Born in North Carolina, Redding developed his sound at concerts and small shows all around Manhattan. He distilled his current style in 1999 and 2000 when he did almost all of his performing in a subway station in New York City, panning for tips. He then spent his savings traveling around Chile, India and California before returning to New York City in 2004.
He's been milking his "Lipbone" act ever since, and has been promoting his current album, "Hop the Fence," at venues around the Hudson Valley. Last week he performed in Woodstock and Saturday he takes the stage at the Rosendale Café with his Lipbone Orchestra. That's him with his guitar, voice and "in between sounds;" Rich Zukor on drums and Jeff Eyrich on upright bass.
He said his "brass" sound is no party trick.
"Way beyond the kazoo, my friend. Yeah I do use my voice, my vocal cords and I use my mouth and my sinus chambers," he said. "It's my entire apparatus."
Advertisement
 |
"Usually I kind of say, 'Hey, do we have any wine glasses out there?'" he said.
At the other end of the spectrum from his low-tech trumpet sound, he has a MySpace.com page and sells some of his work online, but his album sales are more grass-roots, Redding said. "I sell most of my stuff at live shows."
His Web site does help get people to the shows, he said: "Technology has been our friend."
Short videos of Redding performing have made it to YouTube, but more older technologies have brought him some of his most dedicated fans.
"We had a couple of guys who drove all the way from Virginia (to Manhattan) because they heard us on National Public Radio," he said.
His years working in New York's subway trains brought his sound directly to audiences, catching them as they commuted. He didn't even bother with amplification.
"I was messing around with acoustics a lot at the time in the subway, just trying to use the chamber. It's like being in front of a big sonic mirror when you're in the underground tunnel."
He said: "Without a doubt," the experience served as a sort of sounding board. "It taught me where people were at, so to speak, and how to judge an audience. It was a constantly moving and changing audience. You could sort of feel how the day was going to be by how the people were reacting."
He takes a playful tone with the lyrics to his mostly-original music. In his "Dogs of Santiago" cut on his current album, he says his canine character's mom is "a rich poodle's wife."
He considers his lyrics an extension of the banter he employs during performances.
"During the live shows we banter with the audience and we play off of that. When I'm writing the songs, yeah, that's a big part of the art for me ... coming up with a piece that will stand on its own and be funny or exciting in some way."
Some of his material isn't necessarily appropriate for young audiences. He writes for the online cartoon show Kitty Blue, geared toward adults. The writers for that animation regularly pull him in to collaborate with them, he said.
"The producers of this cartoon just put a mike in front of me and say "Lipbone, what have you got for us today." They gave me the subject and showed me a few clips and I ended up writing a song called "The Uterus."
And then there was the episode about "A guy who is having a dilemma over donating his seed to a sperm bank," he said. ... I don't know how much I want to advertise this."
Although he performs as many as six times a week, in addition to his work for Kitty Blue, he still does what he can to stay grounded with his audience, even updating his MySpace.com page personally.
"I've got the booking agent and the publicist and I have a web person, but most of the updating and the grunt work? Yeah, guess who gets to do it? Me."
IF YOU GO
What: The Lipbone Orchestra, featuring Lawrence "Lipbone" Redding on lips, vocals, and guitar; Rich Zukor on drums and Jeff Eyrich on upright bass.
When: 8 p.m., Saturday
Where: Rosendale Café, 434 Main St. in Rosendale
HOW MUCH: $10
CALL: (845) 658-9048
ONLINE: www.rosendalecafe.com
