TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9, D-13597 Berlin Tel. 030 – 331 93 50 , Fax 030 – 331 9370 e-mail: traumton@traumton.de

www.traumton.de

Im Vertrieb von: INDIGO (D), Musikvertrieb AG (CH), HOANZL (AT), FINETUNES (digital)

Release October 12, 2007

Erika StuckySuicidal YodelsTraumton/INDIGO CD 904672EAN/UPC: 705304450925File under: Jazz/World/Vocal

Stucky: accordion, vox, pianoHandsome Hank: banjo, guitar Knut Jensen: electronicas, strings, pianoAlain Monod: guitar, sittharFranz Treichler: guitars, harmonica, voxSebastian Fuchsberger: voxLucas Niggli: drums

Erika Stucky – Suicidal Yodels

Stuck on Stucky: Yodeling Up Some Swiss Blues

Erika Stucky is that rare singer who can sound at home in almost any situation, any genre – her vocal cordsserving as a kind of visceral, sinewy link between styles, sympathies and prejudices. Her modus operandi liessomewhere between stand-up liberation musicology and melodic Groucho Marxism. This is in part due to hergift for "serious fun," which includes skewing pop standards, double entendres, flirtatious cavorting, and aboundless energy for discovering the "light" inside "enlightenment." And then there's her tradition-warpingyodeling.

She was born in San Francisco to Swiss parents at the dawn of the hippie movement. She was influenced by thepop music that saw bubblegum go day-glo almost overnight so that everyone – Kenny Rogers, Tommy James,Donovan, Sly Stone, et al. – was singing about their adventures in the mind-bending world of recreational drugs.Her instincts (genetic predestination?) were fed by pop, psychedelic and – yes – even traditional Swiss rootsmusic including yodeling, all of which channeled the peregrinations of an unfettered soul, allowing her to fuse,melt, cross pollinate and cross boundaries both geographical and musicological.

TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9, D-13597 Berlin Tel. 030 – 331 93 50 , Fax 030 – 331 9370 e-mail: traumton@traumton.de

www.traumton.de

Im Vertrieb von: INDIGO (D), Musikvertrieb AG (CH), HOANZL (AT), FINETUNES (digital)

In the 1970s, her family returned to Switzerland, to a tiny village in Oberwallis where Stucky experienced cultureshock – like a Cognitive Dissonance, a bad mixed drink comprised of delight and horror with a twist ofbewilderment. But on this, her most accomplished recording to date – not bad for an intermezzo project! – shehas managed to explore material that has been churning inside her since perhaps childhood [it's in 'er and it'sgotta come out], transforming the schizo-coastal uneasiness into something dynamically multi-coastal, at oncepersonal, local and international; acoustic, electric and ambient. The songs feature a dynamic, evocativepastiche of forms, personas and moods, here further amplified by the inspired finesse of her sidemen.

Each track offers another facet of this robust audio triangle: the personal presents Stucky's oft haunting but alsomischievous vocals that shatter, splinter, swell and sway – and yodel – to evoke a broad palette of emotions.The local is Stucky and co. jamming with their environment; while the ambient aspect casts the vocals,instrumentation, and local sounds into an almost exotic realm. Simply put: lush but intimate. You can easilypicture Alan Lomax, Phil Spector, and Hector Zazou sitting there enthralled but slightly perplexed.Stucky is particularly good at exploding expectation, converting iconoclasm into a source of inventive homage.Her cover versions – of Prince, Procol Harum, Nirvana, Hendrix, Michael Jackson on previous recordings – arealways refreshingly unusual renditions. Her takes on young Dylan and Fats Domino are no less effective here.

This is all enhanced by the field recording strategy, which accepts serendipitous intrusion as an element in themusic making, the very element studio producers try to gloss over, edit out. The suicidal yodels are cast out ofthe clinical confines of the studio and forced to fend for themselves in the real world, creating an earnest streetbusker sound, a genuine "Basement Tapes" feel.

Something about the yodels: A bold and welcome move – a record of yodel songs. Few dare and even fewersucceed. I profiled Stucky in my book Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World,because she, among others, represents the dynamic reinvention of yodeling.

Stucky is able to balance the acoustic incantatory yodel with the raucous barroom style of yodeling and theextended freeform style of abstract/scat yodeling so that her voice evokes not only emotion but also space,geography and one's psychological relationship to it. She liberates the Swiss yodel from the dogmatic confinesof the official watchdogs of folk music who, in their efforts to preserve their national musical heritage suffocate itto a slow, unseemly demise.

