Listen to Lisa Marie Simmons’ projects here.
Interview Transcript
Quentin Walston (00:00)
we are so happy to have Lisa Marie Simmons with us today, acclaimed poet, songwriter, vocalist, creative, amazing person that has been doing so many cool projects and I’m super duper excited to talk to you today. So thank you for coming on for an interview.
Lisa Marie Simmons (00:19)
Quentin, thank you so much for inviting me. I’m thrilled to be here and thrilled with your new initiative. You’re doing, these are things that we need in the world today. It’s so important. And so I’m really grateful to be a part of it.
Quentin Walston (00:25)
Thank you.
Absolutely.
you. I really appreciate it. It’s really fun to highlight all the things that are going on in jazz. I mean, just diving into what you’ve been doing recently has been so fun. I mean, I found you through, I think it was one of the standards that you sung. And now I’m discovering all of this amazing notespeak stuff. And so I want to talk about the notespeak stuff. You’re about to release your third
Lisa Marie Simmons (00:57)
you
Quentin Walston (01:03)
album, I believe. Can you talk to where the idea of poetry specifically coming into jazz? Because a lot of jazz fans are very familiar with some jazz, but how did you arrive at the idea of poetry specifically?
Lisa Marie Simmons (01:04)
That’s right.
Well, I mean, it’s something that’s been done a lot in the 60s really, like Gil Scott Heron and people like that were some of our inspiration. I had a band that was called Hippie Tendencies. I’d send it to jazz festivals and they’d say, this is too pop. And then I’d send it to pop festivals. They’d say, this is way too jazz. But through that band, I…
was inspired to do this piece that was from the movie, the name is escaping me right now, about Sacloy Van Zetti. I don’t know if you know who they were. They were Italian immigrants to America and they were put to death for a crime that they didn’t commit.
And there was a film made about this and Joan Baez wrote the soundtrack for it. And there are two songs that are really famous. One of them is, Here’s to You. Here’s to you, Nicola and Mark. And…
Quentin Walston (02:24)
Mmm. Mmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (02:27)
So she created these by getting letters that Vanzetti had sent back to Italy to his father, telling him about what had happened and expressing, you know, just…
the terror that he wouldn’t be able to see his family again, but also just sort of accepting of his fate, just like these really intense, beautiful letters. And so she used those as inspiration for the lyrics. And so what I did when I was with Hoopie Tendencies is I thought I’m gonna recite these letters rather than, and it turned, it ended up being, so that’s how we sort of started. We put together two of those songs that she had written and I, rather than singing them, I recited them. And it was really,
Quentin Walston (02:44)
Mmm.
Well.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Lisa Marie Simmons (03:11)
audiences really responded to it. I used it because I wanted to talk about immigration here in Italy. It’s a big issue as well. And I just wanted to remind people, is, you you too were immigrants and this is what happened, you know? So that’s how, that’s kind of how we started going in that direction. That’s how it started.
Quentin Walston (03:14)
Yeah.
Mmm. Mm-hmm. Mmm.
Yeah. Wow.
Hmm, that’s fascinating. I feel like when you have words that are spoken at least at least me I pay attention to the words more because sometimes when lyrics are sung sometimes I’m not even aware of what the the lyrics are I’m just listening to the tunefulness and sometimes it gets on my wife’s nerve because she’s So tuned into lyrics and she’d be like, isn’t that song beautiful? I’m like, I have no idea what it was about. I was just listening
Lisa Marie Simmons (03:56)
Your wife and I’ll get along. Tell
her I’m with her. Yes, I’m all about the lyric.
Quentin Walston (04:01)
Yeah,
well, yeah, so I feel like with poetry, it adds extra weightiness to the words.
Lisa Marie Simmons (04:09)
Yeah, think that’s true.
And I think it also depends on interpretation, you know, what we’re giving it. And I think that’s true in it sung as well. You know, I think that interpretation really helps a lot to have those words stand out or have that message, whatever it is that you’re trying to get across, stand out. I think the other reason that I’m sort of theatrical on stage is I’ve lived in Europe for many, many years now. I lived in France for a while and I was in Holland and Amsterdam for a while.
Quentin Walston (04:15)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (04:43)
and in South America. And so being in countries where people are not their mother tongue English means that I do speak Italian and I do speak French, but it means that I use my body and my voice a lot to communicate the subtext, you know?
Quentin Walston (04:49)
Mm-hmm
Mm-hmm
wow,
yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (05:02)
And
so that also I think is why this new project, NoteSpeak, is really good for me. It’s already a direction that I’ve sort of been going for a long time.
