CHRISTINE OHLMAN & REBEL MONTEZ
by A.J. Wachtel
Picture this: a short woman with a tall platinum beehive. Dark sunglasses and the voice of an angel. Hard-rocking, tough, tender, sassy and soulful; Christine Ohlman is the real deal. She fronts a red hot rock ’n’ roll band, Rebel Montez, six days a week: one can also see her at Rockefeller Center in the Big Apple every Saturday night, where she is the long time lead singer of the Saturday Night Live (SNL) band. One thing is for sure: Wherever and whenever you see her; the Beehive Queen ROCKS!
Noise: You were born in the Bronx but your website bio says that at age 16, you “travelled from Boston to New York on an overnight train” to begin your recording career with the New Haven band The Wrongh Black Bag. You recorded The Blues Project with Al Kooper’s “Wake Me Shake Me” and you then relocated to Connecticut. What were you doing in Boston as a teenager?
Christine: I was living in Connecticut at the time. We moved there right after I was born. My grandparents lived in the Bronx and I was always down there, though. I went to college at BU and the very tail end of the Wrongh Black Bag coincided with the beginning of my freshman year.
Noise: You next fronted the group Fancy with your brother. What was the Connecticut /New England scene like back then and do still run into fans you know from those days?
Christine: I have a big fan base from those days. Vintage concert posters are always showing up on Facebook. One interesting link was that the Wrongh Black Bag were the “baby” band who used to open for the Wildweeds, Big Al Anderson’s band. The Connecticut scene was very, very vital at that time. I worked out of a studio called Syncron/Trod Nossel in Wallingford, and lots of great bands came out of there, including Big Al’s Wildweeds.
Noise: Fancy evolved into The Scratch Band and you were noted in the Northeast for your great live shows. What were some of the clubs in the area that your band set fire to?
Christine: The New Haven clubs, of course: Toads, Arcadia Ballroom, HL Wilfred’s, Oxford Ale House. Shoreline joints like The Black Swan/Salty Dog, Silver Bullet in Moodus, Rocking Horse in Hartford—tons of great rooms.
Noise: You overdubbed vocals for The Rolling Stones’ Metamorphosis album and became good friends with Andrew Loog Oldham. How did this happen and did you cross paths with The Glimmer Twins in the studio?
Christine: Andrew and my late life partner, Doc Cavalier, became business partners. The Stones and I were never in the same studio, but it was great fun, and I appeared last year on The Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra and Friends Play The Rolling Stones Songbook Vol. 2., dubbed Coolest Record of 2013 by Little Steven’s Underground Garage. The Metamorphosis sessions were great fun. Who wouldn’t want to overdub to songs that were so deeply ingrained in your consciousness that you could sing them in your sleep?
Noise: A few years later, you reunited with your Scratch band mates G.E. Smith and Paul Ossala and joined The Saturday Night Live Band in 1991. Lenny Pickett, musical director for SNL, has said: “Ms. Ohlman was, at the time she entered The SNL Band, responsible for selecting much of the band’s vintage R&B repertoire.” Has your role changed in the long time you’ve been fronting the band and can you name a few tunes you’ve chosen for the band’s catalog? And why those tunes?
Christine: I have a huge Southern soul vinyl and CD collection—the genre that blended black singers with white musicians in Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and other hot spots in the ’60s and early ’70s—and used to share lots of stuff with GE, still do. -We were just chatting the other day. Some of the fabulously obscure things that are still in the SNL songbook to this day are “He Made A Woman Out Of Me” by Bettye Lavette from WAY before she made her comeback, “A Shell Of A Woman” by Doris Allen and “ You Don’t Miss Your Water” by William Bell—by far my favorite version of that song.
Noise: You are hard rocking, tough, tender, sassy and soulful. In fact, you are a bit like Janis Joplin meets Dusty Springfield meets Ronnie Spector. I know that Etta James was also an early influence of yours too. Looking back, what characteristics of theirs have you incorporated into your style today?
Christine: I love Janis’s sense of pure abandon, Etta’s finely-tuned sense of gritty sexuality, and Ronnie’s tremendous style. Ronnie was the inspiration for the beehive, of course, and it’s been a thrill to now call her a friend and to have had her introduce me more than once onstage as the Beehive Queen. Of course, when I enter, I come onstage bowing to HER.
Noise: What Conneticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts groups did you like to see when you were growing up and are there any New England bands you think should have gotten more recognition and better appreciated than they did?
