The Dance: Jimmy Gnecco

Photo Credit: April Bauer

“It’s about being beat down. The challenges in our society...coming back and finding the strength to fight again but without becoming a monster in order to survive in a world full of monsters." That's how Jimmy Gnecco describes his latest creation.

In 2013 a successful Pledge Music campaign resulted in the album Ballet The Boxer, 1 (One of 2013's 5 Albums You May Have Missed). As album titles go, it’s ambiguous at best. It connotes fighting for a more graceful way to exist and survive without the constant fight: physically or emotionally, as nations, as people. It’s a striking record, no pun intended.

However Jimmy Gnecco, the mastermind of that record and its title: not so ambiguous. The New Jersey native is a clear thinker, straight speaker and a captive of the human emotions which he translates via one of the more stunning and flexible voices in rock today. It’s entirely possible that you may be unfamiliar with this beautiful creature despite his very devoted following, despite his 20 years of music making, despite recording the track "Someone To Die For" with Brian May for the Spiderman 2 soundtrack, despite seven acclaimed albums (solo and with his band) and despite fronting the seminal rock outfit, OURS, with that emotive and soulful voice that can crush an octave until it weeps.

If for no other reason than the pure love of this thing called music, the art of vocal craft or how a great rock song gets beneath your skin, it’s in one’s best musical interest to dig into where his music has been and where it’s going. As a lyricist he is particularly gifted due to often being painfully acute in diagnosing what ails us. Always present have been personal and professional challenges; so life goes, and sourcing the pain and the pleasure has always been the genesis of transparent art. It’s just what he does. “There’s no real formula except what I’ve always tried to have present in the music is that human connection.” Jimmy explains. “The questions that we have, the things that we wonder about. The things that we hope for, the things that we are afraid of. Emotional. It’s very honest. It’s never, ever coming from a stand point of thinking what’s popular.”

Ballet... was of careful design. “When we put the record together, each song we loved for a certain reason because they served a certain part of the story. Without one, another might not mean as much.” The record is also as prime an example as any of emotional and honest- along with exceptional- alternative rock, as well as Jimmy’s command of fleshing out the beautiful and the ugly alongside the intense and the delicate. There’s always an elegant juxtaposition of light and the dark in the songs. “It’s just a natural thing that exists. For every way of looking at something in a beautiful way there’s another way of looking at it.” And Jimmy keenly focused on expressing both of those aspects on Ballet..., which he calls an album of two halves. “The first part of the record is supposed to make people feel that disconnect, discomfort at times. Almost this vindictive feeling. “Coming For You” is antagonistic: I’m coming for you, motherfucker, you better watch yourself.” Let’s be honest: sometimes you just want to swing at whatever is pushing you around. Only to have the second half of the album grasp at and for resolve with the dualistic "Fall Into My Hands."

"On the surface there’s this thing that’s very beautiful: if you’ve lost hope, I’m here. You can fall back and I’ll catch you." Yet there's just as much shadow play at work: "It’s kind of speaking from a devil’s point of view. If you waste the opportunity you’ve been given to make it a meaningful life full of love, you can choose to have it in your life, love and all this beauty or you can throw it all away and fall into my hands."

Although Jimmy admits, “There are some songs on this record that don’t get resolved and won’t get resolved until the next record.” File that away as something to look forward to.

Yes, that's David Carradine in what would be his final performance.

Musicians have various motivations for diving into their craft: fame, money, awards, tigers on a gold leash, an entourage, a house in the Hollywood Hills. Jimmy’s is a little off that beaten path and, again, wanders into the realm of connection. “Genuine conversations with people that were genuinely moved- I love that and I will always love that. It’s a very romantic idea to me, to sit in my bedroom or the car and I write a song, and these are your inner thoughts. You’re putting them down, put it on a record and you send it out to the world. It’s like sending out a note in a bottle and you always wonder who it’s going to reach. So when the music reaches people you want to know who it’s reached and how it’s affected them.” And standing on a stage feeding an audience powerful sound feeds him. A receptive listener open to being touched touches him and reinforces a very simple tenet.