Quentin Walston (05:10)
news.
And of course too, the musical selections for the accompaniment will also augment the words. So what is that plus this? sorry. no, you’re fine. Just curious about kind of then, yeah, the musical accompaniment side. I I was listening to the first one.
Lisa Marie Simmons (05:23)
So, Marple, that’s a good question. I’m sorry, I interrupted you. just talked over you.
which is not
speaking morning.
Quentin Walston (05:37)
I mean, I don’t want to
assume too much, but it felt like it had more of like an electronica vibe and the second one had a lot like a more of like an acoustic jazz vibe. So like, where did these ideas come from for the poems and stuff? Like, do you write the music yourself? Do you collaborate? Like how does it happen?
Lisa Marie Simmons (05:54)
that’s such a good question. Marco and I, he’s my partner in music and in everything else. And he and I were the founders of Hippie Tendencies. And with him, we created this new project, Note Speak. And as far as the writing process is concerned, yeah, you’re right. The first one, so the new album has elements of both the first two, but the second one was heavy on Dota-Coffini, like the 12-tone scale.
Quentin Walston (06:05)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (06:24)
which I don’t
know if listeners know about it, but it basically consists of like the 12 tones of the chromatic scale that each have equal weight. There’s no major or minor keys. There’s no dominant. And then the theme needs to contain all 12 tones and never repeat them. So it’s very challenging. Sorry? Yes, exactly.
Quentin Walston (06:33)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
like a Schoenberg kind of approach? Like a Schoenberg kind of serialism thing?
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (06:52)
So
we married that. this is from the second album, Don’t Speak 12. The concept was, I was like, I want to talk about unity. The first one had come out, and then we went on tour in Europe. We went to India. It was going really well. We had a US tour planned, and then COVID hit.
Quentin Walston (06:57)
Hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (07:15)
And so we’re like, gosh darn it. And then, so we decided to write another one. And while in the process of doing that, I said, I really want to talk about unity. And Marco said, I’m thinking about this, I’ve been messing around with this 12 tone scale. And that’s like a very, it came from Austria, like you were just saying. And he said, let’s get the farthest things apart that we can get. So we took Dodecaphony and married it to Afrobeat.
Quentin Walston (07:33)
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (07:42)
you know, and try to put those two things together. And then within that concept, I was like, okay, let me meditate on 12. What is 12? What is 12? And I started doing a lot of research about all because it’s so ubiquitous. It’s everywhere in our lives, right? 12 jurors. It’s a lot comes, goes back to sort of biblical.
Quentin Walston (07:43)
Mmm.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, 12 tribes of Israel.
Lisa Marie Simmons (08:04)
or religious things,
but it’s also in mathematics and it’s fascinating. So I based a lot of the poetry, I did a lot of 12 line poetry or adapted some traditional forms so they were 12 lines. So we just played with that a lot. And yeah, and it’s a back and forth between Marco and I. Sometimes I come up with a melody.
Quentin Walston (08:10)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (08:30)
on my, you know, and with my skills that are nowhere near his. And then I pass it to him and I can no longer play it because he takes it to a different place. But yeah, so sometimes it’s my melodic idea and sometimes he has an idea for something that we ought to be talking about. So you know what mean? We both participate in both things and we very, very much do not want it to be.
Quentin Walston (08:49)
Mmm. Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (08:55)
poetry with music underneath it. We write them together so that, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed as you’ve listened, but it’s very carefully constructed while at the same time it’s jazz. So we’re leaving space for all the musicians to bring what they bring and it’s alive. We got a gig on Sunday with this, the new album.
Quentin Walston (08:57)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (09:24)
I mean, what I
have a structure for the musicians, but we also want to give them the space to be able to improvise, you know. So when we’re performing live, it’s never the same twice. And that goes for the poems as well. don’t write on the fly. I’m like very structured about my poetry and I really lots of research and a lot of depth to them. And I like to write in layers so that you get something new each time, right. But
Quentin Walston (09:34)
Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (09:55)
maybe the way that I’m going to interpret it or it’s going to depend on the night, just the same way it is with musicians. I’m going to give them space to play and interweave with them. And so we’ve been together for a while now and we’re able to do that.
Quentin Walston (10:07)
Yeah. Yeah.
