First Day In Texas

Corsets? More Corsets? I love way this women thinks! ( but will they go with the Pink Cowboy Hat we ask ourselves? )

If I was going to actually write down every detail of this first day in Texas it would go something like this:

Sat in a green room and played Western Music all the darn day.

But from what little I know of Blogs they should be a little bit more interesting than that and I have had a lot of time to think about this. A. Lot. Of. Time.

Texas is actually quite lovely, at least the part I saw going the ten minutes from the airport to the hotel yesterday. And it is warm. Warm is good. My room does not merit a lot of talk, it is large and everything that you could want in a hotel room, tho I would say I would never have considered decorating in quite that many shades of Mustard before.....It's like being wrapped in a warm mustard glow. I do my make-up in a warm mustard glow. Goth never looked so, well mustard before.

Except I am not Goth. I am Country. Or Western, I can never remember which...

This is a corporate gig here, at a large convention of builders and one thing I must say is that everyone is very nice, lovely people to work with. Mark Sieve, ( Puke of Puke and Snot ) we have worked with before for several years now, as an opening act for his comedy. Love him, 'nuff said. Amy the stage manager is very cool, and Marty who does Power Point ( no, no idea what that is ) has the same sort of sense of humour as us Folk UnderGround. Dinners are not dull.

I am an entertainer, have been for years. When it comes down to it , a gig is a gig. It's all normal.

It's just that some normal things are weirder than others. I am certain by the end of the week I will expound more than anyone wants to hear about the differences between music as work and music as art but for now I will just say this is very very different place than I have ever been

I did get to spend about three hours on the phone with Malena last night, wrapped in that warm mustard glow ,and by the end of it I felt pretty much back to normal, more or less. I strongly suspect, no, I know for a fact , that this is going to be a nightly thing happening . ( hear that, Witchy??? You can't leave me alone here!!! )

Not, mind you that she is in the habit of not calling, I don't think there have been more than a handful of nights when we haven't got to chat and work on songs . (When one does happen, due to schedules, and time zones, our very funny families have taken to looking all concerned and asking ' What's Wrong???Ha. Ha. )

Where was I? Oh, yes, waiting for midnight when my best friend will call and sing some more to me. For now, back to that green room.

Yee-haw,

Lorraine

Oh Give me a home.......

Miss Fabulous is off to sing Country today. I'm ordering corsets and getting ideas for our photo shoot. We have to be as fabulous as people believe we are. Ha! True. Of course, I am bringing my 13 Nights of Fright wardrobe, all my vintage jewels, and loads of hats and shoes. Mr. Gorgeous is a great shopper. He found all my gowns for me. I can't wait to play dress up with my best friend and take pictures in the haunted house. Yeah baby!
I have to practice Lorraine's Violin today. She can play anything....and I mean anything! I on the other hand, am just now graduating from Twinkle, Twinkle little star. I used to be quite good, not as good as Miss Fabulous but you know, well enough to play in the Orchestra. I'll get there again soon. Practice makes perfect.
Well, I'm off to buy Miss Fabulous a corset. I would buy myself another but then I'd be the Imelda Marcos of Corsetry. He hee

Hugs and Kisses
Malena

Testing Testing

Two out of three of the last posts were from Lorraine... with luck this one will not only be from Lorraine, but it will say Lorraine at the bottom....

en route to texas gal

Going to Old Texas now

Good Morning!

Well, due to the fact that I lead a very strange life, I am about to go off to Texas for a week with my Gothic Irish band , Folk UnderGround , to play Country and Western Music with half of a Renaissance Festival act called Puke and Snot. No, really. To anyone, ( which I would guess would be most people ) who are reading this and asking WHY??? I will say that when you listen to Mirror Mirror, the first Lorraine a' Malena cd, remember that about half of it wad paid for by this little jaunt.

I have cowboy boots. I have western shirts. I have a PINK cowboy hat. Sigh. The things we do for art....

I have never been to Texas. Looking on the internet I am noticing that it is warm. Warmer than where I live, (most places are), point for it.The resort we are staying at seems to feature golf. When I told Malena about this she told me in no un-certain terms that "Golf is not Goth. " I countered with " it would be the way we would play it" Golf? In corsets and long black lace skirts? The possibilities are endless.

