Originality Galore: Maya Solovey – “Judy Gumtree”
Maya Solovey
“Judy Gumtree”
Blue Heart
Now, here is one of the more interesting artists out there. Maya Solovey has been everywhere, and has drawn on all the music she has come in contact with, like a genius sponge. According to her bio:
Maya Solovéy was born in Philadelphia, then raised in western Massachusetts after her parents vamoosed with the family to follow an Ashram. “Perhaps it’s odd, but my earliest memories of life are of people dressed in white, dancing around singing Hindu chants, and offering marigolds to an Indian Guru. Kind of funny for a white Jewish girl growing up in the woods of New England.”
In her teens she spent time living abroad in Ecuador and Spain, and developed a love of the Spanish language and the people who spoke it. Kicked out of Spain, (that’s another story) she decided that was a perfect time to record her first album, at 17 years old. Playing, working, and traveling through Asia and New Zealand for a couple years, she came back to record her second record at age 19, a piano pop EP with an Indian flair. As soon as it was done, she moved to New York City, where she has resided ever since.
Bassy Bob Brockmann (producer extraordinaire) and Solovéy teamed up with a few members of MGMT, James Richardson and Hank Sullivant, and Maya’s longtime drummer Robert “Chicken” Burke, of Parliament Funkadelic, and together the band produced her forthcoming album, “Blue Heart”. There is no ordinary singer/songwriter. One of the millions of fun things about listening to Solovey is trying to find which influence she is channeling. Through it all, she is an original.