Christine: The Bram Rigg Set out of New Haven was a huge favorite of mine; they later evolved into a fine rock/blues band called Pulse. But my favorite unknown record BY FAR is Extra Girl by the Bluebeats.
Noise: Rebel Montez has released six albums including Re-Hive in 2008 and your latest, The Deep End, in 2010. The latter includes duets with Dion DiMucci, Marshall Crenshaw, and Mott The Hoople’s Ian Hunter, with appearances by Levon Helm from The Band and Big Al Anderson of NRBQ. Your killer band, Cliff Goodman on guitar, Michael Colbath on bass, and Larry Donahue pounding drums, is busy working on your next release. What can people expect from this project and what do you have planned for it? And what was it like recording with Dion, the man who wrote “Teenager In Love” and “Runaround Sue”?
Christine: Dion is a dear, dear friend but I must admit that we did that song the modern way—we flew tracks back and forth between studios in Connecticut and Florida. Never in the same room, can you believe? The Grown-Up Thing is the working title of the next project and it will be just that… ruminations on love in a grown-up way, sometimes bittersweet as a result. We have just uncorked a complete rave-up called “I Prefer” which came together at sound check at the Knickerbocker two weeks ago in all of five minutes.
Noise: Your expertise includes being a music writer for Elmore Magazine and being a musicologist. What is a musicologist and what does being one include?
Christine: Musicology, to me, just means you know a great deal of history and can make the right connections between songs, time periods, genres.In this era of Wikipedia I think the role of the musicologist is greatly reduced. I try to get real deep with everything I do, whether it’s writing, singing, musicologizing—is that even a word? Deep is where I like to be and how I like to live.
Noise: You are appearing on a bunch of other artists’ CDs. Can you tell us a bit about who you are currently working with?
Christine: Just finished sitting in a number of times with the great Irish Band Black 47, who retired from the road November 15. I appear on their final CD and several of their others and we did The Tonight Show together this past St. Patty’s Day. I’ve also just been asked to be the grand marshall of the 2015 Muscle Shoals WC Handy Festival, so I’ll again be working with the Decoys, including the great David Hood on bass.
Noise: You appeared at Bob Dylan’s 30th Anniversary Tribute Concert and sang with George Harrison. What was THAT like?
Christine: Amazing. At the rehearsal he went around to each of us in the green room and introduced himself. “How do you do? I’m George Harrison.” A lovely way to break the ice. That day we also had Lou Reed on the soundstage in Queens. The rest of the week had been spent with everyone from Clapton to Neil Young to you name it, with Booker T & the MGs as the band, in a rehearsal room. But for Harrison we went to a big soundstage. It was epic.
Noise: Another great event in your career was appearing at the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction ceremonies in Cleveland where you were part of the house band. You fronted their tribute to Janis Joplin by appearing with both Big Brother and The Kozmic Blues Band. What was THIS like?
Christine: No—the Janis Joplin thing was for Summerstage at Central Park in 2003, the Year of the Blues and also would have been her 60th birthday. I was asked to do “Combination of the Two,” the wonderful song she sang at Newport, and also an intimate duet with Sam Andrew, for which we rehearsed ahead of time. Sam is a wonderful cat.
At the 2012 induction I appeared with Darlene Love and others—and it was epic, too, at the Cleveland Public Hall, 6,000 fans in the seats around the top and 1,000 industry folks. I am in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame House band and I’ve performed in Cleveland since then, too.
Noise: You topped AlternateRoots.com’s 2013 Readers Poll as the top Americana vocalist. Does winning awards like this actually do anything for your career and do you have any advice for young artists today trying to get recognized for their music?
Christine: It’s just lovely to be validated and I am a big fan of Bill Hurley’s Alternate Root site. Bill is a fabulous supporter of original music—and he’s a Boston cat! I bet he’d make a very interesting interview subject! My advice to anyone starting out is go deep. Follow your heart ALWAYS. It will lead you where you want to go, and if you are lucky, you can build a career like I have. I consider myself one of the luckiest chicks on this great, green earth.
Noise: There ya go! Thanks a lot. Did I forget to mention anything?
Christine: My fave moment on Saturday Night Live—except what might happen this week, you never know!—was waltzing around the studio during soundcheck with the late Chris Farley while Paul McCartney played “Hey Jude” during his first ever appearance on the show!
www.christineohlman.net
facebook.com/ChristineOhlmanBeehiveQueen