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Younger Joel finds her own, passionate singing style

Younger Joel finds her own, passionate singing style
Syracuse Post Standard - Syracuse,NY,USA
By Patrick Dacey. What we know: Alexa Ray Joel is the daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley. What we didn't know: She can really sing. ...

What we know: Alexa Ray Joel is the daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley.

What we didn't know: She can really sing.

Saturday night on the Taste of Syracuse Main Stage, piano player and vocalist Alexa Ray Joel and band members (bassist Jimmy Riot, guitarist Demian Sims and drummer Scottie Garapolo) got a late start to the night's musical showcase. They appeared onstage in front of a disgruntled, rain-soaked crowd after a 45-minute delay.

But any ill will quickly disappeared as Joel exuded a smooth yet edgy voice through a set list that converged with rock, soul and blues to mesh into something completely her own.

Joel, 20, certainly kept her cool while playing in front of what was her biggest audience to date. Dressed in a T-shirt and rolled-up blue jeans while sitting behind a keyboard, the strikingly beautiful Joel said:

"I write all my own songs. It's important for you to know that. No one writes them for me, not my dad."

Billy Joel saw part of the show from backstage, according to his daughter, but he did not emerge in public.

Showing influences from her iconic father, Alexa Ray Joel sang with his passion, but lacked his lyrical grace.

"The Revolution Song" preached an individual defiance toward societal control that demanded, "Let's get up on our feet/Let's take it to the streets/We'll show 'em how it's done/I say we start a revolution today." However, she slid into a rather pompous claim for such a young woman: "I've seen it all, but I still can't relate/to any woman or man."

The existential matter grew deeper with the depressing number "Resistance," in which Joel asked the unknown to "answer my existence in the fields of dark resistance."

It was when Joel got more personal that her true talent shone with the soulful numbers "Far Away From Here" and "Sapphire Night."

As Joel proved she had the chops to record her debut album, a performer who's dished out nine records of greatest hits followed her.

The much more punctual Eddie Money took to the stage with the swagger of a frontman who's been on the road for more than three decades.

"Let's get wet," Money said, sliding out from under the stage awning as he opened the show with his classic "Two Tickets to Paradise," switching the words to "Two Tickets to Syracuse."

All the hits were on display and the crowd sang right along as Money belted out a set that included: "Gimme Some Water," "Shakin', " and "Think I'm in Love."

The highlight came when Money asked, "You got room in the car for me? You can take me home tonight," cruising through the memory-inducing hit with Alexa Ray Joel beside him singing the refrain: "Be my little baby."

 

Stepping out from her father's long shadow

Stepping out from her father's long shadow
Syracuse Post Standard - Syracuse,NY,USA
Life is good for Alexa Ray Joel, and it's not because she and her boyfriend, Jimmy, are readying for a sail around Chesapeake Bay courtesy of a new friend they ...

Life is good for Alexa Ray Joel, and it's not because she and her boyfriend, Jimmy, are readying for a sail around Chesapeake Bay courtesy of a new friend they met at Baltimore's Hard Rock Cafe.

Although that's pretty sweet, Joel admits during a recent phone interview.

What really works Joel up is that the new pal and excursion on this day off came about because Joel and her band of Jimmy Riott on bass (yes, that's boyfriend Jimmy), Demian Sims on guitar and Scott Garapolo on drums did their thing on the Hard Rock's stage the previous night.

"It's great. It's the most liberating, freeing thing I've ever done," Joel says. "It's really sort of me continuing to prove to myself that I can do this. It's amazing how well these shows have been doing. I'm really happy."

This is a breakout year for Joel, 20, who brings her band to play the main stage at Taste of Syracuse on Saturday.

The daughter of music icon Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley talks without hesitation about her growing career, her relationship with her parents and

life in the public eye.

First, some basic introductions are in order.

Does she like to be called Alexa Ray or just Alexa?

"I go by either. Friends call me Lex," she says.

About that middle name . . . does it honor Ray Charles, perhaps?

"It does," she says. "That's why it's spelled with an 'a.' "

Joel explains that she's always known that she loved music.

"Since I was born, pretty much I've always been singing," she says.

However, it took awhile before she decided the time was right.

"I procrastinated about it because I was scared to do it," Joel admits. "I was a shy teenager and going up on a stage before thousands of people pushed it back on the list of things to pursue."

After graduating from private school - she says she split her childhood between the Hamptons on Long Island and Manhattan - she enrolled in the musical theater program at New York University.

