Post-Gig Adventures

Here we are again...another "normal" gig night at The Mustang Bar in Perth, although we have had a fill in drummer. Awesome BTW! Yeah we all packed in to Damiens' van (Vanessa), including himself, his girlfriend Dolly, our roadie Adam, our guitarist Mike, our drummer Sam, and of course myself! Not to mention all of our gear inclusive...

So we all trundled off to the gig and everything was sweet as apple pie. Gig went well, amidst the show was Sams' challenge to me, to insert a certain (possibly dirty) word into one of my songs, replacing normal song lyrics with *a certain word or sentence* which I have to say I did very well ;-) After the gig, we loaded out and set off on the relatively short path home...or so we thought!

Now of course, we had a rehearsal before the gig this night as we had a fill in drummer playing with us, we needed to make sure that he was savvy with all of our tunes...which he was :)
So all of our cars were nicely parked waiting upon our return to Damiens' house.

So there we all were, happy as larry, heading home via Damiens' house down Orrong Rd until Vanessa started shuddering. Just small ones at first, then small turned into medium, and medium into big until she conked out on the road. CRAP! All these people and all this gear!! But it's OK because it's a gas conversion, so we've run out of gas but we'll just switch it to petrol...meanwhile slowly idling through a major freeway intersection at a speed less than that of walking pace...luckily the lights were still green for us! SO here we go, making the switch over to petrol now...now she'll start...I said, now she'll start...AHEM I SAID NOW SHE'LL START!

Are you kidding??! NO FREAKIN WAY!!! Wouldn't start. Just gave us nothin! So here we all are, once again, in the middle of the road, stopped. Damien says "let's just hop out and give her a rest eh?" "No worries" we all say (Keeping in mind we're still in the middle of a used road LOL!) So we did. Got out, entertained ourselves, waited for about 10 minutes and tried again. But still no luck.
OK so we're gonna have to push her to a petrol station (which luckily is actually in sight!)

What a sight for sore eyes! Damien (A.K.A rockstar), Sam (fighting fit), Mike (unfit) and me (in heels!) running down the road pushing the damn van! HAHAHA if only I had pictures to add :D

We got her to a petrol station, but what a turn of events! We filled her back up with gas and off we went. Got home not a problem. Geez what a night...just what you need after a lengthy and high-energy gig!

There is no moral to this story, however there is a happy ending...we all got home safely ;-P

Vocals for Upcoming Hit Single "Nothing Without Me" Recorded!

In the studio yesterday! Pretty much consisted of 5 hours of solid singing to get the vocals for my upcoming single perfect! ...although having said that I am a perfectionist so I'm always way too critical of myself. I'm sure everyone can relate somewhat.

Big massive thanks to my good friend Kim Goodlet (Sound Engineer) who spent the hours with me in his studio getting the vocals just right. All in all it was a productive and worthwhile team effort!

I will be sending the tracks to my producer in Los Angeles who is producing the track for me. He will add his magic touches and then I will hopefully have the track all ready to be released in the next few weeks!

Am so excited to hear it! Really can't wait :) It's been a while in the making, and there are plenty more where that's come from so keep an eye and an ear out over the upcoming weeks as I will be releasing my first single "Nothing Without Me" on iTunes very soon!

Amazing Performance at The Ellington

Hey all,

Just wanted to share with you the amazing performance that I saw last week.
As some of you may know I am currently studying the amazing technique of Speech Level Singing, and also am a pre-certified singing instructor. Every six months we get graced by the presence of a member of the Instructor Management Team from America. This time it happened to be a lovely lady called Wendy Parr whom I had the pleasure of meeting about four years ago when I attended the Summer camp in LA in 2006.

She was co-writer (alongside AR Rahman) of the famous song "Dreams On Fire" that was on the soundtrack for the GRAMMY and OSCAR winning movie "Slumdog Millionaire". Anyway she was in Perth with us last week doing a teachers workshop, and booked a gig at The Ellington Jazz Club performing songs from her newly released EP.

She was performing (on vocals) with a pianist, violin, cello and drummer-which is already a very unusual line-up of instruments. I have to say it was absolutely one of the most captivating performances that I have seen in a very long time!
She has an amazing talent. Great voice. But such a comfortable and warming stage presence.
She has this wonderful way of making the audience feel that they are just casually listening and involved in her story. One of her songs "Nana's Secret" was so special, and the background story that she told to us, really made us want to know the details of her experience.

I thoroughly enjoyed her performance, as I said, best I've seen in a long time. And I hope that she'll be back here again sometime soon to share her beautiful voice, and her story.

