The Idler, A Web Periodical, 1-18

"Read All About It In The Idler"

18 January 2001

Lea, Rising

By Alexander C. Kafka

Lea

Say there was a dazzling D.C.-area singer-songwriter with an irresistible, velvety alto voice, an assured stage presence, and an endless repertoire of wonderfully fresh, original tunes. You'd have heard her--or at least heard of her--right?

Well, maybe. Maybe, if you'd happened upon her at the right Starbucks or were drawn to her endearing sounds as you browsed at Borders. Or maybe if you wandered into one of the monthly Kensington Coffee Houses in the basement of St. Paul's Methodist--that's assuming you can find the entrance. No not that one, follow the sign. No, not that one either, that's the main sanctuary. Yeah, that one, at the top of the handicapped-access ramp, the other side of the building from the parking lot.

How's this for slick? Five-dollar cover, and that includes the bottomless cup of joe donated by Café Monet. Desserts, like those incredible brownies made by one of the three dozen volunteers who manage the event, are a buck extra, but hey, proceeds go to after-school tutoring, and if you have change, you can put it in the donation box for the September 11 victims. Have a seat in one of the folding chairs at a long table with a red plastic cloth and the flowers donated by Johnson's. Heck, take the flowers home after the show if you like, but leave the vase, OK?

So, get the feeling you're not in the heart of the hustle of the big-label music biz? There's the husband-and-wife duo, Richard Dahl and Audrey Morris. He's singing a funny coal-miner-style folk song about dot-commers getting the shaft (his day job's at an Internet firm, he jokes, but he's lucky to have the non-paying folk gigs, for security). These performers are like family. The ones not on stage are all sitting together at a table up front, clapping supportively, laughing at the between-song patter from the performers. Audrey and Richard invite up on stage, for vocal back-up, Cletus Kennelly, Garth Ross, and Lea. She's up there again, for the next set, playing bass and singing back-up vocals for Kennelly, who will later sing back-up for her.

She's unassuming. The demeanor of a self-contained junior-high-school librarian or some such. "A little more vocal?" she asks the sound man, like Oliver Twist requesting more gruel. Yeah, a real prima donna, this one.

Next set, and it's her turn.

Lea, who in fact has a last name--"Morris, like the cat," she says--is, by all accounts, ready to take off. "She's in her own ballgame," says Pat Staton, who's played Lea on her show on WAGE-a.m. in Leesburg. "People I think are sitting up and taking notice of her through the music gossip line."

Sarah Launius, who books performers for local Borders stores, doesn't want to lose Lea, but says, "I hope to see her doing more along the lines of the larger university auditoriums, breaking into larger venues. I think it wouldn't be totally out of the question to see her playing at the Birchmere in a year or two."

Molly Ruskin, who runs the Kensington Coffee House with her husband Ray, remembers several years ago when, "out of the blue she sent us a tape. . . . We get lots of stuff but we popped it in, and even though it wasn't a highly produced tape we were immediately intrigued and enchanted. And later, after she had played at the coffee house--at the time she was only 20 years old--we were stunned by her sophistication and the mature sound."

And what is that sound, exactly? Well, that's when people have to scratch their heads for a moment. There's certainly a folk element, "but it's not a folky-dokey type music," says Staton. "There's a lot of jazz and bossa nova. She stretches her voice" A little gospel. A little soul. Her debut CD, Creation, with some arrangements backed by drummer Chris Wheel, has a few cuts--like the angst-rocker "Nothing," or "Pins and Needles," about a humiliated lover--that would sound at home on alternative rock stations. And a couple--like "Chickens," an infectious ode to the little people who plan to become big names--that would sound apt on soft rock stations. But even the DJs who play Lea, like Mary Cliff, who's featured Lea's music on WETA's "Traditions" program, will tell you that most of Lea's material would fare better on public, community, and college stations in Boston, Austin, or New York. Some of the album's best cuts--for instance, "I Was (One)," a heartbreaking lament inspired by overcoming fear of neo-Nazis on a German train she was riding, or "Favourite," a gladdening, but wary, celebration of self--are wonderfully alluring, but maybe too gentle for mainstream airtime.

Jeff Gruber, of Blue House productions in Silver Spring, who co-produced Creation and plays some inventive guitar and mandolin tracks on it, says, "If you can't pigeonhole somebody, the record companies aren't much help." And for Lea, that's a problem. Staton, speaking practically, urges mixing in some "standard pop" on Lea's next CD, "just to get noticed." That approach would be a shame if it involved compromises, but Lea's versatile enough that it shouldn't really call for any stylistic contortions.

After all, Tracy Chapman did it.

Oh, no. The Chapman question. Lea used to hate the comparison, though she's grown resigned to it. She says it comes about, basically, "because I'm a black female with dreds and a guitar and she's one of the few others who've really made a name for herself. I don't mind it, but I don't think I sound like her."