"I wanted to pursue music, and I was feeling lost and confused," Joel says. "I didn't know what I wanted, which is why I ended up applying at NYU, which I went to for my freshman year. But I didn't feel like I fit in there."

However, she learned a bunch.

"I'm glad I did it," Joel says. "It influenced my songwriting and musicianship. And I can always go back to school."

After leaving school, Joel enlisted the help of a vocal instructor who, "after one lesson said, 'You don't need vocal lessons. What you need is to be out there working with a band.' So he helped set me up with these guys," she says.

So far, her live set includes nine original songs that straddle the genres of pop, rock, soul and jazz.

"Obviously, I'm very influenced by Ray Charles," she says. "Of course, I'm incredibly influenced by my dad. But the style is different, more jazzy and soulful. A little bit of Norah Jones . . . Joni Mitchell. Fiona Apple. It's really all over the place."

Joel listens to what her famous dad has to say.

"It really relaxes me when he comes to the shows. I know he thinks I'm good or else he wouldn't tell me to do this," she says. "He always has a little bit of something to say because you can always do better. He's always the first person I'll call after I write a song."

Her dad tells her to "treat my songs as if they're my babies," Joel says. "There will be a lot of people who say, 'Change this and change that.' He is very much telling me to trust my own instincts, that my first instinct is probably the best one, that there will be a lot of people throwing advice at me, to trust myself. And that the music industry is ruthless."

Her mom's career in TV and films comes into play, too.

"She's very much my biggest fan now," Joel says. "She's supportive. She sort of helps me with advice about how to take care of myself on the road, and health-wise. I'm stuck on a bus with a bunch of boys, so I miss that maternal thing. She worries about me more than my dad."

Joel says she realizes that some people think her famous folks have helped her become famous.

"I think it actually makes it harder," she counters. "It would have been one thing if my dad was a teeny-bopper back in the day and his career didn't have the longevity it had. But since he's so respected in the industry, it's so hard to break out of his shadow, and I'll continue to be compared to him. In terms of connections, of course it helps. But overall, it's harder."

 

MUSIC: SING US A SONG, YOU'RE THE PIANO MAN'S DAUGHTER

MUSIC: SING US A SONG, YOU'RE THE PIANO MAN'S DAUGHTER
Asbury Park Press - Asbury Park,NJ,USA
BY ED CONDRAN. Alexa Ray Joel made things perfectly clear when she played Philadelphia's Tin Angel two months ago. "For anybody who ...
See all stories on this topic

 Alexa Ray Joel made things perfectly clear when she played Philadelphia's Tin Angel two months ago.

"For anybody who thinks my dad writes my songs, he doesn't," Joel said. "I write them all myself."

Judging by her well-received set in front of 100 middle-age curiosity seekers, Joel doesn't need any help from her father, rock icon Billy Joel.

She doesn't need assistance from her model mother Christie Brinkley either. Joel, a poised, head-turning brunette, is an impressive package at the ripe old age of 20.

Alexa Ray Joel sat behind a keyboard and delivered an enticing amalgam of rock, jazz and blues. While there's little doubt her proud father had an impact on his daughter, it appears Joel was weaned on a steady diet of Carole King and Stevie Wonder as well.

What's impressive is that Joel, who will perform tonight at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, has been content to fly under the radar for the most part. She's been playing clubs and bars with little fanfare and she isn't actively courting the media, mainly because she has yet to issue a release.

Joel is working on a demo that will shop to record companies. Her name alone should be enough to interest a label. In the meantime, she is proving herself playing live.

 

Joel loves famous dad, but is her own piano woman

Joel loves famous dad, but is her own piano woman
Chicago Sun-Times - United States
Some have come expressly to see and hear budding musician Alexa Ray Joel -- former New York University musical theater student and 20-year-old offspring of pop ...
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 Joel loves dad, but is her own piano woman

June 1, 2006

It's Memorial Day eve at the Hard Rock Cafe. The all-ages crowd shuffles in. But not everyone is here to ogle Tom Petty's lucite-encased Rickenbacker or guzzle overpriced pomegranate martinis.

Some have come expressly to see and hear budding musician Alexa Ray Joel -- former New York University musical theater student and 20-year-old offspring of pop giant Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley -- do her thing on the main stage.

