Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Denio

Hi Amy, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?

Music has been my guide since the get-go; my mother serenaded me with her upright bass before I was born; after that my childhood home literally pulsed with music. Piano lessons and playing in the advanced Orff ensemble in elementary school helped hone my voice, but improvising and composing made me the happiest. At age twelve I quit piano lessons and taught myself guitar; music was already my favorite language. I worked out my favorite songs on the radio by ear, and started coming up with my own songs, gravitating towards unusual chords and odd time signatures.

By the time I was 15, I carried my guitar everywhere. My friends started a rock band called Elysian Fields, and invited me to play rhythm guitar. My first concert was literally electrifying; I was sitting on a metal chair, singing through an ungrounded PA! The following year I lived in Dublin Ireland with a family and went to school for the fall semester. This sparked a lifelong thirst for exploring the unknown. By the time I graduated from high school I’d written dozens of songs and was playing in small festivals and fibbing about my age to play in bars.

My father was the headmaster of Brookside School Cranbrook, so I chose Hampshire College for its non-traditional program. There, I worked in the Electronic Music Lab, arranged my solo songs for a chamber ensemble, composed sax and string quartets, and created loose structures for my improvising guitar ensemble and a roving horn quintet. My student job at Hampshire was circulation assistant at the library. I loved leafing through all those books.

After two years at Hampshire, I transferred to the Colorado College. There, I enjoyed creating sounds in the Music Lab and singing in the choir. I started an all-girl rock band, and had my first sessions in a professional recording studio. I worked at the on-campus radio station and in the technical services at the library, and was a production intern in a local TV station. The biggest a-ha! moment in Colorado Springs was meeting and playing with multi-instrumentalist / sculptor / inventor Bob Tudor, and realizing that the act of improvising fed my soul like nothing else.

I returned to Hampshire to finish my B.A. in Music Composition and Improvisation. After graduation the Iron Horse Cafe and night club hired me as a waitress. Encouraged by my mentor Fred Frith, I got my start as concert producer there. Vowing not to become a specialist, I added instruments to my collection every few months. When I upgraded my home studio from a low-fi mono system to a shiny new stereo four-track cassette recorder, commissions started rolling in to compose and produce music for modern dance, theater and film.

In 1985, one glance at Seattle’s monthly music magazine The Rocket was enough to convince me to move to the Pacific Northwest. Seattle was already thriving with music in almost every genre, and the classified ads in that paper were filled with musicians looking for collaborators. Once there, my multi-instrumental duo Lao Tse and the Entropics joined the creative scene. In 1986 I released my first cassette No Bones on my new label Spoot Music, and dove into the worldwide underground cassette culture.

I’ve collaborated with a variety of folks in the creative scene in the Northwest, recording with KMFDM and Bill Rieflin, Danny Barnes, Wayne Horvitz, Steve Ball, and countless others. Most notably, Fred Chalenor and I started a bass duo called the Tone Dogs. Our first release on C/Z records featured many guests including Matt Cameron on drums, and was nominated to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording. The Tone Dogs played festivals throughout North America and Europe from 1988 – 1991.

I worked as the Programming Office Coordinator at YESCO Foreground Music ~ which merged with Muzak in 1987. After five years there, I ‘retired’. Since then I’ve been admistering my record label and publishing company Spoot Music, and am a full-time touring musician and international collaborator, commissioned composer, music producer, multi-instrumental teacher. I’ve been President of the Tiptons Sax Quartet LLC for twenty years, and served as Vice President of the Seattle Composers Alliance for the last seven years.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

LEAPING INTO THE VOID
My instinct has been to avoid stasis and welcome new experiences. I like to call it ‘leaping into the void’ ~ though it’s usually a bit less dramatic. After two years at Hampshire College, my financial aid package was cut. Right around then, the Colorado College New Music Ensemble performed in our area, inspiring me to transfer there to study composition with innovative composer Steven Scott. My application was accepted with a full scholarship to join the junior class at the Colorado College. Unfortunately I missed the memo that Professor Scott would be on leave of absence that year. The one reason to move to Colorado Springs didn’t actually exist, so along with suffering from altitude sickness upon arrival, I was in a deep state of despair. Forbidden to take more music classes and surrounded by wealthy ski bums and frat boy culture, it took a while to find my tribe.

