My album Hey Sicko has been a decade in the making…surfing life’s waves of hopes, disappointments, lovers, haters, believers, non-believers, blood, sweat, punches, smiles, right hooks, laughter and tears.
I am finally giving birth to this lion on my own, released into the ether 2nd October 2020. It is a love letter to the awakening of our self-empowerment. Dedicated to all the outsiders, renegades, mavericks, seekers, mystics, starseeds, originals, wanderers and rebels out there...
No artistic compromises have been made, the underbelly, the beast’s vulnerability is revealed. I can say with full conviction this is the best work I have yet completed.
I am a storyteller…and this album Hey Sicko of 12 songs, is an empowering story, as a gypsy-rebel-wild-child-surfer, of shattering the walls other people and society may have built around us, and our beliefs that may be holding us back… riding the dark storms of the open sea to the clearing in the sun, the adventures and people we meet along this travelled dirt road, rising from the ashes time and time again to seize the moment, having fun every second we are on this earth…it is in essence about owning and believing in who we truly are, embracing all of ourselves, the dark and the light, standing tall, on our own two feet and not letting anyone or anything distract us from our paths, being the warriors we are.
I believe the job of every human, especially artists, is to reach down to the deepest, darkest depths of our souls, go digging around in those emotional caves uninhabited for years, remove the masks, tame the ego trickster, meet and then reveal our authentic selves through our unique voices.
We tell our story through the shades we were born with and then colored by our experiences, of how we see life…then stand by this…no fear.
Recorded in Los Angeles with incredibly talented Nashville musicians Stanton Edward (guitar & bass) and Jon Radford (drums), Beau Burchell (sound engineer) and the help of Grammy Award nominated producer Michael Beinhorn (Aerosmith, Hole, Soundgarden, Violent Femmes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Social Distortion and Marilyn Manson).
Coming from a classically trained musician background of playing in orchestras and jazz bands through school (flute, saxophone, piano, guitar), and yet an avid classic rock and folk fan, growing up listening to Janis Joplin, Bad Company, Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater, Led Zepellin, Tom Petty, David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan…
Then time spent in the US, playing LA’s glittery rock scene, where your bass player walks off the Viper Room stage mid-song high to go to a party in the Hollywood Hills cause some hot blonde chick invited him…touring the west coast in a mini-van with four guys, whiskey, smelly feet and very few showers, and then Nashville’s country/indie-rock and songwriter café scene where you better be damn good enough to stand up there alone on the Bluebird Cafe stage, in front of 20 of your insanely talented peers, audience stripped of distracting lights, alcohol and drugs…just your guitar, your voice and with what you have to say that counts, looking up at framed photos of country legends Hank Williams and Dolly Parton staring at you…that’s the real boot-camp training ground for a musician.
Inevitably this surfing of the musical microcosms, influenced my life and music, so after the release and touring of ‘Lost and Found’ (2008), recorded in the traditional Nashville way with impeccable session musicians at one of the top studios ‘Blackbird’, where ‘diamond’ is part of the studio muso lingo and the first pass of a song is ‘perfect’, I decided to do the opposite with my next album…push back against over produced sounds heard everywhere on the radio, and organically write a true classic rock album, with the beautiful, magic unexpected roll of the snare, bass behind the kick, or guitar surprise lick that can only happen when playing in real-time with amazing musicians who are also my friends…with whom after an exhausting rehearsal, I would stay up late on venice beach with a Corona, talking about relationships and the meaning of life.
This album would take as long as it would take…and once ready my beacon is that it stands the test of time alongside my heroes.
The ethos of making the album was to return to the old-fashioned way of bands making rock music…taking only the best songs out of 100’s I had written and then some, rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, then another rehearsal till your fingers bleed and you vocal chords are raspy as ****….and only when everyone is ready, where you can feel with eyes closed, the other musicians playing through your senses intuitively, when you are one entity…then and only then stepping through studio doors to track together in one room, live as a band…
Preview of the whole album is available on my website. I have begged, borrowed and put everything I have into this album for over ten years. So while the music world has changed over the last decade, in the spirit of supporting myself, my fellow musicians and artists, so we can continue to create and put art into the world, I ask that if you do dig the album and wish to support with a download order here on this website, I would really appreciate whatever you think is the right price to donate. I hope you enjoy and go on a journey listening to the album, as much as I did making it for you.
Thank you for listening.
Much love & light
Noush x
