The Coppertone

Maybe it’s because I grew up reading too much Hemmingway, watching too many Steve McQueen and John Wayne flicks with my dad, and listening to too many Rolling Stones records, but I seem to have been born with, or developed, a predisposition against female artists. Aside from a select few (Lucinda Williams, Aimee Mann, Patti Smith, Jesse Sykes, Victoria Williams, Cat Power, Aretha, etc.), it all sounds pretty much the same to me. Before I go on, I want to clarify that statement by repeating that it all sounds the same to me. This is to say that, to my ear, there’s not a discernible difference between, say, Feist and every other indie chanteuse in the world. I’m not saying the differences don’t exist, I’m just saying my ears – bludgeoned by years of the ‘Mats and Mudhoney – don’t pick them up. It’s my problem, I’m aware of it, I’m working on it.

All of that said, when I came upon Amanda Zelina’s record, Love Me ‘Til I’m Me Again (yeah, you’ve got to get past a clunky title), I was immediately taken aback, not just by Zelina’s voice but by the arrangements – reverb-drenched, spacey and distinct.

Before David Sitek buried Scarlett Johansson’s voice in a sea of murky reverb, guitars, and synthesizers, arrangement was an aspect of record-making that seemed to go largely ignored by female artists in lieu of exposing their distinct voices, quirky and/or insightful lyrics, or both – as if arrangement and performance were somehow mutually exclusive.

Zelina’s voice is breathy and ethereal – two words often associated with female artists and perfected by the aforementioned Chan Marshall – but what sets Zelina apart is that she’s able to drift effortlessy back and forth between that breathy, reedy whisper and a full, powerful wail that owes a large debt to Carla Thomas (example: Zelina’s cover of “Try A Little Tenderness”). In short, she bridges the gaps between folk, rock and soul without seeming contrived or pedestrian. What Ray Lamontagne did for the cookie-cutter “sad guy with guitar” genre, Zelina does for coffee shop sirens everywhere.

Love Me ‘Til I’m Me Again may not show up on any end-of-the-year best of lists, but it’s a powerful effort from an artist who has given herself a very good chance at finding a foothold in a very crowded genre.

Amanda Zelina – My Version Of It
Amanda Zelina – Try A Little Tenderness

Amanda Zelina’s Official Site, Amanda Zelina on myspace - ninebullets.net

Amanda Zelina
Love Me ’Til I’m Me Again
By Jessica Carroll

It's not uncouth to state that the music industry is overwrought with gratuitous female pop singers and establishing individuality as an artist is arduous, to say the least. Toronto, ON's Amanda Zelina is lucky in this respect: her record, Love Me 'Til I'm Me Again, not only exhibits her exemplary vocal chops but also her distinctive delivery, so clearly influenced by some of music's most well-respected female singers. She's raw but extraordinarily feminine, belting out tunes that speak of love and its conquests. Zelina definitely sang into a hairbrush in front of her mirror while growing up and cites Tina Turner and Etta James as major inspirations. Her blues-inspired pop songs are airy and passionate, and seem to be written to play up her fantastic vocal ability, with simple instrumental accompaniment. Love Me 'Til I'm Me Again sounds like it was created to be performed live, preferably in a seedy speakeasy. With a voice and songwriting ability as accessible and well-developed as Zelina's, this young redhead is well on her way to becoming a staple among Canadian female songstresses. (Independent) - EXCLAIM MAGAZINE

http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/season/georges_picks_nighttime_wishes.html - THE HOUR

The Coppertone - Hidden Dreams

The Coppertone is the rock/blues band from singer/songwriter Amanda Zelina, Amanda Zelina has an amazing voice all on her own, but on The Coppertone album it takes on something completely different, I can’t put my finger on it but it’s something quite spectacular…phenomenal even.

Hidden Dreams is a damn good album, I’m not a huge fan of the blues genre but this one had my blood pumping, my toes tapping, and my head bobbing. It lends itself to the imagination very well in the sense that it’s easy to see what she’s singing about, instead of a film dictating the soundtrack, Hidden Dream dictates the film, except in this case the film is in your (my) head.

