 1: the not a dealing the song about doing drugs and
Speaker 1: life in prison, oppression, poverty. These were people living difficult lives.
Speaker 1: Their one reprie would be like smoking hashish in a
Speaker 1: circle and jamming out pretty badass. You don't think about
Speaker 1: that when you think of your grandfather's But that was
Speaker 1: not my grandfather's scene. There was this other scene which
Speaker 1: was in stark contrast to thistica movement called the Old
Speaker 1: Athens Music or Light Greek music, so the complete opposite.
Speaker 1: This was music that was largely influenced by the sounds
Speaker 1: of Europe. From the Lead to Spain to France. You
Speaker 1: had Greek composers writing tangos and sambas and fox track swing,
Speaker 1: Latin bosa nova. Bolero h, the leader of the New
Speaker 1: Athens movement of Light Greek music, was better known by
Speaker 1: his stage name A Tick I Think. Came from a
Speaker 1: wealthy background and lived most of his life abroad before
Speaker 1: settling down in Athens, where he opened up his own
Speaker 1: venue called A k A ticks Pen I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a double play on pen and like farmhouse. This
Speaker 1: kind of started this movement of vaudeville, theater, musical reviews,
Speaker 1: and cabaret shows. The music and the culture associated with
Speaker 1: this style was kind of the opposite, romantic and forlorn
Speaker 1: and sentimental, and had no guzuki whatsoever, and it was
Speaker 1: only Western instruments like piano, guitar, violin, upright bass. Maybe
Speaker 1: this was a form of escapism at the time because
Speaker 1: it was happening during the Second World War and maybe
Speaker 1: people wanted to feel like they were somewhere else. So
Speaker 1: basically you had this like West Coast versus East Coast
Speaker 1: of the thirties and forties in Greece. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was a particular rivalry or anything, but the music
Speaker 1: was so different, but it was happening at the same time.
Speaker 1: You were either a bad boy with a bad reputation
Speaker 1: or you were romantic and a bohemian. I'd like to
Speaker 1: think that they both eventually merged in the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties with this other kind of music called ede No music.
Speaker 1: Even if you listen to Greek music now, the Greek
Speaker 1: pop music, you'll hear guzuki and clarinet and like all
Speaker 1: this lute stuff and all this stuff that's happening that's
Speaker 1: very Greek inspired and very Middle easternly. But you also
Speaker 1: hear like hip hop beats and all this like a
Speaker 1: Western influence and structure. Somewhere in the middle of this
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties culture class, Tony Rice made his debut. A
Speaker 1: lot of his story remains a mystery, but here's what
Speaker 1: we do. I want to say. He was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen o two in Padra, this island in Greece, to
Speaker 1: a poor family during the war First World War, coming
Speaker 1: from nothing essentially. I think he was self taught on
Speaker 1: the guitar and singing, and he was just kind of
Speaker 1: discovered by accident, which like, wouldn't that be nice if
Speaker 1: that happened to all of us. He was a screen
Speaker 1: printer making basically posters in Padra. He was playing at
Speaker 1: some little club or something, and attack just happened, of course,
Speaker 1: to be in Padre. He went up to my grandfather
Speaker 1: and allegedly my mom says, he was like, if you
Speaker 1: come to Athens with me, I'll make you a big star,
Speaker 1: which is like the classic thing that you hear about
Speaker 1: in movies is born. He packed up his guitar and
Speaker 1: he was like two pieces of clothing and he was
Speaker 1: off the next day. You're right that he's a romantic
Speaker 1: that's a very romantic notion. Oh yeah, So Tony Rice
Speaker 1: moves to Athens and he starts singing at Atiqus Club.
Speaker 1: I imagine a collection of creatives and artists. So you
Speaker 1: have singers and you have storytellers. You know, I can
Speaker 1: remember when kids used to like to have stories read
Speaker 1: to them and mimes. What what? What a complete vaudevillian
Speaker 1: theater experience. As people came to see the shows, they
Speaker 1: started liking him. At some point, he was even playing
Speaker 1: at the Royal Palace in Greece. By the way, did
Speaker 1: you know Greece had a monarchy at some point? If
Speaker 1: it isn't the illustious a word in your ear. Eventually,
Speaker 1: what happened is he made a kind of name for
Speaker 1: himself as a singer, and a desert is kind of
Speaker 1: like a person who performs monologues and tells stories, and
Speaker 1: it's also kind of speak singing style that was popular
Speaker 1: back then, and so he was kind of well known
Speaker 1: for that style. It's a kite by that, and composers
Speaker 1: and lyricists kind of huddled around him and started writing
Speaker 1: songs for him, which became the songs that he would
Speaker 1: make famous. The chance that a team gave him had
Speaker 1: paid off and Tony Rice paid it forward. In the thirties,
Speaker 1: it was this new kid on the scene, Tony Maruda,
Speaker 1: the poor kid orphaned, must have been like seventeen or eighteen.
