"HOLD ON"... IT'S MORE THAN WORTH IT!

When I first heard Jess Delgado's voice in a YouTube video posted by AJ Rafael, I was blown away by her soothingly smooth, breathy, pop/jazz tone and I fell in love with her voice immediately! 

Since we already had a session scheduled with Decca Label artist Nikki Yanofsky in May, I decided to invite Jess and her band to come down from Boston and record the second half of the day with us.

So, Jess, A.J, Julien and Kazumi took the bus from Boston to New York to come and meet us at our studio on the lower East Side of Manhattan. Upon arrival, we all immediately knew that this was going to be a great session. Seeing such young, devoted, talented and fun yet professional musicians come together to perform their own original material that most people have not had the chance to be exposed to, gets me and my team every time.  

Although, Jess and her band are still in the beginning stages of their careers, I could instantly feel that this group of musicians had come together with the goal to combine all their individual talents to create something much bigger than each one of them alone. I felt a very strong connection amongst each member of the group so it was to no surprise to hear that all of their songs were written collaboratively.

As you might remember, we released Jess Delgado's cover video of John Mayer's "Why Georgia" earlier this year via RAWsession's YouTube channel and all this time, we couldn't stop thinking how the best is yet to come. We are so proud to release Jess' original song "Hold On" as the level of musicianship and songwriting is impeccable. Listen to the emotionally loaded lyrics of this song and don't feel bad if you might drop a tear... 

Thank you Jess, A.J., Julien and Kazumi!

Musical Arrangement: Jess Delgado (lead vocals), A.J (acoustic bass), Julien (percussion & ukulele), Kazumi (guitar & background vox)

Ashley Rodriguez performs V.V. Brown's "Shark In The Water" @RAWsession

I first met Ashley Rodriguez back in Boston during my last 2 semesters at Berklee College of Music in Boston. We had mutual friends and saw each other around campus, but of course, I knew her better through musician gossip than through her personality.  It wasn't until Ashley moved out to LA in 2009 that I really got a glimpse of her person and her talent.

Ashley came to Los Angeles and had begun working towards a career as a singer. During her first months in Los Angeles building up her client base, developing her music and perfecting her sound, she became a member of the (in case you didn’t know) tight-knit, RAWsession family.

Her love of the craft aligned with ours and she began passionately helping us find and help develop dope, unrealized talent. It wasn’t until she revealed to me that she made it on American Idol that I realized how talented she was. I remember, the first thing I said was congratulations (I have a German accent and I’m pretty sure I mispronounced that word) and then I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were still singing?” She said something about ‘not wanting any help etc...’ I was frustrated but proud and happy for her at the same time. I said, ‘When are we going to do a RAWsession?” She replied, “as soon as you’re ready.”

Eric - But really, we had to wait for American Idol to finish because those guys bake time into their contract.

Matt - Yeah, but it wasn’t that long a wait...and, I think it was worth it, she’s gotten to the next level now.

Nils - Chill out guys. And YES, it was more than we could’ve wished for. All I’m saying, and let me finish, is that it makes me happy that she was part of the team before doing a session with us. So anyway, finally, this summer, we brought her and Britten Newbill (on guitar) into King Size Labs near Silverlake, CA to record a session with her. All I can say is how impressed and excited I am by her performance.

Ashley chose to cover V.V. Brown's "Shark In The Water" as well as perform one of her original songs written by Britten Newbill called "Hanging By A Thread" coming soon. Look out for it on VEVO.

So, you saw it here first! Introducing Ashley Rodriguez, performing V.V. Brown's, "Shark In The Water."

DIRECTOR'S PERSPECTIVE: Nikki Yanofsky @RAWsession

Matt and I were looking through some photos of older sessions... Check out these pics (down below) from the 2009 RAWsession with Canadian singer Nikki Yanofsky at The Cutting Room in NYC. If you caught the Olympics this year, she was the 17 year old girl who sang the Canadian National Anthem in the opening ceremonies. We were pretty excited, to say the least, when we saw her belting her heart out for all the world to see. Take that, American Idol! A couple months later we got in touch with Nikki's team and decided to do another session with them.

This was one of my more recent favorite sessions as I got to revisit both the city of New York and the lovely and talented Nikki, whom I’ve now had the pleasure of working with twice (more on that later). Heading up RAWvideo meant I needed to show up a day early to meet the crew and prep the gear and although it was hot, I was able to find residence in Spanish Harlem before our early morning call on the lower east side.

When I got to the site, I prepped video alongside our audio team as we waited for Nikki’s call time. As was the case with our first Yanofsky shoot, Nikki showed up early with a smile on her face and a desire to ‘get to singing.’ What else can I say?, an adamant professional and a consummate talent, Nikki has her music together and executed with the precision that it takes others years her senior their entire lives to learn. That being said, the most impressive thing about this artist is that she truly enjoys her work and it shows in her smile and can be heard in her words. As a director, I can’t stress enough how much easier Nikki makes my life with her lack of ‘tude and abundance of talent. 

Here's a cover of her singing Norah Jones' "Don't Know Why" with singer/songwriter/guitarist, Jesse Harris (who actually wrote the tune for Norah) from the same 2009 session in NYC (thumbs up for our old logo! haha). You can also catch the rest of the videos we shot from this session as well as the Premiere videos from the 2010 session over on VEVO here.

WE'RE OFFICIALLY LIVE ON VEVO!

We did it! We're extremely proud to say that after over 2 years of hard work we are now offering many of our RAWsession vids on VEVO, Youtube's destination for premium content.

 

This is a really important step for us as it allows us to make advertising royalties off of the exclusive content we produce for our viewers and fans! With this natural next step, our viewership is tied directly to our content in that the more RAWsession videos are watched, the more RAWsession videos will be made. We're finally able to give our fans what they want!

 

We've already delivered some of our favorite RAWsession content including Rome, The Dirty Heads, The Katinas and Sharif to VEVO and we have a TON of new stuff on the way. We're also eager to premiere new videos from artists like Jess Delgado, Tiffany Alvord, and Mo Brandis. To find our content on VEVO.com all you have to do is to search for "RAWsession." All the VEVO vids are also still searchable and accessible via YouTube, so if you're favorite video seems to be gone, don't worry, it's probably just up on VEVO!

 

More and more videos will be going live over the following weeks, so let your friends know, spread the news and help us get clicks so we can make more videos and help spread the organic, RAW music we're known for!!!

 

And don't worry! We'll still be uploading covers to our YouTube channel and behind the scenes videos, pictures, songs, stories and everything RAW can always be found right here at RAWsession.com.

Thanks to all who have supported us and for those of you who are new to us, welcome!

TIFFANY ALVORD covers "What Hurts The Most" by Rascal Flatts Live @RAWsession

On a hot day in mid July we filmed a session with the young and talented Tiffany Alvord. Not just another YouTube sensation to come across our radar, Tiffany is also a very talented songwriter and cover song interpreter.

Three original videos are on the way and set to release over the next month or so.  If you can't wait, check out our DOWNLOADS section for a free mp3!

Check out the video below to see her performing "What Hurts The Most" by Rascal Flatts. This video is also the first to feature our new bumper graphics for YouTube....more on that soon though! Now to the music.