Oct 15, 2014 | Press, Shows/Events
By Jeff Niesel, Cleveland Scene – “Straight Outta the Living Room: Uno Lady, who counts Roy Orbison, Laurie Anderson, Freddie Mercury, Mary Ford… as her influences, played her first show at Pat’s in the Flats in 2007 and has been a steady force on the local scene ever since. “I went from recording in my living room with no plans beyond that, to being asked to play shows, and slowly learned how to perform live,” she says.
Lotsa Loops: Since she manipulates her upper register voice by sampling it and mixing it with a number of loops, the live show has been a tricky proposition…. “There have been a good amount of developments as well as simplifications,” she says when asked about the live performance. “My genius friend Ian Charnas is helping me construct a new podium out of a vintage suitcase. In addition, to a bunch of new songs, I have a new loop pedal that has some fancy buttons. Other than that, I like to keep it simple: My voice, a loop pedal, and a mixer.”
Why You Should Hear Her: Her new album, Amateur Hour, commences with “Dear Wes Anderson (You should Hear This Song),” an atmospheric tune characterized by soft vocals that make it sound like a veritable choir is singing. It’s one of the more unique albums you’ll ever hear. “I wanted to take unfinished songs that were worth finishing, re-record and fine tune them, and couple those with a new material,” she says of the new album. “It is meant to be a sort of wrap up, an ending of a chapter. Another thing I am excited about — this is the first Uno Lady release featuring other artists. I was lucky enough to have the Cross Brothers [from the local indie rock group Little Bighorn] lend their musical talents on a few of the tracks.”
Oct 14, 2014 | Press, Shows/Events
Greenbay Press Gazette – “The Tambourine Lounge at the Holiday Music Motel hosts a pair of unique house shows in the next week… Delaney Davidson and Uno Lady perform separately as a one-man and one-woman band at 7 p.m. Oct. 22.
Although a native of New Zealand, Davidson is truly more of a citizen of the world. In constant motion, Davidson’s touring schedule is relentlessly nonstop, including several June appearances in Sturgeon Bay for Steel Bridge Songfest. It’s a mystery where he finds the time to continue to produce a growing arsenal of albums, artwork and cinematic music videos.
Winner of the New Zealand Music Award (its version of a Grammy Award) for Best Country Album in 2013, Davidson’s latest release, “Swim Down Low,” features co-writing credits with Victoria Williams, Eric McFadden and James Hall from Steel Bridge Songfest’s collaborative songwriting “Construction Zone.” Known worldwide as a premier one-man band, Davidson is said to be more like a one-man machine in concert and in the studio.
Uno Lady, aka Christa Ebert of Cleveland, 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 (as heard on her recent release, “Amateur Hour”), she also creates that sound live. Uno Lady is a one-woman choir, with a high, clear voice that she accompanies with more of her own voice, prerecorded on tapes and played and looped as she performs.”
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Oct 14, 2014 | Press, Shows/Events
Green Bay Press Gazette – The annual “Dark Songs” songwriting and concert event hosted by the Holiday Music Motel will have 11 additions of “fresh blood” this year.
“Dark Songs” gathers songwriters and musicians together at the motel to collaboratively write songs with a theme appropriate for Halloween or other dark, morbid ideas, then record and perform them live…. this will be their first experience with collaboratively writing, recording and performing in one of the motel’s fully immersive, weeklong songwriting marathons.
Christa Ebert of Cleveland, aka Uno Lady, will be an eclectic addition with her looping talents and vocal abilities, while Julia McConahay of Madison will provide vocals and a wide range of violin stylings. …Bass player Patrick Kelly of Atlanta got involved on the recommendation of fellow Atlantan rocker James Hall, one of The Holiday’s most dedicated songwriting event attendees….
Other rookie participants are Sugar Ransom of Milwaukee, Susan Howe of Appleton and Barrett Tasky of Chicago, all of whom possess a wide range of talents that will add to the darkly themed “Dark Songs” stew. Tasky, who is proficient at a multitude of instruments, will also run one of the four operational studios.
This year’s “Dark Songs” concerts take place at Third Avenue Playhouse, 239 N. Third Ave., Sturgeon Bay. The Oct. 31 show starts at 10:30 p.m., immediately follows TAP’s 7:30 screening of “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” and the second concert is at 7 p.m. Nov. 1. Tickets are $5 for each. For more information, go to www.holidaymusicmotel.com/darksongs.
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Oct 14, 2014 | Fellowships and Artist Residencies, Press, Shows/Events
By Anastasia Pantsios
By Anastasia Pantsios, COOL Cleveland – “Christa Ebert calls herself Uno Lady when she performs, a hint that she creates all her music by herself using only her voice as the raw material. 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.
It’s hard to even tell if she has a highly trained voice or the girlish voice of an engagingly uncertain amateur; her delivery can be in turn knowing and wide-eyed, while she alternately buries a phrase by multiplying it or strips away everything to lay it bare in all its vulnerable nakedness.
Ebert released a tape almost exactly five years ago called I Really Like Genetics But I’d Rather Have a Good Time, followed by Tacocat in 2010.Back then she was in the early stages of exploring the striking and confident music she makes now. She hasn’t been too speedy about getting a new release out because she’s been business with work and school, like many of us. But when she landed a Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, it gave her the wherewithal to synthesize her evolving ideas into a new recording, a full-length album (available in vinyl and CD) called Amateur Hour.
She says, ‘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.’
That is a reason to rejoice. Meanwhile, she’ll celebrate the release of Amateur Hour at the Euclid Tavern at a show also featuring New Zealand country singer/songwriter Delaney Davidson and Cleveland surf/garage rockers the Shale Satans. ”
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Oct 14, 2014 | Fellowships and Artist Residencies, Press, Shows/Events
Photo by Ryan Poorman
By Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer – “Usually, the music lessons come before the records — and the shows.
Not in the case of Uno Lady, aka Christa Ebert, one of the most unique talents to emerge in the Cleveland music scene in the last five years.
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, prerecorded on tapes and played and looped as she performs live….
The album even contains some conventional instrumentation, with guitars and drums from brothers Nick and Tony Cross, of Little Bighorn.
On Saturday, Ebert will celebrate the release of “Amateur Hour” with a show at the new Happy Dog at the Euclid Tavern, with Delaney Davidson and Shale Satans. Unlike her past releases, which are now available as free downloads on her site (unolady.com), it’s available on both vinyl, pressed at Cleveland’s own Gotta Groove Records, and CDs from Parma’s A to Z Audio.”
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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
