Jody Gnant on ABC 15 on Monday, March 31

Fans of Jody Gnant can catch her on the news Monday, March 31, when ABC 15 in Phoenix airs a segment on the Bohemian Geek Soul singer at 10 p.m. MST. The news crew shot footage of Jody and her band at rehearsal, and filmed an exclusive interview. Tune in locally, or visit www.abc15.com. Fans outside Phoenix might also be able to catch the news on ABC 15’s stream.

Jody Gnant to perform at the Phoenix Film Festival on April 5

The fast-action fury of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. A geriatric rock chorale. Whirlwind Wall Street romances. The “Bohemian Geek Soul” music of independent musician Jody Gnant.

Some things just go exceptionally well together – like movies and music. That’s one reason Phoenix singer-songwriter Jody Gnant has been asked to perform at the 2008 Phoenix Film Festival. The innovative artist is one of eight Valley music acts – including the Instant Classics, What Laura Says Thinks and Feels, and Black Carl — who’ll perform inside a 10,000 square-foot party tent over the first three nights of the festival.

The highlighted films at this year’s Phoenix Film festival include The Forbidden Kingdom (starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li), Young at Heart (the Sundance sensation about a fictional senior citizens chorus group), and the Wall Street romance Falling for Grace. And for Phoenix Film Festival President and Co-founder Chris Lamont, Gnant’s performance is among the musical highlights.

“Music is a huge part of making film work as an art form, and we want to use the festival opportunity to bring the biggest and brightest local music acts to the biggest and brightest independent filmmakers in the country,” Lamont says. “Jody Gnant is one of the bright stars in the Arizona music sky. We’re really excited to have her here.”

Gnant’s performance at the Phoenix Film Festival comes on the heels of a six-month buzz blitz following the release of her second record, Pivot, an album Village Voice Media praised for its “bluesy, funk-inflected material.” Gnant’s decision to open her life up to cyberspace via her 24/7 lifecast at www.jodygnant.tv has also landed her on the front page of news.com and The L.A. Times, along with national stories in The London Times, NPR, and a slew of other media outlets. Most recently, Gnant appeared on an episode of MTV’s Made as a performance coach for a self-conscious tomboy who wanted to sing onstage, and hit the streets of Austin for the South-By-Southwest music festival as a correspondent for Web site moguling.com. On March 30, the week of her performance at Phoenix Film Festival, Gnant will appear on ABC-15 News in Phoenix. Check www.abc15.com for information.

Jody Gnant performs live at the Phoenix Film Festival from 7 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 5, followed by The Instant Classics from 8 p.m. to midnight. Admission is free. Visit www.phxfilm.com or www.jodygnant.com for more information.

Gutterkitty’s two cents on SxSW fashion sense

Let’s talk fashion – specifically, music festival fashions. Now, I used to wear stuff in high school like giant, baggy, tie-dyed MC Hammer-esque pants, red Reeboks, and hot pink headbands — so obviously, I’m no fashion expert. But every time I come to Austin for SxSW, I notice various trends that simply baffle me.

For example, why do so many guys wear girls’ jeans? I have heard that this is part of the “emo” fashion trend — “emo” being a style of music where guys basically scream and whine over spiraling, repetitive guitar riffs about how some girl screwed them over. It’s a very un-macho genre of music. So I guess wearing girls’ jeans would fit with that whole shtick, but seriously, guys – your uh, “junk” doesn’t look very good crammed into denim so tight it looks painted on. How on Earth are you supposed to “adjust” yourselves? And your butts virtually disappear.

Here is an example of the “emo jean” thing:

I know the photo looks small, but it’s actually to scale (just kidding).

The afro was a big trend last year, and has made a kinky return this year. Everywhere I look, there are guys who look like a Chia pet exploded on top of their heads. The “band guy” look here still seems to be: big afro, scruffy stubble, and glasses. I blame trendsetter Jack Osbourne:

By the way, Jack Osbourne has lost a ton of weight and cut his hair since the above photo was taken. He looks awesome. So next year, I expect the ‘fro boys to look more like Justin Timberlake – I mean, Jack Osbourne:

The women’s fashion rage seems to be short skirts with knee-high, heeled boots. I hate this look only because I cannot pull it off without twisting my ankle, falling in a ditch, and exposing my uh, intimate apparel. I don’t do heels at all, unlike Jody, who’s been wearing them pretty much the whole time we’ve been here together (albeit without the short skirts – it’s freakin’ windy here at night, and lots of people are lying in the streets bemoaning how much they drank by Saturday night. They’re likely to look up from the gutter and see more than stars).