Amanda Zelinas music is a little bit pop, well it’s a lot pop in my opinion and that bleeds through in some of the songs, but even the worst song on the album is still pretty good. The best song on the album, for me, is satisfied mind. It’s more rock than blues, that maybe why I like it so much. As for the rest of the album, I can see myself sitting on the patio with a beer with this playing and I would be very content with the night. - The Lyceum Drift

So much of what makes modern dirty blues bands so appealing is visceral. Raw energy, sweat and a voice that can raise the dead, all threatening to spiral out of control at any second. When it comes to Amanda Zelina and her band – The Coppertone – those emotions are softened and more fluid, but no less real.

There’s no question she feels her blues, but unlike someone like Becky Black (who is a powerhouse on the mic), Amanda’s soul moves in a sensual sway instead of a screaming stomp. There are some heavy tracks that will appeal to those that love the dirty blues revival (“The Heroine”, “Nighttime Wishes”, and boogie woogie ready “Ramblin’”) but instead of pushing the intensity to the max, Zelina seems more comfortable letting her fire smolder - Hero Hill

Amanda Zelina can’t hide from me for long. I got this email from her a few days ago, downloaded her album and then promptly forgot about it. Today I plugged it into my speakers and had no clue who it came from (untagged, grrr!) Had no clue, that is, until the vocals began…. there is simply no mistaking this voice for anyone else once you’ve studied it as I have. Yes, the style is dramatically different from her previous, solo record, Love Me Til I’m Me Again, from 2009. The Coppertone, her new project as a three piece, has a very distinctive blues/rock feel and I’m more than willing to accept that. She wears it well.

Hidden Dreams brings nine tracks to your ears with finesse and smooth, heavy music for a hot summer night. This is sexy. This is a slow, deep kiss. This is reminiscent of Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon, updated to showcase Amanda’s howling, modern vocals. I can easily imagine this crossing all sorts of scenes and sitting comfortably with anyone who loves twang, the blues, and even R & B. The bass lines are strong, taking initiative for the duration. Track four, “Satisfied Mind” has a nice busyness to it that stays just far enough back to offset a grinding guitar whereupon Amanda rides. Just listen to that You’re going to need a handkerchief for this album, it’s hot and sweaty! Overall, it has a slight homemade feel to it and I love that about Hidden Dreams. It’s intimate and sing-able, and honest. Don’t let this pass you by, this summer gem is worth digging out of hiding.

Jun 18 2010 9:00P NXNE//The Hide Out Toronto, Ontario, CA
Jun 25 2010 10:00P The Black Pirates Pub Thunder Bay, Ontario , CA
Jul 1 2010 9:30P The Victoria Park Boathouse Kitchener, ON
Jul 2 2010 9:00P Not My Dog Toronto, Ontario , CA - Love Shack Baby

Toronto singer/guitarist Amanda Zelina has been an emerging figure for a couple of years now, combining passionate songwriting with a no-holds-barred slide guitar attack. Now working under the moniker The Coppertone, she’s finally put all of that talent on full display with this short but satisfying nine-track debut album.

Hidden Dreams was one of the final projects completed by the late Dan Achen at his Catherine North studio in Hamilton, and his unmistakable touch is all over the album’s warm and haunting sound. But it is Zelina’s pure ability, accentuated only by Bonham-esque Spirits drummer Nick Skalkos, that sets her apart from so many other young blues devotees following in Jack White’s footsteps.