Maybe not.

I do get to sing " Thank God I'm a Country Boy" which was my favorite song when I was 8. Also Tom Dooley, a lovely song about, near as I can tell, a guy getting hung. All 10 verses. Now we are getting back in familiar territory. We are doing " Home on the Range" and if I can sneak in some of Tori Amos' " Cherokee Version" I will be a happy lady. There is a song called " Jingle Jangle Jingle " , about the joys of not being in love, and a sweet song called " Streets of Lardeo" about a dead guy lying in the road.

Ok, maybe this won't be so bad after all.

Malena says that she will be with me the whole time. I know this means frequent text messages and as much phone time as we can squeeze in. I strongly suspect she will be in my head much of the time, too, laughing at my cowboy costume, and singing me our songs in the off times, the Banshees, the Dark Sonnets, Isabel ( who was a pretty wild lady herself, go read about her in the lyrics section ) and all the other ones we are working on about ghosts coming back for thier lovers forever more, Foxes who turn the hunt into the hunted, and Princes who turn into Death.

And I know she will meet me, as usual, down in the Haunted Mansion , where the party never stops, all the women wear black and Vampires could be your own best friend.

See you there,

Lorraine

The Making of Malena

I came from a very musical family. I grew up learning show tunes and going to musicals both high school and Broadway. Ha! Anytime the entire family would get together, we'd gather around the piano and sing. Everyone played an instrument and knew all the vocal parts. We’d even sing on road trips to pass the time. My Mother taught me to sing harmony when I was about 5. The first song where I learned to sing harmony was, You are my Sunshine. I thank my mother for my musical background. She always made sure I had every opportunity to explore my talents.
The violin was such a beautiful feminine instrument. I fell in love with it in fourth grade. Its sound was so sensual and calming. I'll bet I drove my mother nuts because I wanted to do everything: Sing, Dance, Act, and Play the Violin. I gave them all my best shot. By middle school, I was getting up at 5 a.m. to make it to dance class before school. Then after school I had Orchestra practice for 3 hours.
On weekends, I took voice lessons from a woman named Shirla Sullivan. She introduced me to Opera. (Hey, getting to sing in a fancy corseted dress sounded good to me and I was already in love with Sarah Brightman.) With all these lessons to go to, I didn’t have time to date and I liked it that way. I was in love with art and fashion.
I could never decide what talent was my favorite. I always believed I could do it all, but when I grew up reality told me I must choose. At 15, my modeling career took off and I quit the Orchestra. Anytime I had a modeling/acting audition, I would sing in my car to calm myself down. (I still do)I sang in bars from New York to Milan to St. Tropez. One thing I didn’t like about being a vocalist was, I didn’t have a band. I was always told what to sing. So and so would want me to sing like Bonnie Raitt, while others would ask for Sara Brightman. I allowed my voice to get shaped and molded until I didn’t know what my own style was. I didn’t know how to tone down my Opera Background and just sing from the heart. I never found my own creative voice with music. I always wanted to sing songs that touched my soul. I wanted to sing from the heart and show my voice. But I didn’t know how. I’m the type of girl that if I can’t do something, “all the way” I won’t do it. I’ll just pick up one of my other talents until I can do something good with what I’m working on. I prayed for the opportunity to be in a band and musically bloom. Then, I put my voice away and just sang for my own pleasure, patiently waiting for God to show me a way to express myself. Years and years..........and years past. I still didn't have the opportunity to sing songs that touched my heart....until now.

In May 2004, I was hired to be Neil Gaiman’s undead Goth assistant for 13 Nights of Fright on FOX Movie Channel. When they told me about the part, I knew I wouldn’t be acting much. It was like the part was made for me. After all, in real life I wear corsets and live in a haunted house with a famous artist too! One thing I didn’t know was, I would be playing my future best friend on TV! Ha.