Speaker 1: He came to Athens with nothing, maybe to drachmas and
Speaker 1: the shirt on his back, and he was interested in
Speaker 1: singing and playing the guitar. My grandfather took him under
Speaker 1: this wing and showed him the road. Oops. He gave
Speaker 1: him his first suits and shoes and take care of
Speaker 1: him as he started building his career pol Sopol Later on,
Speaker 1: Tony Mruda became one of the most well known singers
Speaker 1: of this era and went on to record many many
Speaker 1: albums and a hit song with Sophia Loren That's Sophia Loren.
Speaker 1: Including Atti and Tony Maruda. Tony Rice was associated with
Speaker 1: some of the most well known artists of the dead
Speaker 1: now legends. He also sang with people like you and
Speaker 1: Nicos Junari's a k a Mr Greece which I think
Speaker 1: speaks volumes. These are bigger names in Greece, so like,
Speaker 1: if you type in any of these names, you'll find
Speaker 1: their records. So he kind of paved the way for
Speaker 1: other bigger singers. My mom really glossed over the fact
Speaker 1: about how big of a deal Tony Rice actually was.
Speaker 1: For years she would tell me stories about him, how
Speaker 1: he was a singer and he sang at clubs. And
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, yeah, Mom, like me too. I'm
Speaker 1: a singer and I sing at clubs. Big deal likely
Speaker 1: to meet our new entertainer from Chicago. But he had
Speaker 1: composers and lyricists writing songs for him, and people would
Speaker 1: go to see him specifically perform these songs live. And
Speaker 1: he was making a solid living being a gigging musician.
Speaker 1: He was kind of living the artist's dream, getting paid
Speaker 1: to do what you love and be around other creatives.
Speaker 1: My mom was born in nifties, so now he had
Speaker 1: a newborn and a beautiful and loving wife. To have
Speaker 1: all of that after a war that completely ravaged your
Speaker 1: country an inconceivable miracle the pool. But of course that
Speaker 1: didn't last long, and it started a chain of events
Speaker 1: that changed his life forever. When my mom was six
Speaker 1: years old, my grandfather was diagnosed with throat cancer. I
Speaker 1: don't know how long he knew about it, but the
Speaker 1: only option back then for treatment was to remove the
Speaker 1: vocal cords entirely so in a life saving surgery that
Speaker 1: removed his vocal cords, and he never sang again. In fact,
Speaker 1: he also never spoke again either. My mom doesn't even
Speaker 1: remember what his voice sounded like. She only knew his
Speaker 1: speaking voice through a machine. Talk about devastating, shattering multiple
Speaker 1: dreams at once, aspirations, livelihoods, hopes all in one go.
Speaker 1: Ten years later, his wife passed away suddenly, the love
Speaker 1: of his life, my namesake, Grandma Laurie. And then he
Speaker 1: was just left with my mom, no voice, no career,
Speaker 1: and he had to completely do a one eight and
Speaker 1: just do something else to support his family. It's kind
Speaker 1: of amazing. It's like he took his creativity from singing
Speaker 1: and he transferred it to using his hands, and he
Speaker 1: became a carpenter, and he became really good at making
Speaker 1: these beautifully intricate bird cages. In fact, he had one
Speaker 1: that he had made in his house in his backyard,
Speaker 1: this humanous walk in birdcage where he kept all of
Speaker 1: his canaries and all of these other singing birds. And
Speaker 1: he would be the only one who would be able
Speaker 1: to walk in and just hang out with all these birds.
Speaker 1: That's how he made a living. For the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. He would still hang out with his composer
Speaker 1: friends and they would go out to tavernas and stuff,
Speaker 1: and he would play the guitar and people would sing,
Speaker 1: and he was still very social. I can't imagine having
Speaker 1: that kind of resilience and not being bitter and just
Speaker 1: resentful for the rest of my life. But according to
Speaker 1: my mom, he never showed any of that. He was
Speaker 1: always kinds and funny and a gentleman. So they never met.
