Kim Lenz

Kim Lenz and her Spanish Jaguars

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KIM LENZ AT SCREAMING FESTIVAL 2007

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KIM LENZ
Early Careeras of 1998


HIGHTONE INKS KIM LENZ AND HER JAGUARS

SELF-TITLED DISC ON HMG - OAKLAND, CA - HighTone Records managing partner Larry Sloven has announced the signing of Dallas-based rockabilly/roots combo Kim Lenz and her Jaguars, and the release of the band's self-titled debut album on the label's HMG imprint.

KIM is current in the midst a major tour that is taking her aroubf the US and over to Europe. Led by the fiery-maned Lenz, whose singing and songwriting prowess have already stirred-up considerable noise in the honky-tonk circuit around the country, the band has generated a strong buzz in the Texas/Southwest region, as well as at several special events, including Las Vegas' VIVA VEGAS 1998 Denver's Rock 'n' Rhythm-Billy Weekender in 1997. As the daughter of a rodeo queen, Kim Lenz comes by her pedigree naturally, with influences ranging from Janis Martin and Wanda Jackson to Charlie Feathers. The Dallas Observer voted her as 1997's Best Female Vocalist. Kim Lenz and her Jaguars recorded their first album in early February, with Wally Hersom, bass player for Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, producing. The CD was recorded in Glendale, California, using all vintage gear, with the majority of the material being original songs. The self-titled disc is released on HighTone's HMG logo, which is distributed independently through the REP Company. The band is booked by Minneapolis-based Hello! Booking. Publicity Contact: Mark Pucci Media (404) 816-7393 / FAX (404) 816-7144

FROM THE DALLAS OBSERVER, 4/98:

Everything old Rockabilly queen Kim Lenz moves ahead by looking backward By Robert Wilonsky

Kim Lenz takes no offense at the suggestion that she is like a page torn from a history book. Quite the contrary, she finds it a flattering remark, testimony to the years she has spent looking backward while moving forward. Her '50s fetishism runs skin-deep and beyond: At this moment, she sports her red hair in a Bettie Page point over her forehead, wears an aqua-blue dress bought in vintage-clothing stores, wraps a silk scarf around her pale neck, covers her eyes in pointed sunglasses that are midnight-dark. For the past decade, she has purchased everything she owns - down to dishes - at secondhand shops where people go to sell off their pasts. Lenz buys their yesterday things as she builds a monument to the 1950s in the Hall Street apartment she and her husband share near downtown. She's a 29-year-old woman out of time and out of place, a living artifact. "Some people think it's weird," she says, giggling, "but what's weird anymore?" That is why, she explains in a roundabout way, she plays rockabilly for a living - because it's music that has been discarded and left on the trash heap, like a rusted-out Edsel or a rayon shirt with a small hole in the sleeve. For her, it's pure, perfect music done right only by a handful of faithful worshipers who mike the drums just so, who record all the instruments and vocals at the same time, who would rather the music was in your pants than in your face. She plays rockabilly, sings rockabilly, and writes rockabilly because no one else does.

"It's complicated why I like rockabilly," she says, sipping a white Russian during a happy hour growing a little happier with each sip. "I love rockabilly. To me, rockabilly is rock and roll at its most pure. It's the beginning of rock and roll. It's very passionate music to me. It's simple, yet it really gets a lot of feeling across. I'm one of those people, and this will look stupid in print, but I think I tend to be one of those people that doesn't like things that are popular, so rockabilly not being popular makes it appealing to me. Rockabilly right now is what punk used to be. You get made fun of for the way you dress. I mean, do I look weird to you?" Not at all - at least, not for a woman who moved from Los Angeles to Dallas and decided one day she wanted to become a rockabilly sweetheart. Lenz off-stage looks just like the woman onstage or on the cover of her just-released CD, Kim Lenz and Her Jaguars, released on the home-to-roots-rock HighTone label. She looks like any other female rockabilly gal from the 1950s; she's a black-and-white photograph rendered in brilliant red and, at the moment, faded blue. Even the disc's cover is a pose-for-pose replica of an old Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps album sleeve, so perfect is Lenz's love for the golden age of rock and roll.

And on the disc, her voice recalls the echoes of Wanda Jackson or Barbara Pittman or any of the handful of other women who traveled knee-deep in rockabilly testosterone 40 years ago ÷ indeed, it takes a strong woman to play to the leather-and-greased-back crowds even now. She has a voice as pretty as sharp steel, and if it's a bit more tame than Jackson's orgasmic yelp - Jackson was an Okie who sang country as though she was a blues belter ÷ Lenz is no less convincing when she's screaming about rockin' and rollin' till she rips her dress or loving her kiss-and-tell baby or scratchin' that itch with a brand-new man.

