{"id":1932,"date":"2010-01-25T14:06:30","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T21:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anthologysd.com\/blog\/?p=1932"},"modified":"2010-01-26T11:37:41","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T18:37:41","slug":"janiva-magness-brings-hard-earned-blues-sound-to-anthology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/2010\/01\/25\/janiva-magness-brings-hard-earned-blues-sound-to-anthology\/","title":{"rendered":"Janiva Magness brings hard-earned blues sound to Anthology"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mikel Toombs, SDNN<\/span> <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When Janiva Magness makes the trip to perform Thursday at Anthology, she\u2019ll be in her element.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love that venue,\u201d the singer said by phone from her Los Angeles home. \u201cThere\u2019s not a bad seat in the house in terms of sound or sight line. And the food is, like, off the hook.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe often get to play songs we don\u2019t get to play in other types of venues, because it\u2019s such a good listening venue. And that\u2019s going to be my San Diego birthday party. If folks want to come down and wish the old broad happy birthday, that\u2019ll be fine with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

This birthday, her 53rd, isn\u2019t the only happy occasion Janiva (pronounced JAN-iv-uh) Magness has to celebrate. She\u2019s the reigning B.B. King Entertainer of the Year (Koko Taylor is the only other female to ever win) and Best Contemporary Blues Female Artist, as determined in last May\u2019s Blues Music Awards. And she\u2019s putting the finishing touches on the follow-up to \u201cWhat Love Will Do\u201d (Alligator Records). Like the critically acclaimed BMA-nominated album, Magness is co-producing with Dave Darling.<\/p>\n

A longtime local favorite who last month headlined a benefit for non-commercial radio station KSDS (\u201dThose guys have played my records pretty much as long as I\u2019ve been making them,\u201d she said), Magness sparkles in her live shows. She matches passionate vocals with a high-heeled strut that recalls another celebrated \u201cold broad,\u201d Tina Turner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Tina Turner,\u201d Magness said, surprised by the compliment. \u201cWell, Tina is a survivor. And I guess in that regard that puts us in the same category: as Etta James so aptly coined the phrase, \u2018rage to survive.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

While her \u201crage\u201d has softened over the years, Magness\u2019 survival is the stuff of legend, or at least of an especially memorable blues song.<\/p>\n

Musically, she\u2019s overcome being dismissed, almost three decades ago, as being over the hill. An MCA Records vice president told Magness, then 25, \u201cthat I was talented but I was too old,\u201d she said. \u201cI tell that story today, and every word of it is true. I tell that on the bandstand because it is so ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Magness, who discovered the blues after she hitchhiked to an Otis Rush concert in Minneapolis at a young age, already had a life story that was ridiculous, although in this case horrifically so. Born in Detroit, she ended up homeless or bouncing from one foster family to another, 12 in two years, after both her parents committed suicide.<\/p>\n

Today, she remembers that period by volunteering for the Casey Family Programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really grateful to be able to stand as a spokesperson for National Foster Care Month, which is a cause we celebrate all year long,\u201d Magness said. \u201cI was pretty much dead-heading for a really bad ending. And really, really and truly because a small handful of people within that framework stood up for me, it changed everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m interested in testifying to that. I\u2019m interested in encouraging and inspiring other people to step forward for youth at risk in this country. I\u2019m interested in inspiring and encouraging those kids to not give up on themselves, for that textbook predictable thing. It doesn\u2019t have to be that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Magness found her experience sadly relevant during a 2008 tour of Iraq, and she\u2019s clearly moved when, whether on stage or in an interview, she discusses her time there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was deeply personal for me,\u201d she said. \u201cPost Traumatic Stress Disorder is suffered by kids in the foster system at twice the rate as combat vets. We have it twice as much as they do. That\u2019s really horrifying.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, you know how it is when you have a certain thing and you recognize your own kind? It was like that. And I saw it a lot. I had the opportunity to talk to some of them about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Because I\u2019m always going to have that. It\u2019s never going to go away, I\u2019m never going to \u2018get over it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s part of my landscape. But I don\u2019t live in that, day after day after day, anymore. They live in it now, day after day after night after day. They live in it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t live in that anymore. It\u2019s taken a tremendous amount of very hard work, but most days I\u2019m not in that night. Every once in a while, it crops up. Every once in a while a series of events will happen and I will have an extraordinarily tough time.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut mostly, I don\u2019t have that issue. What a huge blessing, what a huge healing, to stand there on an airstrip outside of Baghdad and tell a soldier that, smack in the center of that shit, and have him really know what I\u2019m talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Event info<\/strong>
\nWhat:<\/strong> Janiva Magness
\nWhen: <\/strong>7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28
\nWhere:<\/strong> Anthology, 1337 India St., downtown\/Little Italy
\nTickets:<\/strong> $18 BUY TICKETS<\/a><\/p>\n

More:<\/strong> www.anthologysd.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Mikel Toombs writes regularly for SDNN\u2019s Music page.<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Via SDNN.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mikel Toombs, SDNN When Janiva Magness makes the trip to perform Thursday at Anthology, she\u2019ll be in her element. \u201cI love that venue,\u201d the singer said by phone from her Los Angeles home. \u201cThere\u2019s not a bad seat in the house in terms of sound or sight line. And the food is, like, off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[170,615,171,611,612,253,613,614],"class_list":["post-1932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-past-shows","tag-blues","tag-contemporary-blues","tag-janiva-magness","tag-janiva-magness-concert","tag-janiva-magness-live","tag-live-blues","tag-live-blues-in-san-diego","tag-san-diego-blues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1932"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1940,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions\/1940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anthologysd.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}