Thread Magazine, Burlington's new art and culture publication, recently featured an article on Heloise & the Savoir Faire. Read the article below and pick it up in print at one of many downtown Burlington locations.
USE YOUR ILLUSIONS: HELOISE AND HER KNOWING WHAT TO DO
story by John Flanagan | photos by Ben Sarle
I’m guessing your average Middlebury honors student often doesn’t find herself up on the first tier of rickety scaffolding in Tokyo performing a set of synthesizer-based disco/pop/punk tunes in “a huge wall of makeup and artifice” akin to Divine fromPink Flamingos while busily defending her wardrobe from a zealous pack of screaming Japanese girls. While Heloise Williams has yet to find her name among Famous Dave, John Denver and Ric Flair as a “Notable Edinan” on the Edina, Minnesota Wikipedia page, the oversight is unlikely to last. Williams and her band, Heloise & The Savoir Faire, have garnered the attention of a burgeoning fan base anchored mainly by Burlington and New York. The aspiring group approaches the trials of identity and success with a hyper-brand of postmodern spectacle, often leading even those vehemently against dancing into cutting rugs with quickstep frenzy.
Blundering about the second floor of the BCA Center on Church Street last Saturday, I played fly-on-the-wall amid the frenzy of pre-show buzz. The evening’s program consisted of the Heloise crew along with Burlington music cornerstone DJ Disco Phantom. The Savoir Faire sans Heloise carried amps and instruments from an elevator held ajar by a snare drum, maneuvering respectfully around an art piece called “Perpetual Motion Device” set in a corner of the Lorraine B. Goode room. In the opposite corner, a determined Mr. Phantom erected his turntables and regalia with consummate poise. “What, are we all going oxfords and skinny ties tonight?” asked Williams’ husband and Savoir Faire guitar player James Bellizia to bassist/synth-man Rob O’Dea. O’Dea was in fact dressed in oxfords and a skinny tie. The black beanie covering his baseball hat rewarded no comment from Bellizia. Keyboard player Angie Mae Lizotte was to join the group for the first time that evening. Also in tow was drummer Steve Hadeka, who plays in just about every good band in town. Williams arrived wearing tall boots and knee socks, shedding her jacket soonafter to reveal a well-worn Funkadelic shirt. A film crew in another corner of the room was busy maneuvering expensive-looking equipment. “There’s a lot a lot of shit going on at the same time right now,” she mused to no one in particular. Luis Calderin of Okay Okay Creative, the production company putting the show on, made his rounds. He checked in intermittently with the film crew and the bar service, occasionally offering glances of curiosity in my direction. At one point I heard him muttering, “we have to roll out the red carpet!” to one of his two accompanying children. On a projection screen behind where the band’s equipment had taken operable form, a video mashed together by Rebecca Kopycinski, aka local vocal sensation Nuda Veritas, played silent non sequitur clips gleaned carefully from 50s cartoons and gangster films. A member of the film crew asked O’Dea if it would be alright to shine an LED towards him during the show. “I don’t like lasers in my face,” he said. “I like lasers in my face,” Bellizia offered. “Yeah, me too,” said Williams. She then sang an abrupt aria-esque melody amidst the ado, and a brilliant red carpet unrolled down the length of the room.
Raised with a very French name by very British parents in the Hennepin County suburbs of Minneapolis, Williams grew up in a house lacking a healthy variety of musical exposure. “My parents didn’t have any records besides Edith Piaf and the soundtrack to A Man and a Woman,” she told me. Though Williams still maintains a solemn respect for Mrs. Piaf, her horizons found greater expansion at the MacPhail Center of the Performing Arts, where the five-year-old was nurtured musically via the Suzuki method. Conceived by Shin’ichi Suzuki, the Suzuki method encourages children to consider their environment as an essential component of the creative process. “We were just, like, wearing leotards and doing the bunny hop,” Williams remembers. After an experimental stint with the clarinet and the marching band, Williams joined the choir, where she was soon offered the lead role in “Annie.” Her choir director encouraged the young singer to take a non-traditional approach to playing the orphan: “He wanted me to be Annie, but, um, drunk.” Outgrowing “Tomorrow,” the aspiring songsmith later bent her ear towards the reining minstrels of 80s radio. Prince, Madonna, and Culture Club would soon define for her the onslaught of hairspray and theatrical pizzazz that remains prominent in her shows. The glitter and maquillage, however, would wait nearly a decade to resurface, while Williams explored alternate paths to the stage. Continue reading here.
Check out Heloise & the Savoir Faire's website here.
