S. J. Tucker

Tag: music

  • Strowlers on YouTube!

    I made a new playlist on my YouTube channel for TV & film projects that have licensed my music, so you know it has to start with my favorite modern fantasy series, STROWLERS! Thanks to the #Strowlers team for making their content available & free on YouTube for the first time!

    The pilot episode of Strowlers features two songs of mine and they’re also woven into leitmotif throughout the score: “Burn Me Out” and “Mirror Self”, from my Burn Me Out EP. There’s more Strowlers content than what I have on the playlist, and even more to come. If y’all believe in magic, I need you to see this.

    Follow @Zombie Orpheus Entertainment for even more! They make cool stuff!

  • Big November update!

    Lots to share this month!  I’ve released a new song called “Alchemist Eyes” this morning- the first version, anyway! Listen here: http://music.sjtucker.com/track/alchemist-eyes-redshoes-teaser-mix

    I’m launching this song in tandem with the pre-order and Indiegogo launch of Phil Brucato’s novel, Red Shoes, in part because Phil borrowed the song for the YouTube trailer he made to announce the book!

    Watch the trailer here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YO9Jk5-qEI

    If pre-orders of Red Shoes go very well through IndieGoGo, there’s a chance I’ll be invited to help create an entire tie-in record for the book!  It’s an urban fantasy novel with magic, dance, music, and several different flavors of badassery, and I do recommend it. Pre-order and back it here:  tinyurl.com/GetRedShoes

    My next online show, featuring some watery songs, old and new, will be November 21st at 2pm Central: https://onlineconcertthing.com/product/on-the-water-s-j-tucker-in-concert-2021-11-21-0200-pm-cst/

    If you haven’t pounced upon it already, Betsy Tinney has released her newest record, LUMINOUS, this very day:  https://music.betsytinney.com/album/luminous

    Leslie Hudson is offering a discography bundle for Bandcamp Friday, including her lovely new release, Hemlock Honey and Crows: https://lesliehudson.bandcamp.com/

    And my friends Sharon Knight & Winter and Tuatha Dea will perform online this weekend, for Virtual Hexenfest 2021! https://onlineconcertthing.com/product/virtualhexenfestlite-2021-10-16-0700-pm-edt/

    Please also mark your calendars for my Midwinter online concert, which will be December 20 at 9pm Central: https://onlineconcertthing.com/product/midwinter-music-s-j-tucker-in-concert-2021-12-20-0900-pm-cst/ Thanks for reading, everyone!

  • Another Snow Moon Entirely

    My friend Leslie Hudson, a fellow songwriter based in Hamilton, ON has a Snow Moon song of her own, and it is absolutely lovely, as is she!

  • Creative Spotlights Article

    Here is a thing that I absolutely must share with y’all today.  I’ve been included in a brilliant article over on the Creative Spotlights website, as well as in their book, In the Spotlight: Over 100 Voices in Music. This is the first time that anyone’s ever referred to me as a “key music industry player”!  I’m pretty well over the moon about it. 🙂

    The article includes the wise words of several of my contemporaries from all different corners of the music biz, including Grammy winner Fred Lipsius who co-founded Blood Sweat & Tears, and fascinating NYC busker Samantha Echo.  I’m honored all the way down to my striped-socked toes right now.

    Read the article here!

     

    Bonus: here’s an Instagram peek into the studio stuff that I’ve been working on with my Tricky Pixie bandmates these past several days!  We’re laying down the baby steps for album #2!

     

  • Raise Your Glass. Turn it up.

    Raise a glass of starstuff and chase your living dream.
    May it always be that we are more than what we seem,
    living by example, until our separate brilliance
    can rise-
    that wild example, those mismatched eyes.

    I’m heartbroken that David Bowie has died. He showed so many of us that it was a Good Thing to be brilliant and creative and freaky and bisexual and Fucking Strange. I’m just one little blip of light in the sea of raised lighters today, but I’m holding my own as high as my arm will allow.

    I will grieve, and then I will continue to sing loud and to be weird and to Not Apologize for it, because when I was at my most young and most lost, someone dear to me made me a Bowie mix-tape, and I listened, and the stars came out again, and I have not lost them since.

    Raise your glass. Blast “Ziggy Stardust” if it helps. Or Outside, or “Wild-eyed Boy from Freecloud”, or Earthling, or or or. Write your own. Put on glitter eyeliner today (every damn day) if you want. I will be right there with you.

    Here is Buzzfeed’s article on this master’s last, entirely orchestrated release and accompanying videos- both of those are terrifying, necessary, and profound.

    (more…)

  • What I’m Listening To Lately

    Got to share some stage time last weekend in Memphis with the mastermind of this project. Buck has a big tasty producer brain in his head. Check it out!

  • Port Townsend This Wednesday + Autumn Pixie Flights

    Betsy and I have one more show together in Washington state for 2015.  Come and join us at our Port Townsend house concert this Wednesday!  Get tickets here!

    Sept2PosterThis summer has been an unprecedented season for Tricky Pixie concerts.  It may be the first time ever that we’ve been able to do more than just a couple of shows at a stretch before our schedules require us to part ways.  I’m so grateful to my band mates for this time and this magic, and also to all of our fans, friends, colleagues, and crew!  As Alec says, “the best magic takes the best of friends.”

