“On Hollywood Boulevard – Live at The Mint in New Orleans”
Performed at Music At The Mint in 2017 – brought by The New Orleans Jazz Museum
To be released through ReverbNation and Bandcamp on 08/08/2024.
Album: On Hollywood Boulevard
Album sub title: Live At The Mint in New Orleans
Album Artist: Billie Davies
Lyrics: Billie Davies
Lead sheet melodies: Billie Davies
Musicians: Billie Davies – electronic drums, Evan Oberla – piano/electric keys/synth, Oliver Watkinson – electric bass, Iris P. – vocals.
Genre: Jazz, Nu-jazz, World Jazz Fusion
Recording date: 05/19/2017
Recording place: The Mint at the New Orleans Jazz Museum
Recording engineer: Danny Kadar
Mixing/Mastering: Mike Davies
Author URL: http://www.billiedaviesmusic.com
About “On Hollywood Boulevard – Live at The Mint in New Orleans”
“On Hollywood Boulevard” came about while Billie Davies still lived at 6533 Hollywood Blvd. at The Historic Hillview Hollywood in Hollywood, Los Angeles. She lived there for several years and her many experiences in and impressions of Hollywood Boulevard needed recording. It took from 2012 in Hollywood, the initial conception, to September of 2016 in New Orleans to result in a recorded album of 5 songs that Billie Davies wrote melodies and lyrics for, 1 instrumental improvisation and 1 improvisation with improvised lyrics by IRIS P.
Billie and her husband/recording engineer Mike Davies chose Evan Oberla, with whom she recorded and performed since February of 2015, on keys/synth and trombone and Oliver Watkinson, who became her bass player in the summer of 2015, on electric bass. Billie Davies met Iris P through an introduction by Evan Oberla, during one of their performances at The Dragon’s Den in New Orleans, and was rejoiced to find the perfect vocalist, the perfect chemistry, to record and perform the electric “On Hollywood Boulevard” lyrics and experience.
The Live at The Mint in New Orleans version in 2017 was the third time they performed On Hollywood Boulevard live and according to Billie Davies tradition sounds different from the original recording as nothing can ever be exactly the same every time and needs to be different as it has a different environment, a different audience, a different mood of the day… In Billie’s opinion the best recording and performance of the “On Hollywood Boulevard” album.
This Live recording shows the evolution of the music since the original recording in 2016 … and the music was performed live first at “The Prime Example” in New Orleans during the CD Release Party in December of 2016.
“It is all about life, and my life, on Hollywood Boulevard, and what that boulevard and Hollywood represents to the world, to America. But then again it is also very much about life in general, and how the media has such a big influence on our lives today through the web, TV, movies, magazines, music and its stars.
Whether you call it prostitution or the seduction (touch me, squeeze me, love me) of millions of people every year into the fantasies that are responsible for maintaining one of the biggest brainwash schemes that are basically controlled by Wall Street and Industry & Enterprise, it all lives on Hollywood Boulevard, in Hollywood.
It is a world of Drugs, murder, con artists and thieves.
It is a world of selling the american dream.
It is a world of high end entertainment that most Hollywood Boulevard locals cannot afford or get into, but maybe they work or perform in it.
It is the world of the dream, a last stand of bohemia where poetry is very much alive and where punk rock and rap and hip hop and DJ’s rule.
It is the world where we smell the crack in the hall ways and where thugs and hookers and homeless and hopefuls meet at night…
It is a world of selling the American Dream, selling that fantasy of Disney and Oscars and Grammys. Selling the brainwash of the world.” (Billie Davies)
“All of my music is improvisational… I just evolve into it and with every project comes something different, depending on the subject of the project or album. I do not think of myself playing avant-garde, or avant-jazz or free jazz or nu jazz, I just play what comes naturally to me, in the case of “On Hollywood Boulevard” for example I needed it to sound very electric, almost commercial like because Hollywood Boulevard is a commercial, is very electric and full of neon lights. I wrote lead sheet music and lyrics for that album. It’s all jazz to me.” (Billie Davies).
