About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 8, 2011)
tirokes - VJct'.du LoVou 0 you how tc>pa,nt using a step-by-step technique world to pick up a paint brush and create T Pe ° P ' e a " ° Ver ,he h ° me « -d of a fun filled evening at" p TsTrokes ^ ^ *" Now Open! —Check out our other - ~ \ special offerings! Private Parties Bachelorette Parties Birthday Parties Sorority Parties Kidz Art Camps Bridal Events Saturday Kidz Classes 3061 Atlanta Highway, Suite A Athens, GA 30606 (706) 208-7337 For more i on, visit us online www.sipsnstrokes.com MUSIC AWARDS SHOW THURSDAY JUNE 23 • 8pm at The Morton Theatre FEATURING: « ABANDON THE EARTH MISSION LERA LUNN » TIMMy TUMBLE UBy KENDRICK •- • KENOSHA KID ATHENS VERTICAL DANCE ACADEMY AND MORE! SEE NEXT WEEK'S FLAGPOLE FOR CATEGORY FINALISTS & TICKET INFO T he most New York's Miwa Gemini will say about her stage name is that Gemini is her astrological sign. She won't reveal her actual name—but that's OK, because she doesn't care to talk too much about her self in her music. Most of Miwa Gemini's songs are intricate, guitar-based pieces riddled with twisted horns and fleshed out with eerie minor-key strains. A casual listen conjures images of some mysteri ous chanteuse serenading a dark, back-alley barroom, but in real life she's straightforward and modest. The complex chords in her songs show she's quite adept in music theory—in fact, she's classically trained, having studied piano since her childhood in Japan. She deserves to be a little cocky about her talent. But she isn't. She even admits it took some time for her to believe in her own ability to write music. She originally moved to the Big Apple under the guise of studying photography. "I actually wanted to do music all along, but I just didn't have the guts to really face it," she says. "It's funny because I played a lot of shows with other bands before I played my first open-mic by myself, so I'd been onstage and everything before, but never as a main singer and not by myself. It was the scariest thing I'd ever done. I remember looking at the exit door from the stage and thinking, 'Maybe if I just run they won't say anything.'" Still, she pushed through the show and thrust her creativity into the limelight. Since then, she has built a loose network of friends who collaborate with her and help realize her songs. "I have a full band of three or more people sometimes," she says, "but for this tour it's just me and Aaron [Burns], who plays accordion, piano and glockenspiel." From the chords to the song structures to the unusual choice of instruments, her music exudes adventurousness and confidence—a far cry from the girl with stage fright at open-mic night. Gemini is just more comfortable speaking through her music. Her vocals recall Bjork's haunting timbre with a more direct delivery. Then there's her guitar tone: warm and quiet but assertive enough to string the whole pack age together. "Guitar is definitely my [primary] instru ment, but having a classical background definitely influences the way I write music and the way I approach guitar, even though I've never studied guitar; I'm self-taught," she says. "I almost never use picks, and I feel like that approach comes from the piano." Lyrically, she focuses on the folk tradition of storytelling. Though she doesn't listen to much in the way of conventional folk music, she does enjoy darker, "non-Disney" fairy tales in the vein of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. She also names Tom Waits as a chief lyrical influence, referring to him as "hilarious." "I like the classic fairy tales, you know, the original ones that not always necessarily have a happy ending," she says. "It's more strange and beautiful." Which brings us around to Grizzly Rose, the mysterious woman Gemini fashioned for her quasi-concept album, Fantastic Lies of Grizzly Rose, which was released just a couple weeks ago. She's cautious to call Grizzly Rose her alter-ego, merely stating "it'd definitely be cool to be her." "The way I look at it, I was lucky enough for her to appear. I didn't really create her," Gemini explains, adding to Rose's mystique. "She just appeared and said, 'I want my story to be known... you will do.'" As the playfully gothic cover art (a la Tim Burton) suggests, the music retains a quality that's edgy yet buoyant, unsettling yet never bleak—a quality that fits Gemini's description of Grizzly Rose pretty damn well. John Barrett ( ^ WHO: Miwa Gemini, Etienne de Rocher. Kara Kildare, Griffin and the True Believer WHERE: Flicker Theatre & Bar WHEN: Thursday, June 9,8:30 p.m. HOW MUCH: $5 V / 14 FLAGPOLE.COM JUNE 8,2011