Speaker 1: Grandfather and granddaughter would eventually get to connect in an
Speaker 1: unexpected way in the Rice Stories of Family, the musical
Speaker 1: but seems to have skipped a generation. So Tony Rice
Speaker 1: was a singer and a guitarist, and his wife, Lorie
Speaker 1: was a piano teacher and one, two, three, watch those things.
Speaker 1: This performer extraordinaire, highly educated woman, which at the time
Speaker 1: is kind of crazy, spoke multiple languages. And then they
Speaker 1: had my mom, and when she was in her teens,
Speaker 1: she was like sneaking off to take opera lessons until
Speaker 1: my grandfather discovered that she was doing that. He would
Speaker 1: not let her go into the music industry because of
Speaker 1: how rough and questionable it might have been for a
Speaker 1: woman back in those days, so that was the extent
Speaker 1: of my mom's musical toe dip. My dad didn't really
Speaker 1: play anything. My brother is a historian, so it was
Speaker 1: basically just me being the weirdo of my family. I
Speaker 1: started singing when I was very young, and then my
Speaker 1: dad got me one of those small toy keyboards. Maybe
Speaker 1: the year after he got me a slightly bigger one. Finally,
Speaker 1: we rented this upright piano, and that piano has traveled
Speaker 1: with me all over the globe in every apartment in
Speaker 1: house I've lived in, from Belgium to Australia to Greece
Speaker 1: to all of my apartments in New York, and it's
Speaker 1: currently sitting in my living room. It's not a rental anymore.
Speaker 1: I guess I guess you bought it at some point. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had. I think we made a good investment. Up
Speaker 1: through high school, I took classical piano and classical voice,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't a very good sight reader, so I
Speaker 1: would just kind of make up melodies on the spot
Speaker 1: and most people wouldn't notice. But of course the one
Speaker 1: person who did was my piano teacher, and she was like,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. You have to read what's on
Speaker 1: the page. You're not Mozart, you know. That's when I
Speaker 1: started writing music. In high school. I was writing these
Speaker 1: epic prog pop seven eight minute long things. But then
Speaker 1: I started music in college, and then later I got
Speaker 1: my master's degree in studio composition a k a. Songwriting,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of when things started for serious. One
Speaker 1: of my first collaborations was with Stoop, who's better known
Speaker 1: as the producer in the underground hip hop group Jedi
Speaker 1: Mind Tricks. They didn't really know anything about the rap world,
Speaker 1: especially not the underground rap world, but for someone like
Speaker 1: me who loved singing and writing catchy melodies, it makes
Speaker 1: a good pairing and contrast. We collaborated on a full
Speaker 1: album called The Waiting Wolf under our band Vespertina. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like this trip hop concept album loosely based
Speaker 1: around Scheherazade and A thousand and one Arabian Nights. You'll
Speaker 1: have th Jo Pulls, keep me your full welky a
Speaker 1: my nerd, but it's a very sort of studious, fresh
Speaker 1: front underground trip hop. You know that you've got some
Speaker 1: people that went to college when you dropped Shaherazade, and
Speaker 1: there I guess that's there's even some Rinsky course of
Speaker 1: cop in there for all all the O G S H.
Speaker 1: We released it actually ten years ago. It was my
Speaker 1: first album and it kind of just went nowhere. After that.
Speaker 1: I moved to Japan, and while I was there was
Speaker 1: part of this group called the Good Johnson's Nobody Can
Speaker 1: tell you. There's only one song where it's singing that did.
Speaker 1: It's like j pop elector lounge, insane funny show. We
Speaker 1: would tour around Japan in New York too, but it
Speaker 1: was the complete opposite, obviously of Vespopina Night, good Night,
Speaker 1: good Night school Scooby Scoob. When I got back to
Speaker 1: the States, I just felt really out of touch and
Speaker 1: I was going through a long depressive writer's block. I
Speaker 1: don't really talk about this a lot, but I was
Speaker 1: close to quitting music altogether. I just couldn't write anymore.