Lenz is more revivalist than revisionist (unlike, say, Reverend Horton Heat or even Ronnie Dawson, whose swing has always been more blues than country). Her album was recorded with her band live to one track using nothing but vintage equipment, and the result is like listening to music made in a tin cup. It's too sturdy to be considered novelty but too then to sound now. When Cowhide Cole spins a tune from the record on his KNON rockabilly show, between a couple of oldies from Mac Curtis and Johnny Carroll, you can hardly notice the difference - they all sound like they were made on the same day in the same studio with the same band. Which is precisely what she's going for. Yet there's something to be admired, and something intrinsically appealing, about a woman who so defiantly refuses to move into the...1960s. You can count on two fingers the number of women who perform rockabilly these days, Lenz and New York-to-Los Angeles transplant Josie Kreuzer, the latter of whom doesn't really dress the part, but has a voice like a Gene Vincent 45 sped up to 48 rpm. And it's not as though Lenz is riding a trend; she's 40 years late to the party but ready to rock nonetheless, part of a subculture that refuses to die long after Vincent and Eddie Cochran and Carl Perkins cashed in their drink tickets. She adores the "butterheads" and "greasers" who show up to the rockabilly conventions and dances (such as the San Francisco Greaseball) and party like it's 1959. She's drawn to the music not just because of how it sounds, but for what it once meant.

"I'm stuck in the 1950s," she says, smiling. "In the '50s, especially the mid- to late '50s, there was a sense of hope in America. I mean, it's like, there was all that rocket-age stuff. People thought we were gonna be living on the moon in 20 years, ya know? Myself and a lot of people, we think romantically about that time period, because the time period we live in now doesn't have a lot of hope, and everybody is so jaded and Grinchy. Nobody cares about their surroundings. Nobody cares about how they look. I mean, I do have a microwave and a brand-new TV, and I wear modern underwear. I don't like the vintage underwear thing. That goes a little too far for me."

Lenz grew up in San Diego, the daughter of a rodeo queen who grew up on an Oregon ranch and a Kansas boy who was a 1950s greaser whose radio was always tuned to Wolfman Jack broadcasts - Lord, how does that sound for a storybook beginning? She only recently began remembering that rockabilly and old country were very much the music of her past, and the very sound she rebelled against during her teenage years. Indeed, in the 1980s, she fashioned herself something of a Mod, listening to the Jam and the English Beat as she and her pals rode their Vespa scooters around San Diego, looking to pick fights with the very rockers she'd come to adore only a few years later. Her life was Quadrophenia bathed in Southern California sunlight. Twelve years ago, her idea of rockabilly was the Stray Cats, and she absolutely hated it.

When she was 20, she moved to Los Angeles and got a job in the music business, working for a management firm. She didn't even consider getting on a stage herself, but she was drawn to the big-band sound she heard played every afternoon on a local public radio station; soon enough, she was enamored of the Gershwins and Cole Porter and Frank Loesser and the other Tin Pan Alley greats who created American pop music. "I listened to that music every day for six years, and I think that reawakened my love for traditional American music," she says. "I know every word to every standard ever written. I love the old style of songwriting where songs really had feeling." And it was in Los Angeles that Lenz discovered her love for swing music, not just rockabilly but the music of Louis Jordan and Nat Cole. If swing is a trend now, in L.A. back then it was an underground movement, played in dark clubs after hours. Lenz began hooking up with musicians, trekking to places such as the King King or the Palomino to see the Paladins, Royal Crown Revue, Dave & Deke Combo, or Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, all of whom were just beginning to play around L.A. at the beginning of the decade. For them, retro wasn't a fad; it was a lifestyle, and Lenz embraced it to the point where she wanted to participate in the scene, not simply observe it.

"I used to listen to all kinds of music when I was growing up, but I never thought of myself as a creative person," she says. "I had a guitar, and I'd strum a few chords on it, and I played piano, but I don't think I was encouraged by my family. It seems like the people I hung around with as a teenager and the people I dated and ended up living and being involved with were artistic or musical, so I always felt kind of insecure. I never felt like I could explore it, because they were all so much better than me."

