Not only is British singer Sylvie Lewis an admirer of songs written by both great American and European composers, but by looking at her and listening to her music, she could have easily lived in an era (1930s through 1950s) considered the heyday for classic standards.
Lewis, who attended school in both Italy and Switzerland, recently finished work on her debut album, "Tangos and Tantrums" on Cheap Lullaby Records. It was co-produced by Lewis and musician Richard Swift.
The work - which not only makes good use of staple instruments like guitar, piano, bass and drums, but also strings, horns and a harmonica - offers up a myriad of different sounds from jazz to ragtime to cabaret to salsa.
Raised in London, Lewis became interested in European cabaret legends like Kurt Weill, Noel Coward and Lotte Lenya; and American composers like Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and George Gershwin. Lewis now resides in Los Angeles after first coming to the United States to study music at the Berklee School of Music in Boston in 1995. Lewis took a year off from school to travel in East and South Africa. In 1999, she relocated to Los Angeles where she has since become a resident musician at venues like Hotel Caf/.
The Beach Reporter this week sat down with Lewis, who speaks four languages, to talk about her earliest memories of music, the new record and her influences. Lewis will perform at Tangiers in Los Angeles April 5.
The Beach Reporter: Where do your songs off this album come from?
Sylvie Lewis: Well, I definitely think that my songs are sort of mosaics of my experiences. All sorts of things get in there like things that have happened to me, along with books that I have read, conversations that I have had with people and paintings that I have seen inspire me. So a lot of it is from my life and some of it you have to make more interesting.
Is it harder for you to talk about your own life compared to things that you haven't experienced?
The things I haven't experienced, there is always imagination, which I rely heavily on. Things from my own life, the really personal things, I need to take some time to process them and make them palatable to other people. Certain experiences I've had are too raw to talk about, so I definitely think there is a process of digesting before I can write about them in an eloquent way that will be interesting to people.
You were born in England, but went to school in Italy and Switzerland. How do you think this has shaped your exposure to music?
Well, in a funny way, I guess ... when I was in Italy I listened to a lot of Paolo Conte whom I just love. He is just brilliant, sort of like the Italian Tom Waits. I was pretty young when I went to both of those countries and not really sure that I was going to be a musician at that stage so it was more about learning languages to me. But I think that my music is very much rooted in the past - the great American songbook and also the parallel, which I think, is the great, the European songbook. Just living and growing up in Europe definitely gave me my roots in terms of European jazz.
I think in most ways learning music is just like learning a different language and because you speak a few different languages, is the learning process the same?
Yeah, I think it is. I think languages and music or playing an instrument are very similar in that if you don't practice you forget. If you don't practice guitar, you forget how to play; and if you don't speak Italian, you forget vocabulary and phrases.
You play guitar for the first time on this album. Any challenges along the way?
Yeah, it was a bit nerve-racking for me because previously I always hired people to come in and play for me because I felt like I wasn't a good enough player or technically proficient enough. But with this album, I wanted something more honest. It wasn't necessarily about being perfect. It was about being real, so I played a lot of guitar on it. It was really challenging to record anything because when you play live, the music is there and then it disappears, it's gone in the air and any mistake is gone with it. When you're recording something, you get to listen back to it over and over again; and you have to be sure that you are really happy with what you did.
Was music on the mind when you were away at school? When did the whole interest in music come about?
It started when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I was kicked out of school when I was 7 for being very misbehaved and my mother had to pick me up the day I was kicked out. She came in, dragged me down the corridor and passed all of these scowling faces of teachers. She heard a voice saying, "Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Lewis." My mother was like, "(Bleep) it, I'm not doing this anymore, I'm not going to listen to one more complaint about my daughter, I'm not hearing it." Finally the woman who caught up with her was my piano teacher and she told her, "I just wanted to let you know that Sylvie is musically gifted and you should really pursue that with her." My mother just kissed her and walked off (laughs). So my mother enrolled me in a school where I could sing a lot in a very strong music department.
Is there a memory that stands out when you first realized the effect of music itself?
Well, I love the "Sound of Music" and when I was 5 years old I thought I wanted to be a nun because I thought nuns got to sing all the time and kiss Christopher Plummer, and that was kind of all right with me. But it wasn't too long before I realized that perhaps it is not the life of a nun and it might be another life I was looking for. I used to cycle around the park singing "Sound of Music" very loudly to all the trees and the birds, and hoping to be discovered at age 5 by Christopher Plummer. No such thing happened.
What are your top-five favorite albums?
Joni Mitchell, "Blue"
Paolo Conte, "Greatest Hits"
Rufus Wainwright, "Poses"
Richard Swift, "The Novelist"
Ute Lemper, "Berlin Cabaret Songs"
The last selection, who is that?
She is a German cabaret singer who is outrageously brilliant and beautiful, and is probably in her 40s now. She sang "Chicago" on Broadway and in London I think in the 1980s. A sixth choice, if I could have one, would be anything by Serge Gainsbourg. He's just one of my huge heroes, he's brilliant. He's a French guy who's been making albums since 1959. He's a living legend in France but no one has heard of him outside of the country.
How would you compare American composers to European composers of the 1940s and 1950s?
Well, I think in the great American songbook, the songs tend to have more of a happy ending and they also tend to be a little bit cleaner. The most ill-mannered you got was "Love for Sale" but it's not definitely about a prostitute, I mean yes it is, but it's kind of ambiguous. Whereas you have Edith Piaf singing songs about a prostitute who just murdered one of her clients. I wonder if it was because of the immediacy of war in Europe that things were not quite as nice and neat and clean. Lyrically speaking they would get dirty on you, and tell you when things were broken and messed up. I think the American tendency was to make things look beautiful. I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I want to let you know when things are messed up but I also want to make them sound beautiful to you (laughs).
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