And that’s I was going to ask about that. Like if you’re singing like a standard, yes, you can like lay back on the beat or maybe stretch out a phrase or something. But for the most part, the melody is fixed to the harmony. So I was going to ask, like with the poetry, do you have like landmarks? Like I need to get to this stanza by this part of the tune. Like, how does that work?
Lisa Marie Simmons (10:29)
Yes, yes, yes,
that’s exactly it. That we construct them just like a song. And that has room though, when we’re live. But everybody knows this phrase means that we’re probably, we’re gonna be going to this part of this, we’re going to the B now, the C, because we’ve heard that phrase, right? Yeah.
Quentin Walston (10:39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Very cool. I love
that like reverse engineering, getting to see the intricacy. And that brings me back, because I do want to talk about that 12 tone stuff, because I think as far as people that are musicians, probably the first and maybe only time they learn about 12 tone and serialism is in college. Like you have your obligatory sophomore college class and you do like four weeks of 12 tone music and most people don’t like it. I was a big fan because I…
Lisa Marie Simmons (11:11)
Right, yes.
You
Quentin Walston (11:21)
That stuff is so fascinating to me. But a lot of people thought that it was unaccessible or didn’t sound good. But I love how your album, it still is super accessible and it sounds really good. And it blends with the more like, I guess, traditional sounds that people might expect, whether it’s the saxophones kind of having maybe a bebop phraseology or something. But I want to like go into a music theory class in college and be like.
Look, this is serialism or this is 12 tone music that is compelling. So I just applaud you on that because yeah, it’s super difficult. Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (11:57)
Thank you so much for saying that
because that was something that we really wanted to do. We really wanted it to be accessible. We had an artist residency, Marco and I, at SUNY Oneonta last year and talked about this with the students and…
Quentin Walston (12:01)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (12:15)
Marco, it’s funny, he’s Italian and he is like, don’t leave me alone in the room with them. don’t know if my English is good enough. He did a great job and he enchanted the students and they were all like, can we write one right now? Can we just go to the piano and write this down? Because yeah, you know, that’s the beautiful thing about music is it’s infinite and why…
Quentin Walston (12:30)
Awesome.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (12:39)
put ourselves into boxes or, you know, try to conform to some rigid, stiff idea.
Quentin Walston (12:42)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, that’s fantastic. And I love the education standpoint too, because yeah, it’s showing people that they can do it themselves too.
Lisa Marie Simmons (12:56)
evolve.
It’s like language, know, language is continually evolving and growing and moving and changing and that’s sort of the subject of the next album which will have some elements of Dota Cofiny, it’ll have
Quentin Walston (13:04)
Hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (13:13)
you know, some of the more sort of standard jazz elements that you were talking about that we use as well. But we’re adding Afrofuturism now into the new one, into the mix. So yeah, I think that the new album is gonna be called, Don’t Speak in a Word. And it is, I don’t think I sent you the one sheet I should have. did I? So you kind of know what it’s about.
Quentin Walston (13:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
I do have it, I believe I do. On my other monitor. Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (13:43)
I just lost you because I was pulling up the one sheet. so yeah.
Quentin Walston (13:49)
no worries.
Lisa Marie Simmons (13:51)
With this new one, we have a lot of guests on it and we’re going more of a direction of sort of more traditional songs. We’ve got a lot of people singing, like interweaving that with the poetry. Because you just wanna keep evolving and as I said, since this is about language, I really wanted to have the musical language in all of its forms as well. So a lot more singing than we’re on the
Quentin Walston (14:08)
cool.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (14:21)
two
albums. Although there’s some singing on those as well, but I think there’s a more heavy emphasis on that this time.
Quentin Walston (14:28)
Very cool. you have guest artists singing as well as yourself singing on there?
Lisa Marie Simmons (14:33)
singing and
so we’ve got, I shouldn’t say names yet, but we’ve got, I won’t do it if you, I’m tempted because there’s some really good ones, but we’ve got an incredible saxophone player who’s gonna be guesting with us. We have a great, I can say his name, Henry Spencer, the trumpet player from England. We’ve got a couple singers who are,
Quentin Walston (14:37)
you don’t, no, don’t, don’t, don’t do it. Keep it a secret.
That’s exciting.
Lisa Marie Simmons (15:00)
So good, and I can’t say their names yet. So let’s see, what else do we have? We have a flute player. So yeah, so we have both singers as well as guest instrumentalists. Yeah. Well, so we’re going into the studio in April and…
Quentin Walston (15:16)
When is that coming out just so we can kind of keep an eye out?
Okay.