But that seeming lack of resources gave me no choice but to create my own opportunities. Ignoring the moratorium on music classes, I worked in the electronic music lab right away, sang in the choir and started my own all-girl rock band, Random Sheep. The college radio station KRCC-FM took me on as DJ and promoted me to Production Director and Sponsorship Director. I taught myself saxophone, recorded my first single in a professional recording studio, became Production Intern at a TV station. Then I discovered my true love: The world of free improvised music and the elation of deep listening that comes with it. Improvising is not just playing over jazz chords, it’s a life choice! Scientific studies have proven that when one improvises, the entire brain lights up with activity, not just one sector. Embracing improvisation leads to evolution ~ and survival of the fittest.

SEATTLE
With no real plan other than finding a job and playing music, I spent all my savings to move to Seattle (sight unseen) with my duo Lao Tse and the Entropics. I had no job prospects and knew only one person, my bandmate David. Six days after arriving to the Emerald City I was in a major bicycle accident, resulting in a major concussion, two black eyes and a whopping hospital bill. For the next month I recuperated by recording new songs on my four-track cassette deck, and scraped by with the help of friends.

TONE DOGS
If you think marriage is complex, try playing in a band. Bassist Fred Chalenor and I collaborated for four years in the Tone Dogs. We played festivals and booked our own tours throughout North America and Europe, and did it in true D.I.Y. style: Lugging all of our own gear, merch, and whatever else by plane, train and bus. Our fifth (and final tour) was brutal, with daily miscommunications resulting in disasters like having nowhere to sleep ~ or arriving a week late to play a confirmed gig and being turned away. The Balkan civil war was on the verge of erupting, and the tension was palpable at our concerts in Belgrade, Serbia and Ljubljana, Slovenia. By the end of that tour we dutifully did our sound checks and played the concerts we’d booked, but rarely spoke to each other. That was the end of the Tone Dogs.

COLLABORATIONS
Co-creating with others can be a source of inspiration. Collaborating with choreographers, theater directors and actors, film and video makers, installation artists, and engineers has led to delightful, dark, whimsical and beautiful new projects. But creative relationships are truly complex marriages, and the more people involved, the more difficult it is to hone a common vision.

As a co-founder of the Billy Tipton Memorial Sax Quartet, I composed for the group, organized tours, and wrote grants. We got signed to the Knitting Factory and New World Records, collaborated with Estonian/Russian punk/folk outfit Ne Zhdali (‘unexpected arrival) in Tallinn Estonia, toured throughout North America and Europe and got major media coverage. Then came the crisis. Wanting even more success, a couple of the players in the band demanded that I quit all other projects and focus only on our band so that we could have even more success. Compelled to keep my freedom (and resisting specialization!) I quit. A few years later my colleague Jessica Lurie and I reformed the group with different players. We’ve been going steady since then. https://tiptonssaxquartet.bandcamp.com/music

I started playing sax with Kultur Shock in 1999 ~ but frustrated as the only female in the band and overpowered by the sheer volume on stage, I left the band. But time is a great healer. In 2009 the band invited me back, and by then we had all matured. Since then we’ve recorded a dozen more albums. You can hear our prodigious output at https://kulturshock.bandcamp.com/music.

MUMBAI
I accepted Jazz India’s sponsorship to study voice in India, and lived in Mumbai India for seven weeks. My teacher Dhanashree Pandit-Rai was a fabulous musician and human being and we laughed easily together. But to pay for room and board at the five star hotel, I sang in the lounge five nights a week with George and the Soft Rock Revolution. I didn’t have proper lounge singer threads (or attitude) and knew only a handful of pop and jazz songs. I met some of the richest ~ and most unhappy ~ people, complaining how their servants didn’t respect them. I was a true fish out of water there.

