Assume Joanie Pallatto, the signature voice of Southport Records, will pop up at more than just her featured gig during the label’s fifth annual festival.
It’s not that Pallatto, known for preferring the studio to the stage, has had a change of heart.
“The thing is, you have more control over every aspect of your music (in the studio),” Pallatto says. “When you’re singing live there are so many other things besides singing to worry about — the booking itself, the mikes, the monitors.”
But circumstances being what they are, what with spotlights by Pallatto on various other artists’ CDs as well as her own work with Marshall Vente, she’s just been out and about playing a lot more.
“I’m still not performing a lot,” she demurs. “With all the engineering and production work I do for the label, there’s only so many hours in a day.”
But she’s been getting out there. “Really, you can’t stay away from live performance for too long, it’s part of being a complete artist. You have to perform live.”
In fact, when Pallatto records, she treats the session like a live gig. “I always dress up, full makeup, the works,” she says with her hearty laugh. “I don’t mean that I pull out the sequins but I have to feel like it’s an event. The mike is my audience. It does look at you, believe me. And, hey, you never know about those photo opportunities that occur in the studio.”
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Her recent CD with Vente, “Two,” came about not so much from dressing up but from one of those opportunities created by working in the studio. She was engineering a disc he was recording in which he used different female singers on each cut. Then he asked her to sing a song with him.
“Of course, as the engineer, I’d listened to everything he’d done already and I knew it was all these big productions,” she says. “So I said, `Hey, why don’t we just strip it down — just piano and vocal?’ We got really comfortable, developed all the trust in the world and had a wonderful time.”
Vente loved it so much he asked her to do it again.
“He wanted to record a song a couple of times a year and eventually put out a CD and I said, `You know, that stuff never works — let’s just do it!’ ” Pallatto remembers.
So they rearranged their schedules and got down to working on “Two,” which is one of the featured CDs during this year’s Southport/Northport Festival.
“The great thing was that there was no restriction,” says Pallatto. “We just did songs we both liked; we found ways of making them our own. We treated the piano as an orchestra and got down to the core of the songs.”
The result is beguiling: “Two” includes compositions by Paul Simon, The Doors, Oscar Brown Jr., Kurt Weill, Carly Simon, the suicide theme from the M*A*S*H TV show (!) and one of Pallatto’s originals, which are appearing more frequently these days. As always, Pallatto’s versatility and exacting control are on display, as is Vente’s arranging talent. “Two” is an intimate, sublime experience.
Pallatto, though, won’t be able to just lie back and prep for her gig during the Southport/Northport fest next week, which includes label artist appearances at two Borders Books & Music stores (on June 20).
“We started the festival as a way of getting some live exposure for our catalog,” she says. “Now it’s taken on a life of its own.” Among other things, the fest this year has been re-christened Southport/Northport, now that the Northport half of the company (the non-jazz half) is issuing more CDs and has more artists to show off.
Pallatto’s working on her own stuff, too — in the studio, of course. “I’ve already recorded three songs for the next CD,” she says. “One is a new arrangement of `Something Else.’ It’s a Miles Davis-Cannonball Adderley song, pretty straight-ahead jazz. Another one is an original. I don’t know why, but I’ve been getting more and more into writing. It’s a kick, it’s a whole new thing.”
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the facts
Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., Willie Pickens Trio, Pops for Champagne, 2934 N. Sheffield Ave. For this and all Southport/Northport Festival information, call 773-281-8510.
Wednesday, 8:30 p.m., Paulinho Garcia, Pops for Champagne.
Thursday, 6:30 p.m., Verbs & Vibes featuring the Sparrow Trio, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.; 8:30 p.m., Fred Anderson Trio, Pops for Champagne.
June 19, 5 p.m., Joanie Pallatto and Marshall Vente, 9 p.m., Von Freeman and the Southport All-Stars, Pops for Champagne.