Lisa Marie Simmons (15:24)
and shooting for a late August release. We will see if that is gonna be able to happen. There’s a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of people from all over the world. The last album we had 14, 16 musicians on the album, but they were almost all Italian. A couple of guests from out of town, but most of the people were here. So now we have people from England, we have people from America, we have people, a guy from
Quentin Walston (15:30)
Man, that’s a timeline.
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (15:54)
from Switzerland. So yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that we have to put together. But that’s the hope is that we get it out for late summer. I’ll be on Rope-A-Dope again. We love.
Quentin Walston (16:02)
Man, that’s so cool. Well, yeah, I’m excited for that.
I’ll keep an eye out. That’s awesome. I do want to make sure I talk about some of your influences. We’ve already talked about a bunch of the kind of genre styles that are feeding into this. There’s hip hop, there’s traditional jazz, electronica. What are some of the influences? And I know this is a huge question.
Lisa Marie Simmons (16:09)
Yeah.
Quentin Walston (16:25)
So maybe we should start with influences maybe outside of jazz and then kind of work in or maybe start jazz influences and work out. But I want to I want to know where Lisa Marie Simmons gets all of these cool ideas that come out in your work.
Lisa Marie Simmons (16:41)
gosh, so both Marco and I feel like the music that we make or that any musician makes is like sort of the sum of what you’ve studied and gravitated towards and loved. So I grew up, I was adopted and my adoptive father’s father was a jazz drummer.
Quentin Walston (16:53)
Mm-mm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (17:06)
and he had a, he traveled around and then he put, when he was in his older age, he put together a bar called Down Beat that he would play in every night. I often went there. So I had this, and that whole part of the family was very into jazz. And I fell in love with Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald both, but I really identified with the…
the deep sorrow of Billie’s voice and how she communicated that.
Quentin Walston (17:36)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (17:38)
And a lesson I think also from her and from other artists is about taking your personal pain and not doing harm with it though. And just having it be something that people can relate to. Because you can vomit out pain to no good end. Do you know what I mean? Yes, there’s a way of communicating deep-seated trauma or pain in a way that is healing for other people.
Quentin Walston (17:48)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Right, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (18:08)
rather than a negativity, right? So there’s that. And then on my adoptive mother’s side, she was way into singer-songwriters. So Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, all of the 1970s, 80s, sort of singer-songwriters. And I gravitated towards that because I love words. I love the lyrics, right?
Quentin Walston (18:28)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (18:38)
and Bob Dylan also, and then moving forward, you know, to sort of more modern day musicians. But yeah, I guess I gravitate to people who are lyric heavy a lot of the time. I don’t know. There’s so many, like I don’t even know where to start because.
Quentin Walston (18:59)
Great, yeah.
Yeah,
no, but I love that. it’s, I think the, with the Billie Holiday and the singer songwriter, mean, it speaks so much to connecting with people’s emotion. And I think that’s something like, so I primarily play instrumental jazz and I fall into, I think a lot of pitfalls that other musicians that exclusively play instrumental jazz fall into, which is like appealing too much
to either showing off chops or too much to intellectualism. Like, yeah, exactly. Like, man, I’m gonna do this cool Coltrane thing over this normal two-five and look at me. And sometimes I’ve, like, I’m not a good singer myself. The most I do is sing at church, but that, my voice is hidden among everybody else. But.
Lisa Marie Simmons (19:35)
Yes. Look at how many notes I can put in this phrase.
you
the choir.
Quentin Walston (20:01)
I’ve sometimes lamented like, I wish I could have a singer because there is like emotion that can be so clearly conveyed with lyrics and not saying that emotion can’t be conveyed with instrumental music, but I think there is something special about lyrical music and lyrics and also kind of avoiding the just show-offiness. And I know we mentioned Ella, but I think Ella’s was just brilliant and
Lisa Marie Simmons (20:26)
Right.
Quentin Walston (20:26)
She wasn’t
doing it to show off. She was just this joyful person that all these notes just erupted out of her, so.
Lisa Marie Simmons (20:32)
Yeah,
yes, that’s so true. think that’s so true. It’s interesting because the younger guys in the band, Manuel Caliumi on drums and the brilliant, well, they’re both brilliant, but also the brilliant Manuel Caliumi on sax. They both primarily before this group playing in instrumental.
