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With a new label and tour, the gossip blogger is giving it a...
Because she's celebrating the release of her latest EP at a bookstore, it's only natural to want to know if Monmouth County songstress Beth Arentsen has read any good books lately. It turns out that she, like millions of other folks these days, is diving into the work of a certain mega-selling scribe.
"I decided to jump on the Dan Brown wagon this summer," she recently revealed with a laugh, "and I read ‘Angels and Demons,' which I thought was better than ‘The Da Vinci Code,' but I really needed a distraction, because I was also recording an album, so I wanted some very light reading material and I love Italy, so it was a really great setting to let my imagination run wild. Would I say it was the best book I've ever read? No, but that was the last book I read."
Arentsen, who lives in Matawan, will be celebrating the release of her latest effort, "Nicer," with an in-store performance at 8 p.m. on Saturday (Oct. 3) at the Barnes and Noble on Highway 35 in Holmdel. She recently chatted with Metromix Jersey Shore about "Nicer" and how her friendship with a certain gossip icon may have inspired one of her new tunes.
Let's talk a bit about "Nicer." Can you tell me how your sound has evolved since "Sap" (your first solo LP) in 2007?
Good question. The sound has evolved in that I've introduced more electronic elements to the album. If you remember, I was in the funk-electro band P-1 a few years back and I didn't want to neglect the electro side of me. When "Sap" was released, it was very acoustic, very stripped-down and I wanted "Nicer" to be a little more spunky and a little more upbeat, and so I introduced a lot of electronic components to the album -- it's really an EP, six songs -- so that it could be a little different from "Sap," kind of like an evolution of my past with P-1, "Sap" and where I am today.
When "Sap" came out were there any fans who knew you from P-1 who were like, "Whoa, what's this going on here?"
I think the P-1 fans really embraced "Sap," I got a lot of positive feedback. Our biggest markets for P-1 were Chicago, D.C. and New York City and all of the fans that came out to support us still really love my voice and my songwriting and my storytelling, so nothing really changed, it's just that the songs weren't so produced. But the meat and bones of the songs, like I said, the melody, my voice, the songwriting, that was still there in "Sap" and I think they really appreciated it.
Now, I've heard four of the songs off "Nicer" that you put on your MySpace page and to me "Sap" is definitively a solo record, but this sounds more like a band album. What influence did the folks you've been playing with over the past couple of years have on you and on the sound?
That's funny that you say that, because it's still a trio. But my cellist, who's Lenae Harris, ... I wanted her to really take the reins as far as production. She's a classically-trained cellist with a Master's from N.Y.U., we actually went to N.Y.U. together, and she wanted to take a stab at production for a few of these songs, so I said, "Go for it," and she introduced a lot of the synths, a lot of the bass that you hear in it, but it's still a trio, it's still Brian Wolfe on percussion, me on piano and Lenae, so it's a three-man band (laughs).
Now, what do you think you learned during the making of "Sap" that helped you out this time around?
Well, "Sap" was my first album that I self-produced. Knowing a little bit of what had to go into P-1, I wasn't the producer of the P-1 albums but I watched very closely what had to be done with the label and the producer so I was very involved in the recording of P-1, but with "Sap" I had a producer, I had Jimi Zhivago who produced "Sap" and I was next to him the whole time at the Magic Shop on the Lower East Side, watching what he did, so what I learned is to be very organized, hyper-organized, especially with recording because ... it's your baby, you know? It's a big project, and you want to make sure as a producer that you're employing the right people and that you're getting the best quality out of people, because you have such a limited time in the studio.
And we recorded at Retro Media, right in Red Bank, hometown recording, so I'd say (I learned) time management, being aware of finances and being open to other people's ideas. You know, when you're the artist it's really hard to take in criticism and to take in other people's opinions, but as the producer you have to really open up and listen to everyone's critiques, so that's what happens.
And when is the official release date of "Nicer"?
Well, the unofficial release is Oct. 3 here in New Jersey at Barnes and Noble. We also have the CD release show in the city at the Living Room on Oct. 6, but once I get the disc to iTunes, CD Baby, some of the retail outlets, I will keep you posted. But, as far as I'm concerned you can download "Nicer" in about two weeks off of MySpace.
And it's a self-released EP, right?
Yeah, right now it's a self-release, and I'm in the process of writing more material and then who knows? Maybe some of these songs, some of my earlier songs that I haven't recorded will make it on to another album come 2010.
Now, I would think thanks to stuff like MySpace and iTunes that it's so much easier for artists to self-release material now and kind of cut out the middle man.
Right. Well you know, I had major distribution with both of my P-1 albums and we were in every single store in the country, but unless you have a huge marketing budget and major muscle behind you, sometimes you can also get lost in those retail outlets, you know? So, with MySpace and iTunes it's just such a pleasure, because you can meet someone on a plane who lives in Hawaii and give them your MySpace page and they can hear your music and if they're interested they can just go and download it, so it's quite amazing.
Absolutely. Now, I can imagine one of the tracks folks will be talking about once they hear "Nicer" is going to be "Gossip Queen." What can tell me about that track?
Well, I wrote "Gossip Queen," people try to say that I wrote it specifically for the biggest gossip queen of all who used to be, and still is, a friend of mine, Perez Hilton. Perez, formerly known as Mario Lavandeira, and I we were really close friends, we went to N.Y.U. together, we even traveled a lot together, we were buddies and he was very instrumental in my early career.
If you remember, he rapped on the song "Ladrona," which is on my second P-1 album, "Power," so he's appeared on my music in the past (laughs), and I just had an idea one day that I would write a song about all of the gossip queens. You know, it's not about anyone in particular, but if people want to believe it's about him or any other gossip queen they know, that would be great.
