Beth Thornley

new album coming soon

2009-06-01T15:13:00.000-07:00

Hellooooooo out there!

It's been awhile. My bad. I've been under the studio rock. It took longer than we thought. That's no surprise though. Albums are like construction projects -- they always go longer and cost more than anyone predicts.

But I'm writing to let you know that we're nearly done and I should have something in hand by July/Aug. '09. We will finish tracking this week and then it's mix and master time. The artwork is nearly finished, too. Here's an example of something we're thinking of using for one of the album pages:

I've also just started up over at Facebook. Come find me and write on the wall!

The Getty gig and 2008

2008-01-09T13:49:00.000-08:00

I'm way overdue (again) in my blogging. Who knew it would be so difficult to do? I like typing. But I don't think I like editing. Takes too long. Makes me think too hard.

I wanted to tell you about the Getty experience. I had so much fun that I'm having a hard time removing my MySpace picture that advertises it. It was one of the most creatively satisfying things I’ve gotten to do as a songwriter. Once, I got to sing at Carnegie Hall in NYC, and it was great, but that was in a choir with, like, 100 other people and we were singing Mozart. But back to the Getty. I loved the event. It happened like this - I was asked to write a song about an exhibition they have going on there. There were 11 other songwriters that were also asked to write a song and so the Getty was able to turn it into a concert. Everyone played their one song. The concert hall there is amazing. I got to play a really nice 7 ft. grand piano. I LOVED it. Let me tell you, it's been a long time since I played an instrument that fine. I played the hell out of it. I was hoping to break a string on it but didn’t. It would not have been cool, anyway, so it was good that I didn't. Did you know it's actually really easy to break strings on grand pianos? It’s not hard. You just have to know how to do it. In the interest of grand pianos everywhere, I'm not going to tell you how.

My holidays were lovely and too short. I'm back to writing songs. I finished one right before the holidays and now I'm staring at a blank piece of paper. For me, that's always the hardest part. I've got an idea, though, that will hopefully turn into a song soon. At least I hope so. The blank paper is blinding.

I didn't send out a 2007 newsletter. But in case you’re interested, I played some shows, wrote some songs and placed a few things in a few TV shows. I almost have enough new material for the next album and I hope to have something by fall-ish of this year.

I already like 2008. It has all even numbers. It feels comfortable; like you could cozy up to it. It’s gonna be a good year.

I just found the comments

2007-07-25T18:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm new at the blog thing. I just found some lovely comments left for me by people from like 6, even 9 months ago. I'm sorry I didn't respond! I'm not a snob! I'm just a bit behind. I'll be better.

Juror #10

2007-07-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

I got a summons to report for jury duty a couple of weeks ago. I didn't want to go but there was no way out of it. I don't know about anywhere else, but here in Los Angeles, you can't get out of it anymore. You HAVE to go down there.

I got picked to be on a jury.

I was super bummed. I kept trying to think of things to say during jury selection to make the lawyers think I was a nut. But I couldn't think of anything. To make a long story short, after the trial got started, I loved it. I really did.

The trial was about a restaurant owner (located just a few blocks from me it turns out) who was being sued by the person who owned the land the restaurant was on. We found in favor of the restaurant owner (defendant).

Honestly, the land owner was evil. If we could have fined or punished the land owner, we would have but we didn't have that power.

The jury was a wonderful mix of people from all walks of life. It was a great experience. If you get called to do jury duty, GO! It's fun.

If you live in LA and want to know the name of the restaurant, write me and I'll tell you. I had never set foot in the restaurant before the trial, but I went after. It's a great place to eat and I'll keep going back.

a cat, 4 dogs, 2 goats and a horse.

2007-01-31T09:32:00.000-08:00

And I thought I was going to be a good blogger!

Ha! It takes far more discipline than I've got to do this regularly. I can't believe how long it's been between posts but, I do have a couple things on my mind and I'm finally getting around to typing.

I had the best New Year's Eve I've ever had. On New Year's Eve, I found myself taking a walk with a cat, 4 dogs, 2 goats and a horse. I'm not kidding. I went to a friend's ranch and they all accompanied us while we fed the other animals. It was so cool. None of the animals were on a leash or a lead; they were all just super cool and walked with us. And then later, more people came to the ranch. We had a fantastic dinner and then played music right up until midnight. It was a great midnight. I usually hate New Year's Eve but not this one. This one was a keeper. See the picture below. My back is to the camera. I'm playing accordion but it's in my lap so you can't see it.

