*My Aunt Dot (one of my fav people in the universe) passed away after a long drawn-out battle.

*Early detection is the thing that saves lives.

*Just as I sat down to write this, I got an email about a friend’s friend, whom I met w/ her 1-yr-old son at a birthday party recently, who’s having emergency surgery for what appears to be stomach cancer. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

These are all great reasons… but not the whole reason.

I don’t know how much you know about being an artist, rock star, self-promoting entrepreneur in today’s economy…. but it’s a lot of *Look how great I am!*

So I want to tell you about how great someone else is. Lots of someone elses.

The more I get to know cancer survivors, I find their courage amazing. And their lust for life awesome — it’s a blueprint for how I want to live.

So we’re doing two projects. About courage. Supporting eachother. And remembering what we can accomplish when we band together, get educated, & demand better health services.

1) The first is an homage to cancer survivors by making a video for our song the Brighter Side.
the song

these are all photos of survivors who’ll be in it.
If you’re a survivor, it’s not too late to take part: email me a pic at rockstar@jessietorrisi.com

If we can raise just under $3,000, we’ll give a copy to everyone who participates in the Livestrong Challenge this August in Philly (*my hometown). That’s ~6,000 people.

It’s a way of saying thank you for fighting the good fight & giving to something greater than yourself & raising money & running 23 miles… When the video gets passed around youtube, hopefully it will give others the motivation to get tested.

2) Let’s round up enough people in 2012 — at a cancer walk, run, or mustache-shaving bash — to kazoo their hearts out that we break the record! Last I checked, it was 5,800 people kazooing to Take Me Out to the Ballgame. (We think Cannonball’s a better song.)
If raising awareness can be fun quirky n creative… Why not?

Most of these ideas came from my friend Walking Eagle Burr, who lost her mother to cancer last year. And I’m running with them.

Are you with me?

* * *

More cool stuff to check out:
Cancerpants … the trailer for a great survivor documentary being made here in Austin
Livestrong Cancer Navigation Center …. whatever you need, they can point you in the right direction

Only one problem. He seems to think those who live for the art of it, to write a great song, chase the muse, or bring an audience to its knees died off around 1985.

We know he’s wrong. The world is fuckin’ overflowing with talent, amazing young artists coming of age in a DIY world.

So here’s my response to his blog on creativity & James Taylor. (his original rant here.)
* * *

A picture of the boys in the van.

And a boy & a girl on the bridge.

Midpoint Fest rocked our world.
Quote Dave, “This is a big fuckin’ deal.”

Personally my favorite moment was the next day in Cincinnati. We were playing around with our beatbox pedal on the sidewalk when we were joined by a surprise guest. “i’m just a lonely boy, you’re just a lonely girl.”

We’ll leave you with an original song.

More soon. Thanks a gajillion.
~the Please, Please Me

Alissa w/ beignets at Cafe du Monde (while talking on the cellphone & balancing her cello against a trashcan)

Getting ready to play Cannonball live on WWOZ

Bloody Mary’s (how else are we to wash down the beignets??)

Loney Abrams‘s birthday bash at our Circle Bar show

The tradition of pinning dollar bills to your shirt on your birthday never fails to crack me up

Wild crowd. We do our best to whip up the energy; they took it & ran with it so fast, we weren’t quite sure what had happened after. Never seen so many broken kazoos.

Wish i had pictures of us climbing the statue in Lee’s Circle and looking out at the city after.

ps– Alissa’s new wig & the necklace I got off the mannequin are to die for.

Thanks Zack Smith (host with the most), George Ingmire (radio DJ who let us crash his show), Lu Rojas (the one & only… be back to record soon), Luke Huddleston (Silent Cinema & our guest trombonist) and Jason Songe (the Circle Bar) for making magic happen.

Five years ago, a not-so-bad storm with a pretty bad-ass name swept through a magical, magical place. Levees broke, people in high places made no decisions & then terrible decisions.

But you know what, the best city in the U.S. (possibly the world) still stands, sways, swings harder than your mama after listening to 3 Marvin Gaye records & downin’ strawberry daquiris.

Life would be so boring without purple houses & pickled okra Bloody Mary’s (that you can walk down the sidewalk with, or stagger down the aisles sipping while grocery shopping… i can’t recommend this enough).

It would be capital L lame without tubas & trombones & men in rabbit suits strutting through the streets a dozen times a year.

And too-rich-for-my-blood gumbo. And park benches littered with crawfish shells. And old men with top hats, languid accents, and catcalls that make you feel impossibly sexy and classy, no matter how attractive you may or may not be.

Don’t even get me started on the drummers.
(check out this video.)