One thing I did see today that totally rocked my world was this guy with killer dreads, who was hanging around the Austin Convention Center:

Yes, they are real, and they actually hang down to his ankles. If Crystal Gayle ever dreadlocked her hair, it would prolly look something like this dude’s ‘do.

I’m interested to see what trends people are sporting at SxSW next year. By then, I should have my dreadlocked ‘fro, emo jeans, and knee-high boots all ready to go. I gotta stay a step behind, you know.

Now I gotta go dig my tie-dyed parachute pants out of my luggage.

iSxSW is Over… :(

Well, SxSW Interactive is over… We had an amazing time last night – including a few stories that I have been specifically instructed not to blog (or Twitter) about.

My good friend Ariel Hyatt and I went to dinner with a group of people and the festivities began.

We’ll be doing a panel together at PodcampNYC, so if you’re in that area on April 25th come on out and see us!

Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity and me     She rawks!

I bumped into Chris Brogan in the hotel lobby, and luckily enough, he was handing out free hugs!

It’s a good thing, too – cuz later on in the evening Chris’ band FAILED at Rock Band, but I was still basking in the afterglow of the hug – so it didn’t matter much.

We were at the “Rock Band” Party at Six Lounge, when I bumped into Mark Cuban…

He stole my glasses, refused my CD, and then invited me to join them on the rest of their evening’s adventure.

(ENTER THE PART OF THE EVENING I’M NOT ALLOWED TO TWITTER OR BLOG ABOUT)

After said undisclosed activities, we ended up at Pure Volume where I ran into Moby.  He DID take my CD, and he said something that really inspired me.

“Take your music seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously.”

Ole’ Moby, Ole’.

With the evening over (and the dawn beginning) it was becoming alarmingly more obvious that iSxSW was over, and that the musicians were taking over the conference.

The streets were starting to fill with piercings, tattoos and fishnets, and the geeks were gone – made obvious the absence of people walking around with laptops and webcams.

*sigh*

Imma miss mah peeps… but I’ll never forget them.

See you next year guyz! 

C.C. Chapman and I expressing our sadness at the end of SxSW Interactive

HUGS!  \o/

Jody

SxSW is soooo much fun!

Moguling totally rawks for sending me to South by Southwest!

Making lots of friends, and procuring sponsorships and partnerships with some really cool companies.

I can’t wait to get back to Phoenix to get started working on all of the cool new developments…

Oh wait!~  Yes I can.  SxSW is going on for another five days.

Seriously – I am so tired right now, and the music portion hasn’t even started yet!  These geeks sure know how to have a good time.  (G33k’s FTW!)

On the lam from the ‘Dam

On the lam from the ‘Dam:

Just returned from a fantastic vacation with Jody Gnant in Amsterdam. After seven days of fun and (most recently) almost 20 hours of globe traversing, I’ve come to some realizations. Now, a good professional writer will tell you that the grit of any story is in the details. But a good professor of psychology will tell you that “brevity is the soul of genius.” I will attempt to give both grit andgenius in the blog entry that follows, but can promise neither in my current, frazzled state-of-mind. So let’s start with my realizations about some clichés:

“There’s no place like home.”

That is certainly true. But just because a place is like no other place, that doesn’t particularly mean it’s better than any other place. Amsterdam is an amazing city for many, many reasons. People seem to focus on those “tourist attractions” in the ‘Dam that stem from the city’s more lenient legal system about certain things, but there’s so much more to the city than that.

Art and music lovers, in particular, are drawn to the city, because it’s a mecca of international creative expression. On one corner, there might be a Parisian busker playing “Red, Red Wine” on an upright bass. On another corner, there might be a Dutch portrait artist with a small studio set up. Another corner might play host to an Indonesian flute player who’s placed her tip jar in front of her very cute dog.

And then there are the museums: Rijksmuseum, Rembrandt House, the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum – plus tons of shopping, restaurants, canal cruises, etc. So yeah – there’s no place like home, but there’s no place like Amsterdam, either. My goal is get Jody some gigs in Amsterdam and other places in Europe, because I’ve found that by and large, the audience for pop music (and singer-songwriters in particular) is much larger there, and people actively seek out new music.

When Jody gave one of her CDs to the clerk at one of the clothing stores on Nieuwdijk, the clerk and her friends looked genuinely interested in the music and happy to have a free CD. And not a single one of them mispronounced Jody’s last name. Jody’s heritage comes from European countries and she was happy to be “in ze fatherland” in Germany.

