Nice review and thoughts on 2007

It's difficult to describe Gina Sicilia or her record without employing a whole bunch of clichés and making both sound like stereotypes– it's disrespectful and would demean a heck of record and a terrific performer. Facts are facts, though: she's got the goods. Big, big voice with the big Blues and Big Band sound, unbelievably "real" and deep and knowing for someone only 22. Big, swingin' sound from just a "little big band," only the organ and a jazz guitar plugged in, ten other horn and rhythm guys simply blowin' like there's no tomorrow. Big, fat blues tunes, most penned by Ms Sicilia herself, full of those big hurts, big bad dudes, and big attitudes. Big presence, too, starting with the big green eyes: she's got Big Star written all over. With all that, though, she never sounds like the same old, same old, which is why this reviewer is so big on Gina Sicilia, and you're gonna be, too! (Victory Music)

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My, my, my. It's been quite a year.

Last Christmas my debut album hadn't even been printed up yet, and now...all of this.
I honestly NEVER expected it. I expected maybe a little radio play and some gigs. Never did I expect more, but I received more.

I have been SO SO SO lucky.

I know there is a fine line between being overly humble/modest and appearing ungrateful.

Ironically, what this past year's success has done has certainly humbled me. I'm not one to bring up in conversation with people good things that are happening. I don't want to seem like I'm bragging. Oftentimes I don't want other people (specifically other musicians) to know.
.
However, I also realize just how lucky I am, that things don't always happen so easily as they seem to have happened for me. I know they always wont. I will undoubtedly have down times. Everybody does and I'm expecting this. Who knows, maybe all of this is just a fluke. I'm preparing myself to NOT be disappointed if things start to not go my way.

I've barely scratched the surface of what I'm hoping will be a long career. I have only been doing gigs for 2 years. This is my life-long dream. When when I was 8 years old I used to brag to my family that I was going to go on world tour someday as a singer. I still want nothing more to having a career in singing. I'm not going to complain about any of this, that's for sure, and I would never give it back. This is what I want!

I don't want it to appear that I'm unappreciative of the good things or don't realize the magnitude of them or am not grateful enough.

Since I've never not had great things and opportunities like this in terms of trying to "make it", I don't know what it's like not to have them, and therefore do not know what immense gratefulness and appreciation would feel like for someone who finally reached certain goals or achieved certain things after a long time of falling short of that. Maybe it would be better for me and if I experienced failure after failure after failure.

I'm not trying to brag or toot my own horn here. I don't want this to be a self-indulgent, egotistical blog, but I do have to aknowledge just how lucky I have been over the last 10 or 11 months. I have to recognize that this is not all my own doing and I wouldn't have been able to do any of it without the helpful, supportive people I know and have met. I think by aknowledging this I am showing that I AM grateful. To mention nothing of it would signify that I'm indifferent, expected it, or am displeased. I have to be honest, and that's exactly what I'm doing.

So, thank you to EVERYONE who has supported me and helped me.

Let's see what the next 10 months brings!

To ignore the negativity and negative people, strive to improve, focus on the music, and be HONEST in everything I do are just a few of my resolutions.

I wish you all the best. Never let anyone discourage you from pursuing your dreams.

Hope your holidays were lovely and have a merry new year!!

<3
Gina

NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey everyone!!! Great news!!!
I am SO honored and SO thrilled to announce that this month I have signed with the prestigious Piedmont Talent booking agency for worldwide representation AND that I have been nominated for a Blues Music Award for "Best New Artist"!!!

You can go to http://blues.org/bluesmusicawards/nominees.php4 to vote for me!!!

Visit http://www.piedmonttalent.com to check out my new agency!!! :)

What a year it's been! I'm a lucky, lucky girl!

I never expected ANY of this to happen less than a year after releasing my debut CD!

How wonderful this has been!

I want to thank ALL of you who have supported me through all of this. I could not have accomplished what I have without your support.

I solemnly swear that I will be posting much more often...