Speaker 1: There was nothing like left, either putting on a show
Speaker 1: or putting out anything. There's all this effort and money
Speaker 1: and time and practice. You work on it, and you
Speaker 1: work on it and you build it up, only the
Speaker 1: find that no one cares. Or so it played out
Speaker 1: in my mind. Right about two years ago, there was
Speaker 1: this huge thing that happened for me. A couple of
Speaker 1: friends of mine suggested I applied to via My Musical
Speaker 1: Theater Workshop as a composer. I laughed, because I had
Speaker 1: never done musical theater before, aside from people coming up
Speaker 1: to me at shows and being like, do you do
Speaker 1: musical theater and me being like incredibly offended that they
Speaker 1: would even like put me in the same category, So
Speaker 1: it never crossed my mind. The prestigious New York based
Speaker 1: v m I Musical Theater Workshop has been training composers
Speaker 1: and lyricists since including an impressive list of alumni. Alan Mankin,
Speaker 1: who did all those Disney movies Aladdin, Feeling the Beast,
Speaker 1: Bobby and Kristin Lopez who did Frozen and Coco. They
Speaker 1: met at this workshop. Janine Sasori who did Shrek and
Speaker 1: con Hone. They all got there to start. At this workshop,
Speaker 1: you auditioned as a composer or a lyricist or both,
Speaker 1: and then if you get in, you're surrounded and created
Speaker 1: by other artists. What do you think of this? People
Speaker 1: are just like you, but like way better and it's
Speaker 1: a collective. It feels like that's what I was really
Speaker 1: missing from the New York rock and pop scene, this
Speaker 1: actual sense of community. So I auditioned and by some
Speaker 1: crazy miracle I got in. I didn't changed my life.
Speaker 1: I don't think I deserved it, of course, at the
Speaker 1: time and I was terrified that I would be out
Speaker 1: at as a total fraud. But ever since then, I've
Speaker 1: rid through work really hard to just keep writing. It
Speaker 1: turns out a major source of inspiration had already found
Speaker 1: its way to laur but it would take some time
Speaker 1: to materialize. Seven years ago, I was in Greece hanging
Speaker 1: out my family talking about Tony Rice and Atique, and
Speaker 1: on a whim, I did an Internet search for Tony
Speaker 1: Rice and I got two hits. One was a Greek
Speaker 1: Wikipedia article that mentioned his name in quick passing, and
Speaker 1: then the other one was from a music library in Greece.
Speaker 1: When I went to the music libraries online database, I
Speaker 1: found the thing that started at all, which was the
Speaker 1: cover of the piano and vocal score for a song
Speaker 1: that had my grandfather's portrait. And I was like, wait what,
Speaker 1: because up until that point I was like, Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: just a singer and he's stang at a club, right,
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything, And I was like wait, this
Speaker 1: is an actual photo of him. The family was already
Speaker 1: aware that there aren't any audio recordings of Tony Rice.
Speaker 1: The technology used for proper recording to a while to
Speaker 1: get to Greece, and while some people were able to
Speaker 1: spend money on recording the albums, somehow it never lined
Speaker 1: up for my grandfather. Who knows in what condition his
Speaker 1: voice was like before he had the surgery, but he
Speaker 1: lost his vocal cords just before he got a chance
Speaker 1: to record any of his songs, and of course, without
Speaker 1: any recordings of his songs, they quickly faded into obscurity,
Speaker 1: and so did he. So yeah, I knew there wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna be any recordings, but how did I not think
Speaker 1: that they might not be sheet music? So the next
Speaker 1: day I zoomed over there and I got a photocopy
Speaker 1: of the sheet music, brought it home, plugged in my
Speaker 1: headphones into my dinky little keyboard that I still had
Speaker 1: at my parent's house, and I started playing through it.
Speaker 1: I think at the time I even transcribed it into
Speaker 1: a session so I could later arrange it. Tony's face
Speaker 1: on the cover of this score indicated that either the
Speaker 1: song had been written specifically for him, or made famous
Speaker 1: by his performance, if I could find this one piece
Speaker 1: of music, were there more? Like I said, my brother
Speaker 1: is a historian, so he's a little better at finding
Speaker 1: stuff than I am. And he also lives in Greece,
Speaker 1: so he can go to these places in person. We
Speaker 1: started doing some internet searches. We found this random website
Speaker 1: which had the title and the composers, and then we
Speaker 1: tried to cross reference it with the libraries. We talked
Speaker 1: with archivists and collectors and YouTubers and like questionable people
Speaker 1: on face spoke just like anyone. We could hunt down
Speaker 1: to see if they had sheet music. Every time I
Speaker 1: saw his photo on a cover, or every time I
Speaker 1: saw his name in the credits or mentioned in a dedication,
Speaker 1: it just blew my mind. It took about two years.