We finished filming 13 Nights in May. It aired in October. Then sometime in December Lorraine emailed me and asked for a reading. She sent me a gift box full of Neil’s Books for Christmas. I was so excited!! I had a great time with Neil, so I knew I would like Lorraine. I did her reading, and then we talked for another 2 hours. Haaa. When we talked it was like talking to my sister. There was no “getting to know” Lorraine, whom I now call Qwitchie. That started when she told me her friends calls her Quiche, like Quiche Lorraine. So we made up Qwitchie and Witchy. My nickname needs no explanation. Hee hee One day she said, “I’m you with a Q.” and I said, “Without you I’m just Itchy”

This divine friendship is sure to produce wonderful, enchanting music. Miles says we’re like, Goth Heart..you know the two singing sisters thing.
We’re rather connected intuitively as well. There have been so many days she will be thinking of me and I will call her. Then we both scream at how good we are at telepathy and we haven’t even met yet. Although I know I have known her before.

Lorraine's first BLOG

Lorraine a' Malena Blog




Everyone Blogs these days.... Ok, Almost everyone Blogs. All my friends have a Blog. All the writers, musicians and artists I know have a Blog. My boss has a wonderful Blog. It can't be that hard. We have a website. We have a website set up for a Blog. Both I and Malena, the other half of this duo, write constantly. For magazines, pleasure, other people. I work for a writer. A very large portion of my friends are writers.

How hard can it be?

Sigh. Tell, me, fellow Bloggers that this DOES get easier?

This is such a cool story, Malena and I and our band Lorraine a' Malena, that it ought to be told as it unfolds and not in retrospective . You can read the story of how we met over in another part of the website. (except I get ahead of myself, we haven't met yet, see? I told you this was a great story) Of how she was Neil Gaiman's un-dead vampire Goth assistant on Fox's 13 Nights of Fright, and how I am his living assistant in real life and how we started talking on the phone and discovering how alike we were and how much music we had in common and how very much we needed to do this CD together.

Let's take up the story as it is now, by weird coincidence, 13 Days Before We Meet.
(For the first time in real life anyway. What goes on in the dark and your dreams is another story entirely. ) Every night shortly before midnight the phone rings here, and Malena calls to work on music, which after an hour or so of catching up on the events of the day, we generally do. This is a story of sisters and best friends as well as band mates, you see.

We have worked out a way using a speaker phone and an old 4-track run through one of Folk UnderGround’s monitors ( as I lack the proper connecting cable to go direct ) to record and sing together. Sometimes I play the songs on guitar, sometimes we just sing. Melodies, harmonies, and who the heck is going to sit in on this track are all coming together. What songs are we going to do? That is certainly something we ought to post as well, and something we are going to be figuring out when Malena comes out to my place for a week. In 13 Days.

And we meet for the first time. I mentioned that didn't I? Yes, we do know, thank you , that it is a rather odd way to go about getting a best friend and forming a band, but when the universe throw you something as wonderful magic exciting and Right, one ought to go with it, or what is the point of anything?

And why should one wait to get a website , book the studio, line up the music, write the songs, and just recently, start agreeing to interviews and talking with Indie labels , not to mention booking gigs, until we meet? Malena and I think we would just end up in the same place at the end of it, as before the beginning. We need to do it now, and here is where the story starts. Before we meet.

Malena can write her own bits of the Blog, until we are here together rehearsing and again later in the studio, then we can do them together. I will tell you a few things she will never say though, she is the most wonderful, magic, witchy, violin playing, banshee singing , best friend a girl could ever have. Did I say she could SING??? Oh, yeah, she can sing alright. She makes me laugh, she listens to me rant for hours, she tells me stories that no one has ever heard, about things that are magic. She loves the night, and all the creatures in it, and knows how magic is with the moon and stars and the street where all the lights are burnt out. (The one where all the houses are lit with candles.....The one that has a haunted mansion at the end of it.)

She also wears really fabulously wonderful clothes.

There. This is the start of our Blog. It is a story about the making of a real CD. And it's a story about two friends who met once in a haunted mansion somewhere in a dream and knew it. Some bits will be very real. Some bits will be very magic. Who can say which bits are which? We all will have to wait and see.

It is however, ultimately, the story of two witchy women who play violin and sing and who will meet in 13 Days and make a CD. Here.... In this world.

Love and Light_Lorraine