Ben Ballew likes to play guitar and keys while singing.
Jeff Ballew likes to play bass and sing along or play his french horn. Sometimes he plays ukulele with Ben, which makes people smile.
Alex O’Farrell likes to play drums while maintaining his status as the best looking member of the band after both Jeremiah and Jeff.
Sarah "St. Lion" (Trumpet) likes to play the trumpet. Its a given. Sometimes she switches to keys so the rest of the band finds her more valuable.
Diana "Baramaphone" Dizard (Baritone Sax) can ride the sax. Please don’t deny the power of a woman behind four feet of brass and wind.
Jeremiah "The Diva" Austin (Trumpet) is a jazzy noodle maniac. word...
Influences
The Pepper Sisters, Big Fat Fish Co., Anthony's, La Fiamma, Fairhaven Pizza, Boomer's, Little Caesar's (c'mon, sometimes you don't got money), Casa De Sherri, La Vie En Rose, Le Chat Noir, Old Town Cafe, Espresso Avellino, The Bagelry, etc.
Sounds Like
Sam & Dave fronting the E Street Band; Sweat; Sam Cooke feat. Booker T & the MGs w/ the Memphis Horns; Tambourine; The Beatles at Muscle Shoals Studios; Billy Preston smiling; Curtis Mayfield at Hitsville, USA.
After recording Problems & Solutions, the Love Lights emerged a more sentient band. Aware of the instrumentation, musicianship, and enthusiasm at our disposable, we began pairing melodies and rhythms reminiscent of the ones we were raised on and currently enraptured with. We began smiling more when we plucked our strings, beat on our drums, and blew our horns (which is fairly difficult to do at the same time).
The song "Fences" was the first song we wrote for the album that explicitly recalled those roots and influences. With only rough sketches to guide them, the Love Lights’ horns, Jeremiah, Sarah, and Diana crafted what I still believe is a brilliant counter-melody to Rob’s vocal melody. It’s bold, melodic, and unison; it sounds like something the Stax horns would have played behind Otis Redding. The first time we played it in rehearsal, the lights in the room got brighter (I swear!), brows were raised, and a new precedent was set.
At the time, I had just seen the documentary A Great Day in Harlem, about the once in a lifetime gathering of jazz greats for a single photograph. At one point, one of the older musicians referred to the young musicians "young lions." This was the next generation, paying tribute to the structures, melodies, and rhythms of their predecessors, but bringing a new fire and electricity to the fold. Still cubs, to be sure, but they could bite. There was something of the that same fire and electricity in what the Love Lights were now doing, and the phrase appropriately stuck.
Young Lions is not a perfect record, but it is the start of something new and old. And, as Joey "The Lips" Fagan said in the film, The Commitments: "I believe in starts." Listening to the completed Young Lions, this is a start that the Love Lights are excited to share with you.
I refuse to discuss how awesome or not awesome your show may or may not have been last saturday night until the Ballew boys give up and return my Beach Boys Good Vibrations box set. Don't think I don't know where the majority of you live.
