Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

As the editor of Listen & Be Heard I became familiar with the name Tia Carroll by reading it over and over again in our calendars. Then there was the CD Review by Dave Tilton. Then I was hearing that CD in the office when it became the current favorite of our then calendar editor Cyndi Combs. So when we started presenting Blues on some Thursday nights at Listen & Be Heard Poetry Caf� I naturally thought of asking her to bring her spirit to Vallejo. Tia’s response was quite enthusiastic. “It’s not an easy thing to get love in the media and you guys have totally given me love. I would drop everything to do that…that’s the first cd review I’ve had.” It’s nice to get some appreciation, but she certainly deserves the attention we have given her. We’re not the only people who think so, since she has recently been named the Blues Singer of the Year by the Bay Area Blues Society (awards show March 10th @ 7pm at Kimballs Carnival in Oakland’s Jack London Square.) “It is so exciting to be named Blues Singer of the Year. I’m almost overwhelmed by that title. I know there are singers who can sing circles around me. But there is no singer that is better than me and I am no better than another singer.”

One thing I knew about Tia Carroll before I interviewed her is that she does a lot of hard work to promote and publicize every appearance she makes. While many performing artists believe that that kind of hard work is someone else’s job, Tia takes a different approach, so when I called her I asked her to speak about her approach. “You can have the greatest, the absolute greatest box of washing powder but if no body knows about it… You don’t have to have a lot of money. You can sit down and hand write a flier. You have to spend time in record stores, guitar centers, rehearsal halls. In San Francisco they have parking lots around some of these clubs. You can put your fliers in a stack on a table by the parking lot. You have to let people kow that you have the best thing. If somebody hears my music and they put it to my face; they put it together. They continue to put it together. It’s just so important. I do a lot of fliering. Press releases. There’s also lots of websites where you can put your pictures and show dates. Some are obscure, but you can count on one out of ten visitors. So I’m saturating. I meet people at the Bart station. My bag is a clear plastic see-through bag. When I have a show I make sure that the flier is on all four sides of that bag. Sometimes people stop and ask, sometimes they don’t, but they might go Google my name. I Google my own name just to see what else is out there that I might be doing or not doing. Stuff stays on the web for years. I hadn’t heard of Youtube. I went to the website and I typed in my name and there was a video of me from a month or two before. There I was Tia Carroll singing ‘God Bless America,’ when I opened a credit conference for my day job.”

I asked Tia what’s up and she told me that “the good news is Tia Carroll & Hardwork are going back into rehearsal next week.” Rehearsal for their appearance at Listen & Be Heard Poetry Caf� on Thursday February 22 from 8-11pm, when they will make their Vallejo debut. “I feel so much more comfortable when I have Hardwork behind me. . They know my stuff and they almost know what I’m going to do next. I probably would be a sound man’s worst nightmare. Another aspect of hard work is trying to keep together schedules and the band, and also throw in different kinds of things, expanding our repertoire all the time. That’s why I call the band Hardwork.”

I asked Tia what it means to her to be a Blues singer. “It means a lot to be a Blues singer. I feel like this is a whole new can of worms opening up for me. I don’t feel like there’s enough black female blues singers out there. Etta James, Coco Taylor, Norma Jean Bruso, Shemekia Copeland , there’s also Erma Thomas, there’s a handful. When you run down the men’s list it goes on for pages. I’ve taken to singing that James Brown song “this is a man’s world but it wouldn’t mean a thing without a woman or a girl.”

A new can of worms? I thought she was always a Blues singer. But I stand corrected. “I was doing Rock and Soul and R&B, and a little bit of country. I was dabbling for a long time. I started hearing Blues music, actually Coco Taylor really did it for me. I loved Tina Turner. My whole persona was energized by her high energy. But when I heard Coco and Etta James I said ‘hey wait a minute, I don’t have to holler and scream. I can settle down and do some real music.’ You open yourself up for a serious storytelling situation. All music is storytelling, but for me Blues is more of a personal story being told. It’s not what happens to everybody. I’m pretty much talking about what’s going on with me. When I’m writing it’s about me. When I’m performing it’s about giving something to the audience. Being a Blues writer is a comfortable way to tell my story. But anything with Tia Carroll is not just going to have some Blues on it. There’s one song on the new cd that’s more Rock, nothing Bluesy about it at all. I just feel like if you’re writing a song you should be writing what’s going on with you. I very rarely put in any of the new stuff. The newer stuff is not me. I’d just as soon reach back and get something from 1952 and do it a little different or even the way it was done.”

Tia grew up listening to an eclectic mix of music including Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Blood Sweat and Tears, The Grateful Dead and Stevie Wonder. Born and raised in Richmond, California, according to her mother she’s been singing all her life. “I never even liked my voice. I just love to sing. In 1984 a friend of mine took note and said ‘you know really have a nice voice, you need to go check that out, you need to go talk to your cousin’ (Larry Batiste.) So I went to my cousin, and he said ‘girl I didn’t know you could sing.’ I joined an old time rock and roll band called Yakety Yak. We did all the fifties and sixties, poodle skirts and pony tales. I was singing in my falsetto, I wasn’t a fan of my full blown voice. It took four years before I realized I had a full blown voice. EC Scott asked me to do a sound check for her. She always had a tight band, so I said sure I would go do it. They had never heard my voice either. They did ‘I can’t stand the Rain’ and we were all surprised at what came out. I’ve been singing full blown since then. No formal training. No church. No school. I do everything by ear. I’ve never really thought about it. It seems to come natural for me. Sometimes I already hear the note. It’s in my head. I know the key. I couldn’t say if it’s A, D, F or G, but I can go from the first note. I guess it’s a little difficult for the musicians. Half the time I don’t know what key I sing a song in. The first thing out of their mouth is ‘what key is it in?’ I tell them ‘I don’t know, just play and i’ll work it out.’ I don’t want to mess around on stage. I’m just so excited that I want to sing. When it works out they’re kind of amazed.

Tia is a mother of four kids from eight to twenty years old. “I dragged them to so many shows. They’re just used to it. During the time I really started singing and going to festivals, the kids were six and eight. Everything we went to they went to. A couple times we got them outfits just so they could get on stage with me because there was no one to watch them.”

Yet another aspect of hard work. Is it worth all the hard work? You can be the judge yourself when you come out on February 22 to hear Tia Carroll with Hardwork at their Vallejo debut. I asked Tia if she has a message for our Listen & Be Heard readers and here’s how she responded: “To all those who are trying to make it in show business, stop trying. For all those who love to sing, play, perform keep doing it.”