New Orleans, thank god you are still here. And THANK YOU to all the people who have stuck out the terrible times and are rebuilding the city, house by house, block by block, dream by dream, school by school, family by family, one street parade at a time.
~Jessie

Jessie Torrisi/PlsPlsMe: Well David, ironically, the better things are going, the less time i have to blog. I’ve been a busy rock ‘n roller as of late. Doing shows in Bryan, New Orleans, we finally broke into the Parish in Austin. Demo’ing some new stuff with the band. And, get this, I’m also a college professor. I’ve been teaching an Intro to Mass Media class at ACC.

David Fricke/RS: Inculcating young minds?

Jessie Torrisi/PlsPlsMe: While I’ve been playing rock star & trying to make sense of how the whole world is charging, I’m also getting to study the digital revolution in communications, new business models and teach students how to make the most of how the world is changing. *Blog all about it.* But sadly, or apologetically, by time I get home at night, the last thing I want to do is log on. I’d much rather strum a few chords and finish that new song that’s been nagging. Or have a beer with friends. Or read a good book.

David Fricke/RS: Did I hear you say studio? Do tell… what’s brewing with the band? Are you working on the 2nd record?

Jessie Torrisi/PlsPlsMe: Well, let’s start with the good news. We’ve been recording four brand spankin’ new songs out of Carlos Mendoza’s living room studio the last few weeks. These are songs that have really evolved with the band — having the drummer decide to give the whole thing a James Bond soundtrack twist, or having the cello & trombone come to me with harmonies that make the hairs on my neck stand up. And 6th & A, the one heartbreaker ballad, an ode to New York City, being lonely & drunk in the East Village (think Ryan Adams) would have probably never seen the light of day had Carlos not helped me rewrite it. So for once, it’s a real band effort. I mean, I came up with The Please, Please Me as a name because I wanted people to think of me & the whole experience we create as that of a band, not a singer-songwriter. But now it’s happening. As a result, I think I’ll measure up to some of my indie songstress heroes with these in a whole new way.

The Impromptu Please, Please Me Kazoo Chorus

RS: What are you going to do with these recordings???

JT: That’s the $20 million question. We’re still waiting to see if the results will sound hi-fi album ready, or that we need to go into a fancier studio or grab William Berlind (my producer in NYC), and find a way to lure him out here to record it. I would really like to go that route, but it seems I’ve spent all my money on touring and kazoos as of late. Am hoping that by having these demos a few interested labels or possible sponsors of the arts might come forward and decide to really make this happen. Y’know what Prince says? Money changes everything. I’d like to start working on a 2nd record, but if it’s not in the stars, we’ll release an EP, or give away new tracks one by one in exchange for fans support/email addresses/help in other arenas.
*** like if you can silkscreen Please, Please Me panties or make a cool video, we’ll prob show up at your house every morning for a month and serenade you.

RS: Does the uncertainty worry or frustrate you?

JT: Definitely. But when I lived in New York, I had not near enough time to really live art, make music my life. In just a year in Texas, I feel i’ve truly become a musician & a performer, not just someone who wants to be one. I’m a much more masterful songwriter. I have a kick-ass bands, fans, songs I’m really proud of. But I had more better ways to make money in New York, and here, I’m still trying to find my way in the marketplace.

RS: But you’ll be back in New York soon, I hear.

JT: Oh well yes, one summer in Texas was enough for me. 60 days over 100 degrees last year. Besides you can take the girl out of the city but not the city out of the girl. Last summer, I happened to be in NYC when they did a 20th anniversary sing-along screening on Purple Rain in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. These kinds of things — the experience of shouting Purple Rain into a night with 10,000 other New Yorkers from all conceivable walks of life — they change you. They make you feel unity that can only come from art & diversity & a certain electric current that runs through the city. I can’t live without that completely.

RS: Ok, yes yes, I get that. I mean, sometimes you think the price of working at a major magazine is having to live in a crowded, dirty, noisy city. And other times, you think Thank God, I’m stuck here.

JT: Yes, it’s the question that never answers itself. If i can’t find peace of mind in New York City, can I manage to feel fully alive elsewhere?

Jessie Torrisi & the Please, Please Me at The Parish

RS: So you’re hitting the road again soon. What do you want to leave readers with?

JT: Well, to everyone I’ve met this year…. in Colorado, Portland, Philly, and TEXAS, especially all those dancing easy-going fools here Austin who turned out at SxSW, who kazoo their hearts out, who show up to the Parish on last-minute notice, THANK YOU.

(If you want to hear the new EP, or catch us live, just drop a line to rockstar@jessietorrisi.com. Our new website’s not up yet, so for now, this is the best way. If you have a vote for what song we should make a video for, or live somewhere we should come play, we’d love to hear that too.)

The record’s only been out 6 months, but it feels like more. And y’know, If a rock ‘n roller gives the show of her life & no one’s there to hear it… it doesn’t make a sound. It might be perverse to measure success in comments on my Facebook page, or fans who send me annoyed emails b/c I didn’t send an invite out in time & they missed the show, or how many kazoos I need to rush to print, but I do.