Singer steps out of her father's shadow

Singer steps out of her father's shadow
Baltimore Sun - United States
... But she needs some support," says Lachaina, who alone, at this place and time, comprises Alexa Ray Joel's crowd support. But it's growing. ...

 She's got a way

Though she's the daughter of a superstar, Alexa Ray Joel is forging her own path

RALEIGH, N.C. // The plumber is psyched. Mike Lachaina, born three towns down from Billy Joel's hometown on Long Island, stands in the gravel of the Lincoln Theatre's parking lot waiting to see what she sounds like. Lachaina, a Carolina man now, is more than twice the new singer's age, which is a fitting initial audience for the Piano Man's daughter.

"I grew up listening to Billy. I've never heard her. But she needs some support," says Lachaina, who alone, at this place and time, comprises Alexa Ray Joel's crowd support. But it's growing. The guy charging $5 to park didn't know Billy Joel had a daughter - now he's curious about her, too.

This could be how some music careers still are built - from the ground up in a near-empty parking lot on a Monday night.

"Alexa Ray Joel (Billy Joel's Daughter)" reads the identifying poster on the theater door. No question it's the right theater, given the mural on the building of an old black Lincoln with Abe himself at the wheel. Under Abe, a Prevost tour bus is parked - its generator humming. Inside, Billy Joel's 20-year-old daughter awakened earlier in the day to find herself in central North Carolina. (She will find herself in Baltimore today, where she will sing tonight at the Hard Rock Cafe.)

As for Monday, the concert will probably not rival the show in Florida, when Alexa Ray and her band opened for the Beach Boys earlier this month. They played before 9,000 people. Good vibrations, indeed. This night in North Carolina, who knows how many will come out to hear Joel, who writes her own songs, plays keyboard, will not play her father's songs ("He does his songs better than anyone"), and doesn't yet have a CD to sell. She has a hit surname but not a hit.

Through her well-traveled space on MySpace and 60 shows (and the inevitable head cold) since January, Joel is in play. Of course, the pedigree has not hurt. Her name should be familiar to boomers; her dad named his boat after her and wrote a popular lullaby (and children's book) for his then 8-year-old daughter when his marriage to her mother, Christie Brinkley, was ending. Goodnight, my angel. Time to close your eyes. And save these questions for another day ...

Goodnight, my angel

Now it's time to dream

And dream how wonderful your life will be ...

Her life has become this: gigging, meeting and greeting fans, blogging, falling in love with her bass player, falling in love again with her father's music and crediting her mother for making her stick to piano lessons. "She was the rock," Joel says. "My dad is a genius and super supportive, but he's also a dreamer."

Showtime is 60 minutes away at the Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh. Joel knows people are drawn to her because of him. People are curious. That's fine. Just leave the show a fan of my music, she says.

And, no offense, but get your own Billy Joel tickets.

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At 20, Alexa Ray Joel is an old musical soul. Her eclectic set of influences includes Chopin, Carole King, Al Green, Neil Young, Fiona Apple, Leonard Cohen, Billie Holiday, the Beatles and Ray Charles for whom she was middle-named. She also has been "insanely influenced" by her father, who has been an insanely popular singer with a recently released box set that dozens of careers could fit in. Given the line-up of musical influences, what is Alexa Ray Joel's style? Soul, classical, rock, rhythm and blues, pop?

"It could be considered pop," she says on her humming tour bus. "I don't think it's a bad word, but 'pop' has become a taboo word when it shouldn't be. My dad writes pop songs. They just happen to be really good songs with good lyrics.

"More than anything, my singing is very soulful."

She does have that soulful Norah Jones-thing going on. At another angle, she resembles (here goes) a touch of Katie Holmes, too. No, it's more like this: She has her father's - "yeah, I know. I hear that in every city now." Sorry, but she does have her father's eyes - but not his figure. Her mother, after all, was a supermodel.

In April 2005, Rolling Stone gathered children of famous rock stars for one of its classic covers. Among others, there was Otis Redding III, Nona Gaye, Harper Simon, Ben Taylor, Sean Lennon and Alexa Joel, then a freshman at New York University. "When she tells me that I'm an influence on her, I don't necessarily want to be because with her name, she may have some difficulty being taken seriously," her father said in the magazine.

His daughter left NYU last year to pursue, surprise, a music career. She hooked up with a band and they hunkered down in five-hour rehearsal jags to practice her original songs of teenage angst and rebellion against authority and school. When Joel conjures a melody in her head, she sings it into her answering machine for preservation.

With her parents, friends and even her piano teacher in attendance, Joel made her New York City debut late last year to a standing-room only crowd at the Cutting Room. Pressure. Nerves. Applause. The reception was amazing - and overwhelming.