Speaker 1: My brother found most of them, and we got ten songs,
Speaker 1: and I know there's at least one more that we
Speaker 1: couldn't find the sheet music for. So there's probably more
Speaker 1: out there that I don't know about. And you never
Speaker 1: mentioned that you were doing this project to your mom
Speaker 1: about her father. Nope. So in fact, the first song
Speaker 1: that I discovered, the one that I brought home and
Speaker 1: played on my dinky keyboard. This was a song called
Speaker 1: I Wish I Never Met You, which was kind of
Speaker 1: an ominous start to this whole thing. But I really
Speaker 1: didn't have enough at that point. And then by the
Speaker 1: time I did, I was like, Okay, mom's turning seventy.
Speaker 1: We're gonna put this together and we're gonna give it
Speaker 1: to her for her birthday as a gift. That seems
Speaker 1: like a good deadline. I thought we were going to
Speaker 1: do like a live show. She lives in Greece, so
Speaker 1: I was gonna fly out there for her birthday and
Speaker 1: do this show. And then the pandemic hit how are
Speaker 1: you going? Never mind? Because I was like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: what now? And this was how Loris stumbled upon her
Speaker 1: next project, an album featuring new performances of the songs
Speaker 1: of Tony Rice. I mean, I didn't think it was
Speaker 1: gonna be a whole album. I thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be maybe a handful of songs and piano and
Speaker 1: voice at most. But then I guess, like most things
Speaker 1: that I start, I got obsessed and then it became
Speaker 1: more and more intricated. Started off, Okay, we'll record piano
Speaker 1: and vocals, but how do we do that? A lot
Speaker 1: of these songs were for a baritone or tenor voice.
Speaker 1: I don't know what Tony Rice's voice type was, but
Speaker 1: I want to assume he had this buttery, baritony voice.
Speaker 1: I'm a soprano, a high soprano, so things were either
Speaker 1: moved up or down, depending to make sure that it's
Speaker 1: set in a nice comfy range with my voice. But
Speaker 1: it soon became clear that all these songs were begging
Speaker 1: for more. Thus began the endeavor of arranging the scores
Speaker 1: for orchestration. It started off as a software score, transcribing
Speaker 1: what you have in the sheet music, which is the
Speaker 1: vocal score in the piano score, and then you extrapolate
Speaker 1: the chords and everything, and you just start adding different
Speaker 1: textures and instruments to create a fuller sound. In this process,
Speaker 1: Laura enlisted the help of her BMI Workshop cohort Dan Wilson.
Speaker 1: We worked together on trying to figure out what it
Speaker 1: used to sound like when Tony Rice performed it, doing
Speaker 1: research and looking at what the instrumentation was, even like
Speaker 1: looking at old photos of the live performances and seeing
Speaker 1: what people were holding in their hands. We have some
Speaker 1: idea of what it would have sound like, because there's
Speaker 1: other recordings at the time. So I did a lot
Speaker 1: of listening to old recordings of fatigue and even the
Speaker 1: Golden age of Hollywood kind of music, like Fred Astaire
Speaker 1: at DEEPPF, trying to figure out what is it about
Speaker 1: those arrangements that make you think about that time, different
Speaker 1: tricks you used, for like the violins to do like
Speaker 1: a little swoop and a swell and like a little
Speaker 1: harp thing comes in and you're like, oh, I'm in
Speaker 1: the forties. For me, it was really important that the
Speaker 1: arranging reflected the emotion and the feeling of the song
Speaker 1: because it's in Greek and I assumed some non Greek
Speaker 1: listeners might be listening. How do you make those listeners
Speaker 1: hear the feeling and feel the feeling without knowing what
Speaker 1: is being said? Your name? I mean, it took a
Speaker 1: few tries. I think I could never let you leave me.
Speaker 1: Took like seven or eight arrangements until it was like,
Speaker 1: that's a good arrangement and Matt props to Dan Wilson
Speaker 1: for figuring it out and doing an amazing job to
Speaker 1: capture that nine decades old sound. Laurie and Dan arranged
Speaker 1: the piano scores for a symphony's worth of instruments. We
Speaker 1: used string quartet upright, bassed clarinets out of sacks, harp, flute, guitar,
Speaker 1: we even used nylon guitar for spend sounding song and
Speaker 1: piano and voice stone gosh more Pull me Up and
Speaker 1: make it room working loathing on Starsho use Chlomia l Loathing.