In fact, on tracks like “Heroine” and “Satisfied Mind,” Zelina sounds more like she’s simultaneously channeling the spirits of Chris Whitley and Jeff Buckley. It all adds up to Hidden Dreams being an ideal introduction to an important new homegrown talent. - EXCLAIM MAGAZINE

Je suis presque tombée à la renverse en découvrant Amanda Zelina par je ne sais quel lien. Non, je n'ai pas été attirée par ses magnifiques yeux verts et ses charmantes tâches de rousseur mais bien par sa voix et ce qu'elle dégage : une voix très souple qui fait songer à Feist en plus soulful (puissante). Agée de 23 ans, cette canadienne risque de faire rapidement sensation sur la scène musicale car je viens de recevoir son premier opus sorti en cette année très prolifique Love Me Til I'm Me Again (merci mille fois à Amanda pour me l'avoir envoyé !) et c'est une petite bombe qui réunit pop et soul pour le meilleur. En attendant une chronique à la rentrée concernant ce fameux premier opus, je vous propose quelques liens et vidéos qui sauront étancher votre soif. N'hésitez pas à donner votre avis, c'est important pour elle !

- With Music In My Mind

Link: http://blaremagazine.com/2010/03/14/for-your-ears-only-amanda-zelina/

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A charming soul on and off the stage, Amanda Zelina is rare talent that’s as bold as her voice, personality and sound. Having performed a set at The Central that could make knees weak and blues lovers howl, the Canadian songstress talked to us about her influences and being attached to music.
When did you first get involved in music?

I was a late bloomer. I think around the age of 16 realistically. I only started seriously writing songs at 17 and picked up the guitar at 18. Mind you music was always in my life, so I suppose in a way I was actively involved as a child growing up around the turn table, banging pans, dancing and most of all listening. I think that the listening part, the years of just sitting and listening, helped more than any training.

What did your parents listen to while you were growing up?

Well my Dad would always be playing ZZ Top, Elvis Presley, BB King, Ray Charles and Muddy Waters. Good ol’ rock n’ roll, soul and blues. Every other summer I went to visit my grandmother in Newfoundland and she would play all the old country records like Johnny Cash and The Carters.

Which artists influence you the most?

The really old ones! The old blues guys like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin Wolf, Sleepy John Estes, John Lee Hooker and Junior Kimbrough. The ones whose voices rip through you and whose playing is exciting. They lived through things I will never experience in this lifetime and it paints a different shade of truth to their songs. To go through something so devastating and re-create those experiences into a song that makes you stomp your foot and celebrate life, that is something rare and incredible.

Otis Redding or Jack White?

That’s like asking: sex or chocolate?. I love them both. Depending on the mood, both are equally satisfying and both let off the same endorphins but in a very different way.

How would you describe your music?

Truthful. Raw. Real.

Your talent has attracted critics and a handful of musicians such as Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins. What was it like being personally requested by him to perform at his 40th birthday party?

It was flattering. It’s one of those moments you are in and really feel like whatever you are doing has brought you to a certain place. That’s comforting.

Unlike most artists you’re also intimately attached to music and everything about it. Can you explain more on why you recently decided to sleep in the studio where you are recording new material?

Exhaustion? Well, I feel like there is something magical about really submersing yourself in the creative environment that you are building. Sleeping in the old church (Catherine North Studios) is special. There is just this peaceful and nurturing energy all around the place. So you spend all day and night working away catapulting your creative energy out into the open space. Then when it’s time for bed, I’ll be laying there on the couch and all of a sudden the piano in the corner of the room is still not finished; so I’ll walk over, sit down at it and it gives me a song.

It’s an abstract thought, but the residue of creative energy buzzing off of all of us during the day gets released at night when no one is there and it’s calm. In those moments there is something very amazing that happens. Because of exhaustion, my mind doesn’t have the time to judge a creative thought so when I’m laying there and I get an urge to go to an instrument, I trust it. In less than five minutes, I have a new song. It’s sort of like stream of consciousness writing.

Music is known to assist individuals, whether its by helping them ignore the outside world or providing them with inspiration to dream and achieve. Would you say music is more of a cure or a drug?

Depends on how you use it. It’s all relative. I think any real musician has worked it both ways.

How does the new material sound?

The new material is loud, confident, raw and just unapologetic blues-rock. It deals with themes that are more mature than my last record. I am planning on releasing it June 1st.