Brooklyn-based electro-rock outfit Heloise & The Savoir Faire is playing a handful of dates this fall to brush off the dust and get back in the game. They will be kicking off their east coast shows with a performance in Portland, ME at the Coast City Comic-Con and making stops in Burlington, VT, Hudson, NY, Philadelphia, PA and looping back around to Brooklyn for a two more shows – one at Union Pool and the other at Cameo Gallery.
Heloise Williams began performing in 2004 with a theatrical live act featuring two dancers and a laptop as a backdrop to her powerhouse vocals. Now, with a full band in tow, the splendor that is Heloise & The Savoir Faire began to attract serious attention, eventually catching the ear of Blondie’s Debbie Harry who went on to declare the band her “favorite underground New York band.” Harry supported the sentiment and lent her vocal talents to two tracks on the full band’s debut Trash, Rats and Microphones. The record could not be a more fitting introduction to Heloise & The Savoir Faire; a potent cocktail of new wave, soul, disco, rock, and electronica fused together with poppy hooks and always danceable beats.
For the last year, Heloise has been writing and recording the follow up to their debut album in Burlington, VT and Brooklyn, NY. It promises to be a dance record with a soul: four on the floor beats, arpeggiated synths and heartfelt anthemic vocals which will be Heloise & The Savoir Faire’s most exciting self-possessed effort to date. The sophomore album will be available Spring 2012, you can visit their website for updates on the album and upcoming shows.
Heloise will also be starting her monthly “Diamond Dust Sundays” at Nights And Weekends in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on November 27th. Catch Heloise spinning records and performing some of her own songs one Sunday a month.
Praise for Heloise & The Savoir Faire:
“Front woman Heloise has Cyndi Lauper’s tone, Debbie Harry’s range, and many cheesy come-ons—what’s not to love? As synths bubble through the disc’s randy electro-pop songs, you won’t know whether to pogo or grind, but dance
you will.” –Marie Claire
“The group draws freely from the past and present, with streaks of classic disco, new wave and rock coming together around Williams’s anthemic vocals in a tightly orchestrated mess of decadently glammy misfit cool.”- Time Out New York
UPCOMING SHOWS
November 11 Portland, ME @ SPACE
with Waranimal and DJ PonyFarm
November 12 Burlington, VT @ Burlington City Arts
with DJ Disco Phantom
November 17 Hudson, NY @ Club Helsinki
November 18 Philadelphia, PA @ The Barbary
with Metropolis America
November 19 Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool
with Pass Kontrol, Xenia Rubinos, and DJ Disco Phantom
December 9 Brooklyn, NY @ Cameo Gallery
with JOHN and Hi-Fashion
CONTACT
Publicity
Gina Schulman & Samara Shwidock
Management
Luis Calderin
Booking
Eric Sosa
On Tuesday, November 8th, Shwayze & Cisco premiered the music video for their song "Drunk Off Your Love" feat. Sky Blu. "Drunk Off Your Love" is the second single released off their latest album, "Island In The Sun", which debuted August 13th.
The video features Sky Blu of LMFAO, Ron Jeremy, Pauly Shore, skateboarder Greg Lutzka, and snowboarder Mason Aguirre.
"The making of this video was a nonstop party with a carnival's worth of characters stopping by," Cisco told AOL Music. "Where else can you find Ron Jeremy and Pauly Shore at the same party as Olympic snowboarders and the best skaters in the world? I think it's the perfect visual for the song. Fun, sexy, and a little bit tipsy. Bananabeat to the fullest! Good music and good people getting down!" he added.
Check out the video on VEVO at http://www.vevo.com/watch/shwayze-cisco/drunk-off-your-love/USA371459844. The album is available on iTunes and all other major platforms.
What a weekend! We recently got back from performing some shows in New York and we couldn’t be happier to be back playing in the city. The weekend got started Saturday night with a performance at a CMJ showcase at the world-famous Mercury Lounge to a packed house of family and friends. The set list included everything from dance jams off our last couple of albums to some new material from the album we are going to release early next year.
Later Saturday night we headed to Brooklyn to play at Karl Lagerfeld’s 2nd Annual Unofficial CMJ Showcase (which wasn’t really Karl’s party) at the Bushwick Starr. There we got to play with a bunch of different artists including our friend Tom Lawson’s band Activists/Dictators. House of Ladosha – who describe themselves as a crunk/ghettotech group – also performed and is truly a band you have to see to believe. Another band we love, Pass Kontrol, played the show as well. We were really excited to play alongside them and we’re looking forward to playing with them again in November. We will be bringing our magical love jams to a town near you soon to play one of our upcoming shows, see you there!