Speaker 1: Then after we did the arrangements, then we had to
Speaker 1: reach out to the musicians and find musicians that had
Speaker 1: the capability to record remotely. I think that was the
Speaker 1: most difficult part, getting people to record separately and make
Speaker 1: it sound like you were in the same room together.
Speaker 1: As a musician, you need rehearsal time with other people.
Speaker 1: And back then when they would record, they had one
Speaker 1: or two takes and they were just really well rehearsed.
Speaker 1: But we didn't have that. We just kind of had
Speaker 1: a lot of pre production and post production and then
Speaker 1: the recording was whatever it is, we just have to
Speaker 1: make it work. I wanted, you want to give them
Speaker 1: the basic stuff click track and the scratch vocals and
Speaker 1: scratch piano as a reference stun Goods and I had
Speaker 1: a reference track that I had exported from my sabellious
Speaker 1: session and you know, it sounds very like Middy, and
Speaker 1: then people would record on top of that and send
Speaker 1: it back to me. But the strings, for example, I
Speaker 1: think we did like five violins, five viola is, four cellos,
Speaker 1: two basses. Strings are all about the blend, so we
Speaker 1: had a lot of overdubs. It was one person who
Speaker 1: was doing both violin and viola, and she would take
Speaker 1: multiple tracks. I think we did like five or so,
Speaker 1: and then I would send the violin and viola tracks
Speaker 1: to the cellist and the basis that they could put
Speaker 1: that in their mix and kind of play along with it.
Speaker 1: For woodwinds, for example, that was just kind of live.
Speaker 1: I think they just played to a backing track and
Speaker 1: a click track, and then we would re record the piano,
Speaker 1: re record the vocals, edit edit every single thing, and
Speaker 1: then try to put it all together. Mix edit, edit,
Speaker 1: more mixing, mastering, more mastering. Mm hmm. I should mention
Speaker 1: that this is a completely scrappy endeavor. This was all
Speaker 1: self financed. This was not something that was meant to
Speaker 1: get out of control like this, But it was important
Speaker 1: for me to have musicians that I like working with
Speaker 1: and pay them during this time where no one's working.
Speaker 1: We all what did the kind up? And get? Guys
Speaker 1: got why? I want to think that it captures this
Speaker 1: old style of recording. You get what you get in
Speaker 1: one or two takes. That's just kind of part of
Speaker 1: the beauty. The ten songs that came together for the
Speaker 1: Tony Rice project give a sense of both the old
Speaker 1: Athens sound and the range of the performers abilities. So
Speaker 1: we said, lu lothing see us skips you moved because
Speaker 1: music is super romantic and sentimental and forlorn. There's a
Speaker 1: few tangos in there that are about deception and cheating
Speaker 1: and I'll never look your way again. If you see
Speaker 1: me on the street, look the other way. There's a
Speaker 1: few upbeat ones that are a little more I'm currently
Speaker 1: in love not I was pity then he say you're mad,
Speaker 1: just full of romance and sensitivity. Lick you up. My
Speaker 1: brother Petros he helped me translate all of these songs.
Speaker 1: But there's one song where I wrote an English verse,
Speaker 1: and that's the song I Could Never Let You Leave Me,
Speaker 1: which is the title trackhoation she see Stacy no God
Speaker 1: being much better. When we got the sheet music for it,
Speaker 1: there was only one verse in Greek it was a
Speaker 1: verse in a chorus, and I was like, he needs
Speaker 1: at least one more verse. What if I did this
Speaker 1: like Levan Rose Louis Armstrong French and English verse and
Speaker 1: put it together. So you're asking us to to take
Speaker 1: a love and tear it. All of it's basically almost
Speaker 1: exactly the same lyrics as the first verse in Greek.
Speaker 1: So I know that interests your love. Honestly, that was
Speaker 1: the first song that broke me. So up until now
Speaker 1: I had found mostly tangles about cheating and deception, and
Speaker 1: then this score came along and I printed it out
Speaker 1: and I set it up in front of my piano
Speaker 1: and started discovering it for the first time, measure by measure.
Speaker 1: By the time I got to the fourth measure, I
Speaker 1: was already crying. It was the most beautiful song I
Speaker 1: had ever heard. And I know this sounds dramatic, but
Speaker 1: I felt like with every measure I was wiping tears
Speaker 1: and it just broke my heart. Can you hear this
Speaker 1: with me? These are the first four measures. It's just
Speaker 1: something about this chord. Yeah, look, court is it g
Speaker 1: B F a flat b G seven G seven with
Speaker 1: the nine G seven nine it's a G seven nine
Speaker 1: plus nine plus six plus six. I looked it up
Speaker 1: and it's either a G six flat nine or maybe
Speaker 1: an inverted F sharp minor seven sharp four nine. Just
Speaker 1: it's just it's just how does that not break your heart?