Why did you choose to start the project The Coppertone?

I kept having a re-occurring dream of a big black bull killing me and then it came to me looking through the eyes of the bull. After about the tenth night, I woke up and understood what it meant. It was a for-shadowing of a death and a rebirth. I have always wanted to write a record like this one but was always intimidated and afraid. I finally trusted my gut and became that bull in a sense and wound up confident! It was a huge step for me.

When I wrote Love Me Till I’m Me Again, I was going through a lot of depression and figuring my life out as I was trying to get back on my feet. This time, I was just ready to really be who I am to the fullest extent, no apologies. It’s liberating to wake up in the morning, grab a guitar and just have fun without wo - BLARE MAGAZINE.COM

Singer/songwriter Amanda Zelina received major critical acclaim (including being called “The Artist To Watch”) for her last album Love Me Till I’m Me Again, but she is branching off with a whole new style for her next album, Hidden Dreams. Under the name “The Coppertone”, Amanda is premiering a new sound at Canadian Music Week. We talk to her about her bold move to head into a whole new musical direction.

Your previous album’s sound had a very retro 1960s R&B sound to it. That Motown sound has really made a big return in the mainstream the past few years with artists like Amy Winehouse, Duffy, and John Legend. What made you gravitate towards this sound? Why do you think it’s connecting with audiences so much again?

It’s one of the sounds I grew up on. I believe in past lives, and I know that I was there in that era, so now it feels natural for me. It feels healing. Fads come and go. These genres are timeless. I feel it was always only a matter of time before they came back around in a big way and re-introduced themselves again. Plus, there is a hell of a lotta soul in them. Soul will always prevail.

Do you have any sense of what your past lives were?

Yes. I’ve followed MD Brian L. Weiss’ work on past life regression for a long time. I always found as a child I would come upon these déjà vu feelings in places I’ve never been before. I also would write in diaries as a child in what I thought was jibberish and ended up being different languages. Later on, they were translated… long story, but point being there are things in my life that have been undeniable to look into; because of certain unexplainable or “illogical” instances in my childhood. Past lives have helped me heal, grow, inspire, and be inspired.

You’re debuting your side project, The Coppertone, at Canadian Music Week. How would you describe the sound of The Coppertone?

Blues/Rock/Southern Soul. Think if The White Stripes dated The Black Keys, had tea with The Kills, George Thorogood came by for a drink, Billy Gibbons drove in with some guacamole and then Charles Bukowski crashed the whole thing.

Sounds like the greatest party ever. What made you want to branch off with this new project?

It all came about through a re-occurring dream I kept having a few months back. Where I would get killed by this huge black bull, and then came back AS the bull, seeing through its eyes. I believe that, in dreams, lay a lot of answers in your subconscious; I took it as a re-birthing of sort. I picked up my guitar, slide, and amp, cranked it up and started playing the music I was FEELING. I have grown a tremendous amount since “Love me Till I’m Me Again” [my previous album]. I am now a happy, strong, confident woman who is powerful in her creativity. I feel those dreams just pushed me to accept it and to own it. The approach I took with the last record wouldn’t have worked on this one. I needed to just go in deep and push out what needed to be said/played.

Why was it necessary to perform this different sound to the public under a new identity?

I wanted to create an atmosphere where I could go wherever I wanted with it. If I had stayed under my name it would have been limiting because of my past (and the wonderful acclaim I got for the last album being a certain speak-easy-singer-songwriter-type). This way, I could create whatever I wanted to do and it would be easily accepted by the media/fans because it was a “side project”.

Do you think there’s a chance for this “side project” to become your permanent sound or do you still have the drive to return to a style similar to your last album?

I never say never to anything, but I do believe this is the direction I am going in. It feels like home, if you know what I mean. I feel like I am trusting myself and just letting out what has long awaited an arrival in my creative conscious. Blues and Soul music really hit every cell in my body in the right way. It’s one of the only dialects of music that I understand, that I find poetic, and that I feel feeds my soul.

