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Written by Meghan Jones Thursday, 29 October 2009 23:11
Music Notes
Sam Brooker and Ruby Amanfu were doing just fine on their own. Each had a successful, Nashville-based solo career, and each had put out an album under their own names. In 1999, though, Sam and Ruby finally decided to collaborate, and that's when the magic really started.
Their lush, lovely voices complement each other in a swoonworthy, romantic way that oozes chemistry. I'm far from the only one who's noticed: Their album, The Here and the Now, came out this past August, and they also have a song on The Secret Life of Bees soundtrack.
Their sound is absolutely perfect for spending a day in the sun, preferably with a boyfriend or girlfriend. If that seems like a way you'd like to spend a Saturday, you know where to go. Sam and Ruby will be here on Halloween day to play the SoCo/WWOZ stage at 12:30 p.m.
NOC: Ruby, you're from Ghana and Sam is from Green Bay, right? Those are some pretty divergent musical backgrounds to come together.
RUBY AMANFU: I know! The only similarity is that they both start with 'g'.
NOC: And you met in Nashville. What brought you each there?
RA: Actually, I grew up here, believe it or not. This was the first place my family moved to. When we left Ghana, we came to Nashville, Tennessee in 1982, so I got to grow up here. Sam moved to Nashville in 1998, and then we met in 1999 because I had come home from spending some time in Boston.
NOC: And your first full length CD came out in August, so you've been touring around to promote it. How's that going?
RA: It's been going really, really well. We've had a crazy good time. We've been kind of blown away, not just by the response, but by the people that are coming out. We're really connecting with them, and this record is a personal record - not just our personal stories, but personal stories about people that we've met. So it's really neat when we see the people who've come out connecting with the songs, and we feel that we can walk away and feel that we know them a little bit better, as opposed to just being on stage and having this very separate experience. We feel that it's an all-inclusive experience with the listeners and ourselves. It's very rewarding.
NOC: And will this be your first visit to New Orleans?
RA: No, this will be our fourth Voodoo! We absolutely love it, and it's another place where instantly, immediately, we felt connected with the whole place, with the people that we met. We're just really honored that Steve Rehage has asked us back again.
NOC: Yes, apparently he's taken a liking to you guys! Have you and Sam developed a list of places that you have to see or eat at every time you come down here?
RA: Oh my goodness, every time is a different experience. I'm trying to remember the name of this little brunch place. I don't think it's vegetarian strictly, but they have really good homemade juices.
NOC: Oh, it is Surrey's?
RA: Yup, Surrey's! I have to go there every time. It is so cute. I don't know if they change up the art, but the art is really good, and you can buy stuff and you can hang it on the wall or they have magnets for the refrigerator. And I always have to get down to Magazine Street and do a little thrifting.
NOC: I was reading that you released an electropop album in the UK before you were together with Sam? That's dramatically different from what you're doing now! Tell me a bit about your path through your different musical interests.
RA: Well, my first record deal was when I was 19, and I was actually writing more of the stuff that Sam and I are doing together now; the stuff that Sam and I are doing together, this is each of us how, when we wake up in the morning, this is what comes out of us, the most natural thing. But he and I still both did the pop world.
For me, I got with a production team called Merlin Music Group, and they have done 'Toxic' for Britney Spears, and J. Lo and Christina Milian. They have written and produced so much stuff, so for me, they approached me. I think they hadn't really dealt with a lot of female artists who wrote all of their lyric and melody, so they could come in and do something really unique with it.
When I decided to sign with a non-staged deal, I knew it was going to be really progressive, really fresh, stepping outside of my box. And I was stepping outside of my box to not be in the country that I was living in to do that project in the first place. I was all for it, and it really pulled out some neat things from me that actually were always there; my influences are Madonna and Michael Jackson and Prince as well as Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. All of that was in me, and I think that was why I was able to step right in and it didn't feel fake. It felt real and that was another side of me that was in there that they really pulled out.
That was really fun, and Sam as well was doing his own thing. In Nashville, he was known as the Jamiroquai kind of guy with all the girls swooning, so it was interesting. But we both lost all sex appeal when we got together. Just joking! We come together and everyone just assumes that we are this romantic couple, which we are not.
NOC: Oh, I fell right into the trap then! You're holding hands in a picture that I saw, and you just sound so nice together. There's such chemistry, and I just figured that was the case.
RA: There's definitely chemistry, definitely a connection, which is what makes it so yummy. But outside of that... the music definitely brings us together and makes it a very real relationship, but a different one.
NOC: I read that you credited Madonna's Like a Prayer as your entrance into pop music?
RA: That album was the one, yeah! It really was the one, and it's funny, I think once I discovered that type of music, I began to see pop music in so many other realms. It wasn't just Madonna, but I was finding pop in some lesser known artists. There's a woman named Cindy Morgan who had her start with Christian [music], and she's done a bunch of other stuff, but her songwriting is so prolific. As a kid, I was getting a lot from her, and then later on I broadened that scope and jumped into Rickie Lee Jones and Peter Gabriel and had my world open up.
In the meantime, Sam was listening to all the funk stuff. His brother was listening to all that stuff and had every funk record. His dad, on the flip side, both his parents listened to all the folk stuff. All that stuff is in the both of us.
NOC: I'm always interested in that when I'm talking to musicians. They list their influences, and I go back to listen for it, and it really is in there. It just comes out, whatever you were marinated in.
RA: It's so true! All of my favorites are really conversational artists, their lyric and stuff, and we tend to do that. You can tell that Sam picked up some really cool stuff in his guitar playing coming from where he comes from.
NOC: And can we expect anything special for your Halloween show?
RA: Oh, Sam is definitely vying for something different, but the show is already going to be different. This will be the first year we're bringing our full band, so we'll have strings and drums and bass. It'll be really fun and new for Voodoo Fest this year!
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