Meeting and marrying a mathematician (four years now) with a like-minded love for rockabilly helped her get over her fear of trying; she no longer had to compete with someone else's abilities. So when Lenz and her husband, Charlie, moved to Dallas in 1994, she ended up at the University of North Texas and discovered she was probably the only person in Denton who didn't have a band. "So we had a house, and I just figured, well, I'll start a band," she says, recalling the Andy Hardy beginnings of her first group, Rocket Rocket, which featured members of the Grown-Ups, Slobberbone, and Wayward Girl. The band performed no more than five shows around Denton, and it was indeed one of those kinds of bands that happens only in Denton: Everybody sang, they played at the Karma Cafe, and the repertoire consisted of vintage 1950s and '60s tunes. Lenz, of course, sang Wanda Jackson songs.

"The first time I got up on stage, I got hooked on it, like heroin," she says. "I didn't know. It was like the first time you have sex. You don't know how great it's going to be, and then when it's over with, you're like, Let's do this again tomorrow night! I think for the first time in my life I discovered what my passion was." But Rocket Rocket would disband in short order, and Lenz moved back to Dallas, where she decided she didn't want to share the microphone with anyone else. It would take her several stop-and-start efforts to form her first band; she had a hard time finding musicians who could play straight rockabilly, who didn't want to mess it up with some fast-and-loud punk riffing or laid-back country shuffles. She had become a purist in short order and demanded the same out of her band. In the end, she would go through a handful of drummers, guitarists, and bassists before settling on the lineup that would record Kim Lenz and Her Jaguars.

Cynics will say that Lenz isn't too unlike a Joey Ramone look-alike making music out of three chords or a woman in a faded peasant dress singing Dust Bowl laments. But she's a purist, a fanatic, unabashed about her passions and unashamed of the results. And in the end, Kim Lenz and Her Jaguars and the single she released last year (featuring two tracks from the record and the never-before-heard "Bop City," originally performed by Sherry Davis at the Big D Jamboree in the 1950s) are swinging, thrilling exercises in forward-looking nostalgia, recreations of a past ignored so often, it might as well be the present.

"Writing rockabilly is like writing haiku," Lenz says. "There are boundaries, what some people might consider limitations, but there's so much you can do inside of that. I think there's so much new stuff that can be done. It's not for everyone, but for me, a good rockabilly song gives me goose bumps, makes me want to dance. It makes me feel good."

KIM'S BACKGROUND


Take one fiery-headed untamed guitar-strummin' songstress, add one red-hot guitar picker, a bass that won't stop slappin' and a rock-hard solid backbeat and you have the secret formula for Kim Lenz and her Jaguars. This combo has already made a name for themselves with the rockin' set in their home town of Dallas, Texas and have started tearing up the honky-tonks and juke joints in the surrounding countryside. They've recently returned from the 1997 Denver Rock N' Rhythm-Billy Weekender where they made quite a commotion. When was the last time you saw a gal sing the hell out of rockabilly?
Daughter of a rodeo queen, Kim Lenz caught the bug early for the "billy" side of rock 'n' roll. Her vocal influences include female rockabilly greats like Janis Martin, Barbara Pittman and, of course, Wanda Jackson, but also include the crazy ravings of male singers like Charlie Feathers and Johnny Powers. She was recently voted '97s Best Female Vocalist by her hometown music paper, the "Dallas Observer." Strummin' her guitar and singin' her songs, she's helping to keep authentic rockabilly alive and kickin'.


From the banks of the Mississippi comes Memphis-born lead guitar player Mike Lester. He plays a early model National Val Pro guitar through a '53 Fender Pro amp to get his trademark "ringtail tooter" sound. Mike was raised on backwoods music and you can sure hear it in his guitar pickin'! You'll like the cut of his jib.
Straight from he Oklahoma hills where he was born, Jake Erwin keeps the ladies attentions while slappin' his beautiful blond 50s Kay bass fiddle. His heroes are Fred Maddox, Bill and Johnny Black, Dorsey Burnette and Tom Mix. You will agree that when it comes to pullin' duty on doghouse bass Jake is one top hand who is no slouch.
Dutch the Cattlebaron, a Texas native, drives a chopped '51 Merc and really knows how to cook a mean steak. Though busy with his livestock trade and auctioning dates, he never fails to appear on time to pound out the savage backbeat that rounds out the Jaguar sound. http://www.rockabillyhall.com/KimLenz.html

Website : http://www.kimlenz.com/

My Space : http://www.myspace.com/kimlenzrockabilly



RECORDS :::

Kim's newest recording is burning up dance clubs and DJ turntables all over the world. Your collection is NOT complete without a copy! The CD features the following great cuts: 1. Howl At The Moon 2. One And Only 3. Somebody Lied 4. If You Don't Want My Peaches (Don't Shake My Tree) 5. Rock And Roll Guitar 6. Choctaw Boogie 7. Coming Back Strong 8. Dancing Me To Death 9. Crawlin' Back 10. Truest Love 11. Fit To Be Tied 12. Stick Em Up Honey 13. Flame Of Love 14. You've Met Your Match

Click on any of the links for a sample (You will need Real Audio Player to listen) The One and Only is available on-line at Crow Records, Hightone Records and other fine music retailers

Kim's First Hightone CD Is Still Available! Click Here for Details!

