An
album that totally caught me unawares is 'Get To You' by
Cleveland, Ohio based singer/songwriter Jeannine St.Clair.
Thirteen tracks of bombastic riff melting hard rock numbers such
as the opening track 'Out Of My Reach' with it's pounding tribal
drum attacks and Skid Row/Phantom Blue/Megadeth style power
chords which is continued on most of the albums songs such as
'Take The Time', the fantastic Phantom Blue inspired 'Get To
You', through to stunners like the sexy Vixen-ish 'I'll Take It'
'Blaze', 'Pelican Knot', the ballad 'Taking My Heart', the bluesy
funkyish 'Sun Goes Down', and the closing song 'The Day The Music
Died' which Megadeth's Dave Mustaine wrote.
Jeannine St. Clair has been singing since she was five years old,
it was from here that Jeannine made her television 'debut' 'It
was on a show called "The Gene Carol Show"' explains
St.Clair 'I continued singing for various children's singing
groups, school choirs
and musicals until I graduated high school and got involved with
my first "rock" band, which was an all female band
called "Cherry Bomb"'. It took Cherry Bomb about two
years to find all the right members, 'we had enough original
material (more than enough, actually,) to record an album with,
we perfected our "crafts" in the music business before
we started playing out in the clubs'
The bands first show on top of a roof at a college party. 'It was
pretty fun' says Jeannine 'everyone seemed to like us a lot', she
adds. Cherry Bomb continued playing out at the various clubs and
in 1993 they ended up recording an eleven song tape called 'Code
Green', ' at our live shows I would come out dressed in a
catholic school-girl outfit and we would have police lights
flashing and sirens going off and then about three songs into the
set I'd go backstage and change into leather, biker outfit or
something of the sort. It was really cool and the audience seemed
to get off on it.'
The band then generated interest from the labels 'Later that we
year we generated an interest from a well-established management
company in Los Angeles which then led us to signing an
independent record deal with a company called "Moonstone
Records". That brought Cherry Bomb out to Los Angeles to
record another album, tape, CD, (whichever you want to call it,)
and we worked with infamous producer/songwriter Kim Fowley who
had produced and managed the 'Runaways' back in the late 70's.
Kim Fowley was an interesting character to say the least and he
liked to have total control over us 24/7. There were times he
would come to our hotel rooms at night to tell us more stories
about the Runaways,we would be exhausted and he would yell at us
until 3 or 4 in the morning
if we didn't stay awake and listen to him talk. He often called
us various nick-names, usually very degrading ones, like
"little cuntess" or he would call us by what
instruments we played like "hey drummer girl", or
"hey you, singer." I don't think her ever called us by
our real names.' remembers St.Clair, she continues 'I ended up
reaching out my voice during the week of pre-production work
because he would make me sing verse, chorus over and over again
of all of our songs. I don't think he ever really listened to any
of the songs
in their entirety and I don't think we even got around to playing
any of them in their entirety during that week until the actual
recording.' The girls found their collaboration with Fowley
dissapointing and to their dismay the album never even got
released 'We travelled to New Jersey to work with
song-writer/producer Jack Ponti. Jack Ponti had worked with a lot
of well-known artists, like Alice Cooper, Bon Jovi, Skid Row,
Boys to Men and Doro Pesch, (just to name a few.) We did a three
song demo with him, (which turned out really good,) sent it back
to the record company and for some reason, never heard from
"Moonstone Records" again. I think they went under.'
In August of '95 tragedy struck the band, 'we were going through a lot of "band" problems, one of Cherry Bomb's biggest fans was killed in a car crash coming home from one of our shows. It was devastating to us becuase I don't think this fan ever missed a show and would even come to our rehearsals so he could tape our latest, newest songs. He was thrown from his vehicle and the police were not able to find his body so they were under the impression that he had maybe walked away from the accident. His parents were elderly so they were willing to believe that and just wait for him to come walking home, however, we, Cherry Bomb, did not have a good feeling about this so we went to the site of the accident and starting walking down the highway, picking up pieces of his truck and then looked over into a grassy ditch and saw his lifeless body laying there.
Because of this
tragedy and his dedication to our band I felt like it was an omen
to keep Cherry Bomb going, just before this I had started working
with the drummer from Vixen, (the all-female band popular back in
the late 80s,) Roxy Petrucci, on a side project in Long Island,
New York. She was looking to do something a little harder and
more aggressive than what Vixen had been. The guitar player of
the project was a girl named Gina Stile who had been in an
all-female band called "The Poison Dollies". The three
of us did 9 songs on Gina's 8-track recorder, Roxy never actually
playing real drums on any of it since it was just a demo so we
used a drum machine.