The hype almost happened too fast. I wasn't ready for all that attention yet," she says. So, she told her agent she needed to hit the road and play colleges and small clubs. "I knew people wouldn't respect me if I started playing in these big showcase venues. I needed to play for people who don't know me, people who aren't critics, regular people who want to hear music."

Sixty tour stops later, she is in Raleigh. No family or critics in sight - just one enthusiastic plumber. Joel, whose songs "The Revolution Song" and "Resistance" can be heard on MySpace, just finished a six-song demo she'll shop to major labels; then, she hopes, her first record and another tour will follow. On the road, she's learning to care for her voice and care for a business of which she is the CEO. Her father, his own money/manager problems well documented, again serves as a role model.

"I really want to be perfect, perfect, perfect. You know, being my father's daughter, he's such a perfectionist, and I have seen how it pays off. He's a bit of a control freak, and I'm also learning that's kind of a good thing," she says. "He always says your music is your baby, and you have to treat it as such."

In conversation, Joel seems like a serious soul ("You are asking serious questions!") but she claims she can get silly and relax sometimes. She asks if we know her dad's song "I Go to Extremes." We do. "I'm just like him because I really do go to extremes." She starts to sing, I don't know why I go to extremes. ... And OK, this is a cool tour bus moment: Billy's daughter singing one of his songs. It's no "New York State of Mind," but we'll take it.

The bass player, Jimmy Riot, comes onboard to announce dinner plans. He's 34 and judging by his T-shirt, tats and rings, one might assume the man didn't listen to a lot of Billy Joel or Carole King in his formative listening years. A tad heavier music for this dude. But then, a funny thing happened on the way to age 34: The musician meets and falls for the talented daughter of a pop icon.

"I knew his hits," Riot says. But now he's really listening to Billy Joel's music. "He uses these amazing baroque chord progressions." Our observation exactly. "He also writes great bridges." So true.

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But Jimmy Riot is more impressed with the band's lead singer, whose chords and bridges aren't too shabby either.

Raleigh is a long way from New York City's Cutting Room. At 8:45 p.m. inside the Lincoln Theatre, a dozen people sit in folding chairs. We're reminded of something Joel said on the bus: I'm singing just for the sake of the music. If anybody has taught me how important that is, it's my dad. You know, just write a good song and don't worry about what other people think.

By 9:05, the crowd has swelled to 25. The band in place, Joel opens with a rocker called "Jaded." Her voice is startling - stronger and rangier than presumed. Her voice does not sound like her father's on account of, well, she's a woman. But she does have her father's - chord progressions. Don't know anything about the baroque thing, but one day, radio might eat this Joel up, too. Her lyrics can tip toward corny, while on other songs, they show some muscle.

"People ask me, 'Does your dad help you write songs?'" Joel tells the crowd. "No, I write my own music. I just wanted to clear that up."

She is sweet, shy and business-like as she soldiers through her 50-minute set. Often looking at the bass player (who often looks back), she introduces each song with "this next song is about ... ." because, to be fair, no one knows her music. "Far Away" was written when she was 16 and going through a "rough little patch." When she was fed up with school and bosses, she wrote "The Revolution Song," a funky, soulful tune that has her bouncing a bit behind her Yamaha keyboard.

As a nod to her classical piano training and perhaps to her father's intro on "Vienna," Joel performs her own classical prelude on "Resistance," a number where Joel admittedly cops a Fiona Apple vocal pose. But Joel has her own voice. A rocker, "Make Me Your Own," and a teenage ode to love, "Sapphire Night," round out her set. She praises the theater's acoustics and thanks everyone for coming out. Jimmy Riot slides back out to fiddle with something on her keyboard. "One more?" he asks.

For an encore, Joel "a little nervously" plays another love song before exiting the stage. But she doesn't flee Raleigh; she comes out to meet her sparse but supportive audience. She chats them up. She signs autographs. This gesture, too, will pay off.

Mike Lachaina from Long Island waits with open opinions. "She's got great chops. She doesn't have that commercial sound. She's definitely herself." He praises the band (an obviously well-rehearsed, tight group) and shows off his Alexa Ray Joel autographed poster. Other fans deconstruct the past hour.

"We were wondering if she would come out, and she did. She was gracious," says Robert Baldwin, a local singer-songwriter.

"She's not a diva," says Baldwin's fiancee, Laura Freeman.

"She's not a copy of anyone," says Jamie Purnell, another local musician. "She has great chord progressions." We know, we know, but here's the real kicker:

No one asked her for Billy Joel tickets.