Shivaree: All they need is love
Shivaree has always explored the many facets of love — the good, the bad, and the ugly — and their new album, “Tainted Love: Mating Calls and Fight Songs” ups the ante by taking the emotions of others and filtering them through the heart of lead singer and creativecenterpiece Ambrosia Parsley.
Parsley, a celebrated songwriter, takes the vocal helm for an album of an eclectic mix of cover versions. Songs by Chuck Berry and David Allen Coe share space with R. Kelly’s “Half on a Baby” and Gary Glitter’s “Hello, Hello I’m Back Again” — not to mention tracks by Rick James and Spade Cooley.
This multi-faceted pop music fantasia reflects Parsley’s childhood dream of weaving part of the historical tapestry of radio hits.
“I thought maybe I could grow up and just be a songwriter. I was kind of hoping for a Brill Building job,” said Parsley. “I would think ‘Wow! That would be a great job!’ because you could just go to an office and write songs. And now I’m thinking ‘Office? Oh, God, what was I thinking?’ I thought that would be really great and swanky.”
Such an varied song list also reveals a little something about the singer’s unusual beginnings. Of all the places to start a singing career, Parsley has the distinction of being able to claim early days crooning in Shakey’s Pizza with her grandmothers 99-piece senior citizen banjo band when she was in grade school — it’s no wonder Parsley shows such a preference for older things.
“They played at Shakey’s Pizza every third Sunday,” said Parsley. “I sang at the Shakey’s Pizza across the street from my house because my grandfather was a bartender there when I was really little, he wasn’t anymore by the time I was old enough to sing there. But they had a piano player and a banjo player who was also in that band and I used to sing with them, so they just moved me over to the banjo band . I got a microphone, it was all very exciting.”
For Parsley, it was an education as well as an experience — and the tremors of those lessons learned are still felt today in works like “Tainted Love.”
“They taught me all those old songs and they taught me all those old standards, those old silly songs, I sang a lot of those,” she said.
Growing up, Parsley took to songwriting and singing in Catholic choirs, but eventually gave it all up in favor of being a teenager.
“I was a ham when I was a kid. Most kids are kind of hammy, you know? Then the world beats it out of you and you get shy. I did, I got real shy. I think I really wanted to be a different person but, you know, no one else was going to do it” she said.
It was at the age of 23 that she made a strong creative connection with her now regular musical cohorts Duke McVinnie and Danny McGough, which brought her back to the path music. What they ended up forging was not so much a band as a musical collective that takes different shape through the years, built around the voice of Ambrosia Parsley, but with tentacles formed from the various players and their experiences and sensibilities.
“Shivaree is kind of a funny little gang,” said Parsley. “The three of us were the first three that came together, sort of the old core of the group, but for the past 10 years, 20 different people routinely rotate in and out of the band and play on the records We just let everybody come up with their own parts and see what happens, it’s always more fun to have a surprise, they all lent a sound that makes this a little bit peculiar, but that’s very important.”
If the sound of the band is its own thing, Parsley’s voice is doubly so. She’s often compared to Rickie Lee Jones, but her vocal work is a result of her early years mixed with later exploration. As “Tainted Love” reflects, Parsley’s scope is a large one — she’s built on the standards that the ukulele band performed, moved on without leaving them behind.
As Parsley will attest, she never stopped learning about music and herself — and isn’t likely to.
“You do what you can with the instrument you’re given,” she said, “and you learn to figure it out and you know that there are certain things you can pull off and certain things you can’t and that’s really just the way it is. On that note, I’ve probably learned just as much from Marilyn Monroe’s singing as I have from Billie Holiday.”
Purchase Shivaree - Tainted Love: Mating Calls and Fight Songs
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