Her charm is her ability to convert her yodeling limitations into evocative soul music – like Jimmie Rodgers. Theyodels here serve not as calls to the herds or as ornamental refrains. No, her natuurjodels, her scat yodels, herpop-inflected yodels and yodel samples serve to lure us ever deeper into her lyrical world. This is what HankWilliams did as well. The yodel's primary function as outward call has been transformed into something inner-directed like a mantra or tolling bell. They penetrate effectively enough to provide incontrovertible evidence thatthe yodel is appropriate, versatile – and hip.

The Suicidal Yodels are suicidal for a number of reasons. Unlike most yodels that come to mind, which gouplifting and joyous at the end, Swiss yodels are often – especially the natuurjodels – go down an octave into amelancholy reflective register until you can feel your ribcage reverberate in a way you thought only Tibetan orGregorian monks could. It is rightly considered the Swiss blues, which often evoke images of Alpine herdersenduring long, lonesome winters, which has its effect on the Swiss soul that no amount of schnapps orbreathtaking vistas can surmount. The yodel dips down. And as Erika notes, the Swiss have one of the world'shighest suicide rates. Yes, Swiss yodeling is definitely a high altitude version of the blue yodel.Bart Platenga •

• Bart Plantenga has been producing his radio show 'Wreck This Mess' in New York (WFMU), Paris (RadioLibertaire), and currently in Amsterdam (Radio Patapoe) for 20 years now. He is also the fiction author of BeerMystic. His YODEL-AY-EE-OOOO: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World is the first-ever globalhistory of this mysterious vocalisation. ROUGH GUIDE TO YODEL is the shorthand audio version of the book. Heis currently working on book 2, Yodel in Hi-Fi, and a yodel documentary. He lives in Amsterdam.

TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9, D-13597 Berlin Tel. 030 – 331 93 50 , Fax 030 – 331 9370 e-mail: traumton@traumton.de

www.traumton.de

Im Vertrieb von: INDIGO (D), Musikvertrieb AG (CH), HOANZL (AT), FINETUNES (digital)

Back Catalog:

Princess (Traumton 4481, 2005)

"Erika Stucky is a subversive jazz singer, with a Tom Waits sounding lounge-band. On her newest release "Princess" (2005)the melancholy-tone of one tune veers into Laurie Anderson sound-art excursions, or more likely unusual covers by Nirvana"You know you're right" Michael Jackson "Bad" Queen "Killer Queen", Prince "Sometimes it snows in April", or Elvis"Jailhouse Rock". Her own songs and lyris are compelling--confessional, comical, sometimes outrageous, all under a dramaticbed of brass, accordion and electronica. The most haunting is a Linda Ronstadt song, "El sol que tu quieres". The funniest is"Domina" a dominatrix's anthem that end in a school-room version of the "Hoochie-Coochie-Shuffle"._There is a stirring edgeto all of Erika Stucky's music, and in concert she combines performance and art and a backdrop of her homemade super 8films._So she is a true multimedia package with all her inner feelings, both high and low, exposed to the world. Based inZurich, Stucky was born to swiss parents, but raised in the 60's San Francisco hippie scene and then the Alps. Her "Princess"is a truely strange jazz affair, and so we should most of all thank her freaky hippie parents for that."think*again, Prague, Tony Ozuna

Lovebites (Traumton 4470, 2003)

"I have no bloody idea what is going on in "Lovebites" but I like it all the same. Erica Stucky doesn't provide any real linernotes so just what this weird cavernous set is - besides some kind of meditation on love - is a mystery. it uses orchestrationsthat are drunken forms of tango and waltzes all done in a spooky ominous fashion with electronics and taped voices in thebackground. Stucky sings well and the atmoshere - with big low horns like sousaphone and tuba out front - is genuinlyspooky. It's a genuine blast hearing those horns boom put the familiar themes of "A Whiter Shade of Pale", and Jimi Hendrix's"If 6 was 9". Ray Anderson comes by to contribute some crusty New Orleans trombone and cracking, jivey vocals on "I'll seyou in mey dreams". Stucky's own material is best summed up by "The Manson Look", a flash of orchestral brightness leadinginto a theatrical song about people with serial killer gazes, decorated with tuba, tympani and anonymous growling sounds.Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones have worked similar boho junkshop vibes, but neither of them had ever had quite the scary,European flavour Stucky creates here. If this were on a major American label, critics would probably hail it as a masterpiece“Cadence Magazine 3/2004