Is there an extra set of nerves built into this show since you’re debuting something new at at such a high-profile venue?

I think there is an extra set of excitement! “High” profile, “low” profile, “whatever” profile, to me, a show is a show. I will always give my everything and more for the audience. I don’t go out and search for “high profile” people and beg them to take me on. Instead I prefer to play the hell out of a show for them, if they dig it they will. The whole mantra with The Coppertone is “UN-apologetic confidence”. It’s about acceptance. If you love who you are on some level, you lose that anxiety about the “high profiles”.

So a “high profile” is not a necessity for you. It’s more about your personal growth and confidence as an artist?

Sure, it would be great to garner success as an artist. The trick lays in garnering that success whilst maintaining a constant personal growth as an artist. To mar - ON THE GO IN T.O.

Amanda Zelina
The Toronto-based Zelina used her CMF slot to spotlight material from her new garage/blues rock duo The Coppertone. With the programmed synths and keyboard the pair sounded much closer to The Kills than The Black Keys, but that's definitely not a bad thing. The focus though is Zelina's vocals. That girl can sing the blues something fierce. - T.O. SNOBS MUSIC

contrary to popular belief ireallylovemusic is not one of those blogs that hangs out with the fashionista, we don’t spin the latest blog friendly remixes to the pumped up mascara’d beauties on a saturday night in some secret only-the-worthy-need-to-know location

no no, regrettably such exciting times aint for us in 2009.

instead, ireallylovemusic is based in the outer regions of the cotswolds living a rather more sedate version of life.

so much so, that this saturday, much earlier than is the norm, saw the beginning of the lawn season, much to my dismay, and regret.

you see following the sudden appearance of plenty of sunshine this weekend just gone, meant that my green green grass need some tender lovin’ care. so with such a chore in mind, i dispatched my oldest off on his bike to explore the hidden corners of our countryside idyll, while my beloved took my youngest off to the park to throw himself about contraptions made of steel and wood in the hope he would be knackered, thereby allowing us old’uns to enjoy a few more minutes of tranquility on sunday morning. will we ever learn, that such expectations are rarely rewarded.

anyway, 60 minutes after the evacuation of ireallylovemusic hq and the lawn looked a lot more suitable.

this rare weekend respite gave me a few moments to check my emails.

amongst which was an email from amanda zelina.

she tells me that her forthcoming album has taken an age to make, and she’s rather chuffed about it.

there is of course, a link to myspace.

my heart sinks, but as i am only in front of the computer for a few moments, i do the honourable thing and click.

it must have been my post physical exercise aching muscles that lulled me into submission, but with the summer sunshine hitting all corners of the home office, the state of calm, and the general feeling that was well with the world, something clicked into place.

such simplicity. such warmth.

the far away vibes of the stripped back but effective instrumentation, the stomping handclap rhythm, the hidden slide guitar, the voice.

clearly this blog is not often one to throw love to singer songwriters, but i can’t help but love this.

while the subject matter is a little unnerving ("stalker pop" anyone ?), this is a lovely summers day song.

actually, now i think about it, it’s all about the giggle at the end.

mp3 : amada zelina - obsessed.

more detail : here - - official site - ireallylovemusic

"Her only intention is to penetrate the hearts of all who listen."

This is Toronto's Amanda Zelina. You couldn't tell from the classic nature of her music, but she's only 23 years old. She mixes blues, country, folk and soul with raw emotions and a haunting voice that stands apart from the current influx of female artists. She tried going the L.A. route to further her development as a singer, but after fighting some inner demons that failed to get the best of her, returned home to Toronto and continued to do what she was meant to do, write and record music utilizing an incredibly beautiful voice and her talents with a slide guitar. She's not only come full-circle now, she's fully formed musically and will soon release an album, Love Me Till I’m Me Again, that is sure to make people take notice of her. Because when it comes to music, she not only gets it, she has it. Her music is not only about her life, it is her life. She has the talent, she has the desire, and she has the voice. Simply exquisite.

- Local Vertical