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A lot of people think artists are cool. But I actually think only cool artist is cool. There are quite some uninteresting “artists” which muddled the soup a bit. Lori McKenna, as a Boston local musician, as a mother of 5, is very cool.

Here is a sample of her song written and sang by herself. The title is called “unglamorous”. At age 39, she’s just been “discovered” about two years ago. All this time before, she was doing her music as a side thing while raising 5 kids (from 18 to 2), working at a glue factory, married to a plumber. But her talent was discovered. The music video was shot at her home in Stoughton MA. Her coolness shows when she achieved something that’s not easily reachable at that age and when she is very much buried by the burdens of life.

I am not a country music fan, but I am still touched by Lori McKenna’s talent.

To clarify why I liked Maggie’s voice from my last post - her voice is not the ultra smooth kind. It is a bit smoky, jazzy, when she’s singing a slow song and stretching one note, you can really hear the texture of her voice and a vastness. If she wants to, I think she can be trained and become a very good jazz singer.

Going to a Hiromi concert is a high experience. Everyone gets into a trance of happiness and high energy. The opening piece XYZ was powerful to the soul. Watching her hitting the keyboard with her fist, elbow, pounding her legs, standing up from time to time while playing the piano was like in a rock concert. Hence my title Hiromi rocks.

To give you a taste of it, here is her music video called “Kung Fu World Champion”.

Initially I was puzzled as to why one couldn’t categorize her music. I now know a little why. She blends in so many different elements into her jazz so that it is a mixed jumbo (in a very enjoyable way though). There are traces of heavy metal, anime (even her performance style some times contains the ever spreading Kawaiiness), classical music, jazz…just to name a few that popped up in my mind.The only disappointment in this concert was the bass wasn’t properly hooked up. It was a little hard to hear. A problem with the engineering…