UPCOMING SHOWS:
with Waranimal and DJ PonyFarm
SPACE Gallery
538 Congress Street, Portland, ME
Tickets: $7.00
Show: 8:00pm
with DJ Disco Phantom
Burlington City Arts
135 Church Street, Burlington, VT
Tickets: $6.00
Show: 8:00pm
21 +
with Metropolis America
The Barbary
951 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia, PA
Tickets: $10.00
Show: 8:00pm
with Pass Kontrol and Xenia Rubinos
Union Pool
484 Union Ave. at Meeker, Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: $10.00
Show: 9:00pm
November 27th
Live Performance / DJ Set
Nights and Weekends
18 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY
New Album, ISLAND IN THE SUN, Now Available on All Digital Platforms
Shwayze & Cisco will hit the road for the ISLAND IN THE SUN TOUR, starting November 1 in Boston, MA and ending in San Diego, CA, on November 25, to promote their new album- which was released September 13, 2011.
Island In The Sun features Sky Blu of LMFAO, Nikko Gray, Sophie Stern and Dr. Dre protégé, Kendrick Lamar. The album debuted at #2 on the iTunes pop album charts, and is now available on all digital platforms. The music video for the album’s first single, “You Could Be My Girl,” received an astonishing 1.36 million views in just 3 days.
Supporting artists on tour will include Mod Sun who recently released his mixtape titled Blazed By The Bell, and G-Eazy who is most recently known for his Doo-Wop inspired mixtape, The Endless Summer.
You can catch Shwayze & Cisco at:
Tue 11/1/11 Middle East – Boston, MA
Wed 11/2/11 Rock & Roll Hotel – Washington, D.C.
Thu 11/3/11 The Studio at Webster Hall – New York, NY
Fri 11/4/11 Providence, RI
Sun 11/6/11 Xtreme Wheels – Buffalo, NY
Mon 11/7/11 Peabody's – Cleveland, OH
Tue 11/8/11 Reggie's Rock Club – Chicago, IL
Wed 11/9/11 Varsity Theater – Minneapolis, MN
Thu 11/10/11 Blue Moose – Iowa City, IA
Wed 11/16/11 Aggie's Theatre – Fort Collins, CO
Thu 11/17/11 Black Sheep – Colorado Springs, CO
Fri 11/18/11 Cervantes – Denver, CO
Sat 11/19/11 In The Venue -Salt Lake City, UT
Mon 11/21/11 Crown Room @ Crystal Bay Club Casino – Crystal Bay, NV (Lake Tahoe)
Tue 11/22/11 The Independent – San Francisco, CA
Wed 11/23/11 The Roxy – Hollywood, CA
Fri 11/25/11 SOMA – San Diego, CA
For tickets and more information go to:
http://bananabeatrecords.com
http://shwayzeandcisco.com
CMJ Showcase and Halloween Performance
Heloise & The Savoir Faire are thrilled to announce some upcoming shows, where they plan to debut a lot of new material. They’ll be taking the stage this Saturday, October 22nd, at the CMJ Showcase at Mercury Lounge. Later that night, Heloise will perform (sans The Savoir Faire) at Karl Lagerfeld's 2nd Annual Unofficial CMJ Showcase at Bushwick Starr.
On Sunday, October 30th Heloise & The Savoir Faire will also perform a Halloween show at Cameo in NYC. More details on these upcoming shows are listed below.
For the past several months, Heloise & The Savoir Faire have been hard at work on their new record, which they are very excited about and hope to finish by early 2012. Stay tuned for more information regarding the album release.
SHOW INFO
Sat. Oct. 22nd
Mercury Lounge CMJ showcase
217 E Houston St.
New York, NY
Facebook event
6:30 doors (we play at 7:30!!)
$12
Sat. Oct. 22nd
The Bushwick Starr
207 Starr Street
Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY
Facebook event
L train to Jefferson Street
8pm doors
$8
Sun. Oct. 30 with 33Hz and Infernal Devices
Cameo
93 North 6th Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Facebook event
8pm door
$10
Rough Francis is set to rock Burlington this month with a couple upcoming shows at some dope venues. On Friday, October 21st the band will play at the Monkey House (30 Main St., Winooski, VT) alongside indiepop quintet The Smittens, local rock 'n roll band thePROPER and post punk rockers The Static Age- performing in Burlington for the first time in two years. DJ Disco Phantom will be spinning in between sets to keep you dancing all night. The show runs from 7:30pm -10:30pm; tickets cost $7 and are now available for purchase at Pure Pop Records and the Monkey House. For more information check out the Facebook event.