Near the end, I unwittingly broke the contract with the hotel by sitting in with a blazing jazz band at another venue around the corner. The hotel management threatened to deport me and my sponsor was furious ~ but I reasoned that it would draw more people to the dim hotel with the crappy sound system and carpeted stage. The ruckus subsided after a few days, and a week later I played my music to jazz lovers in a sold-out cricket arena.

SELF-EMPLOYMENT
After working as a professional musician for most of my adult life, I had a classic mid-life crisis. My debts were equal to my income, and life felt like a big fat stalemate. I’d obstinately insisted on avoiding regular day jobs for twenty-five years, proud of my disdain for corporate culture and fueled by the allure of touring the world. Commissions kept rolling in to compose for dance, theater, TV, film and multi-media collaborations. Though working like a maniac ~ producing scores of recordings and albums, writing grants and receiving commissions as an artist, and generating royalties from my compositions, all that effort didn’t quite pay the bills.

I was ashamed to ask for help, but my father lent me money to pay off those credit cards. Then it dawned on me that teaching was a noble profession. Even though I was mostly self-taught, I had a life time of experience as a working artist. As my roster of private students began to grow grew, I learned that teaching goes both ways ~ my students teach me how to improve as a teacher! Plus, one can have a flexible schedule teaching privately, so it was not hard to juggle my teaching duties with the obligations of completing commissions and the insanity of touring worldwide.

PANDEMIC
In January 2020 the Tiptons Sax Quartet went on tour and one by one we suffered from a wicked case of the ‘flu, just in time to record our 14th album Wabi Sabi. The corona virus was identified a few weeks later. We started touring Europe as the Pandemic took hold in March 2020, and soon the tour started to crumble. First the Italian concerts were canceled, then Bavaria. We hopped on one of the last flights back to the States. Though I lost friends and relatives, facing the grim reaper was darkly inspiring. I assigned notes to numbers, and created tone rows out of COVID statistics. Using the numbers of infected and dead, I composed homages for the various cities where I’d resided. You can hear the results on my album Pandemonium.

Once I decided to let music guide my life, and to ignore other peoples’ opinions, the real learning started. Almost anything is possible as long has you have the guts to try. If other folks have a problem with your creative acts, it’s likely their problem, not yours! A collaborator once told me: Worrying is like saying a prayer for that which you don’t want. So don’t worry. Something will happen. We just won’t know exactly what ~ until it happens.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

I am a self-taught improvising singer and soul music explorer, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, audio engineer, producer and cross-discipline collaborator.
My instruments are piano, electric keyboard and accordion, acoustic, electric and baritone guitars, ukulele, cello, electric bass, baglamadaki, bouzouki, clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone horn, didgeridoo, theremin, and percussion. My vocal range is four octaves.

My first recording session was in my family’s living room when I was in high school. My first cassette release (Amy Denio: No Bones) came out in 1986. Since then I’ve composed more than 600 songs for my publishing company and record label Spoot Music. I’m a co-composer or lead singer on over 60 recordings, and have received numerous grants, awards, fellowships and artistic residencies to develop and present a myriad of projects ranging from a Bus Horn Concerto to a Sonic Bench. Earshot Jazz awarded me a position in the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame in 2015.

I have learned a plethora of musical styles over the last 35 years by collaborating with musicians in and from North America, Mexico, Bolivia, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, India, ex-Yugoslavia, Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and throughout the European Union. This has fueled my passion for learning foreign languages.

These days I’m putting the finishing touches on my forthcoming book of travel stories called Applause for the Bridge. It is bi-lingual, in English and Italian. Capturing ‘perfect moments’ by taking photographs and editing short videos is another prized activity. Check out my page on Youtube!