Click on sleeve for reviews and sound samples:

The One And Only



Self Titled



Shake A Leg




These shots taken at Schuba's, in Chicago

Kim at VLV '99.

(photos by Chris Auger)


Credit Photos ::: http://www.rockabilly.net/kimlenz/photos.shtml



For many contemporary rockabilly artists striving to recreate that originary 1950's moment, rockabilly is not only a specific musical sound, but an entire culture. And Kim Lenz is nothing if not traditional rockabilly. Her parents grew up in the 50's, introducing her as a youngster to many of the musicians that would later become incredibly influential in her development as an artist, from Roy Orbison to Jerry Lee Lewis to Carl Perkins. Her mother, a rodeo queen, grew up on an Oregon ranch. And her father spent his teenage years in Wichita, Kansas, where he "drove around in old cars with all his friends, listening to Wolfman Jack."

Lenz writes almost all of the material she performs. Even before she ever attended music school in Texas, she says, there was a working songwriter inside of her. "I've been playing guitar since I was a teenager, just strumming chords and all that. I bought a cheap canoe-paddle guitar when I was a kid. I played the piano when I was younger, too. When I first moved to LA, the only station that I could listen to at work played big band music. So I learned every standard ever written. I know the words to them all. And I love all the stuff that was written in the 30's and the 40's--all that great old-style songwriting.

"I spent so much time listening to music throughout my life, that when I started writing songs, it was a natural transition. I was writing songs before I really understood what the structure of a song should be. I already knew about bridges and chord changes because I just felt where they needed to go. I had heard so many songs. There are only so many patterns you can use."

Neither mired in the 50's, nor stuck in the 90's, Lenz tries to write traditional songs that will mean something to anyone, in any era. "For me," she comments, "songs should be timeless. They should be about strong feelings, like excitement. Let's dance. Let's drive fast. I'm mad at you. I love you. Those are the basic feelings that good songwriting will make you feel. And traditionally, rockabilly is very passionate music.
"My favorite song on the new record is 'Thinkin' About You.' It's about change in life, and giving up, and still being able to find love. It's a very simple song. It has fewer lyrics probably than any other song I've written."

Wally Hersom, bass player for Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys, both recorded and produced Lenz's new album. Her connection with Hersom stretches back to her years living in LA, which also happened to be the Fly-Rite Boys' first years as a band. "Wally is known around the rockabilly scene, and around the world, as having one of the largest collections of vintage recording gear. He's also one of the most knowledgeable about vintage recording. I really wanted to record my album on vintage equipment, with someone who knew the sound we were after. What we're doing is so different from modern music. The bass drum isn't supposed to be really loud, for example, and it's very hard to get the right sound on the upright bass. Wally really did a wonderful job.

"Frank Laudo, the art director, also did a fantastic job. I wanted the cover to be a replication of Gene Vincent's album on Capitol: Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps. And it looks identical...the same fonts, everything. On the Gene Vincent album, the Blue Caps all have blue caps on. So we had the Jaguars wear blue scarves."

Her band is also one of the world's only female-led traditional rockabilly acts. And even though she doesn't call herself a feminist, Lenz admits that she has come up against her share of sexism in the music business. "I think that music is a lot about fantasy," she comments. "And people's fantasies really tend to gravitate towards traditional roles. So the idea of a powerful woman is still very scary to a lot of people.

"If you have a strong opinion about something, you must be a bitch. Whereas if you're a guy, you're just a guy who knows what he's doing. There's really still a double-standard. But I've been able to overcome a lot of this stuff, especially now that we're getting a little bit of a name for ourselves.

"Probably my biggest influence, as far as female singers go, is Janice Martin. I think she's just fantastic. And Barbara Pittman. And of course Wanda Jackson. But I'm trying to do what's unexpected. It's expected for women to sing country, or folk. And I want to get out there and tear it up and do the sassy side. I like to cover old rockabilly songs that were originally sung by men. Sometimes they have a whole different slant when a woman sings them. I'm not sure I could pull off 'I've Got a Rocket in My Pocket,' but I think I ought to write a female version--that'll shock 'em!"