For now, here is a silly photo of a pair of quite painful shoes that a fan in Virginia insisted on shooting of photo of!!



Happy holidays to you all and a very, very merry new year!

xoxo
Gina

2 Things That Overjoy Me

1. Going into a large record store, as I did last week, and, with euphorically ecstatic shock, discovering my debut CD for sale on one of the racks, right next to Etta James, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Susan Tedeschi, Shemekia Copeland, BB King, and other huge names I respect immensely . A few years ago I would ambitiously and insistently declare to others that someday they were going to see my CD right there in that store, alongside those exact names.
One simple, life-long,innocent dream has materialized splendidly.

2. Booking my first Blues festival in Europe (Finland to be exact)

What can I say? I am surprisingly easy to please.

If you want something bad enough, you will find a way to achieve it.

Alright, back to reveling in the grandiose and awe-inspiring beauty of Italia!
:)

Ciaociao
-Gina

Italia domani!!

...arrivederci e baci

:* :*

Tomorrow I'll be in Italy.
I'll most likely be eating too much food, food that my relatives will, according to tradition, force feed me.

>:

:)

Life is wonderful

First column published!

My first column for RivetingRiffs.com was published last week!

My editor told me with glad surprise that only a few days after the column was published, nearly 300 people had already read my column. Pretty good for a brand new online magazine!

Please click here to read my column.

Enjoy, and please let me know what you think...I would love to get some response on the issues I touched on in the column....

xoxo
Gina

Words, Thoughts, and Lyrics

Words. I'm a sucker for words--spoken, written, or sung.
I'm a sucker for lyrics.
Most people will tell you that a singer's powerful or sweet or teary or heart-throbbing or gritty voice "gives them chills".

What gives me chills is lyrics: Beautifully written, thoughtful, thought provoking, personal, honest, meaningful, relatable, precisely descriptive lyrics.
What makes me cry tears of astoundment is lyrics.

Combine incredible, perfectly phrased lyrics with a great singer who is not forcing anything or trying to be anything he or she is not--a singer with a soulful, convictional, down-to-earth, honest voice--a singer who understands that power exists in subtlety and that great serenity and comfort can be found in intensely powerful vocalizing, and you've got a winning, tear-inducing match.

Just the way lyrics are phrased or placed within a phrase in the most creative and touching of ways, at the most effective point within a song, can bring tears to my eyes.

As I said, I'm a sucker for words, which is why I wrote these words for all of you to read. Hopefull you will.

With that said, good night! Tomorrow is another day when a whirlwind of words will be floating around in my head and leaving my sleepless mind all the more restlesss.

-Gina

Today/Hair Catching on Fire

Today I began recording demos for my next record.
I'm super excited about it, slightly nervous, but very VERY anxious to get it out there.

and...

10 days 'til I'm in heaven!!
On Sept. 1st I'm going to the most beautiful country in the world to visit family in southern Italy and Milano. I have a ton of family over there, including aunts and cousins. The last time I was in my dad's hometown (in southern Italy), all my relatives through a huge surprise 16th birthday party for me at a restaurant in the town

Here's a funny story...(well at least to me it's comical)

As I was leaning my head over to blow out the candles on the cake, much to everyone's horror, my hair caught on fire!! I was able to quickly brush the fire out with my hands, but considering all the hair product I had in, I'm surprised I didn't go up in flames!! That's a birthday I'll never forget...and someone got the whole thing on tape!!!

I'll also be very excited to get back from Italy because, starting this fall, I have so many things planned. There are multitudinous things I want and need to do and accomplish...it's overwhelming at times but things are happening, so I can only be grateful!!

Buona notte :)

G

Thunderstorms

There's something so comforting about being inside your home during a violent thunderstorm.

From inside you can hear the rain slamming down like iron pellets against your shaky windows.

The rooms always get shaded and gloomy. This darkness gives me an an ironically pleasant feeling of isolation, but I know my own company is enough to satisfy my mind.

