Gina Sicilia, the Blues-Americana singer-songwriter, sat down with ReviewFix.com for an exclusive interview. In the first of two part interview, Sicilia discusses how she writes her songs, her thoughts on her recent success on the Blues album charts, and learn how she defines herself as an artist, and more.
Review Fix: First, congratulations, you are set to open for Beth Hart on New Years Day concert at The Blockley Pourhouse in Philadelphia.
Gina Sicilia: It’s really cool, it’s the second time opening for her. She’s just an amazing singer, an amazing artists and she draws a huge crowd, she has such a loyal following, and her audience is really passionate about music. It’s a really cool audience to play for, so I’m really excited. It’ll be a good way to start off the new year.
RF: How do you go about writing your songs?
GS: It happens in different situations. Sometimes I’ll sit down with the guitar with the intention of writing a song. Usually that’s not the case. Usually I’ll be driving my car, I’ll be doing my hair in front of the bathroom mirror, or something like that, I’ll start humming a melody, and sometimes the lyrics, sometimes not, and usually a song forms from that.
You know a lot of my songs I’ve written while driving in my car, I think a lot. I wrote a song, it’s going to be on my next CD, called “Don’t Wanna Be No Mother, Don’t Wanna Be No Wife,†it’s not autobiographical but I was sitting in the airport on my way down to Florida, on my way to Disney World, and I was just kind of observing couple and families and the way they interacted with each other and their kids and I wrote that song based on that. So, I’m a people watcher, I draw inspiration from different places.
RF: Earlier this year your album “Can’t Control Myself†debut at number eleven on Living Blues Radio. How did that make you feel when you found out?
GS: It was really cool. It’s a great feeling to know that radio stations are playing my music and especially with this latest CD because it’s not a really a straight Blues CD. It’s not a Blues CD at actually, none of my CDs have been straight Blues CD. I’ve always incorporated Americana, Country and Roots music, but this one doesn’t have a straight Blues song on it. It has Soul music on it, which Blues radio plays, but there’s no twelve-bar Blues on this one. There’s country, soul, a mixture of things, kind of a good Americana album. So it was really cool to know that XM Radio Bluesville embraced it so much and that Blues Radio embraced it so much, and it got really good reviews in the press and the Blues audience gave me a really great response to it. I was really happy about that.
RF: How would you define yourself as a musician?
GS: I would say I am a Roots music artist. I love Blues, R&B, I love Soul, Country, I love Rock. I love Jazz, and I like you know combining all those genres into kind of one crazy little genre of my own. My own style of writing, my own style of singing, so, I definitely would consider myself an American and Roots artist. I guess American and Roots have the same meaning. Americana’s just, you know, if you’re Americana you’re performing American music that’s American music which is Blues, Soul, and Country.
RF: How did you get into music?
GS: I’ve been singing since before I could talk. I was probably like two years old, probably wasn’t singing, but, I was like humming, or maybe making go-go-ga-ga songs, clapping my hands, singing the alphabet when I was two or three, or something like that, or so my mom says. But, you know I grew up listening to music, there was always music in the house. My parents are big music lovers, so I grew up listening to a lot of the music they grew up listening to, like Doop, music from the ‘50s and the ‘60s, groups like Deon and The Belmonts, and the Cherils, the 60s girl groups, and lot of Doop. So I always had an appreciation for classic music and timelessness.
I started writing songs when I was twelve. They were probably kind of like cheesy, really simple pop songs, I don’t know what I was writing, they were mostly lyrics. But when I was about thirteen or fourteen years old, I was watching TV and I saw an infomercial for Solid Gold Soul, and it had B. B. Kind, Bobby Bland, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and a bunch of Soul and Blues artists. And I got it, and I listened to it non-stop, and that’s what really got me into the genre. And I started writing Blues and singing it non-stop, and I spent most of my teenage years locked away in the bedroom, singing along with Aretha Franklin and trying to emulate everything she did.
RF: Why the Blues?
GS: It’s sort of like, it just spoke to me. It seemed instantly familiar. It’s sort of like any kind of relationship you have with anything: it feels right. You can’t really explain why it feels right, it’s just like a chemistry there, something speaks to you, you’re drawn to it. I didn’t choose it because it’s sad, or I didn’t choose it because it’s this or that. It just spoke to me. It was natural to me, it came natural to me. It just seemed natural.
RF: Is Aretha Franklin your idol? Who are your idols?
GS: I have a lot of idols. I would say my all-time favorite is Sam Cooke, as a singer, a song-writer, performer, as someone who is involved in the business aspect of the business. Towards the end of his life he had a label and he was involved in developing unknown artists which is something I would like to do. He had it all, his music is amazing, he is amazing.
RF: What qualities do you try to emulate from Sam Cooke?
GS: I just try to draw inspiration from his song writing. He once said ‘The more you read, the better you’ll write’ which is so true. I have a lot of influences depending on the genre. Another one of my idols is Dolly Parton, I love Dolly Parton, she’s an incredible song-writer. Sometimes that gets overlooked, people can’t get past her Barbie doll figure. She’s an amazing songwriter, an incredible performer.
As far as modern artist I really like, who I’ve gotten into recently, and now is my favorite singer is Brandi Carlile. She’s incredible. She’s an incredible song-writer, an incredible singer. I mean, I don’t often hear singers that make me say ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ So, she’s become one my favorite singers. The stuff she does with her voice and it’s just incredible. She just has a way about her that I really like.
RF: Is it her voice or is it her story-telling?
GS: It’s both. She writes really really good songs. Or she performs really good songs. I don’t know if she writes all of them, I know she has some song-writing partners. She has an amazing repertoire of music and her voice is incredible.
RF: Do you have any song-writing partners?
GS: No, I don’t. I have never really written a song with someone else. It’s something I would really live to do. It’s just a matter of meeting the right person, who you have that chemistry with, you click with, you want to write the same kind of music.
Leave a Reply