No, she doesn't. Her voice, her songwriting, and her whole stage personality are lighter, more mellifluous, and often more lushly harmonized than Chapman's. But it's more than skin color and dreds, too. There's a pervasive bitter-sweetness to the songs, both topically and musically, that's not unlike Chapman. There's the unadorned acoustic presentation. And there's that sense of spontaneity, that feeling of, she just had an experience and she's gonna sit down and tell you about it because it's important.

The Chapman comparisons irritate Lea less now than they did a while ago, she says, and she even does a Chapman cover, "Baby Can I Hold You."

Perhaps lessening the sting, also, is the fact that Lea's compared to a lot of other singer-songwriters, too, at least some of whom don't have dreds, or even a guitar. And anyone who can be compared with that many performers must ultimately sound like, well, herself.

There's a Phoebe Snow flower-child quality to some of the ballads, and an early Roberta Flack kind of calm, precision passion. When the amp's turned up and the kit drums replace the congas, the jazzy chromaticism and syncopation bring to mind the first few Joan Armatrading albums. But the winding melodies and free-verse lyrics inspire Joni Mitchell analogies (which Lea finds flattering but a little baffling, since she's never heard Joni Mitchell--remember, she's only 23). And "Chickens" could be a cover for Sheryl Crowe.

Truth is, Lea listened in high school to Neil Young and other classic rock, plus Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and all the other grunge all her classmates were listening to. So those were her influences? No, not those either.

"It sounds cheesy, but the most honest answer is my parents," she says. Her dad, John, is a trumpet player who traded a career playing with an R&B band called Black Heat for family life and work at the post office, "He was always playing trumpet, walking around singing a bass line." Even when the music was coming from the stereo, "You turn on the music and my dad has an extra part for it."

As does her mom, Sandra, "a staunch Southern Baptist" who wanted to be a professional singer but also ultimately opted for family and post-office work. That doesn't mean she stopped singing, though. She was in the Jones Gospel Family Singers, a group Lea's grandfather started some 45 years ago. Lea, who--family legend has it--had been soloing in church since she was 3, joined the Jones family singers when she was 6 and sang with her mom, her aunts, and a cousin for about a dozen years. "Church music. That's the best music ever," says Lea, who diplomatically skirts the fact that she's no longer singing much of it. Still, it's clear that like most overnight successes, Lea's took about 20 years.

In addition to guitar, she plays flute, drums, bass, and a little piano. She thinks the Jones family singers is "where a lot of my arranging comes from, having to find the left-over part. Singing with them kind of opened up a lot of musical space in my brain."

Lea was born in D.C., and grew up in Baltimore's Forest Park neighborhood and in Silver Spring. The household was busy with Lea, her sister Joi, and "various foster kids and cousins," usually two at a time, at least 15 in all, who stayed anywhere from a few weeks to eight or nine years. All that company, she says, "can be good and bad."

Her mom wanted her to be a doctor, though Joi, who plans to be one, has taken some of that heat off. Lea's dad doesn't mind her playing music, but it took him a while to get used to the music she plays. "He's a soul musician," she explains. "To him, I was playing bluegrass." He's a perfectionist with perfect pitch, she says, "and any time you do something wrong he makes sure you know it and makes sure you don't ever do it again. I have him to thank for my ear and my precision. He made it difficult for me for a long time. He didn't appreciate the kind of music I was doing, always dogging the music, telling me it was a waste of time." That friction's lessened, she says. "Now since I've gotten the CD done, it's pretty obvious that I'm serious."

If she was one petal of a beautiful flower in the Jones singers, it seems that she blossomed as an individual performer during an exchange program when she was at Springbrook High School. She was going to go to Spain, but it was too expensive, so she went to Germany instead. With rudimentary German, she says, "I was out there on a limb and did the best I could. I had so much fun and did so many things. I booked some gigs . . . . I was my own booking agent at 17." The highlight was when she brought together some German students and put on a show based on stories by Oscar Wilde. For the production, "The Happy Prince," she scored the music, adapted the script, and made costumes. "We did a little bit of traveling. It filled me with pride, filled me with joy."

Her parents, both college grads, wanted her to go that direction. She went to Montgomery College "for a couple years and I had enough of it," she says. "I'm not opposed to going back to it, but it's not on my mind." She worked at a Pizza Hut, and whatever the tips were, the job inspired the song "Chickens," as in don't count 'em.

Sally knows around 4:30 she'll be free. That's the only way she

makes it through the day. She'll never be a Marilyn Monroe, but she knows

she's got her thing. She's a good girl, she's a smart girl and she's never

out of place. She's just thinking 'bout the time when eveyrone'll know her

name. And she fills another glass 'til they say when. She's so busy counting

chickens, man, that she can't even see that right now baby, no one's ever heard

you at all. Sally's gonna buy a cover for the pool, put a swing in the front

yard just for her boys. Nobody minds that she lives on Second Street in an

old rundown apartment by the closed down Dairy Queen. Where's the harm in

only dreaming if it's the best break that she's had?..."