The ominous skies are to blame for such bleak, shadowy skies.
I find strange comfort in such dreariness.

During these kinds of storms, a dim light, a comfy blanket, and the knowledge that you're safe from the harsh arguments mother nature occasionally has with herself--the angry bickering occuring right outside your front door--offer such a feeling of warmth and security.

I love thunderstorms. I look forward to them in the summer. I'm also fond of a Friday night that consists of staying in alone, keeping inside myself, and, if inspired by some whimsical thought while listening to that pitter-pattering against my window, writing a song and playing a little guitar.

Not to mention giving my doggie a few kisses...

...and this is exactly what I am going to do tonight.



Here he is. Little Chippy. 10 years old but doesn't look a day older than 6 weeks.<3

-G

Why Me???

On August 21st, I will be putting my U.S citizenship to full use and, against my will, and quite unenthusastically, will be participating half-heartedly in the American Justice system:

Jury duty.

I've tried and tried but cannot get out of it. Damn, and believe me, I conjured up in my mind an encyclopedia of excuses and reasons for which I could not perform this duty.

-I claimed I was 9 months pregant and due any hour. Didn't work.

- I claimed I had a spastic spinal cord and am unable to sit for lengthy periods of time sitting and waiting and waiting in a brown, pew-like bench next to a man wearing the most rancid of musky colognes. They wouldn't hear it.

-I claimed I am heavily allergic to the exposure of boredom on my restless mind and an outbreak would require immediate medical treatment. They seemed to care less.

They just would not have any of this, but I suggested the staff arrange for an ambulance to remain parked outside the courthouse, as well as for a trained counselor to be on call who specializes in accute dementia caused by extreme, intense, I-would-rather-hang-myself-from-that-American-flag-over-there-in-the-left-upper-corner-of-the-dusty-ceiling-than-be-here-right-now kind of boredom.

Why me???

Time/Heaven/Absurd Amounts of Food

Time:

I'm certainly not where I imagined I'd be at 22.

I imagined something different.

Is it August of 2007 already?? Time sure does fly.

Pretty soon I'll be doing double time at the local bingo room, before which, of course, I'll be catching the early-bird special at the Red Robin Diner with the last of my surviving gal pals.

There, I'll likely be selecting chicken croquettes with a side of peas from the sticky menu and giving my order to the 22-year-old cranky waitress who is probably wasting her youth worrying and being bored, when, in reality, 99% of the things one worries about never happen and boredom is a sinful, poor excuse for laziness and lack of interest in doing all the living one can.

Life is too short to be bored. Don't spend your time wasting it.

Heaven:

I believe that, if heaven exists, it is not just some grand white ballroom comprised of poofy white clouds and cool, airy nothingness where everyone who has ever died congregates, reunites with their mother, finally meets their great, great grandmother from whom their gargantuan nose MUST have come from (because "it didn't come from my side of the family," used to say their mother), and befriends other deceased inhabitants of the other side, the by and by, upstairs, whatever you want to call it.

Nope. There are no divine white robes and euphoric floating around in my vision of the afterworld.

Heaven must be more personalized, more custom-designed than that!

I believe everyone has their own heaven.

It is a place that represents a time or place in the life of the deceased that brought them the most happiness, that they hold most dear, that is closest to their heart, that they long for to have or experience again, even if for just a split second.

It could be an old beach house where someone spent every summer of their enchanted youth-- swimming in the ocean, walking on the sand with their loving grandparents by their side.

It could be a 30th birthday party, freshman year in college, a honeymoon, a youth baseball game, a country, a city, a town, a house. Catch my drift?

Absurd Amounts of Food:

I had a great gig last night.
The band and I did our first set and took a break.

During our extended break, the multi-talented club owner/chef brought out an inordinate amount of food for us to feast on. It was nothing less than an exquisite buffet fit for a Roman Empress.

It would take a whole lot of time to list all the food my favorite new club owner so kindly served us.

All I can say is that, well, it was just like heaven.

-Gina