K&K's
Artist of the Month: Cesca Waterfield
September 2003
"I am an Americana vocalist and songwriter. My newest release, Sweetbriar, is garnering strong reviews and is in its second pressing, as it sells very strongly on CD Baby, my site, and at my shows. I have been touring regionally to enthusiastic audiences. I will expand my touring circle with the release of my next recording, which I am working on now with a regionally prominent and artistically phenomenal band.
"Sweetbriar
was recorded with my gorgeous Taylor 615 with a Pure Western K&K
Pickup. I am buying a second Taylor for travel and I want the consistency
and brilliance for which K&K is known. I talk about you guys everywhere
I go and K&K ‘s products have convinced many musicians I know of your
superior craftsmanship.
"I am an independent musician with my own label. I am a member of Indiegrrl, and I write music reviews and tech articles for two magazines. Whenever I can, I publicize and support musicians and their pursuits involving music. For example, I am writing an article to be published in the Fall about stunning guitarist June Millington and her "Rock and Roll Girl's Camp" in Massachusetts, where pre-adolescent and teen girls pick up guitars and ROCK onstage!"
P u n k d o e s n o t p r e c l u d e t w a n g .
First,
I wanted to be Johnny Cash.
My Dad played a cassette oneday. I tell myself I can see him reach
above his forehead and select that cassette from the visor-case in his
truck, and push it in the player. That is probably not true.
What is true are the chords that emanated from the door-speakers. The
song, I would learn was written by Kris Kristofferson, but I wasn't ready
for that information yet.
Sunday
Morning Coming Down began.
I don't know how a 10-year old appreciates solitude expressed that way
in song, that adult sense of free fall, an irrational / undeserved grip
on hope...
But I felt something push back at me. Even as a little kid, I felt like
I
spent most days pushing into my small world. I was growing suspicious
that any needed-change would not be wrought, at least not by me.
When that song reached the chorus, I felt something push back at me.
In retrospect, maybe it was something to lean on.
From then on, I was taken with singer-songwriters, male, who lived the
trouble that they made look romantic and spiritual. Johnny, Kris, and
Bob Dylan have been my Trinity, (sorry Ma!), and when I heard Townes
Van Zandt, I wondered why god chose only three!
I
also idolized Emmylou Harris & Chryssie Hynde, Exene Cervenka &
Dolly. I loved the Clash & I loved Kris Kristofferson.
I
grew up in tiny towns in Alabama & Virginia without MTV. It didn't seem
odd
to stack albums on the player so that Mom's Ian & Sylvia and Kitty Wells
dropped first, followed by my Echo & the Bunnymen and Marvin Gaye,
which preluded my sister's Stevie Wonder and Lynyrd Skynyrd,
and Dad's Stanley Brothers and Howlin' Wolf.
Punk does not preclude twang.
Hillbilly music remains the racial hybrid stomp & cry of outsiders.
What music would exist as we know it without Blues?
To my ears, good music is both buoyed and weighted
by something carried in the singer's need to sing it.
If Billboard is product of & precursor to
a behemoth marketing machine
in the practiced application of pop music calculus,
that
might make 3 chords & the willingness to sing honestly about one's life,
with hopes it rings true for others,
a claim to something
mighty important.
That might be
the haunch of, or the lipgloss on the outlaw.
I'm
not skeerd.
I just want to share my songs with y'all.
Cesca
Waterfield
1780 Farragut Avenue
Norfolk, Virginia 23509
www.cesca.net