At this point I am still in Cherry Bomb and they were all having
a really hard time with me working on another project without
them. It was stirring up a lot of friction in the band, however
that was minimal compared to some of the other friction that had
built up between a couple of the other members for other various
reasons' laughs Jeannine.
Anyway because of the tragedy with the fan Jeannine made the
decision to stop working with Roxy Petrucci and Gina Stile to
concentrate completely on Cherry Bomb. To add insult to injury
Cherry Bomb ended up breaking up at the end of 1995. 'At that
point in our careers we had endured a lot of hard-ships,
let-downs, frustration with the music industry and add to that,
our own personal tragedies.' shrugs Jeannine.
The break up of Cherry Bomb led to Jeannine's current solo
project, ' I worked on writing my own songs in various studios
and if I were to actually release all of it, I'd probably have
about three albums worth of material. This was a tough time for
me due to the fact that music was changing so much and going
towards that "grunge" style. I had a tough time getting
acceptance from any former managers, producers or booking agents
I had worked with in the past because my music wasn't considered
"sellable" anymore but I kept to my principles and
continued writing, experimenting musically and playing live
whenever I could.
I have also been doing a lot of other musical endeavours, by
singing the National Anthem a couple times for my hometown's
professional baseball team, The Cleveland Indians, and our
professional basketball team, The Cleveland Cavaliers. I recorded
a Christmas CD which I only gave to close friends and family
members. I have ventured off into a little bit of acting as well
by appearing in a Drew Carey episode as an extra, and hosting a
cable network show called "The Big Al Show." I
participated in a promotional, multimedia CD/video for an
internet music web site called Full Concept, which I am currently
an A&R Rep for. My music is also on the site. www.fullconcept.com Dave Mustaine of Megadeth is the founder
of this site and I am proud to say that I have developed a strong
business relationship/friendship with him through Full Concept.'
Jeannine is currently writing new songs in the studio and playing
out live with her JeannineSt. Clair band which includes Billy
Morris, Todd Shelly, Joe Frietchen, Rose Kuhel and Gene Williams
in support of her most independtley released CD entitled
"Get To You" which with the help of her guitar player,
Billy Morris. The pair started writing the songs for "Get To
You" back in Sept. 98 and finally finished everything in
March of '99 and then added a couple more songs to the end of it
in June '99. 'I wrote most of the lyrics with the exception of
"Blaze", which Billy wrote himself and of course the
two covers I did on there, "I'll Take It" by Billy
Bizeau and "The Day the Music Died", by Dave Mustaine.
Jack Ponti wrote the words and music to "Pelican Knot"
and "Can't Wash It Off I co-wrote two of the songs,
"Underneath the Sky" and "Take the Time" with
my female bass player named Rose Kuhel. She was also the bass
player of Cherry Bomb. Most of the songs are pretty aggressive,
and they tell the stories of most of my
frustration and hardships I've endured in the music industry. The
slow one, "Taking My Heart", is of course, about a
relationship that has reached its end point but not wanting to be
the one to actually end it. I have strong musicians backing me on
this CD - The drummer, Todd Shelly of Kidd Wicked, the bass
player is Joe Frietchen also of Kidd Wicked and the guitar
player, once again is Billy Morris of Kidd Wicked as well as
guitar player for Warrant right now as they tour a few shows
throughout the states. Rose Kuehel also played bass on a few of
the songs. Todd, Joe and BIlly also back me when we do Jeannine
St. Clair live shows' she explains
'I recently opened up for CC Deville's new band, Samantha 7.'
smiles Jeannine, 'I am also involved in another recording project
with two former members of the all-female band Phantom Blue.
(Linda MCDonald, drummer, and Josephine Soegijanty, guitar
player.) I flew to Los Angeles back in July of this year to work
on pre- production for the 5-song demo we plan on recording in
December of this year. (That was previously scheduled for
September, but due to scheduling conflicts got pushed to
December.) I will be recording another album as Jeannine St.
Clair starting sometime this year and I am planning on
incorporating a new sound to the songs. (Possibly a little techno
twist with edgy guitars.)'
Jeannine St.Clair is a woman with balls, her song are killer
stomping hard rockers with mega cool axe work a'la Phantom Blue
and Megadeth. Make sure you check her out, you won't be
disappointed, now then Jeannine will you marry me?
By Nicky Baldrian
HTTP://WWW.JEANNINESTCLAIR.COM