|
[05 Jan 2020|06:05am] |
![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) warnerbrothers members only! question | comments | request | pickles? All comments screened. |
|
| great in the eyes of someone... |
[05 Jan 2020|05:40am] |
|
|
|
|
[05 Jan 2009|04:55am] |
Strange Happenings
by Jenny Rominy for Spin Magazine
“Music just sorta happened to me…” A surprising sentiment from a person who grew up in the house of a rock legend.
On a frosty November morning in the heart New York City, I’m sitting in the back of a Dean & Deluca Café as 22-year-old Audrey Monroe warms her hands around a cup of Egyptian Chamomile Tea. We’ve been inside for ten minutes and she’s still shaking like a leaf. “I just wasn’t built for the cold. I try to avoid New York in the winter when I can help it,” she asserts and the bluish tint to her caramel complexion backs up the claim. I suppose, this isn’t so surprising for a born and raised Californian. She’s only in the Big Apple for one week to promote her debut album One Cell in the Sea which dropped earlier this fall and has been doing a slow climb up the Adult Contemporary and Pop Charts ever since.
“I’ve got Letterman tonight, a few radio appearances, and then Conan at the end of the week,” she explains, sipping her tea daintily. When I tease her about her form, she laughs at herself. “My mom is a huge etiquette buff. She put my sister and I in these classes as kids where they had us walk around with books on our heads and practice a proper curtsy. I think it only stuck for me though. Not so much for my sister. You think watching me drink this is funny, you should see me at a dinner table. I really can’t help myself.” I ask if she minds my more rudimentary table manners and she grins brightly. “Not a damn bit. You do you.”
Monroe will agree that her positive attitude, remarkable talent and, reluctantly, her looks have got people suddenly paying attention and seeking out her music, but one mention of people’s interests being steeped by who her father is and the recoil is instant. “That’s why I used to never talk about it. All through high school especially. People would find out that my dad is Garrett Griffin and suddenly I’d be surrounded by all these fake friends and people who just want a chance to meet a rock star. I started using my middle name around tenth grade so I didn’t have to deal with it as much and it’s worked out.”
As the lead singer of glam rock band The Red Battalion, Garrett Griffin made his mark on the musical world in the seventies and early eighties, garnered a rabid fan base, and attracted the love of Nigerian runway model Esi Darzi. The couple produced two daughters and Griffin went on to a successful solo career when the band dissolved in 1984. These days he’s more often seen with "Producer" in front of his name rather than "Performing Artist". But more on that later. I ask Audrey what it was like growing up in such a musical household.
“It’s hard to explain. It’s like how do you rebel in a house with people who’ve seen and done everything under the sun?” she laughs. It appears as though she’s warming up as she finally takes off her coat. “You can’t, right? So I think my form of acting out was not getting into the music. I had to take piano lessons until I was ten and said I didn’t want to do it anymore. Dad would have all these amazing musicians going back and forth through the house and I just wasn’t into it. Instead I did academic stuff and excelled in school. I got accepted to Pepperdine and USC. But along the way, music just sorta happened to me.”
Ironically it was a year spent here in New York that diverted her path to the collegiate life. “I wanted to take a year off and just travel and see things other than the inside of a classroom for a while. I’d chosen USC and deferred my enrollment. I made it to New York that summer and I just never left.”
On her own for the first time at the tender age of 17,—“I graduated early”—Monroe fell in love with idea of a modern bohemian lifestyle. “I grew up comfortably and I wanted to try something else. I got a job in a coffee shop kinda like this one. I found a place that wasn’t much bigger than my old closet and shared it with a roommate. Half the time I was broke just making the ends meet but it was the best time of my life.” That roommate is the one to thank, or as she would say “blame” for Monroe’s entry to the music scene.
“My roomie was a musician and trying to get signed. He’d drag me to all these gigs with him. One night I volunteered to play piano for his show. And then it was just this snowball effect. I was playing piano. I was singing back up. I was writing songs and then all of a sudden I was on stage by myself and it was my show.”
Discovered one night by an A&R representative for RCA Records inside of New York’s Knitting Factory, she says that it’s all been a rollercoaster ride since then. Embarking on a crash course in music appreciation, she found inspiration in everyone from Etta James to Prince to Radiohead. “I just started devouring anything I could get my hands on. I’d fallen in love with the one thing I’d tried to stay away from my whole life; music. It all started happening so fast. I got signed. I started working with different writers and producers. I lived in the studio for two years getting ready for where I am right now.”
And where is that? On a whirlwind promo tour and with single, “You Picked Me”, burning up Billboard’s Heat Seekers chart. It’s a tempting little ballad about the joys of first love. She tells me that almost all of her songs are autobiographical, but when I ask if the song is about someone specifically, she plays coy. “What girl hasn’t fallen in love? It’s about that ecstatic state that comes with it. It’s universal.” And the heartbreak of “Almost Lover”? Is that also universal, and not specific? “Well, with first love usually comes first heartbreak. Unless you’re really lucky or really dumb.”
On the strength of her pitch-perfect voice and hauntingly emotional lyrics, Audrey Monroe’s rise to stardom is just beginning. There's an honesty to the way she performs, delivering each performance with passion and sincerity. Fans say they connect to the way she throws herself entirely into the music when she's on stage. The mysterious come-hither look in her brown eyes contrasted with the sunniness of her smile, don't hurt either. And what does her father, the executive producer of One Cell in the Sea, think of his daughter’s success?
“I didn’t tell him what was going on for a long time. My dad’s signed to the same label, but I wasn’t using his last name so it wasn’t the hardest secret to keep. Somehow one of my demos reached his hands and… Well, I think it shocked him half to death.” She laughs about it now, but confides that there was a period of tension when it was discovered she’d been keeping such a big secret. “But it all worked out for the best. He's proud... and relived I'm not a lawyer or something. He gets cranky and yells at me all the time for singing with my eyes closed. We’re both perfectionists in a lot of ways so there were days that we fought more than we recorded. But, I couldn’t imagine a better producer to work with. “
Speaking of producers, the album’s finale is a moving track called “Hope for the Hopeless”. It was written and produced by Jason Smith of Blue Chairs and solo fame. She lights up when I ask how this collaboration came about. “We were actually introduced by my manager. We have the same management. I was getting down the end of recording for the album. Jason and I talk for a little while and he says to me ‘I’ve got this dope song you might like!’ It’s just something that didn’t make it onto his album. And he plays it for me and I love it. A few weeks later, we’re in the studio recording it and it was the last cut to make the album. It was such a good time. He’s an amazing artist.”
It’s almost noon when the lunchtime crowd starts rolling in. Every few minutes someone walks by our table and gives Audrey a funny glance or a strange smile. “That’s just started happening recently. I always wonder if I’ve got something on my face,” she jokes.
There’s nothing on her face today but an enchanting smile. She’d better get used to those looks because I've got a feeling fame something that is about to "just happen" to this young siren.
|
|