Johnette Napolitano is best known for her role as lead singer & bassist for Concrete Blonde. When I sat down to do a phone interview with her recently I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I discovered is how easy she was to talk to. I felt like I was calling an old friend and we were catching up on each other’s lives.
Besides being the lead singer for Concrete Blonde (and having one of the best voices since Aretha), Johnette is also a book writer, an artist, and lover of horses (she lives two and a half hours outside of LA where she keeps a horse).
She brought up the fact that she turns 57 this year and how women that age are not adequately represented in society. “No one represents women our age. We aren’t the same women as our mothers and grandmothers. We’re inspired by them. But we aren’t them.”
She spoke of her beginnings, how her father bought her her first guitar when she was nine, but how she met with a lot of discrimination when she was trying to make it as a singer/guitarist. Back in the seventies promoters didn’t want a woman playing guitar because it didn’t “look right.” She also found she was paid less than the men, being told she was paid less because she didn’t have to carry heavy equipment. She worked as a waitress and took odd jobs as a singer, singing at weddings and other important events. She met the members of who would become Concrete Blonde while she worked at Paradise Studios, a studio owned by Leon Russell (in her words, an unsung hero).
Johnette is currently working on a book with the working title of Witch. It’s a book about an old friend of hers who’s now in her nineties, but is a psychic who helped the police find missing persons in Arkansas in the sixties. The book will tell how this woman, who is her friend and long-time mentor, who was persecuted for her talents. She plans to also make it into a movie and a play eventually.
As for the future of Concrete Blonde? “We’ll never play together again,” she claimed. “Everybody needs to go their separate ways.”
Meanwhile, Johnette is going out on a solo tour. She will play Seattle’s Triple Door on June 15th and Portland’s Doug Fir Lounge on the 14th of June. Be there.
All Photos By Holly Homan, taken 01/25/2012.