We had a show last week at Temple Bar in Santa Monica (1/23/07). On the same bill that night was Dirty Martini (a wonderful band that was on tour down from Portland, OR) and the lovely and talented songwriter, Lily Wilson, with her very fine band). It was my first time playing there. I now LOVE the Temple Bar. The sound guy, Swan, was incredible. The manager was so helpful and gave me all the bottles of water I could ever drink on stage. My band played, the room was full and it couldn't have gone better. Well, maybe Rob's solo opening of "Mr. Lovely" could have gone better but making mistakes when you can hide behind the band is for pussies! Actually, we all had a good laugh and when it came around the next time, he nailed it. And, if I had remembered to hand my camera to someone to take some pictures, that would have been better, too. We're planning our next big show in late March/early April. In the meantime, Rob and I will do some acoustic duo gigs.

I also wanted to tell you about a wonderful blog that I've found that is actually being written regularly and is very entertaining. Check out http://byebyebuy.blogspot.com. Read it from the beginning (she only started on Jan. 1 so there's not much catching up to do). It's a lot of fun.

The only other thing I can think to add is that I'm letting my hair grow. It's getting really long. I'm sure that no one other than me is excited about this. I'm excited about it because my hair hasn't been long since I was in the 8th grade. In 8th grade I first chopped it off and it's been short pretty much ever since. New pictures soon of it blowing in the wind.

And maybe even a blog before another 4 months have passed.

I don't know who you all were, but I love you.

2006-09-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

We packed the house at Molly's last Tuesday night.

The first song was our wacky tango (accordion and megaphone included) followed by our quirky waltz (we added glockenspiel and Maria Scherer on cello). Then we ROCKED (arena anthem style) with Beautiful Lie and then went into our Delta Blues song (crickets and guest guitar picker, Tim Fagan, accompanied). A little later, Jeff Lane sat in and sang backing vocals on a couple of tunes. Karen Teperberg (drums) and Vivi Rama (bass) did their usual awesome thing. Rotten Robbie was there playing all kinds of instruments and gadgets. As for me, I did some singing and playing too, but most importantly, I did it while wearing a mini-skirt and heels. I hope to post some pics soon.

The new album has gotten some great reviews. Here's a bit of what All Music Guide had to say:

"Be it aggresive punk rock or a rich piano and cello ballad, the jerky rhythms of alt-rock or even a melancholy tango, Thornley feels at home."

It has been a blast promoting the new album and I loved pulling out all the stops. We'll play another full band show in a couple of months or 3. In the meantime, I'll be playing some solo and duo shows. Stay tuned!

I'll have some bugs with that.

2006-08-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

Rob and I took a road trip/gig to San Francisco. We played an office gig for Keyboard Magazine. They had already written a fine review of the album so I wasn't trying to score favors. We drove up the 5 north and got on the other side of the grapevine around 7:30pm when we were suddenly barraged by millions of bugs swarming/tripping the sunset fantastic. It sounded like rain but it was bugs. Here's a picture of the aftermath (it's kind of hard to see, but this was done in less than a minute).

Ewwwwwwwww!

Accompanying it was the smell of the cows. There are lots of cows up there. I happen to like how cows smell, but this was particularly strong.

On the 5 north there are many radio stations that play classic rock. Rob and I never heard anything recorded after 1980 the entire way up. It was pretty awesome - Lots of Boston, Zepplin, Yes, The Who, Bad Frickin' Finger, but the second time around on "Brown-Eyed Girl" was more than we could take.

We start running low on gas but we're close to our destination. We only need to cross the Bay Bridge and get to our hotel - a mere mile or so on the other side. The car signals that we have enough gas to go 18 more miles. "Plenty, I thought; we only have to cross a 2-mile bridge and we're home free"! We get to the bridge at midnight and there's a huge traffic jam. Construction and a car accident has the traffic at a crawl. Who are all these people and what are they doing out on a Wednesday night? We should have cruised at lightning speed across that bridge and into a gas station but nooooooooo - it was just like LA in rush hour. Can I never escape it? The gas indicator read 18, then 15, then 12 then 10 then 5 miles left in the tank. Rob was pretty freaked... Ok, ok, enough with the drama. We made it to a gas station.

We got to the hotel. It's 1:00 am now. We unload the gear from the car. Ugh. Where the f*&k are the roadies? Nowhere. Nowhere.