Catch Rough Francis on Saturday, October 29th at Manhattan Pizza with punk rock band Skulls, and Vermont metal band Spit Jack, who are growing a reputation for their wild rock 'n roll performances. Rough Francis is planning a special cover set and other surprises for a night of supercharged, high-energy music. The show is free and starts at 9:00pm.
The guys recently joined bands Parmaga, Blowtorch, and Villanelles as part of a showcase show. Check them out performing their latest, "Not A Nice Guy" on Vimeo.
Rough Francis expects to finish recording by the new year, and are currently making plans to shoot a couple of music videos. Stay tuned for upcoming information on the album release.
SHOW INFORMATION:
Rough Francis w/ The Smittens, thePROPER, & The Static Age
Venue: The Monkey House
Date: Friday, October 21
Time: 7:30pm
Tickets: $7.00 – available at Pure Pop Records and The Monkey House
Rough Francis w/ Skulls and Spit Jack
Venue: Manhattan Pizza
Date: Saturday, October 29
Time: 9:00pm
Tickets: Free
Burlington, VT — Luis Calderin, principal of OKAY!!OKAY!! (a full service boutique marketing & design agency), is excited to announce his participation once again in the renowned ING New York City Marathon on Sunday, November 6, 2011. Calderin was asked to join Team Stoked two years ago, which is the division of runners for Stoked Mentoring. The non-profit organization, co-founded in 2005 by Sal Masekela, X Games Host, and Steve Larosiliere, Huffington Post blogger, began with the mission to promote personal development, academic achievement, positive relationships and healthy living to under-served youth through action sports and mentoring. Stoked was created on the belief that at-risk and disadvantaged youth can prosper and grow by learning life lessons and skills through the teaching of action sports.
For the fourth consecutive year, Stoked has been selected as an official charity partner of the ING New York City Marathon. Each runner is asked to raise a minimum of $2,750 for Stoked, which will directly support their program funding and operational development.
“I see myself in these kids, and I believe in this program. I know the value that action sports can have for kids through my personal experience growing up, and as a father of two,” says Calderin. “This will be my second time running the NYC Marathon and I never would have considered doing anything like this before last year. It’s changed everything about my life, and I’m really excited to be able to come back and do it again for the kids of Stoked, who have also had their lives changed by that amazing program.”
The 26.2-mile ING New York City Marathon is considered one of the world’s greatest road races since its inauguration in 1970. The race draws over 40,000 participants annually, crossing five bridges and finishing at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. The race is cheered on by two million spectators and watched by 315 million television viewers worldwide.
All of the money that Team Stoked raises will directly support Stoked Mentoring’s skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding programs. Calderin hopes to raise more than the minimum $2,750 through his fundraising website. Tune into Calderin's blog for updates.
Check out the exclusive teaser of 'Shwayze & Cisco's Drunk Off Your Love' music video that was just posted on the AOL Music blog! "The making of this video was a nonstop party with a carnival's worth of characters stopping by," said Cisco. "Where else can you find Ron Jeremy and Pauly Shore at the same party as Olympic snowboarders and the best skaters in the world? I think it's the perfect visual for the song. Fun, sexy, and a little bit tipsy. Bananabeat to the fullest! Good music and good people getting down!"
Tropical Storm Irene devastated towns throughout Vermont, leaving thousands displaced without electricity or access to clean water. After the storm made its way through Vermont, local artists and businesses came together to organize the Brave Little State – a benefit to serve the many victims of the recent flooding.
The event kicked off on September 23rd at Higher Ground Ballroom with local musicians Chamberlin, Rough Francis, The Wee Folkestra, The Amida Bourbon Project, DJ Disco Phantom and comedian Pat Lynch, who all generously donated their talents to this concert/silent auction/goods drive to support the ongoing flood relief efforts.
A special thanks to JDK/Iskraprints, Green Mountain Harley Davidson, Burton, Gardener’s Supply and A.M. Saddler Photography for contributing to the silent auction, and to everyone who donated goods. Organizers worked closely with the Vermont Food Bank and Youth Services Inc. of Brattleboro to ensure that all items collected were distributed to those most in need.
The event was made possible by 104.7 The Point, Seven Days, Higher Ground and OKAY!! OKAY!!. It generated over $2,000 and an overwhelming amount of clothing, toys and food. Watch the video above to see some highlights of the event.