About Billie Davies
Billie Davies is a drummer and a composer best known for her free, instinctively avant-garde compositions since the mid nineties, and her improvisational drumming techniques she has performed in Europe and in the US. All of her music is improvisational … reminding us sometimes of, as Jerome Wilson put it on AAJ, “the spiritual jazz tradition, as exemplified by John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders. Billie Davies’ work reminds you of many different things but in the end, it is its own original beast, as powerful as anything more well-known musicians have created.. Her Music Is It’s Own Original Beast”.
By 1977, when she was 22, Billie was working in the Private Night Club sector as a DJ in Cologne, Germany. That set the stage for a successful DJ career in Belgium a few years later, she remembers “Les Cinq Anneaux” in Knokke, coastal Belgium, where she packed the house every weekend.
Aged 25 Davies started the transition to become a professional musician.
She played and performed in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece for the next 7 years.
At a crossroads in her musical career, in 1984, while living and performing in the South of France (Montpellier, Toulouse, Biarritz, La Rochelle), Billie ended up receiving a grant from Max Roach to study at Berklee College of Music, this was after he heard one of her tapes she laid down with a bass player she met in Montpellier, France. Billie was however having too much fun in the south of France, living the life of a gypsy jazz musician and therefore decided not to take the offer. In Max Roach’s words: “Hearing from your tape, you could learn more fundamental drumming techniques, but I also hear the natural drummer, so my advice is for you not to worry too much about your technical skill, you will develop your own, I can definitely hear that, but just in case that you might want to study in a good program, please accept my invitation in the form of a talent grant to come study at the Berklee College of Music, all you need to worry about is finding a place to live and some money to survive”.
A move to the United States at 32 gave her an opportunity to play all over the west coast. In 1987 in Oregon, she met and played a few times with Leroy Vinegar, and then later in early 1988 she moved to California, San Francisco where she was mostly active in North Beach and in the Lower-Haight district, where she met and ended up playing a few times with John Handy and played frequently with local jazz notables at their unforgiving jams, in her words: the best learning school she ever had.
In the mid-nineties she recorded “Cobra Basemento”, that included “The Man From Tollund”, and “Dreams”, the infamous boombox recordings, with Saul Kaye and Mike Goodwin. They were preserved for the future in 2004 & 2005.
In 2009 she moved to Hollywood, California and released “all about Love.” with Tom Bone Ralls and Oliver Steinberg and “12 VOLT” with Daniel Coffeng and Adam Levy and the 23rd Los Angeles Music Awards awarded her best Jazz Artist in 2013.
In March of 2014 she moved to New Orleans where she released “Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon”, with Evan Oberla, Alex Blaine, Branden Lewis and Ed Strohsahl, “On Hollywood Boulevard” with Evan Oberla, Oliver Watkinson and Iris P and “PERSPECTIVES II” re-distributed as “PERSPECTIVES” with Evan Oberla, Oliver Watkinson, Ari Kohn, Iris P and Allie Porter.
She was nominated “Best Contemporary Jazz Artist” by the 2017 Best Of The Beat Awards, AND in 2019 they nominated her “Best Drummer”.
In 2020 she recorded “Whadeva” with Damani Butler and Maude Caillat
In 2022 she left New Orleans and made a permanent move to West Palm Beach, Florida.
Discography As leader:
2004: “Cobra Basemento”
2005: “Dreams”
2012: “all about Love.”
2013: “12 VOLT”
2015: “Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon”
2016: “On Hollywood Boulevard”
2018: “PERSPECTIVES II”
2024: “On Hollywood Boulevard (Live at The Mint in New Orleans)”
Discography As A Contributor:
2020: “Whadeva” (Live at Dangerous Art Studios, New Orleans, LA, 2/13/2020), a Damani Butler project.