    Alec flies away home today.  We’ll miss him terribly, but we’ll reunite with him in Dallas-Fort Worth at the end of September for our appearance as Guests of Honor at FenCon!  After that, we’ll drive north for our first-ever band performance in Cape Girardeau, MO, en route to our other Guest of Honor appearance at Archon near St. Louis!  We’ll round out our touring year in mid-October with a concert at the fest of my heart, Summerland Grove’s Festival of Souls near Memphis— the festival that’s helped spark all sorts of songs of mine, including “Come to the Labyrinth“.

    #bandselfie #bandseyeview #TrickyPixie #sultrysummertour about to rock. 😀

    A photo posted by S. J. Tucker Music (@sjtuckermusic) on

  • New Song: Cool Kids

    My “write one new song a week from a random prompt” challenge and group is still going strong.  We’re thirty weeks in.  Hard to believe I’ve been writing one new song a week as part of this thing, since February!

    This past week’s challenge was to write something on the subject of age, and to do so with humor.

    I’m pretty pleased by this new little anthem.  The tune is a little bit Vaudeville.  I’ll definitely record this one over the winter.

    COOL KIDS
    copyright S. J. Tucker 2015

    So you gotta work just a little bit harder
    than you used to do
    in order to get the bounce back in your stride
    after a long, hard weekend
    of helping people smile
    and singing out your heart for love and pride?

    It doesn’t make you any less
    compelling than you were.
    In fact, the grey you earn can trump the
    rainbow you prefer!
    So hoist the colors, baby,
    and if they start to fade,
    look upon the changes as the
    gift you give to the whole parade!

    CHORUS
    I wanna age like the finest wine
    like all of my friends who’ve grown so fine,
    so fine it hurts to look at you!
    All the cool kids are older than me.
    it’s always been that way, you see.
    when I catch up, I’ll be a cool kid, too.

    Perfection is the enemy of
    making good mistakes,
    of learning all you can while you’re still here.
    The story’s gonna write itself
    in the lines upon my face,
    so I’ll be a storyteller, don’t you fear.

    Better for the Good Folk*
    than for you or I,
    to walk the world forever–never
    age, never change, never die.
    So let’s hoist the colors like the
    pirates that we are,
    and never get too old or proud
    to wish upon a star!

    CHORUS
    I wanna age like the finest wine
    like all of my friends who’ve grown so fine,
    so fine it hurts to look at you!
    All the cool kids are older than me.
    it’s always been that way, you see.
    When I catch up, I’ll be a cool kid, too.

    When I catch up, I’ll be a cool kid too!

    *variant on a traditional name for the Sidhe or the Fae, who are said by some to be immortal, or at least unchanging.  See also: the Good Neighbors

  • Over the Moon Again: New Reviews

    Stolen Season continues to get a whole lotta love, more than I would ever have asked for.  I am so grateful!

    Here’s a quote from Andrew Greenhalgh at Breaking Down Sound:

    The best of music transports listeners to a place that is colored with bold emotion and powerful imagery. These are the songs that connect you to a place in the past while looking into the future and that transport you to places exotic, foreign, and yet altogether very familiar. As she tucks into Mississippi Delta inspired blues and jazz tones, accenting them with warm hits of contemporary folk and a little something extra, longtime recording artist S.J. Tucker does just that, taking listeners on a musical journey that leads down through the muddy swamp and into the hazy smoke of the local jazz club.

    Andrew is a regular and experienced writer of independent music (and it shows) whose goal is to write about artists who are worth hearing.  Color me entirely flattered!  Read his full review here.  He makes me sound, and feel, like a big deal.

     

    Then there’s James McQuiston’s review, which I also love, on NeuFutur Magazine’s website! Here’s a quote:

    Black Swan Blues is a sultry track that works from a bluesy, soulful backdrop that is pushed into high gear with a call and response chorus. Sultry Summer Night looks back into the era of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, spinning their style into a bold new space with a piano line right out of mid-20th century Harlem.

    Scuse me.  I gotta go chase down my heart.  It seems to have fluttered completely away. 🙂

    James’ full review is here.

     

    Thank you, James! Thank you, Andrew! Thank you, CyberPR, for helping me secure such favorable acclaim for my little record!

     

     

  • 4.5 Star Stolen Season review from Heath Andrews

    Believe it or not, it’s pretty rare for someone to give me an album review that includes any sort of constructive criticism and feedback.  The first time it happened, the reviewer was a friend of mine, and he was worried I’d be so offended by his (very useful and not at all nasty) criticism that we wouldn’t be friends anymore.  I reassured him very quickly that I could take it, and it actually is a thing I can appreciate.  If people who like what you do don’t point out the things that would get them to like what you do even more, how you gonna grow?

    Mind you, I love the hell out of any glowing praise I get.  But Heath Andrews gives me more than that in his recent review.  It’s clear to me that he really took the time to listen critically to Stolen Season, and I’m grateful to him for it!  In spite of the things he found to be not quite as good as they could have been (lengthwise and mood-wise, primarily), he STILL gives the album 4.5 out of 5 stars, gives me all sorts of mixing and song treatment compliments, and states that the album “does this genre well and it does this genre proud,” meaning my interpretation of Southern Blues.  Hardcore fans of mine may take exception to a couple of his statements, but me?  I’m taking it all as input that I can really use.

    Thank you so very much, Heath, for taking the time. 🙂

    Read the full review here and check out the rest of his reviews on Tumblr while you’re at it.  Good stuff from somebody who really listens.