Hmmm…It was a wonderful idea to say we were going to blog this cd, and talk about the recording each night , but ye gads! After a full on day of work , we are just not having any time, but I thought I would take a moment to write down a few highlights before stumbling off to bed. Morning comes very early…..

First off, in reverse order of the last couple of days, Malena got up on stage tonight with the Tim Malloys and brought the house down!!! I didn’t see that one coming, I know she can rock, I know she can sing, but this as above and beyond fantastic. This is Adam, our producers Irish bad boy band, along with John ” Big Sexy ” Sjogren and a Scotsman named , near as I can figure ” Mullie” ( both of them are making appearences on the cd ) and she got up and did Tom Waits’s Tango Till They’re Sore, and an old Steeleye Span song called ” The Fox” Wow. I say again. Wow. I am still in awe, she made a LOT of fans tonight , little rock-n-roll Diva that she is, blew me away, and I am her BANDMATE for goodness sake! If only I’d had my violin…..

The sessions are going wonderfully, could not ask for anything more. We are loving it, and the energy is right there. Working with Adam, and Leo, our engineer, is pure pleasure from begining to end. When we can stop laughing. I know that this isn’t the most detailed description of said studio events, but hey, it’s 1 in the morning and we worked all day then gigged. Tomorrow we are back at 10 Am and going till we drop, around midnight. More on the cd ws it develops….

What else? Oh, yes. One thing I HATE, apparently, if you sleep with a cat, NEVER roll over on them in your sleep. They HATE that it turns out and lash out with thier little kittly claws most fiercely . If they catch you in the EYE, you will bleed a lot and freak out your bandmate ( Are you ok, says she ? Uh, that would be a NO says I ) and you will spend the next several hours in the ER. Thanks the gods they now have something called ” Liquid Skin” and tho I needed stiches, they were able to patch it up with that instead….The cat, whom I now refer to as ” Socket Remover” did not get my eye, but the lid, so all’s well that ends well…SO much for getting a good nights sleep before starting the sessions…..( Malena , I will add , is a fine person to have in a crunch, sleep to ER in a matter of minutes she was…)

Love , claws and a bandmate who can rock,
Lorriane

I can’t believe how fast the time has gone this week! It has been SO much fun working on the cd, and learning new songs. I have been playing more and more guitar and am starting to believe I remember how to play. Malena has been working on the violin , so soon she will be able to play while I strum, kind of a flipped around Flash Girls. We have been coming up with many new ideas for songs, and managed at one point to combine an old REO Speedwagon song with an older Irish tune, and yes, weirdly enough it works, I can’t believe Everyone isn’t doing it. ( can’t wait to hear what our friend John Scalzi says about THAT )
( yes, mostly I said that so I could use my new found linking talents to link his Blog to ours )

Yesterday we attempted to get up early and go off into LA and take some meetings with people, I mean , we ARE in LA, I have been setting these trips up for my Boss for years, and that is what one DOES. Only, it took us 4 hours to leave the house, can’t recall WHY exactly, and then we got kind of , ok, completely , lost and managed to MISS all of the meetings . Nearly died in Bel Air at one point, ( not that we were trying to get there, we were shooting for Beverly Hills ) apparently the speed limit in these gated communities is about 85 miles and hour and god help the girls in the little white Miata who are trying to turn around in the locked up driveways…( tho I must say if one certain girl had listened to the other girl and taken the nice little triangle turnaround at the entrance to said gated community we would not have had any problems in the first place, but then again, we would not have had this great story so one supposes it is all for the best, and we DID live thru it, but I can’t fancy going BACK to Bel Air in anything but a limo…)

Where AM I in this story anyway??? Well, where ever I am, to make a long story , uh, shorter, we did end up finally in a place we had been lost in last time I was out here, and found not only a most excellent Italian place to eat, but parking right in front of it, and from there, located the ocean and a pass thru the mountains and came out safe and sound back home again. Meetingless.

Decided to stay in today and learn an old Gordon Lightfoot song, ( which sounds strangely like the Indigo Girls, who knew? ). Safer that way. For all concerned.

Love and speed from Bel Air,
Lorraine

California is still it’s daily lovely self and practice is pure magic. I have my guitar out here, and limited as I am in playing , for the first time we are really playing music together as a band. There is an old Soul Aslyum song, ” Never Really Been ” that I have been playing for years, and now that Malena is singing too, has turned into something more than it has ever been. She has such a gift for knowing what to sing where, and I wake up each morning feeling like the luckiest girl in the world, knowing that I am going to spend the day working with her.

Well, not the whole day, I haven’t played guitar so much in years. My fingers, poor things , are near to falling off. I tell them , in no un-certain terms, ” Party tough or stay home , guys ” , and I think I am going to go home with some fairly respectable callouses. Now I have more sympathy with my guitar playing bandmates, Paul from Folkunderground and Emma from the Flash Girls and of course, Adam , our producer. I say to you all, OUCH! Who knew….??????

( Think I just learned to insert a Link or two, we will see if it works and if so, I am going to link the world together from now on! )

Well,I may, due to the fact that sneaky Malena crept around like a mouse this morning and let me sleep half the day away, have finally caught up on my sleep and jet lag. Sneaky girl, I would have done the same to her….We practiced until midnight last night and I am certain I slept thru the last hour. Today we are going for lunch with our friend the lovely Miss Kitty and she is going to help me in my quest for the ultimate Indian place to eat. ( I have found many I love, but one needs to try them all to be sure. Mangos are fine bribes, but if I am ever in your town and you really want to find your way into my heart, go for the Indian food )

The folk music jam with Motley Crue has not yet happened, but this is such a very Magic place out here, that I would not be at all suprised if it did. Some days I feel like anything is possible, anything.