Bubbles & Bones (Traumton 4454, 2001)

"Switching back and forth between little girl from the Alps and jazz lady....more heart-rending than seriously avant-garde:serious fun."Rolling Stone 1/2002

„American-Swiss vocalist Erika Stucky is being celebrated as one of the most original new voices on the international jazzscene. Her Swiss roots join hand with big city spontaneity to span a bewildering but tremendously enthralling bridge betweendown-home alpine and urban nightmare.“Frankfurter Allgemeine

TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9, D-13597 Berlin Tel. 030 – 331 93 50 , Fax 030 – 331 9370 e-mail: traumton@traumton.de

www.traumton.de

Im Vertrieb von: INDIGO (D), Musikvertrieb AG (CH), HOANZL (AT), FINETUNES (digital)

Web: http://www.traumton.de/label/artists/?id=stucky&lang=dehttp://www.erikastucky.ch

http://www.myspace.com/erikastucky

Biography:

Born in the sixties in San Francisco, California as the daughter of Swiss Hippies, Erika spends her early days picnicing in theGolden Gate Park with the Stucky Clan. From those Flower Power times she keeps the musical influences of The Monkees,Nancy Sinatra, Donovan and the musical „Hair“.

In the seventies the Stucky family moves to a little town in Oberwallis, Switzerland.Shocked by the cultural change Erika Stucky quickly developes her own mixture of Swiss-American-Way-of-Life, which is veryeasily detected in her musical humour and technique till today.

In the eighties she graduates at the C.I.M Jazz-School in Paris, France, works as an actress at the atelier theatre with SergeMartin and goes through a Camera Acting and Advanced Acting Class at State College San Francisco.

In 1985, Erikas founds her first band, the A-Capella and Bass Formation „The Sophisticrats“, with three other lady-singers andher future husband on bass. Till 1991 they release the CDs „Four Singers & Bass“ and „We love you“, play about 500 concertsthroughout Europe and Africa, appear in a number of Tv-Shows and receive several prices (Cannes, Lyon, St. Gervais).

In 1991 Marco Raoult and Erika form the band „Bubble Town“, release the Album „Outländish“ and play hundreds of concertsin Europe.

In 1994, Erika meets George Gruntz at a Big band-Workshop in Basel, goes on tour with him and the George Gruntz ConcertJazz Band and does a recording with the Big band of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk.

In 1997 the Trio „Mrs Bubbles & Bones“, made of two horns and and one voice is founded. Beside of the new band, Erikaparticipates at WonderbraZH, Girl Group (with Bice Aeberli and Sibylle Aeberli), Roots-Alphornprojekt (Morgenthaler-Pedretti-Niggli) and several musicals.

In 1998 Erika receives the Culture Award of the City of Zuerich. She moves to Brooklyn, New York where she starts her newprogramm „Mrs. Bubble“ at the Knitting Factory.

In 1999 she joins the George Gruntz Big Band again for a couple of concerts in Cologne and recording sessions. She alsotours Switzerland and Germany with „Mrs. Bubbles & Bones“ and „Girl-Group“.

In 2000 she tours with „Bubbles & Bones“ (Ray Anderson, Art Baron, Jose Davilla), plays at the Jazzfest Willisau with the Int.Alphornprojekt (Kennel, Anderson, Varner, Stewart) and shares with Sina the musical conducting for the play „Helges Leben“at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, also appearing in the roles of Frau Gott and Frau Tod (Mrs. God and Mrs. Death).

In 2002 The Roots do the opening show for the Expo 02, the Swiss Country Exhibition, where Stucky plays the role of „Lillith“.She tours with „Eurobubbles“ (Bertl Müller, Jon Sass), „Bones“ (Baron, Davilla) throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria,and with „The Roots of Communication“ through the Benelux States. Then she joins George Gruntz again for the project „BigBand de Lausanne“ and does the „Bond Film“ with Sina.

