Sep 19, 2014 | Audio/Visual, Fellowships and Artist Residencies, Shows/Events
“Amateur Hour” is a high water mark for a confident, headstrong vocalist/songwriter who seems to level up with every endeavor—the crispness of the recording renders every skein of Ebert’s voicings audible with unprecedented and welcome clarity, showing off her strong, instinctive gifts for arrangement and lyric writing.
– Ron Kretsch
Super stoked about the new record, Amateur Hour. Cleveland’s own Gotta Groove Records and A to Z Audio are putting all the pieces together for the release.
For the new album, I wanted to complete and record some older songs, as well as have an equal amount of new material to include. Some stuff was dusted off from back when I started — from before I started using a metronome.
This new one is also the first Uno Lady release that includes collaboration. Nick Cross lends his talents on guitar to two tracks, You’re no fangtooth and Night ride. Tony Cross adds drums to Bikini weeding and End of time. And the talented Adam Boose, of Cauliflower Audio, mastered all the tracks
The album artwork is another thing I’m stoked about. It turned out better than I envisioned! A big thanks to Ryan Poorman for taking the photos and Angie Ruland for working in tandem with him on the layout. Thanks to the lovely Kim Tran for the fabulous makeup and Margaret Ruble at Senjiva Studio for making the most beautiful yet hideous dress (by request) I have ever seen!
And last but not least, a heartfelt thanks to Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC) and Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC) for creating and sustaining the Creative Workforce Fellowship. Thanks for relighting the creative fire within me and providing me support so I can invest in myself and music. If it wasn’t for the fellowship, this would have taken another 10 years to make. Instead I am already working on the planning stages for the next record.
Record release show:
October 18, 9:00pm
w/Delaney Davidson & Shale Satans
Happy Dog at the Euclid Tavern
11625 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH
The LP is sold out but you can get the digital copy here
Sep 17, 2014 | Press
PRAISE
[Amateur Hour is] one of the more unique albums you’ll ever hear.— Cleveland Scene
Uno Lady, aka Christa Ebert, one of the most unique talents to emerge in the Cleveland music scene.…Uno Lady is a vocalist – and then some. She’s a one-woman choir, with a beautiful high clear voice that she accompanies with more of her own voice. — The Plain Dealer
With just a microphone and a mixer that loops her vocals, she produces clouds of lush, layered sound that refer to familiar pop themes and lyrics but utterly transform them. Jaunty melodies and catchy phrases pile up into towering edifices that are startling in their grandeur, considering their modest building blocks. — COOL Cleveland
Uno Lady…creates her shockingly great variety of grooves, colors and styles using nothing more than her voice, a looper, small mixer and microphone. She not only makes this multi-dimensional sound in a studio a multitude of individual tracks for layering ….she also creates that sound live — Greenbay Gazette
Layers upon layers of beautiful singing – sometimes comforting, sometimes unnerving – intertwined like DNA, drenched in fuzz and reverb, combine to form songs that feel as though the actual act of Christa Ebert’s singing is an event that takes place entirely outside of time.— Cleveland Scene
One case in point, and the performer who veered most off the conventional path, was Cleveland’s Christa Ebert, in the guise of Uno Lady. Ebert’s performance was all vocals, and a few snippets of found audio, looped and wrapped into and around themselves and drenched in reverb and sometimes fuzz or chorus. It recalled the giant, dramatic sounds of bands like This Mortal Coil or Cocteau Twins: dreamy, psychedelic and sparse. — Heyreverb.com
When Christa Ebert started her Uno Lady project in 2007,
she produced a music so starkly unique that she rose quickly to acclaim and respect in Cleveland, OH’s music scene. Using a digital looping device, she sang, hummed and cooed layers of recursive, ethereal dream-harmonies, over which she finally sang the song’s lyrics, all in a voice that could turn on a dime from saucy to operatic.
Her local treasure status was cemented in 2009 when Cleveland Scene Magazine named her both a Band to Watch and Cleveland’s Best Female Vocalist, calling her music “stunning and unearthly,” and saying that “the actual act of Christa Ebert’s singing is an event that takes place entirely outside of time.” She was also selected that year to play WRUW FM’s Studio-A-Rama festival, and at the First International One Man Band Festival in Denver, CO.
Ebert released the full-length cassette/digital LP I Really Like Genetics but I’d Rather Have a Good Time in 2009 and the 7” “Tacocat” in 2010. Having won a prestigious Creative Workforce Fellowship from Northeast Ohio’s Community Partnership for Arts and Culture in 2014, Ebert used the infusion of funds to finance her most impressive sounding release yet, Amateur Hour. The title would seem puzzlingly inapt, but the self-taught Ebert says that she so named it because “this is the last recording of me acting like I know what I’m doing. I’ll soon be taking various lessons to improve my music.”
That’s as may be, but Amateur Hour is a high water mark for a confident, headstrong vocalist/songwriter who seems to level up with every endeavor—the crispness of the recording renders every skein of Ebert’s voicings audible with unprecedented and welcome clarity, showing off her strong, instinctive gifts for arrangement and lyric writing. The album even contains, for the first time on an Uno Lady recording, conventional instruments, the guitars and drums of brothers Nick and Tony Cross, from Cleveland’s rakish and superb country-rockers Little Bighorn. And atop all that, Ebert’s broadening stylistically, as well—“You’re No Fangtooth” is an inspired, Elephant Six-esque pop gem, while the eerie “Change in my Pocket” recalls the early electronic experiments of Raymond Scott. And the eccentric, whimsical humor Ebert’s long brought to bear on her work finds a marvelous outlet in the frankly adorable “Bikini Weeding.”
Side A
1. Dear Wes Anderson, You Should Like This Song
2. You’re No Fangtooth
3. End of Time
4. Greater than Gold
5. Bikini Weeding
Side B
1. Night Ride
2. Back in the Flip Days
3. Change in my Pocket
4. Five Minute Meditation
For booking and press inquires,
contact Christa Ebert:
unoladymusic@gmail.com
216-408-4768
unolady.com
facebook.com/unoladymusic
soundcloud.com/unolady
Sep 7, 2014 | Shows/Events
Cleveland Public Theatre’s annual benefit will take place on September 13, 2014. I’ll be playing on stage 14 at 8pm.
Featuring dozens of area theatre, dance, visual and performance artists along with fabulous food and drink, Pandemonium is a benefit like no other and an evening not to be missed. Pandemonium’s action takes place in unexpected places throughout the campus as guests decide how they choose to experience this innovative and unusual benefit!
Tickets can be purchased here:
http://boxofficex.printtixusa.com/cpt/donate?w=Pandemonium
Map and schedule of event
http://www.cptonline.org/MapSchedulePan14.pdf
This year CPT is honoring Beth Mooney, Chairman and CEO of KeyBank with the 2014 PAN Award, in celebration of her groundbreaking leadership, enduring commitment to community and support of the arts. A dedicated civic leader, Beth has demonstrated exemplary community service and philanthropy throughout the Ohio region and beyond. In particular, her commitment to the arts, healthcare, diversity and inclusion has featured prominently in her efforts to make Cleveland a better place. She is a Trustee and Treasurer of the Board of the Musical Arts Association (The Cleveland Orchestra), a Trustee of Cleveland Clinic Foundation and a Board member of the United Way of Greater Cleveland.