Quentin Walston (20:55)
Mmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (20:55)
And there’s an interview, I’ll send it to you, where they talk about that and they have the same sort of idea that you did. They really love the concept of the stuff that we talk about. It’s all…
I don’t want to say it’s political, but it’s, you know, it’s reflecting on what we see in the world, or I am, in lyrics, and that translates also to them. And they love it. They say it gives them sort of another approach to music, having that sort of signpost, or you know what I mean?
Quentin Walston (21:17)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (21:34)
even though you write a song, an instrumental song, you do have a, you give it a title, you have something in mind for sure, you know? But having the lyrics somehow, I think solidifies a concept that you might want to speak about. And then the other thing is that I often, so they’re not all just like,
Quentin Walston (21:40)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (21:55)
songs about the world and what’s happening in the world today, but there are also some personal ones too. A lot of the writing that I do, whether it’s like essays or, know, because I’ve done a lot of those as well, I tend to take a micro to macro approach, right? I use stuff that’s happened in my own life to talk about a bigger issue because I think it…
Quentin Walston (22:07)
Hmm.
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah
Lisa Marie Simmons (22:23)
you know, it communicates. It makes it more personal, perhaps, and hopefully, hopefully it communicates. I’m very much intrigued by the idea of storytelling being a catalyst for empathy.
Quentin Walston (22:29)
Yeah, absolutely.
Yes, yeah, absolutely. And I feel like that kind of empathy, it crosses those tensions that are so prevalent in our society. I mean, people are very quick to bark insults across different areas, but then as soon as you realize, man, that’s a person.
Lisa Marie Simmons (22:53)
Yeah
Wow.
Quentin Walston (23:07)
or in that person they might be going through something really hard, that really hard, and suddenly you forget that there’s this whole political thing and you’re just seeing them as another human being.
Lisa Marie Simmons (23:07)
Right!
my gosh, my
gosh, Quentin, that is exactly it. You know, that is exactly it. What my whole raison d’etre, the reason that I do this is really to try to like…
Quentin Walston (23:19)
Yeah.
Lisa Marie Simmons (23:29)
get away from that polarization, those trigger words that people just are at each other’s throats and try to come to this realization that we’re all family. And it sounds so corny and so silly, but I so profoundly and deeply believe that we are all connected and that what hurts me hurts you and what hurts you hurts me.
Quentin Walston (23:31)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
That’s excellent. I want to touch also on a little bit more on that Billie Holiday, Ella kind of history of jazz. Because you do still sometimes, I believe, record traditional jazz. So how does that kind of live in your space as a vocalist? When you do…
traditional standards or traditional gigs? Do you do it kind of in like reverence to an earlier style or a way of preserving jazz history or just you’re interested and you want to mix in some Billie Holiday? yeah, or like how does that area of jazz exist in your musical world?
Lisa Marie Simmons (24:44)
What a great question. All of the above. You know what I mean? I love the idea of forwarding the tradition. I’ll admit to imposter syndrome as far as my singing goes. Don’t we all? Yeah. So especially when you listen to the greats, and you’re like, my God, why am I even attempting to do this song?
Quentin Walston (24:47)
Yeah, yeah.
We all.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (25:11)
But I just love the genre, you know? And it’s funny because before I met Marco, I never considered myself a jazz singer. I always just thought of myself as a singer-songwriter. And then he was like, but you are. The way that you write and what your choice is are…
Quentin Walston (25:16)
Mmm.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (25:36)
jazz, you know? So I guess I can call myself a jazz singer now, but that album that you’re talking about, the last one of standards that we did is Lisa Meets Gianni, and we…
We had been playing with this guy, his name is Gianni Cazzola. He’s now like 89 or something, but when I met him he was in his 80s and he was one of the only drummers here in Italy to have played with Billie Holiday. And yeah, I know. He has great stories and he played with Chet Baker. He has stories about throwing cigarettes to Chet Baker when he was in jail over the wall and like just this great. So he had had a gig not far from us and something happened with the
Quentin Walston (26:04)
Whoa.
Lisa Marie Simmons (26:20)
and he, and so we stepped in and did this show and we’ve never played anything before together. Just a bunch of, you know, he’s swaying, he’s way into swing. And so that was what it was all about. And it was one of those magical performances. It was outside on the lake. They laid out candles all around. People sat on the ground. And it was just this magical, magical moment.
Quentin Walston (26:22)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
wow.
Lisa Marie Simmons (26:46)
and he said, we have got to record something together. So yes, that too, right after the pandemic, as soon as we could get into a studio, we actually did that all in a room here in our home studio altogether, like it used to be done.
