From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V10 #28 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Sender: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "precious-things-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. precious-things-digest Sunday, February 13 2005 Volume 10 : Number 028 Today's Subjects: ----------------- reuters/billboard article [jeff albertson ] national nine news article (australia) [jeff albertson ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 12:10:45 -0500 From: jeff albertson Subject: reuters/billboard article Amos Expresses Herself with New Album, Book Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:43 PM ET By Barry A. Jeckell NEW YORK (Billboard) - "At midlife, Tori Amos understands that she cannot rule life's tidal shifts, only navigate them," Ann Powers writes near the end of the new book "Tori Amos: Piece by Piece," which she co-wrote with the artist. "She is a rider of the waves, her sense of the future defined by an undiminished faith in music's power." Rarely has a summary been so dead on. "You can't stop time," Amos tells Billboard. "And I think that's why, the thing about songs, and it has always been this way for me, they try and capture time in a way that you can't capture sunlight and hold it." "Piece by Piece" (Broadway Books, Feb. 8) was conceived over the course of two years of conversations with Powers. What began as a chronicle of the making of "The Beekeeper," her eighth studio album and second for Epic (due Feb. 22 in the States, Feb. 21 internationally), along the way became an exploration of what makes this enigmatic artist tick. "I felt that now would be the time, before I forget my process, to reveal some of the ways that I've been able to continue to create in the music business," Amos says. "Not just as a musician, but as somebody that has to navigate the business side of it and as somebody that wanted to become a mom and wanted to have a relationship." PREACHER'S DAUGHTER From her North Carolina upbringing under a strict Methodist preacher father and book-loving Cherokee-heritage mother to her days studying classical piano at Baltimore's Peabody Academy and her struggles with the music business, her story is a fascinating one. And it's the entirety of her life, as well as a healthy appetite for researching legends, religious texts, folklore, spirituality and art that informs "The Beekeeper." "The concept is that there are six gardens, no different than that there are six sides to the cell in the beehive," Amos says. "The songs live within these six gardens (that) represent the emotional life of this female character whose voice we hear on the album." In seeking out a traditional setting for her ideas, Amos needed look no further than the beekeeping legacy that exists around Cornwall, England, where she now lives with her husband, sound engineer Mark Hawley, and their daughter, Natashya. "As I started to trace its history, it began to fit into place," she says. "I was thinking about pollination, and we go back to bees and the pollinating of that female worker bee with that male organ of that flower. I brought in the organ, the Hammond B3 organ, to marry with the piano, so that the music would reflect the concept." FANATICAL FOLLOWING "For Tori, there is this kind of built-in, fanatical, very passionate fan base that will follow her wherever she may roam," Epic senior VP of marketing Lee Stimmel says. Beyond access to a streaming version of the lead single, "Sleeps With Butterflies," months ago at toriamos.com, eager fans have been able to preview one song from each "garden" during the six weeks preceding the album's release. They also have been offered excerpts from "Piece by Piece" and the ability to pre-order a special edition of the album that includes a DVD and 24-page booklet. Furthering the intimate connection between the artist and the devoted will be a series of book signings starting with a Feb. 23 in-store at Barnes & Noble in New York's Union Square. April will bring a U.S. theater tour with Amos and just her Bosendorfer piano and a Hammond B3. "Tori alone at the piano tours are intense and very popular, which is why we're doing smaller venues so we get back to that intimate setting," her manager, John Witherspoon, says. "We did the last tour with just drums and bass and Tori, so we're going back to purely solo for the first time since 2001." A similar European tour will follow, with plans to play some festivals there in June, at which time "Piece by Piece" should be available throughout the continent. A full-scale U.S. tour is slated for summer. Reuters/Billboard ) Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 12:26:48 -0500 From: jeff albertson Subject: national nine news article (australia) Amos takes leaders to task with album 21:57 AEDT Sat Feb 12 2005 Socially conscious songstress Tori Amos has used her latest album Beekeeper to take political and religious leaders to task. The 41-year-old daughter of a Methodist minister said her songwriting was her attempt to correct the way certain leaders were using biblical symbolism. "I didn't feel that some of these leaders were using this in the way that Jesus was using these symbols. I felt that they were misusing them," the UK-based American said by phone. "Naturally this is only my minister's daughter opinion, but I'd been brought up in the Church and that was just offensive to me that some very good people, I felt, were being emotionally blackmailed by their faith." Amos caught the attention of mainstream Australian pop listeners with her hit Cornflake Girl back in 1994 and subsequent dance hit Professional Widow. Beekeeper, which will be released in Australia on February 27, is her ninth album. The metaphors flow thick and fast throughout the phone interview as Amos talks about the inspirations behind her compositions and her use of the theme of a Beekeeper's garden to tie the album's 19 tracks together. "I'm in north Cornwall right now where I wrote it and I guess being here had a huge influence on the compositions," she said. "There's a beekeeping tradition within the Celts and the Welsh that has sustained all the invasions that this little island has had to take on board and I think that it spoke to me." Amos was born in North Carolina but raised in Maryland. By the age of four, she was singing and playing piano in the church choir. Amos won a scholarship to Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory and while studying became infatuated with rock and roll, particularly the music of Led Zeppelin. In 1987, Amos signed to Atlantic Records, recording her first album called Y Kant Tori Read. She went on to make several albums with the label and in 2002 signed to Epic records, a sub-group of Sony BMG Entertainment. Amos sees herself as a composer first and her artistic integrity has at times put her at odds with record company management. "Sometimes you have to go up against the cheeses in your life," she says of difficult industry types. "Would I have played that chess game differently?" she asks of her career to date. "Ever so slightly, but not that much. I might have used a different phraseology but it still would have been the same intention." Now that she's in her 40s Amos has figured out that living every moment is the way to go. "I like being in my 40s. I really do. I didn't know how I was going to feel about it, but I really like it. "As you start to be present in your life, just live every moment, you're not worrying so much about next week. I plan things, clearly, but things are going to be how they are going to be. "There is nothing I can do to stop the fates from knocking on my door, all I can do is choose how I will respond. I do have that choice. And so in a way that has made me totally comfortable in my own life and yet it has been liberating at the same time. You don't have to control anything any more." Meanwhile Amos says she's keen to visit Australia some time this year, but first has to work out how to survive the long-haul flight with her four-year-old daughter. The trip, she said, may have to involve lots of bribes and promises of good DVDs to watch on the plane. "In some ways this might sound crazy, but on the big flights like that, it was easier when she was 12 months old because then she was little and she would sleep all the time." It's been a while since Amos's last visit, well before her daughter was born, but she says she "adores" Down Under. "You know it reminds me of a dish that you wouldn't find anywhere else, with ingredients that you wouldn't find anywhere else. You know it's savoury and sweet at the same time. So yes I would like to taste that again." )AAP 2005 ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V10 #28 *************************************