In 2003 Stucky records „Lovebites“ (with Sass, Mütter, Anderson, Perrine, Soloff) in Berlin, Basel and London. She and Sinajoin for „Toluheischi“ a VS Multimediashow and play 50 concerts in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. A tour with„Eurobubbles“ takes her to Denmark, Italy, Switzerland and Germany. After the CD release of „Lovebites“ she tours withBones & Strings & Jensen.

In 2004/05 tours with „Bubbles & Bones“, „Stucky & the Roots of Communication“ and the „Jimi Hendrix-Project“ take her toSwitzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and France.In April she releases her latest album „ Princess“ and works with Stefan Schwietert on a film project.2006 On tour with different projects: Sina & Stucky (Wild - Dances and Stories from Wallis), Low Life (with Matt Perrine(Sousaphone) and Jon Sass ( Tuba) ) Princess (with Bertl Mütter (trombone) and Jon Sass ( Tuba), The Woodstock Project withthe Young Gods, Jimi Hendrix Project (with Christy Doran (guitar), Fredy Studer (drums) Jamaaladeen Tacuma (bass)), US tourwith Roots of Communication.HHonky Stonky Musical with Gardi Hutter.

2007 extended touring like in 2006, recording „Suicidal Yodels“ to be released October 12 on Traumton Records. Finishing theworks on Stefan Schwietert’s documentary „Heimatklänge – Echoes of Home“, presented during the Berlin Film Fest inJanuary. Soundtrack of „Heimatklänge“ scheduled for an October release on Traumton.Touring with Sebastian Fuchsberger and Jon Sass to present „Suicidal Yodels“, touring with Jimi Hendrix Project (with ChristyDoran (guitar), Fredy Studer (drums) Jamaaladeen Tacuma (bass)).

TRAUMTON Records Grunewaldstr. 9, D-13597 Berlin Tel. 030 – 331 93 50 , Fax 030 – 331 9370 e-mail: traumton@traumton.de

www.traumton.de

Im Vertrieb von: INDIGO (D), Musikvertrieb AG (CH), HOANZL (AT), FINETUNES (digital)

On tour:

05.10.2007 CH-Basel, Volkshaus : Solo - Suicidal Yodels06.10.2007 CH-Basel, Kaserne : GASTAUFTRITT bei Les Reines Prochaines17.10.2007 D-Berlin, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse : Suicidal Yodels18.10.2007 D-Arnsberg, Kulturschmiede : Suicidal Yodels19.10.2007 CH-Basel, Gare du Nord : Suicidal Yodels20.10.2007 D-Bad Gastein, Sägewerk : Suicidal Yodels21.10.2007 D-Erlangen, E-Werk : Suicidal Yodels22.10.2007 D-Krefeld, Jazzclub : Suicidal Yodels24.10.2007 D-Saarbrücken, Saarländischer Rundfunk : Suicidal Yodels25.10.2007 CH-Zürich, Moods : Suicidal Yodels26.10.2007 CH-Nyon, Usine A Gaz : Suicidal Yodels27.10.2007 CH-Wels, Alter Schlachthof : Suicidal Yodels02.11.2007 FIN-Tampere, Old Custom House : Suicidal Yodels17.11.2007 CH-Solothurn, Stadttheater : Suicidal Yodels21.11.2007 FR-Strasboug, Pole Sud : Hendrix Tour - Doran-Stucky|-Studer-Tacuma22.11.2007 D-Ludwigshafen, Das Haus : Hendrix Tour - Doran-Stucky|-Studer-Tacuma23.11.2007 IT-Chiasso, : Hendrix Tour - Doran-Stucky|-Studer-Tacuma23.11.2007 SLO-Ljubljana, : Hendrix Tour - Doran-Stucky|-Studer-Tacuma25.11.2007 CH-Bern, Taktlos : Hendrix Tour - Doran-Stucky|-Studer-Tacuma28.11.2007 LUX-Dudelange, Lux : Hendrix Tour - Doran-Stucky|-Studer-Tacuma30.11.2007 FR-St. Brieuc, La Passerelle : Hendrix Tour - Doran-Stucky|-Studer-Tacuma14.12.2007 CH-Wädenswil, Teatro Ticino : Solo15.12.2007 CH-Wädenswil, Teatro Ticino : Solo16.01.2008 D-Osnabrück, Lagerhalle : Suicidal Yodels17.01.2008 D-Lorsch, Rex : Suicidal Yodels18.01.2008 D-Geschwend, Bilderhaus : Suicidal Yodelstbc