Quentin Walston (26:59)
wow. That’s awesome.
that’s cool. That is so, one, that’s so cool. And two, I love that, just that idea. It kind of goes back to what you’re saying about language and music is a language. Like, and you find someone that you can speak with, you don’t need to rehearse forever. Like you just find that person. So that’s amazing. And I love that you recorded.
Lisa Marie Simmons (27:19)
Yeah.
Quentin Walston (27:25)
live like in a room like that that’s all that’s all you need like there’s a famous picture of the Dave Brubeck quartet when they recorded Time Out and they’re in a big Columbia studio but they’re not separated in booths they’re not tracking they’re just like all there and the drums has like a microphone hanging from the ceiling and there’s like yeah each one person gives like a microphone i love it it’s like it’s all you need some calls
Lisa Marie Simmons (27:39)
Right.
Yeah,
yeah, that’s all you really need. mean, if you’re trying to, and we did want to sort of pay homage to that. And then because Gianni is sort of this mythic Italian drummer, we wanted to, to, yeah, to record that for posterity. It’s just, he’s, has so much history, you know, that he’s lived through and that, and that we were, as we were saying earlier, that we are the sum of everything that we’ve listened and played.
right? And so to have that kind of the opportunity to play with that history was fantastic. It was great.
Quentin Walston (28:30)
That’s so cool.
That’s so cool. What a special recording. Well, let me make sure we can plug all of your awesome stuff so you have the third Notespeak album being recorded and getting prepared now. It’s going to be hopefully out in late summer. Where can…
Lisa Marie Simmons (28:47)
We will be debuting
some of those songs on Sunday. I’m so excited. Right before we met, was rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing, right before the interview. Yes, that’ll be Sunday. Yes, so that’ll be coming out at the end of, I’ll not speak in a word, the third in the trilogy. And then we just released a thing called Spoken Standards. I don’t know if you saw that. It’s on Bandcamp. The only place it is is on Bandcamp and we are taking no money for…
Quentin Walston (28:50)
sweet.
Nice!
I’m not speaking all of them. Awesome.
I’ll have to look for that.
Okay.
Lisa Marie Simmons (29:15)
this album. I’m going to send it to you right now because we’re going to dedicate everything to this charity that supports people in war-torn countries. we are doing that. On that album, what we did is this is during our artist residency.
Quentin Walston (29:18)
wow.
Wow.
That’s amazing.
Lisa Marie Simmons (29:41)
and I was speaking of earlier last year, we were working on this, you know, the concept for don’t speak in a word.
Quentin Walston (29:43)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (29:50)
It was great experience. They were wonderful. can’t say enough good things. If anybody has a chance to apply to their Artist Residency Program, I highly recommend it. That’s SUNY Oneonta.
But while we were, it was great, you know, working on that album, but we couldn’t, there was this beautiful grand piano Steinway in there, in one of the studios, and Marco wanted to like take something home with us. Cause like, you know, we’re writing, but it’s not going to be a part of the album, right? And so he came up with this idea of pairing, like four tracks of
Quentin Walston (30:08)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (30:31)
of Ellington. I’m just, gotta remember what he did. So he took two Duke Ellington songs and then asked me to pair the music that he chose with some poetry that made sense to be with it. But that’s it. Exactly.
Quentin Walston (30:45)
Here we go.
you got two monk tunes, Crepuscle with Nellie and Ruby, my dear. You got my two favorite composers right
there. Boom, boom. I love that.
Lisa Marie Simmons (30:59)
Two Monk and
Two Ellington. And then I just chose some poetry that I thought would work well with them. And so Langston Hughes, I originally had something from Audre Lorde, but we ended up not being able to use that because I couldn’t get permission from the estate. But my first choice was Nikki Giovanni, her poem resignation. And I contacted her.
Quentin Walston (31:15)
Mm.
Lisa Marie Simmons (31:26)
And it was like the most amazing email that I’ve ever gotten in my life was her, you know, can I say, approbation or just, you know, saying, yeah, please do use it. It’s available. And she also was like, wow, I just love the pairing. And she liked the idea as well. So anyway, so there’s that out there as well.
Quentin Walston (31:30)
That’s amazing.
That’s awesome.
Very cool. Well, I will be sure to include links to that with the interview. That sounds so cool. Thank you so much for spending your time talking about this. This was super enlightening. I’m super excited. I’m sure everyone else that gets to watch this and listen is going to be super inspired too. So thank you.
Lisa Marie Simmons (32:09)
Oh gosh, thank you.