Speaker 1: Even that first one? So like Gershwin esque who came
Speaker 1: up with this absolutely genius. That's the thing, like when
Speaker 1: you don't know what the court is, when you're like
Speaker 1: playing it and it just hits you. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: So I was. I was just playing measure by measure,
Speaker 1: just stumbling through it with my bad site reading being
Speaker 1: a sloppy mess. The title of it in Greek is themamufiis,
Speaker 1: which I translated to I could never let you leave me,
Speaker 1: but more closely translates to I just can't let you
Speaker 1: go or I will never forget you. Though that was
Speaker 1: a perfect double meaning to use and tribute to my
Speaker 1: grandfather and his legacy. That's a final thing. M Through
Speaker 1: the process of performing and reworking these songs, Lorie developed
Speaker 1: a deep connection with the source material, even when it
Speaker 1: wasn't easy. They these songs happened so also be very
Speaker 1: beautiful and very well written, and it's very enjoyable to sing,
Speaker 1: but there's a few on there that were tough, and
Speaker 1: the only two songs that you may have heard of
Speaker 1: before Sorious Granada by Augustin Laura, famous Spanish composer. Yes,
Speaker 1: my Nancy. This was typically reserved for this big tenor
Speaker 1: arim moment that was vocally challenging, but I can picture
Speaker 1: the dramatic scene on stage lay the one song by
Speaker 1: a Thick that's on the records, Life's passers By. It
Speaker 1: was probably the toughest to record. Pretty most footing scare
Speaker 1: most most said no more mystic, But it's basically talks
Speaker 1: about how you've become like an old man and you
Speaker 1: have nothing and no one is there for you, and
Speaker 1: even drinking won't kill you, and you're just at the
Speaker 1: lowest point in your life where you just want to
Speaker 1: die and everything you try doesn't work. People don't go kind.
Speaker 1: There's no redemption in the song. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: heartbreaking that listen. It just like keeps digging itself deeper
Speaker 1: and deeper and deeper until you're underground, Like don't listen
Speaker 1: to it at a party, total down her. By the end,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm already crying. Every time I recorded it, Singing
Speaker 1: that on stage would completely break me. Here this year
Speaker 1: to stop your dog my guess it's not good good?
Speaker 1: So you've got the record? When do you clear your mom?
Speaker 1: And did all of this November twenty two, on her birthday? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we were working right up until that zoom call, until
Speaker 1: like ago, mastering one of the tracks that wasn't sitting right.
Speaker 1: I had to make her a video to prep her
Speaker 1: on like what she's about to experience. You know, this
Speaker 1: was research involved people that made it happen that we discovered.
Speaker 1: There's still missing pieces, but there are ten songs and
Speaker 1: just I don't know. I just enjoy it. O good,
Speaker 1: you like it? Okay, here go m And I don't
Speaker 1: think she totally grasped the enormity of it at first.
Speaker 1: How did you gather all those musicians to plue play?
Speaker 1: It's amazing? But she does now. I hope this is
Speaker 1: a good seventieth birthday. Yes it is. She didn't know
Speaker 1: about these songs at all, or about the sheet music.
Speaker 1: This was the first time she'd ever heard them as well.
Speaker 1: And she's already my number one fan. So for me
Speaker 1: to sing these songs was I guess, like the cherry
Speaker 1: on top. It was a very nice gift for me,
Speaker 1: not only that I heard your voice and dance voice
Speaker 1: and all these music, but because I had, you know,
Speaker 1: something from my father. It's wild too that I mean,
Speaker 1: because she never heard him sing the songs. No, she
Speaker 1: had no idea that these existed. Plus I find it strange,
Speaker 1: but maybe makes sense that in our attic or basement
Speaker 1: we didn't have any of the sheet music of his.
Speaker 1: This is a complete fantasy, but I picture Tony Rice
Speaker 1: discovering that he has to do his vocal surgery and
Speaker 1: remove his vocal cords and then taking all of this
Speaker 1: sheet music on all of this music that he had
Speaker 1: worked on for twenty plus years and just lit it
Speaker 1: on fire and then went on with his life. If
Speaker 1: I was in his place, I would probably do something similar.
Speaker 1: I Can Never let You Leave Me was released in March.