Chicago is the last stop on this monthlong Hard Rock tour. Like her previous (and much shorter) stints on the road that kicked off in January, it's largely about helping Joel to gain exposure and find her footing in a notoriously tough business -- one that has given her father, who bankrolled a portion of the multistate swing, great wealth and considerable heartache.

Joel readily talks about him -- and, especially in the large and lushly lashed eyes, looks like him -- but she'd rather make it quick. She is, after all, her own woman.

"I feel like it's been going really well," she says during a pre-show chat in a roped-off upstairs area overlooking the stage. "I mean, every now and then there's the occasional person who comes up to me after the show and is like, 'Oh, you're just like your father,' and 'Can I get tickets to his show?' And I'm like, What?"

In fact, the ticket requests and pleas for introductions to Billy became such a problem that she addressed the situation on her well-trafficked myspace.com blog.

"I had to say something," she says. "It was getting out of control. It's like a double-edged sword, because I am really influenced by him and I am proud to be his daughter. He's a huge part of why I'm doing this. And yet, at the same time, I feel like I can't talk about it too much because then it'll just bite me years later. So it's a hard thing. It's a no-win situation in a way."

'I write all my own songs'

Chicago residents Paul Haider and his girlfriend Jeanne Phillips are seated barside. "I was saying to [Jeanne] that I hope things go better for Alexa Ray than they did for Julian Lennon," Haider says. His white T-shirt bears the faded cover art (designed by Brinkley) from Billy Joel's 1993 album "River of Dreams." "And things worked out for Jakob Dylan, but he's kind of an anomaly among the sons and daughters of rock stars."

At a table near the stage, Chicagoans Rose Porento and her 11-year-old son Jake eagerly await Joel's entrance with Jake's aunt and a friend. Jake, Rose points out, is a huge Billy Joel fan and a talented pianist. "You should hear him play," she says. "He'll blow you away."

Chicago investments specialist Richard Jablonowski, on a first date with Chicago attorney Caitlin O'Connor, is disappointed that the special invite and ticket he received for the event turned out to be useless -- it's free to anyone who wanders in. They're making the most of it anyway. "We were just naming our top five Billy Joel songs," O'Connor says. "But only I could name my top five."

Joel's scheduled 7 p.m. performance, which begins 45 minutes late and runs under an hour, gets enthusiastic applause from the good-size crowd. Most of them look on intently from bar stools and stageside seats as she offers up such poppy-angsty-jazzy tunes as "Sapphire Night" (a "quite mushy" romantic ode written in her late teenage years) and the Alanis Morissette-ish "Jaded," among seven or eight others.

"I write all my own songs, everyone should know," she quips from behind her Yamaha keyboard after the first number. "My dad doesn't write them for me."

Afterward, having exited to claps and whistles and you-go-girl yelps, she heads upstairs, where 40 or so fans (of her and her father) are lined up for autographs and photos. A couple of them are less than half her age.

"I love her music and her voice," says turquoise tank-topped Chloe Kausal, 9, aglow in girlish giddiness. During the show, she'd darted back and forth in front of the stage snapping pictures of Joel with a disposable camera.

"She's a Billy Joel fan, too," says her mother Maria. "I grew up with Billy, now she can grow up with Alexa."

Eight-year-old Marissa Garapolo, the niece of Joel's drummer, has similar praise. "She has a really good voice," the smallish and small-voiced Garapolo says, clutching a Hard Rock T-shirt and a miniature CD for the star to sign.

'That's Billy Joel's daughter'

Judging by the queue of mostly twenty-, thirty- and forty-somethings, the grown-ups dig Joel the Younger as well. Of course, this is also the closest many of them will ever get to Billy, and surely that vicariousness is part of the allure. Still, their praise seems genuine.

"Very good music," assesses longtime Billy Joel fan Mark Beckwith, waiting in line with his wife and a friend. "What lured me was her wanting to carve a niche for herself. And she has. She's a very good keyboardist and a very good singer."

"We were impressed," says Haider, whose "River of Dreams" shirt will soon bear Joel's Sharpied inscription. "She's got a lot of potential and a lot of talent."

Signing one item after another, Joel looks thrilled with the onslaught of attention -- even if some of it is merely because of her DNA.

"I mean, I want people to come to my show so they can hear the music," she'd said earlier. "I don't particularly care what gets them to the show. If they leave liking my music and a fan and inspired, then that's the goal. But a lot of these people only come because, 'Oh, that's Billy Joel's daughter. I'm a fan of his music, what does she have to offer?'

"And, you know, that's fine. Because that's how people know me. For now."