"I used to work the lunch buffet," Lea recalls. "One area looked like a dance floor. And I thought, 'I could turn this Pizza Hut into a club and I could play here.' . . . Sally is me, planning about when I'm gonna be famous and play guitar and sing all the time. It's about being in the exact opposite of the place where you want to be but knowing you're going to get there."

For a couple years, she became deeply involved, she says, in "an intense religious movement" called the International Church of Christ. Meeting in her old high-school auditorium, "a lot of people would consider it a cult. I just think it was radical Christianity. It was really great . . . charismatic, warm people, young people, diversity, attachment to the Bible, close attention to the teachings of Christ, a pure lifestyle, a whole lot of evangelism."

"I'm not badmouthing it," Lea says, but she grew away from it. "From time to time, people have their doubts anyway. What I was saying I believed wasn't in my head and in my heart. I didn't want to go through the motions."

She stopped attending the International Church meetings, moved, and started a new relationship. She played more shows at Montgomery College and hung out with a group that was as different from the church group as "night and day," she says. "It didn't bother me. I still don't drink, don't smoke. Those are not of interest to me. But I realized people can do those things and it doesn't make them evil. Playing guitar is what I'm addicted to. I've had a few varying experiences with it, which I think in the long run is a very good thing."

That life transition left its mark on the CD's title song, "Creation," which Lea says is "not so much mocking my religious background as questioning it a little bit, asking God some direct questions."

"Seems every inclination of our hearts is on/evil all the time," she sings. . . . "Here I am a little part of creation. One mother's child born/free and wild in this great nation./Here's my message, here's my plea: I will be all that I can be in this place/and this time."

The song has a jaunty, perplexed quality, joyously embellished by the fiddle playing of Rick Schmidt, whom the album's co-producer Gruber brought in and calls "an incredible multi-instrumentalist, one of the best secrets in this area."

Lea says of the song, "I know people need faith, but God is hard to define. My beliefs are constantly evolving, but that song, it kind of sums up a big part of my philosophy. I'm here. I'm a part of what's going on. Sometimes it's beautiful. Sometimes' it's not. But I'm just really grateful to be a part of it."

Lea next attended to her two most vital creations, her 2-year-old daughter Laela Sequoia Meadow, and the CD. Laela's name is a combination of Lea's and that of the girl's dad Lee, a songwriter and sax player. Laela, whose picture you can see on Creation's back cover, "is a beautiful, beautiful girl--stubborn," says Lea. "I honestly encourage a little bit of rebellion. I think she ought to exercise her rights as a two-year-old. She's adventurous, climbing, bossing people around." For her first Christmas, Laela got her own little guitar, and "she plays the drums all the time. She's been to gigs, seen me on cable access. She'll point and say, 'Mommy,' and start dancing."

The CD is also beautiful, and in its creation, also stubborn. Lea thought it would take a few months and a couple thousand dollars. She picked Gruber out of the phone book because she liked his company logo, came in, and laid out her plan. Gruber, who Lea says is "the man, he's just awesome," "basically shook his head and said, 'You have to be joking.'" When her speakers and guitar were ripped off from the trunk of her car, the business model went further askew.

The album was still made for a relative pittance, though a few times the pittance she imagined. Her mom and others helped out financially, and that few months turned into three years.

The next album, of course, is on her mind. Asked if she has enough songs--which she says usually come to her first as chord progressions, with melody and lyrics following--she says that's no problem. She has about 100 to 150 of them. "I've written so many songs," she says, adding with typical self-promotion, "and so many of them are completely crap." Aha. Well then, out of those 100 to 150, how many are studio-worthy? She clarifies: All of them--they're culled from the complete list, which she thinks numbers roughly 1,000.

"I don't need to be told that I have to be out there," says Lea. "I'm not a business person. I'm not one for chasing down gigs or producers or A&R [artist and repertoire] people, but the last couple years I've gotten better at learning to present myself.

"I'm really not here to impress anybody. I'm just doing what I do. I'm not selling sex and I'm not selling an image. This is what I have to say. Some people will like it. Some people won't."

Even in her 20-minute Kensington set full of love songs, Lea doesn't like to be pigeonholed, throwing in a ghoulish number about dancing corpses whose fingernails are still growing.

But she closes with a tender bossa nova, solo, with just an acoustic guitar. "I'll Want Nothing More," a gorgeous, straight-forward love song, works fine even without the overdubbed flute tracks (by Lea) that grace the CD. As she sings it, her eyes shine as she gazes out at the audience and at her new beau, Jason, a professional puppeteer from upstate New York who's flown down for the occasion.

Love is real, give in to doubt no more, but one must learn to walk before one

can fly. Patiently awaiting wings. When they come, I'll break loose, be free

of everything that stood in my way before.

(Lea's debut CD, Creation, is available at House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park, MD and at Borders' Fairfax, VA and Bowie, MD locations, or by sending a check for $15 [which includes shipping] to: Lea, 14562 Good Hope Road, Silver Spring, MD, 20905.)

Alexander C. Kafka is an editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education and a freelance arts writer.