Shenale on Abnormally Attracted to Sin

Devin noticed that John Philip Shenale has started to post about his contributions to Abnormally Attracted to Sin on his blog. So far, he’s addressed three songs — That Guy, Maybe California, Strong Black Vine — and two instruments: the Chamberlin (no, not Matt) and the Optigan.

The pieces are also being posted on his MySpace.

Rantz Hoseley To Unveil Tori-Related News At SXSW

Rantz Hoseley, editor of Comic Book Tattoo and CEO of the LongBox Group, will be appearing on the discussion panel Comics on Handhelds: Taking Webcomics Mobile at SXSW on Tuesday, March 17th, from 5pm-6pm.

If you are a Toriphile attending SXSW, you will want to do everything you can to attend this discussion. Why? During the panel, Rantz will be spilling info that will be of particular interest to Tori fans and (to quote Rantz directly) “comic fans will crap themselves” as this will be the first public showing of LongBox.

If you can’t hop on the next plane to Austin, don’t worry … we’ll fill you in after the panel has taken place. (No, we don’t know what the big news is yet.)

ADDENDUM: Rantz clarifies that he meant to indicate that fans who enjoyed CBT will likely be excited by the stuff on the panel, not that he will be making any Tori-specific announcements or unveilings during the panel, and apologizes for any confusion this may have caused.

John Philip Shenale On AATS

In a new entry on his MySpace page, John Philip Shenale documents some details of his work on Abnormally Attracted To Sin:

I wanted to xpand alittle on an email i received, asking about Tori’s new record “Abnormally Attracted To Sin” and my involvement .
I worked on 4 songs for the record.
All 4 of Tori’s creations , consumed me for the last 3 months of 08.
We used an octet for the string section on 2 songs ( 4 violins, 2 violas 2 celli.
Various synths, samplers, processes, Hammonds (A100 and solovox) and Wurly were used at times, played by Tori and me.
Tori played Bosy on 3.
Matt and Jon played on all 4.
One song i arranged the rythym section, keys and strings around Tori .
Then Matt and Jon added there magic later.
This process finished in Cornwall in December.
The ending of a wonderful record and an emotional year for me.
Well thats it for now.
I will put up more text and pics after the release.

Sounds exciting. We can’t wait!

(Thanks to Seth Miller for catching this.)

Blueberry Girl Reading & Video

Neil Gaiman announced on his Twitter feed this morning that HarperKids has put together a video promoting Blueberry Girl. It includes Neil reading the poem he originally wrote for Tori’s daughter, Tash, along with previews of Charles Vess’ art from the book, which will be released March 10.

Check it out:

Pink Is The New Blueberry Girl

As we reported last weekend, Neil Gaiman mentioned at a recent reading in Santa Monica that he had seen his first pre-print copy of the Blueberry Girl picturebook, illustrated by Charles Vess, and also read the poem of the same title that he had wrote for Tori’s as-yet-unborn daughter back in 2000. Well, Trent from Pink Is The New Blog got to go backstage before the reading and delivers the goods: a photograph of the book’s cover and a video of Neil reading “Blueberry Girl”. Check out the latter after the jump.

Thanks to Adam Connie for the tip!

read more...

"Blueberry" Coming Soon(ish)

Progress is slow sometimes in the publishing world, and some of you may recall that we reported nearly a year ago that Blueberry Girl, the Neil Gaiman poem written for Tash and illustrated by Charles Vess, was “almost done.” Alex F. told us that he saw Neil live in Seattle last night, where he read the poem and told the crowd he had seen his first pre-print copy of the book. So, it must be on its way! Amazon is listing it with a release date of March 10, 2009 — though you can pre-order it now for the curious price of $12.23.

Learn To Hit Things ... From Matty

As per his website, Matt Chamberlain will giving drum lessons from September 22nd through the 26th at Donn Bennett’s Drum Shop in Seattle. If you’re interested, call the shop at +1-425-747-6145 to make arrangements. Thanks to Erin for catching this one!

UPDATE: Also, check out this timely Seattle Weekly article about our favorite little drummer boy and his attempts to school the author in the art of the beat.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Charlie W. and me (hey, that’s MY name, TOO!) told us about a postmortem addendum to the ancient Tori/Alanis “feud”¹ making its way onto various music news sites the past few days…

From Contactmusic.com:

MORISSETTE + AMOS MAKE PEACE OVER ‘HURT EARS’ COMMENT

ALANIS MORISSETTE and TORI AMOS ended a silent feud on the road when the Canadian rocker took the CORNFLAKE GIRL to task over a comment she made in an interview.

Morissette admits she was a little confused when Amos said the album Jagged Little Pill “made her ears hurt,” and decided to bring it up when the two were paired together on tour.

The Ironic hitmaker tells Venice magazine, “I was, ‘All right, what do you have to say for yourself?’ She apologised profusely.”

Years later, Morissette agrees her hit debut was a little harsh for some.

She adds, “She’s (Amos) right… It was a record that didn’t rhyme, and to some ears sounded really abrasive.”

While the above comments from Alanis are recent, we do want to stress that this is pretty much a non-event in Toriville, as Tori and Alanis cleared the air with each other years ago.

¹ (See Tori & Alanis: Their Comments On Each Other for a convenient rundown.)

More From Matt -- and Jon -- in Cornwall!

Over the weekend, Matt Chamberlain updated his site again, talking a bit about recording in Cornwall at Martian Studios with Tori and Jon Evans. Quoth Matt:

Things are going great out here in Cornwall—just been recording music and drinking lots of great coffee that my friend Jon Evans got from an amazing coffee place in Oakland, CA called Blue Bottle Coffee. This company specializes in organic micro roasting,probably some of the best coffee i have ever had—it also makes you feel like a superhuman capable of playing drums for 18 hours straight…

Still no word on just what they are recording out there though, of course!

Thanks to Jimmy Ferrin for the tip-off!

Um, What? Matt Chamberlain In Cornwall, Recording?

Matt’s journal explains that he is in Cornwall to do some recording with Tori. On May 11, he explained, “Tomorrow I’m off to Cornwall England to record with my red headed piano playing friend Mrs. Tori Amos.” The May 13 entry shows a photo of his kit at Martian Studios. Wow. We have no idea what they’re up to over there in England, but as soon as we find out we’ll post it. Thanks to Darrell and Kevin D. for spotting this.