“I have hope in people. You go out and somebody’s riding up your ass in your car and running you off the road, screaming at you and you get razzled, you wanna strangle somebody. And then you go away and you’re like ‘I can’t lose hope in people.’ You still have this love, ultimately it comes back to wanting to love, wanting to be loved.”

And there is the fragile ballet that the boxer in us all has to dance.

A Rare Child: Danielia Cotton

 These days in the realm of music, an air- that rarified air- of authenticity often feels harder and harder to come by. The popular, packaged and big-box music machine churns out more and more for us to listen to and look at but less to actually hear and see, let alone feel. One cure for so much malaise and mediocre offerings goes by the name of Danielia Cotton.

From the mostly White and small town of Hopewell, New Jersey, Danielia covers many musical bases, some of which don’t often cross over: female, singer, songwriter, guitar player, Led Zeppelin fan, hard rocker, Black. One minute the richness, rasp and howl of her voice is taking you on a soulful journey, the next it’s inciting the urge to headbang. She does rock and roll, not  R&B so general/stereotypical expectations tend to need revision. Thin Lizzy to Nona Hendryx to Tina Turner: these are some of the formidable footsteps that Danielia is walking alongside as opposed to merely following in.

Some of the best singers are the ones who are especially deft at using their lifetime of experience as fire and fuel. In that respect, Danielia can be considered a raconteur of sorts: her voice connects with the honesty of life’s real struggles with love, pain, loss, joy and darkness with a vengeance and emotional ferocity that’s as blunt as it is beautiful. Vocal talent is one thing that Danielia has in spades, but how she uses it is what impacts the mind and heart. Her third album, The Gun In Your Hand, dropped in October and is representative of her pushing through the unimaginable lose of miscarrying twins and just as she does with demographics, the album crosses many genre lines.

If you want to know the who, what, where, how and why of the music, ask. So I did and Danielia was kind enough to dig into and shed some light on a few of her songs on the album including her downright devastating cover of Prince's "Purple Rain."

"Boy Blue"
"This song really unfolded in a beautiful way. Me and one of the co-writers, Shelby Gaines, were in a rehearsal space and he literally played three beautifully haunting notes and I said "STOP" and we were off to the races. I had recently learned that my high school friend Lisa Sprague's son had committed suicide and it really struck a deep chord in me. As I began to write the lyrics, I saw a boy trying to free himself and began to write the story. I was very familiar with the idea of trying to keep one's head above water through difficult times. Anyway, I love this song and the haunting melody. I think it is uplifting but telling of how we struggle to survive hard times and keep our head above water."

"The Only Reason"
"I love this song as it is just a pure and simple ode to great love. Love is not safe, it's everything but."

"Save Me"
"I have always struggled to understand my darkness so to speak. I think it's okay to embrace the crazy in you. It keeps you sane. I love this song as I believe it's about asking to be saved and the struggle to save yourself at the same time. We need both sometimes. Grungy rock has a way of being the perfect vehicle for life's tolerable insanity. This is my ode to old school 70's rock, but where a female rock vocalist gets to kick ass."

"Purple Rain"
"I have done other covers and I am careful in my choices. However, I only pick songs where the story speaks to me and am absolutely positive I can make it my own. This song came across to me as an apology. First line, "I never meant to cause you any sorrow". I sang it like I was apologizing to someone who really didn't care to hear me, so I had to really get them to listen. I had to mean it. There are many things I am sorry for in my life, so there is always a place to go when I sing this song. I am also celebrating one of my heroes."

I don't think that you can ever have too many girls with guitars or ones who don't care to fit into pre-designed boxes. Fortunately for us, Danielia Cotton is both. See this live performance of the title track from her album Rare Child.

To treat your ears to more of what Danielia has to offer, listen to and download the her uplifting track "Lighthouse Keeper"  from The Gun In Your Hand.