Joanne Weaver

When you see a show by Joanne Weaver, you feel like you stepped right into a 1940s supper club on Pluto: cigarette girls are the norm, fishnets and red lipstick are a must, and yet the music takes a surprisingly modern, electronically lush, layered sound, melding the old and new into one unified yet unique sound. With silky smooth vocals that melt you like butter, Joanne presents her unique, psychedelic renditions of 8 classic standards from the 40s, 50s and early 60s in her debut concept album Interstellar Songbook, available now on iTunes and CD Baby. When putting together the album, Joanne, along with producer Andre Fratto, both purposely chose the 8 songs and their specific order to tell a story. “I wanted to depict a woman’s journey from the pain and anguish of losing her lover to growing and ending up hopeful,” says Joanne. “Most of these are songs that I grew up loving since I was a little girl.” To give the songs her personal twist, Joanne brought in her influences from 90s trip hop bands (Morcheeba, Portishead, Massive Attack), American filmmaker and TV director David Lynch (“Blue Velvet”, “Twin Peaks”), and her love of sci-fi, as in the futuristic film noir classic “Bladerunner”, and the resulting mélange presents more spacey and atmospheric color, which she says “creates a fresh angle on these classic songs for those who have known them for decades, as well as introduces them in a way that is more accessible to younger listeners.” The album “comes back down to Earth” and ends on a lighter, more acoustic note with the relatively newer tune “Moon River”, written in 1961 by John Mercer and Henry Mancini, with just a ukulele and Joanne’s hauntingly stripped-down vocals. She attributes her love of music to her Uncle Ron, who introduced crooner Harry Connick, Jr. to her, which had a huge influence on her singing. She became hooked on iconic singers such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra – all who originally put the songs in her Interstellar Songbook on the map. A native of Sunnyvale, California, Joanne left her home and a promising dotcom career behind when she arrived in New York City in September of 2001. From 2006 to 2013, Joanne studied under vocal coach Elynn Diamond, to whom Joanne attributes her career really taking flight. Among the many people Joanne thanks inside her CD cover are Andre Fratto, the album’s producer, arranger and co-conceptualizer, and her father, Glenn Weaver, who, Joanne says, “left this world too soon. This album is for him. I'm hoping he can hear my songs…somewhere out there.” Spacey, sci-fi, & dreamy stylings on "Interstellar Songbook". Follow-up album on the way... http://www.joanneweavermusic.com