Harlan Steinberger

Thanks to Ann Cohen for her beautiful renderings!

Thanks all who came out and many thanks to Beyond Baroque for hosting such a wonderful night!

Baba Alade performed songs off his album Unified and One

Ellyn Maybe introduced us to a Poetry Rodeo. Many thanks to the incredible band and the rest of the poets!

In Gwendolines words the show goes:

From nerd to beauty queen…
Encounters with the cane to the first time my father said ‘I love you’…
You are invited to join me on a very personal journey.

Without hesitation, I can safely tell you that Laughing with My Mouth Wide Open is the proudest artistic achievement of my career. Even more so than my Emmy submission for Desperate Housewives, or Robert Duvall teaching me to tango on set in the snow, or hearing my Chinese Zithering on KCRW. (more…)

Video by: Jacob Mendel

***Don’t forget! Hen House is curating an awesome lineup of poets and musicians this Friday at Beyond Baroque 7:30pm! We will have wine and samosas from Samosa House! The night will feature collaborations, improvisations and new material from Michael C Ford, Rich Ferguson, Baba Alade, Yvonne del la Vega, Ellyn Maybe, Jaimes Palacio, Eve Brandstein and Rex Weiner as well as many more special guests.

Read more about the event from:

Excerpt from article:

MJ: What about something totally outside your genre?

GM: I like to think there’s no outside; that I can hear whatever has a claim to make, but if you’d asked me if I were interested in poetry set to music, I’d probably say no. When I heard Ellyn Maybe’s “City Streets” on KALX in Berkeley I had no idea what it was, just that I was transfixed. I called up the DJ, went to Amoeba Records, couldn’t find it, wrote away—and after listening to Maybe’s album Rodeo for the Sheepish (Hen House) half a dozen times, I had no idea who the people behind it were—a poet, and a musician/singer who sounds like many of himself, or for that matter her-himself. But there’s a pathos cut with self-lacerating humor that makes this the most surprising and painful music I’ve come across.

Video by: Nisey Jay and Riccardo Spinotti

Viggo Mortensen’s imprint Perceval Press is a small, independent publisher specializing in art, critical writing, and poetry. They were gracious enough to feature Ellyn Maybe’s Hen House release Rodeo for the Sheepish as one of their recommendations! Check out the spotlight and all the great content on their site.

Ellyn Maybe

Thu., September 30, 7:30pm

MAYBE BABY
By Falling James

In her song-poem “There Were Two Girls Who Looked a Lot the Same,” the local poet Ellyn Maybe celebrates her titular subjects with a profusion of succinct details and a steadily rhythmic accumulation of playful phrases, such as “One wore lipstick/One bit her lip” and “The astronomy was tangible” and “They had eyelashes that looked like a hula skirt made of coal.” When Maybe declared, “They wanted a bite from each world,” she was marveling about how the girls appreciated both Gidget movies and Tennessee Williams plays. However, the L.A. wordsmith could have also been describing the sinuous way she moves between the worlds of poetry and music on her new CD, Rodeo for the Sheepish . Maybe’s homages to Picasso and Sylvia Plath are infused with beat-driven, soulful trip-hop moods from her simpatico band, who’ll not only back her tonight at this monthly event but will also whip up cool grooves for adventurous poets in the audience, who’d like to marry their words with this mysterious thing called music.

Location

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center