The fact that Jody tends to sleep all day and be up all night in the states makes me think that she’s just perpetually on European time. And I think Europe is a much better breakout market for Jody’s criminally underheard music than the U.S., where the market is flooded with so much blasé crap and consumers are sheep-herded and spoon-fed mediocrity.

“Home is where the heart is.”

Yep. It’s also where the bills, the jobs, and the everyday worries we go on vacation to escape are. Jody and I both needed this vacation for various reasons, and I would argue that while “home is where the heart is,” you can make anywhere you are “home,” and keep your heart with you. Jody and I made ourselves at home there. I think she was a bit taken aback by the Dutch’s lack of talkativeness – it’s not that they’re rude at all; they’re just not super-friendly and they seem to pay more attention to duty than dallying. But Jody took them equally aback with the random acts of kindness that are so intrinsic to her nature. On the outbound flight, we had a layover at O’Hare, where we met a poor young woman who had lost her wallet and been stuck at the airport all day, trying to figure out a way to rent a car or take a bus to her grandma’s house, with no money or ID. Upon hearing this, Jody didn’t hesitate to find out how much bus fare would cost and give it to the girl. In Amsterdam, Jody gave a girl on the street a whole cup of French fries because she didn’t like the mayo that was slathered all over them. She went out of her way to try to find somebody at Central Station who could use her bus ticket because she was done with it. She gave our friends on the train ride from Dusseldorf to Amsterdam a CD for each of them. She gave a police officer at the Philadelphia airport a bunch of hand and toe warmers.

And we made new friends. I got to meet Andrew from tradingnothing.com, who was just a great guy and so much fun to hang out with. The stuffed monkey he brought with him provided the most entertaining dinner I’ve ever had – the staff at the Italian restaurant where we ate, Peppino, fell in love with the monkey and ultimately traded Andrew a bottle of Chianti and four shots of Italian whiskey for the pillowed primate. We also met a Dutch-Irishman named Duncan at the train station in Dusseldorf (he actually helped to prevent us from getting on the wrong train), and got to spend all day Thursday with him as well. We had breakfast, we took a brief boat cruise, we went to the Anne Frank House, we walked around the park behind the Rijksmuseum, we had dinner, and we took lots of pictures.

So yeah. It was like home. Maybe even a little better.

“You can’t take it with you.”

Oh yes, you can (unless it’s liquid in a container that’s more than three ounces in your carry-on luggage). We bought plenty of stuff and took it with us. Jody bought some killer clothes at this place called Punky Fashion, and I had the joy of watching her try on outfits for almost two hours (no, I’m not being sarcastic; it really was a joy). I also bought a couple of things there. Dusseldorf had great shopping, too – that’s where I bought three pairs of shoes. I got two funky pairs of Converse high-tops (one’s a glittery blue paisley pattern, the other pair has skulls on them) and the ugliest Crocs I’ve ever seen. The color is a splatter-pattern mix of puse and dark blue, and there are Spiderman and robot buttons on them. They are sooo ugly. I love them. I figure if I’m gonna buy shoes in Dusseldorf, they should be striking enough – for better or worse – to be a catalyst of conversation back home (i.e., “What the hell are you wearing on your feet?) As soon as someone asks me that, they’ll get a great story about a day in Dusseldorf.

“You can never go home again.”

My interpretation of this cliché is two-fold. On one hand, I see the truth in that statement as an abstract expression. So many people think of “home” as a sedentary place, a bricks-and-mortar (or drywall-and-chicken-wire) building where they put all their stuff and sleep at night. But if one views “home” in an abstract sense, as in feeling at home and having a sense of comfort and safety, then “home” is not a stationary, concrete thing. It is a feeling, a state of being, and therefore, it is transitory and mutable. So you can’t really go “home again” if “home” is always changing.

But alas, I live in the literal world, and not only can I go home again, but I kinda had to come home again. If I had my druthers (and more money), I’d still be in Europe. There’s another popular saying: people need a vacation after their vacations. I’m so down for that, but it ain’t gonna happen. In less than two weeks, I fly to Austin, Texas to begin coverage of the SxSW music festival. Hopefully, Jody will be with me, and there will be more blogs to come – faster this time, too, since we won’t have to hunt down Internet cafes.

That’s it for now. Not quite brief, and not quite genius. But verbosity is the soul of early morning jetlag.

(Check out the fantastic photos Jody took on our trip here).