The story behind ‘Hot and Bothered’ and the story behind that story….. It’s funny you should ask. Lucy Woodward is most definitely onto something new. Once Lucy debuted in 2003, she knew she wanted more of just about everything. After a particularly unfulfilling gig one evening, she met up with her long-time friend, songwriter Itaal Shur, and spent the next few hours walking around New York City talking about her next musical journey. They ended up committing themselves to writing a whole slew of new songs “just to see what would happen,” and they’d begin this project the very next day. “All during this period, I kept coming back to three records. Julie London, Ray Charles, and the soundtrack of The Jungle Book. They were triggering something in me I hadn’t felt in a while and I knew was brewing up the sound for my next bunch of songs.” They teamed up with electronica-inspired Tim K. (half of Home & Garden), and the three set out to create a funky, sultry, pop/torchsong record with twisted beats. The title song, “Hot and Bothered”, takes the melody of a Yiddish lullaby Lucy’s grandmother sang to her as a baby. “It’s turned out pretty racy, but I still think Grandma would approve if she heard it now.” Having sung her way to Japan, New Zealand and even to the couch of Jay Leno promoting her top-40 single “Dumb Girls” from While You Can (Atlantic Records, 2003), Lucy was looking for just the right inspiration for the next record. She won a BMI award for Stacie Orrico’s “There’s Gotta Be More to Life” (a song she herself had originally cut for the Japanese import of While You Can). She also recorded songs for several soundtracks, including What a Girl Wants, First Daughter, and Accepted, by the time she was asked to cover a Bjork song (“It’s Oh So Quiet”) for Disney’s Ice Princess. “The song took about an hour to cut, and in that time I knew I had the inspiration for my next record. That vocal made me open up in ways I hadn’t done before, and it was really satisfying.” Lucy plunged back into her record collection and pulled out all the recordings of her favorite songstresses – singers like the sassy powerhouse Etta James and the wild and idiosyncratic entertainer Betty Hutton, who had originated “It’s Oh So Quiet” in the 1950s. “Her fearlessness just blew me away.” But, she added, “I have so many musical influences, and I knew I needed this record to allow for that. I am a singer fan. When a singer can make her voice dance, that’s what moves me.” One of Lucy’s partners in crime, Itaal (Maxwell’s “Ascension” and Grammy-winner for Santana’s “Smooth”) says: “Lucy and I wrote the song “Hot and Bothered” before she recorded the Atlantic album. I felt it was good, but only scratched the surface of who she was as an artist. I told her I wanted to make an album with her that was totally, 100% bonafide Lucy. I wanted to capture the rambunctious, whimsical, funky, melancholy, sexy, soulful, playful, and explosive Lucy that I had known for years. All of our songs were written on piano or guitar, but Tim K. was integral in tying the songs to all the strings, melotrons, horns, live and programmed drums, and whatever else we could muster up to make our sonic template. Writing solid songs and having this innovative soundscape to showcase them on was our goal. We were paying no attention to marketplace, just the process of making art.” Lucy was exposed early on to la vida musica. She was born in London but also lived in Amsterdam before moving to New York when she was five. Her father had been a conductor for the BBC Singers and director of the Netherlands Chamber Choir as well as a composer, and her mother a bellydancer/musicologist who also studied opera. So it was that Lucy was raised on a healthy diet of Middle-Eastern music and La Bohème. When she was in high school, her mother became a music teacher and moved the family to the Bronx. Lucy found other kids who “wanted to sing everywhere. You couldn’t stop us.” The first songs she recorded were house music, because everyone’s dad or brother had a studio in his basement. She found singing that kind of music as “liberating and improvisationally freeing,” and she began to write her own songs. Lucy’s summers growing up were spent in Holland with her dad (after a month of music camp, of course!), and they traveled all over Europe, hitting a new country every year, it seemed. “I was lucky to have had such an international lifestyle when I was so young, because it’s a big part of who I am today. I knew being a singer would give me more opportunities to see the world. I’m sometimes just happy being at the airport.” Lucy’s journeys led her further from New York each year, and to Kenya many times. In 2006 she went to Rwanda to visit an AIDS village that she and her friends had been raising money for. Another year they brought school supplies to a Nicaraguan children’s refugee camp. “Most of my friends are musicians, so we had a talent show. We sang Bob Marley songs to the kids, and they sang us songs about Jesus. We had our broken Spanish, and they didn’t speak a word of English, so music was the only thing that connected us.” Lucy was recently asked to sing for Desmond Tutu at a benefit for his foundation in Dallas, and she sang with Carole King at another benefit in New York. Lucy has just finished Lucy Woodward . . . is Hot and Bothered. She is currently performing “The Hot and Bothered Sessions" around New York City. She is finding new ways to sneak into your iPod (or bedroom speakers).