Thank you for sharing your story with us xXx

New Single to be Released on iTunes Soon!

Those of you that follow my twitter page (www.twitter.com/petronellamusic) will know that I have been working with an extremely talented producer John-Mark Seltzer.

I have been writing original songs for a few years now, and my style has ranged a little from acoustic to funk/rnb to rock. From writing in these different styles I have now settled with the genre that feels most like home to me...ROCK BABY!

I love it! I love the raw energy, the explosion of adrenaline that I get when I jump onstage and perform rock music. It's so much fun!

So that is currently what I am working on at the moment with JM. JM is a producer at EMI Records in LA, and also a talented singer/songwriter, with the incredible Billy Mann as his manager (the man behind P!nk's 'I'm Not Dead' album).

I completed writing the song and sent it to JM. He immediately liked it, but thought that we could work on it to make it really "pop" in the chorus. So after a few long hours and hard work, we have rearranged and rewritten a few parts, and it is now sounding absolutely incredible! His words were "If I heard this on the radio, I would want to know who it was!" so I can't be much happier than that!

He has since offered to produce it for me, so I am in the process of recording the vocal takes this week and will send them to him for mixing and mastering purposes...then I will have a new track!

I will be releasing "Nothing Without Me" via iTunes in the coming few weeks so definitely keep your eyes and ears peeled for its debut!

And I am currently working on some other material to follow it up with a kickass EP~just the right kinda ear candy :D

I am so excited that I'll be sharing my song with you all very soon!

xXx

Exclusive Artist Interview on WSF Radio (Chicago, IL)

So last night I was all ready for a normal gig night...or so I thought!

We had a lovely pre-gig conversation with a wonderful lady Susan in Fort Payne (Alabama) who finally got to meet the whole band! :)

Well the gig itself was pretty normal (if you can ever really call them that!) songs were rockin' as usual...as were we ;-P

Huge crowd response down at The Mustang Bar on a Saturday night singing with the Damien Cripps Band. Even had a guy tell me repeatedly that he wanted to marry me! HA! Like I said...as normal as it usually is!

Anyhow, we were in for a real treat. After the show, amidst our post-gig hype we got to do an exclusive band interview on live WSF Radio in Chicago! I mean, we were just hangin out on the phone to a lady running a radio station in Chicago! Was a heap of fun! We got to hear the band songs being broadcast live on WSF Radio as we were sitting there on the phone to them! They played about 10 tracks which is really cool.

We did actually take some video of the nights events, so that will be posted up on the internet somewhere at some point so I will make sure that I post the link as soon as I have it. And as for the radio interview, well if you missed it you can listen to it here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/entertainu/2010/05/01/damien-cripps-band 

Well that's about it for now I think!

Until next time...check out my myspace page at www.myspace.com/petronellamusic for some hot tunes!

New Song A Hit?

So I know it's been a while since I've been onto my blog page...sorry!
I have been taking the time to set up a couple of social networking sites including twitter (see link above) so that I can connect with my friends and fans and keep you all updated with what is going on with my music and life :)

I am currently working with a very talented singer/songwriter/producer in LA and am doing some co-writing work with him. The first song I gave to him he was very impressed with. We have been working on it over the last couple of weeks as he is convinced it is a HIT! We're giving it the TLC that it needs to really explode!

I have been so excited about it and am dying to post a copy of it up on one of my sites, but I have to contain myself so that we can do it the "proper" way. I really can't wait to share it with you all...think P!nk meets Kelly meets ME! Very Rock influenced :) Cos that's my jam!

I'm still performing every week at the Mustang Bar with the Damien Cripps Band, and we're learning a whole heap of new stuff so it'd be great to see some more beautiful new faces at our gigs. We start from 11pm on Saturday nights.

Have also made a start on another new song (hopefully to follow up the other one with!) and I'm really excited about that too!

Well I better go and get my ass back into my writing room :D So much inspiration!


If you have Twitter or Myspace I'd love to see you on there...follow the links above to find me.


Love Petronella xXx

Margaret River

Hey Guys and Gals,

Got a duo gig down in Margaret River this weekend!

At the Secret Garden Brookland Valley Vineyards, set to be a beautiful weekend down South with this gorgeous weather we have been getting.

Be sure to come and check us out Saturday afternoon from 4pm...

Beautiful food and wines to choose from, perfect to accompany a lazy Saturday afternoon listening to relaxing music.

Ahhhh...I'm already there :-)