Especially with Malena.

Love and music and mangos,
Lorraine

Here I am now in lovely LA and we did have a wonderful time last night for Malena’s Birthday. Ah the Parties, the Movie Stars , the Rock-n-roll non-stop folk-music jam with Motley Crue until dawn…Ok maybe not, so maybe we just went to dinner with Malena’s family and the lovely Miss Kitty, but I must say, we picked the better Plan. We had dinner at my new favorite place, called Inn of the 7th Ray. I think that’s the name. Anyway, they sure do know how to cook duck, and the place itself looks like I had always imagined Rivendell to look and had the same sort of peace I had always thought Bilbo found there…..I think it will remain one of my favorite California memories for some time to come. ( unless that folk-music jamm with Motley Crue comes off….)

I gave Malena a Skull-bobbing-head salt and pepper shaker set for her present. I don’t know how to describe them any better than that, but you can find them sometimes on e-bay or little shops, and they sit in a stand and , well, bob at you , grinning like maniacs. Someone once told me they were made back in the Victorian times, and were once quite poular. Ah, those wacky Victorians….

I also gave her some plane tickets so that she could come back out in August and sit in with Folk UnderGround. Folk UnderGround, or FU for short are playing again at the Half Time Rec in St Paul August 3rd thru the 6th and Malena will be with us on the Saturday the 6th all night long. ( A little trial by fire never hurt anyone….) She will also get to expeirence “Load up the PA at 3:00am” that night, and we will then spend the rest of the week harvesting tomatos and scaring the raccoons away from the corn in hopes we will actually get to eat some this year.

Today we practice for the cd.

Do we know how to have a good time or what?

Love and music, Lorraine from LA

Isn’t she lovely, isn’t she wonderful….

Lorraine a’ Malena Shop

Malena’s Birthday

Yeah baby! Tomorrow IS my birthday. Me, Mr. Gorgeous and our daughter went to Santa Barbara today. I got some new duds to wear to convergence. Miles bought me 6 inch platform ruby slippers. It’s “The Wizard of Oz” meets Betty Page. What could be better than that?

I’ll tell you….If Lorraine had a matching pair!

We are SO SO SO excited to start recording. We have been blessed to have some extremely talented people work with us on this project. We will be blogging every night after the studio. But this week….

it’s PARTY TIME BABY! So, if you’re in LA and you see a 6′6″ drag queen in a corset wearing red sparkle shoes, LOOK CLOSELY it could be me. Hee hee

But seriously, this week we are going to be working on our songs. There are a few that are so so sad, I worry I will cry when recording them. LIKE Isobel..and Dark Sonnet…and Personal Thing.

I hope they bring you to tears too! SOON we will be able to share these last 8 months with you. I’m so excited I’m not even hungry for Chocolate!

I am right up there with Malena on the whole organic GM food thing. Ugh. We grow as much as we can during the summer, and make lots of it up into jars, and then the rest of the year buy as much Organic as possible. When will this madness end? ( don’t even get me started on things like Michael Moore’s fast Food Nation and all of that ” food” ) ( PORK?? In Tomatos??? Dear Gods in Heaven…)

So….Cd again. Had a great production meeting with Adam Stemple this week, and have started scheduling for recording. Day 1 will be Robin Adanan Anders on drums, playing with Adam on guitar, and my bandmate Paul Score , from Folk UnderGround who is playing guitar on a couple of different songs. By a weird twist of fate, most certainly most Non-rock-n-roll, I am going over to his hourse at 8:00AM Sunday morning to practice a bit and hear what he has come up with. Practice at 8:00am???? Who would have thunk it????? Many thanks to Jody Wurl , who despite having a Pah-te tonight at her house, is going to get up and drive me there….

I am off to the airport straight away after that ( hence the most un-Godly hour ) to go back to LA-LA Land and see Miss Malena for a week of final practice. And also, and I am outing her here, celabrate her BIRTHDAY!!!! Which is tomorrow, Sunday the 19th! Stop by and leave her some nice Birthday wishes, even if you have been to shy to leave any comments before..( Malena, and I for that matter, are pretty shy ourselves, no really, we are, not kidding , so step right up and add your bits )

Love and Light and Good Food to you all,

Lorraine

Plant your garden!

Have you ever wondered why the produce looks so perfect at the grocery store? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because most fruits and veggies are Genetically Modified. In Europe, the public is outraged, demanding that GMO foods are labeled. But here in the USA, the corporations are keeping things quiet. I had no idea how much this impacted my life until I started reading. What I found was horrifying. So, unless you want Pork Genes in your Tomatoes (which helps them not to bruise), eat organic as much as possible. You can always start small and learn to grow an herb garden in your kitchen window. If a corn worm dies from eating corn, what is that corn going to do to you? Don’t take my word for it, look it up for yourself. Here in LA we are BLESSED with KPFK, a publically owned and operated radio station with amazing information. Take a look……

It’s up to us to save this planet and education is the key!

Now, I’m off to water the Tomatoes.

Love,

Malena

Little LaMi-ies and Mini Malenas

Here’s a photo from my daughter’s party. As you can see, my clothing fits them a quite well…too well! Aren’t they cute?

Little La’M-ies

Lorraine a’ Malena Shop