Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The Local Artist Speaks: STEPHANIE SCHNEIDERMAN


Stephanie Schneiderman is a busy lady. She has always been a busy gal. She has six albums out in the world, has done some acting and coordinated a benefit series. She is also very talented. As one of the local musicians considered to play at the 1999 Lilith Fair, she was selected to represent Portland at the event. She has a vibrant solo career and has also hooked up with two other talent women - McKinley & Lara Michell - to form the group, Dirty Martini. I managed to get an email to Stephanie recently and she promptly responded. Please meet, Stephanie Schneiderman!

How long have you lived in the Portland area?
I'm home grown and when you're from here it's always interesting to see everyone's reaction to Portland. Sometimes it's easy to take for granted what you're used to but we're really living in a bubble of a town full of independent artists and progressive politics.

Give us a brief history of your band/project:
I've put out 5 albums on my own. and 2 with dirty martini. I've also produced soundtracks/cd's for a children's video series. a couple years ago I organized a humanitarian concert series involving 35 artists/bands over 10 nights. The money went to Mercy Corps and the communities they work with in Northern Uganda. Now I've been working with producer/dj Keith Schreiner. We put out Dangerous Fruit a couple years ago which was a big departure for me. Now we're about to release a new one called Rubber Teardrop which goes even further down the path of electronic and trip-hop.

What’s the first song you ever learned to play?
Hard for me to remember. I think it was Helplessly Hoping.

What’s your favorite local venue to play? To see other bands?
I love Jimmy Maks - love the people there. And, Alberta Rose Theatre is turning out to be an incredible venue too.

Speaking of other bands, who do you like on the Portland music scene?
So many bands and songwriters it's hard to mention but a couple of favorites are Climber and singer-songwriter, Pete Krebs.

Tell us about a recent “Only in Portland” moment you might have had.
Well as I'm working on this new cd I'm realizing that EVERYONE involved lives within this 3 mile radius in NE Portland: Keith's studio, klickitat band camp studios, all the engineers, every one of the musicians on the cd - even my publicist and website designer and the person who helped me with marketing kickstarter! I could walk/bike to everyone's place and they're all some of the best people to work with this city has to offer. So to me that's an 'only-in-portland' phenomenon.

Finish this sentence: “I cannot live without_____”
My cats.

Stephanie is having a CD release party on May 6th at the Alberta Rose Theatre and Dirty Martini will also play. She is trying to raise funds for the project using Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1602255562/rubber-teardrop

She is scheduled to be interviewed on Trixie Pop on May 5th. Trixie Pop can be heard on Thursdays at 7 pm.

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