Next day. We load up (again - where are the frickin' roadies?) and go to Keyboard Magazine. We didnn't eat dinner the night before and we haven't had breakfast. A block away from our destination, we spot a bagel shop. We duck in to get a little something to eat. Rob orders a pizza bagel. I'm kinda thinking that's gross for 10:30 AM but whatever. We get it to go. We get to the car and something starts smelling really bad. It's the pizza bagel. It smells horrible. But Rob has to eat. We pull into the parking lot of Keyboard and go in to scope out the place. Rob is carrying his bagel and planning on eating it quickly. Before he has a chance, we run into the main dudes at Keyboard. We're doing the chit-chat thing and Rob's bagel finally smells up the place so bad that I feel like I have to say something. Everybody acknowledges that it's the worst smelling bagel they have ever smelled. He tosses it in a can far from the main office.

The odor-emitting inedible in question:

The people at Keyboard are a lovely group of musicians/journalists who made us feel enormously welcome - even though we had a smelly pizza bagel smell about us. We played our show in the lobby. People from the magazine, along with Bass Player, Guitar Player and surrounding offices stopped in. They video taped it but I don't know when it will post. We had a great time. We went to lunch and had some excellent sushi. I've never had a bad meal in SF and this was no different. We hung out with Ernie Rideout, Steve Fortner and Mike Gallant of Keyboard. They were great.

We go back to the hotel, and, you guessed it, unloaded the gear. Again, no roadies. Later we went to a very fine dinner at 2223 Market Street with friends. The next day we get up and drive home. Pictures are posted of our stop at Rotten Robbies because Rob is often very rotten. We took a couple of pictures of us riding along in the car. We had a great time. We had to get back to real life way too soon.

photoshoot

2006-06-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

My first ever photo session for a national magazine was SO much more fun than when I usually have my picture taken. When I usually have my picture taken, it's by Rob (producer and bandmate) because he knows a little about cameras. And though he's come up with some good shots, it's usually a long and laborious process and most of the time we end up laughing at how dorky I look.

When the pros showed up, my first response was that I felt like throwing up. I was nervous. After all, they're probably going to laugh at how dorky I am. But they didn't laugh. And the photographer seemed to be happy so I was happy. Everybody was happy and at the end of the day I made margaritas and then we all went out to dinner. It really was a wonderful day. Everybody was so nice and fun to be with. The pictures are for Hallmark's debut magazine. It will be a Sept./Oct. issue that will hit the stands in August. Look for me - I'll be the dorky one (but I'll be very well lit and framed beautifully!).

I thought about throwing a tantrum or two. I thought about insisting that I have a large trailer even though they were taking the pictures at my house. I thought about demanding clustered water. But I didn't. I hope they weren't disappointed.

underwear and megaphones

2006-05-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

The show is over but the party isn't. We had a great time last weekend playing our "We Finally Finished the CD" gig in LA. Rob showed everyone his underwear. We also managed to play a few songs. Along with the usual instruments we had glockenspiel, megaphone, cello and accordion. Next time we're bringing the kitchen sink. Check out the pictures on MySpace.com/beththornley. I also finally posted the zombie pictures from the Rob Giles music video shoot, too.

trampoline moments

2006-04-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

I used to belong to the Y. I had a class there that I was a part of. First you swim and then you go to the gym. On this particular day after swimming, they had set up the trampoline for us. I love the trampoline. So I hurried out of my wet bathing suit so I could get out to the gym. Somehow I hadn't packed my usual gym clothes and only had a dress to put on. But that's not the bad part. The bad part is that I also hadn't packed any underwear (I had worn the bathing suit under the dress to get there). You guessed it. That day I jumped on the tramp in a dress without my underwear. I held the dress down though - arms firmly pressed to my sides; hands tightly holding the hem of the dress in place. I don't think anyone guessed. Oh yeah - I was 5 years old.

mimes, clowns and zombies - oh my.

2006-04-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

As I said in an earlier post, now that the album is finished I have a little more time on the weekends. I'm happy to report that this past weekend I had enough spare time to be a downtrodden mime getting beat up by wicked clowns. After that I was a zombie in a fight with the other undead over a bone - all in the same afternoon. It was awesome. Oh yeah, it was for a friend's music video. Pictures at MySpace soon.

I'm no Scrooge.

2006-03-26T17:51:00.000-08:00

This was the first weekend in about a year and a half that I didn't work on the album. I finally had some time to do a couple things I've been putting off - like taking down the Christmas lights. From 2004. Some friends had even dropped some not-so-subtle hints about it. Yeah, I know it's March 2006 but I hadn't turned them on since February so cut me some slack. Besides, the lights make me happy. The ones in the backyard are staying up.

smells so new!

2006-03-20T23:02:00.000-08:00

It's not everyday I get to post a new website with new tunes. But today is the day. It even smells new. It's got that "new CD/website" smell. Take a deep breath. See! There it is. Hope you like it! The new website and CD that is. And if you like the smell too, then all the better.