Wherever you live, you can probably catch Kim Lenz and her Jaguars on tour in the upcoming months. They will play at Viva Las Vegas this weekend, and then hit the midwest and the east coast in a few weeks. A west coast tour is planned for June, and they will appear at the Denver Weekender in July. There is also a trip to Europe in the works for November.


--Lindsey Westbrook, the Hightone Newsletter.


The Hightone Bio


Female singers at the forefront of the rockabilly movement can be counted on one hand - Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin are probably the two most famous - but add to that list one red-hot (tressed) lady from Dallas who fronts one of the most-talked-about combos of that genre: Kim Lenz and her Jaguars.
Daughter of a rodeo queen, Kim Lenz became interested in rockabilly at an early age, influenced by the aforementioned Jackson and Martin - as well as Barbara Pittman - on the female side, and such honky-tonk standard-bearers as Johnny Carroll, Charlie Feathers, Johnny Horton, and Faron Young. Lenz grew up in Southern California, relocating to Dallas in 1994, and forming the band in 1996.
Since then, Kim Lenz and her Jaguars have taken off, becoming a buzz band not only in their native Texas, but all over the world-wide rockabilly circuit. Fans and critics alike rave about the band's live shows, sparked by Kim's energetic stage presence, powerful vocals, and drivin' rhythm guitar. Lenz is backed by one of the most solid bands on the road today. Lead guitarist Mike Lester, originally from Memphis, generates a pure vintage sound through his rig, Oklahoma-born Jake Erwin slaps his bass fiddle for all it's worth, and Texas native Robert Hamilton takes no prisoners on drums. A four-track E.P., released in 1996, further fueled the excitement. And in 1997, Kim Lenz was voted Best Female Vocalist by the Dallas Observer.
All of this has led up to the release of the band's self-titled debut album on HighTone Records' HMG label. To create a more authentic sound, the band enlisted the help of producer Wally Hersom, best-known as the bassist in Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys, who recorded the album totally live in the studio without any overdubs.
Kim's songs also separate this band from the rest of the pack. Their timeless lyrics are steeped in the style and structure of classic rockabilly. Lenz wrote nine of the album's 14 cuts, including "Saturday Jump," a tribute to The Comets (Bill Haley's former band), with whom they shared the bill at last year's Denver Rock n' Rhythm-Billy Weekender. The best of the cover tunes include "The Swing," originally written and performed by 1950's Dallas rockabilly pioneer Johnny Carroll, "Ten Cats Down," originally performed by The Miller Sisters, and "You Made A Hit," which first came out as a single on Sun Records by Ray Smith.

==> http://www.rockabilly.net/kimlenz/bio.shtml

Country: United States

Website: http://www.kimlenz.com/
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/kimlenzrockabilly
Contacts & Booking E-mail: hellobook@aol.com

Female singers at the forefront of the rockabilly movement can be counted on one hand - Wanda Jackson and Janis Martin are probably the two most famous - but add to that list one red-hot (tressed) lady from Dallas who fronts one of the most-talked-about combos of that genre: Kim Lenz and her Jaguars.

Daughter of a rodeo queen, Kim Lenz became interested in rockabilly at an early age, influenced by the aforementioned Jackson and Martin - as well as Barbara Pittman - on the female side, and such honky-tonk standard-bearers as Johnny Carroll, Charlie Feathers, Johnny Horton, and Faron Young. Lenz grew up in Southern California, relocating to Dallas in 1994, and forming the band in 1996.

Since then, Kim Lenz and her Jaguars have taken off, becoming a buzz band not only in their native Texas, but all over the world-wide rockabilly circuit. Fans and critics alike rave about the band's live shows, sparked by Kim's energetic stage presence, powerful vocals, and drivin' rhythm guitar.

A four-track E.P., released in 1996, further fueled the excitement and in 1997, Kim Lenz was voted Best Female Vocalist by the Dallas Observer.

Band Members:

Kim Lenz - vocals, rhythm guitar
Nick Curran - lead guitar
Scotty Tecce - drums
Shane Kiel - upright bass (not a permanent bass player)


Discography

	Up to My Old Tricks Again(2005) Hightone Records
	The One and Only(1999) Hightone Records
	Kim Lenz and her Jaguars(1998) Hightone Music Group Kim's first CD
	Shake A Leg Wormtone Records Kim's debut 45rpm record

Kim Lenz - "Devil on My Shoulder" @ VLV 2009