Mel Minter • Crosswinds Magazine • Feburary 17, 2005

Sassy, Sexy and Slightly Sinister

Bernadette Seacrest is jazzed. The Albuquerque singer with pipes a church organ might envy has spent the entire day on music. “How great is that!” she says. The high point was her first guest DJ appearance on radio. She spent an hour spinning vintage punk and laughing on a Santa Fe station. Now, she’s doing her second print interview of the day, but you wouldn’t know it. She’s jazzed, and she jumps in with both feet — just the way she sings.

Since the 2004 release of her splendid debut CD, No More Music by the Suckers, she’s been spending more and more time on music. The CD features Seacrest and her Yes Men (Jonathan Grimes on sax; Paul Bossert, trombone; Michael Grimes, bass; and Jason Aspeslet, drums) pumping out a steamy blend of jazz standards and originals that might have been conceived as the soundtrack for a Raymond Chandler film. You get the sense that none of these people ever see daylight. They just materialize out of the darkness and cigarette smoke ‘round midnight.

The ii tracks feature six original tunes , four by Michael Grimes and two by local songwriter/guitarist Pat Bova-his “Cold in My Bed” is getting the most radio attention. Five standards round out the CD.

With an approach that’s sassy, sexy and a little sinister, Seacrest conjures a timeless noir world with her voice, inhabiting songs obsessed with shame, lust, anger, fear, booze, murder and betrayal. Coming from her, it all sounds like something worth trying.

PERSON VS. PERSONA

Seacrest is discovering that listeners are happy to conflate her with the material. While the songs resonate with her, she says, “I don’t drink, and I don’t smoke, and I don’t do drugs anymore. I’m clean living.” (She does confess to having a “sailor mouth.”) “It’s kind of ironic that I’m singing these songs, and there are these reviews being written, ‘Oh you can smell the liquor on her breath,'” she adds.

Dressed in jeans and a gray poor-boy sweater for the interview, she looks more like a poised 30-something soccer mom than a noir siren. Then she reaches for her water glass, revealing a forearm swarming with tattoos.

On the CD cover, her fully tattooed torso, exposed by a vintage strapless gown, promises the thrill of excess. Her voice makes good on it.

Growing up in L.A. and New York, Seacrest never imagined she’d be a singer. From age four to 15, ballet was life. Then came injusry. “when I had to quit ballet, it devestated me. I spent my entire life training. Ballet was eat, read, sleep- that’s it,” “So when I had to quit, my life just fell apart creatively.”

For years, she holed up in the fashion industry. “I did everything. I did hair and makeup, stylist work. I designed a clothing line,” Seacrest says. “The fashion stuff was a great creative outlet, but my heart was not there.”

In 1993, Seacrest relocated to Albuquerque, where Bova talked her into singing. “He’s the one who taught me how to sing, to harmonize, to belt. I didn’t know I could do that,” she says.

FINDING A HOME IN JAZZ

In 2001, Seacrest the singer debuted fronting Bova’s rockabilly band, The Long Goners. Her performances, noted for their intensity, belied an equally intense stage fright. “I do have a lot of fear, but I push myself past it,” she says.

Seacrest names Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Patsy Cline, and Exene (lead singer of the L.A. punk group X) as her primary influences. You can certainly hear them all in her singing, but she’s carving out a style that’s all her own. Her voice sometimes sings her, rather than the other way around, but her excellent instincts keep her tracked. You’d never guess she’s just been doing this for just three years.

After two rockabilly years, Seacrest says, “I wanted to spread my wings.” A friend recommended that she talk to bassist and instructor David Parlato to see if he would mentor her. “David kind of opened the door as far as working with jazz people,” she says. “He recommended I talk to Patty Stephens. I did a few voice lessons with her.”

After practicing for a year, Seacrest and Parlato started performing successfully as a vocal/bass duo. Not long after that, Seacrest heard a small combo performing in Nob Hill and introduced herself. In 2004, Bernadette Seacrest and her Yes Men were launched.

No More Music by the Suckers, co-produced Seacrest and Michael Grimes on the latter’s ThrillBomb! Records label, is finding an audience. (The title is a line from a Public Enemy song, and for Seacrest, the “suckers” are pop purveyors like Britney Spears.) A couple of e-tailers (online retailers) have made the Cd a featured release, it’s getting radio play, it’s tracks are being downloaded at a fast pace, and it’s selling out in local shops.

The Cd is doing well enough that Seacrest is spending less time on her cranial sacral practice and, instead, living on credit cards so she can get her musical show on the road. Where the road will lead doesn’t seem to worry her too much. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to be a singer and didn’t even know it,” says Seacrest. “I’ve got a lot of music in me. I want to make a lot of CDs. There’s so much music to be made.”

“So five years from now?” she ponders. “Fuck, I don’t know. The world is wide open.”