In the liner notes of her new album, River, Florence singer/songwriter Lisa Palumbo thanks her mother Violet for passing on her highly musical genes.
“My mom is an only child, which she says afforded her a lot of time to play the piano growing up in the 1930s and ’40s,” says Palumbo. “She was a career music educator. She is the kind of person who can’t necessarily figure out how to work a DVD player but will sit down at the piano at 80 years old and blow you away with a Chopin nocturne.”
After earning a master’s degree in music from Columbia University, Palumbo herself taught music in public schools for many years. She moved to the Valley in 1993 and began what she jokingly calls her music career at an open mic at Northampton’s Ye Ole Watering Hole. She met four of the five band members who join her on River within a month of moving to town.
Palumbo says the gaggle of musicians on River—Tom Sturm, Greg Eramo, Conor Dowling, and Lesley Smith—collectively calls itself Page Six. The group has played several gigs around the area, including a few Transperformances at Look Park. Russell Chudnofsky, who plays electric guitar, is a friend who used to live in town and now plays in Boston.
When it came time to hit the studio, she knew she could count on her crew. “I asked the band if they would do the CD when most of the songs had not yet been written,” Palumbo says. “I could sense a creative period coming on.”
The radio-ready album was recorded with Mark Alan Miller at his Slaughterhouse Studios.
“He is simply awesome,” says Palumbo of local legend Miller. “I worked with him back in the ’90s and wanted to go back to what was familiar.”
Palumbo describes songwriting as a pure way to express her feelings. She says sometimes pieces of music play repeatedly in her mind over a period of time; other times she’ll strike a chord on piano or guitar and just sing what she’s feeling at that moment. After a few hours working out a song’s details, she’ll bring it to the band and allow everyone a chance to react to the music.
“I try not to micromanage too much [to] allow their creative ideas to play off of mine,” she says. “All the friends I play with on River make my songs so much more when they add themselves in.”
Palumbo hopes to round up the band for a few shows in 2012, and will spend some time promoting the album with an eye towards landing one of her songs in a movie. Filmmakers, take note.
To check out Lisa Palumbo’s new album, visit http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lisapalumbo.