Speaker 1: I'm self releasing it, I'm self funding it. This is
Speaker 1: kind of like a passion project that I didn't think
Speaker 1: would see the light of day because it was just
Speaker 1: for my mom. Then I just got so deep into
Speaker 1: it that I felt like people need to hear this.
Speaker 1: The Fia Sutlika say he Nike Africa. You're die night,
Speaker 1: You're that's a This isn't my my demographic or anything.
Speaker 1: I don't know who this is for, but I just
Speaker 1: wanted out there going madya shu here Luckily cast thy good,
Speaker 1: keep see loud. The Tony Rice project required a lot
Speaker 1: of amazing feats, from Laurie and Petros's dogged research to
Speaker 1: the fourth sight of Greek archivists, from the skill of
Speaker 1: composers writing almost a century ago, to the diligence of
Speaker 1: musicians working from home during a global pandemic. We said
Speaker 1: lu lothing. But at its core, the source of inspiration
Speaker 1: in this music is ineffable, the brilliance of one artist
Speaker 1: filtered through the creativity of another. Mad pele truth he
Speaker 1: sails this sing If you can't do she he said, Hey,
Speaker 1: these hards weird. Through this journey, I was able to
Speaker 1: discover a lot about what kind of person an artist
Speaker 1: my grandfather was. But we never got to hear Tony
Speaker 1: Rice himself sing these songs. I hope that we can
Speaker 1: hear his voice through mine, and that these songs won't
Speaker 1: be forgotten again. There let me stood seek say yaman yashion.
Speaker 1: In many ways, I do think we're very similar. He
Speaker 1: had this community of musicians like I have my community
Speaker 1: of musicians. Now, I think we're both big softies for
Speaker 1: both animals and the humans we love, and the kind
Speaker 1: of music that we like. We're both sentimental performers whose
Speaker 1: careers haven't quite gone as planned. We're both great cooks,
Speaker 1: and we love entertaining and making people laugh. I never
Speaker 1: met him, but after all this, I feel really connected
Speaker 1: in a way that I can't quite explain, but I
Speaker 1: hope he likes it. The bard of big gassion. Maybe
Speaker 1: a study keeping ptyshy kidding say y'ama at eyes, flick
Speaker 1: your waver bess h wh what is you may she
Speaker 1: does steelfy you know, going my spitters past your faces
Speaker 1: no bo fgis it looks shai don't love first made
Speaker 1: it so stucky home with your mother, feeling with yours
Speaker 1: who being nothing um the feece so cover good yes
Speaker 1: and d VT shoes. She's a road. It's a phenon
Speaker 1: sty doorbosness, I blabor miss mind you fool those who
Speaker 1: serpoll theyp start the person or if you want to start,
Speaker 1: there's a fena no fee cat yourr spine lovey. So
Speaker 1: you're asking us to pall to take a love and
Speaker 1: tear it all of her. Say when do you think
Speaker 1: you'll go? She s, I know that in truth you
Speaker 1: love me. So you flooded my funk hurting full of
Speaker 1: fis and the fathom's loss and ways if if you
Speaker 1: leave were willing bad, I like you jam wanta Look,
Speaker 1: I could never let you leave, would have made you
Speaker 1: my god to deeply to you and devilte my life
Speaker 1: to you. When snow smoothing, I could never did you
Speaker 1: read You're the sunshine on? This episode of Ephemeral was written,
Speaker 1: assembled by Williams, and produced by Matt Frederick, Trevor Young
Speaker 1: and Max. Williams explore the songs of Tony Roy, Best
Speaker 1: Britina and the Good Johnson. Wherever you stream music and
Speaker 1: pay it forward with your own copy, I can never
Speaker 1: let you leave, or in Greek them over at Lori
Speaker 1: thereasa dot com and hear more from us at a
Speaker 1: fem dot show that's next time on. It's hard to
Speaker 1: overstate the importance of the space of the video store
Speaker 1: right over ten thousand videos. Whether it was a shabby place,
Speaker 1: or whether it was a let's see blockbuster, or whether
Speaker 1: it was a kind of quirky, artsy fartsy place with
Speaker 1: memorabilia or whatever. The space of the store is hugely
Speaker 1: important because it's a social space and a physical space,
Speaker 1: creating this new sense of a physical relationship of shopping
Speaker 1: with movies. Support Ephemeral by recommending an episode, leaving a review,
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Speaker 1: and learn more at ephemeral dot schell.