GROUPS OF NOTE:

TONE DOGS (1987-1991)
Our unique bass duo’s first album Ankety Low Day came out on C/Z Records in Seattle. It was nominated to be nominated (sic) for a Grammy Award ~ we thought it was a prank phone call when got the message! We played festivals throughout North America and Europe from 1988-1991.
I am a co-founder and contributing composer, playing electric bass, electric guitar, alto sax, drums and singing.

TIPTONS SAX QUARTET (1988-present).
An all-female sax quartet with drums named in honor of musician Billy Tipton, a woman passing as a man to follow their dreams.
We’ve produced 14 albums of lively world music and original compositions, and have played concerts throughout Europe and North America ~ in concert halls, churches, subways and squats, fishing ships, prisons and schools, and one abandoned mercury mine. We teach music workshops worldwide.

The Tiptons have composed for modern dance, TV, film and have collaborated with artists worldwide. Our Bus Horn Concerto for sax quartet and 3 Seattle METRO buses was funded by King County METRO. I composed the soundtrack for our performance in Pat Graney Dance Company’s piece Saxhouse. We received funding from the Soros Foundation to collaborate with Estonian/Russian band Ne Zhdali to compose and record music for the Pollo d’Oro CD (No Man’s Land Records ~ Berlin). We received local, state and national funding to create multimedia productions Shop of Wild Dreams (with Croatian artist Danijel Zezelj and film maker Aric Mayer), Mythunderstandings with Coastal Salish storyteller Paul Chiokten Wagner, and Mujer o Bruja, a study of the history of women in culture from paleolithic times to the present, in collaboration with Latin phenomenon Correo Aereo.
I am a co-founder and contributing composer, playing alto sax, clarinet and singing.

KULTUR SHOCK (1999-present).
A Balkan/metal/punk/folk sextet. We have produced over a dozen albums and countless singles and videos for labels such as Alternative Tentacles, Koolarrow and on our own Kultur Shock label. We have gone on dozens of tours in the US, Europe, Russia and throughout the Balkans, and collaborated with Bosnian rapper Edo Maajka and Barcelona outfit Cheb Balowski. Our song Snijeg has become the anthem for the LGBTQ movement in Bosnia. The documentary ‘Grandpa Guru’ focuses on Kultur Shock’s founder and guiding force Srdjan ‘Gino’ Jevdjevic. Gino also plays a major part in Kiss the Future, a documentary about the Balkan Civil war produced by Matt Damon and U2’s Bono.
I am a contributing composer, playing alto sax, clarinet, tin whistle, accordion, theremin, bouzouki, guitar and singing.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?

I would be delighted to embellish your song with my sounds. I have an excellent recording studio.
Contact me if you have a creative/collaborative proposal: amy [at] amydenio {dot} com

Subscribers to my https://www.amydenio.bandcamp.com page get my extensive audio catalog for free, along with any new releases.
My supporters on Patreon are the first to get news and receive copies of my creative endeavors ~ audio, video, stories, etc.
AMYDENIO.COM
Venmo: @Amy-Denio

Pricing:

• Studio Musician: $150/song ~ Call me if you’d like me to overdub saxophone, clarinet, guitar, bass, theremin, accordion, lead or background vocals ~ or do a remix of your song. Price includes up to two revisions. I will provide stems to your specification. I have been a featured musician at AirGigs.com and SoundBetter.com for many years, and run a professional studio.
• Music Teacher $75 (60 minutes) / $40 (30 minutes) ~ I teach technique for most instruments. Lessons focus on ear training, sight reading, music creation and memorization, improvisation, and theory.
• Reiki Session ~ sliding scale I have been practicing the Japanese healing/meditation technique Reiki for seven years. If you are in the Northwest and need some relief from physical discomfort, please contact me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://amydenio.me/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/amydenio2
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amy.denio/
• Twitter: https://x.com/AmyDenio
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTxEgWXrpqhH8-sF6Ko4TKA
• Soundcloud: https://amydenio.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits

Chris Stromquist, Madeleine Sosin, Robert Kainar, Doug Vann, Bruce Tom