Elaine lucia - Twist Run Road (2020)

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Elaine Lucia knows all about this strange alchemy, creating a body of arrestingly beautiful music out of a fraught childhood’s persistent ghosts.

She’s best known as a long-time creative force on the San Francisco Bay Area jazz scene, applying her pure tone and conservatory-honed technique to an alluring repertoire gleaned from the American and Brazilian songbooks and far beyond. But with her album Twist Run Road, Lucia is reintroducing herself as a tune-smith, lyricist and player with a sound so fresh and appealing it’s hard to believe she’s kept the music to herself for so long.

“This is a departure from my three previous CDs; it’s my first record where I wrote all of the tunes and am playing guitar on every track except one,” Lucia says. “I had spent 30 years on the jazz scene but never really considered myself a ‘pure’ jazz singer. I just enjoyed singing all different styles of music but with a jazzy twist, so to speak. And spent my career primarily singing other artists’ songs…while writing my own music all along. I just very rarely performed my original songs with my jazz groups because frankly I didn’t think there would be an audience for my songs…they don’t fit neatly into any particular genre. Plus, with monster guitarists like Dave MacNab, Randy Vincent and Jeff Massanari, I felt I really needed to become a better player to be on the same stage with them!”

With “Twist Run Road,” Lucia has opened a brilliant new chapter while triumphantly completing a circle, transforming her early trauma into radiant song. The music has been there from the beginning, as her youth in rustic upstate New York was filled with glorious sound. She first sang in choirs and local musical theater productions, often walking or riding her bike several miles from her rural home to rehearsals in the nearby town. She taught herself to play the guitar, piano, and flute, and formed or sang in countless ensembles, performing everything from classical and country to jazz, rock, and R&B.

At 15, she started studying opera and the classical repertoire with the local opera company. A summer scholarship to attend the Chautauqua Institute for the Arts gave her a jolt of confidence, and after graduating early from high school she won a theater scholarship to Binghamton University (then known as SUNY Binghamton). She performed in various musicals and sang with the university’s big band, which is where she experienced a musical epiphany when legendary pianist Marian McPartland performed as the orchestra’s guest artist.

She pursued graduate studies via a vocal scholarship at Eastman School of Music, focusing on the classical repertoire by day and immersing herself in Rochester’s lively jazz scene at night. When federal grant money was cut right before her senior year, Lucia lit out for the San Francisco Bay Area and quickly established herself as a creative force, contributing background vocals at recording sessions and performing with her own jazz group at clubs around the region.

Her impressive 2001 debut album “Elaine Lucia….Sings Jazz and Other Things” (Raw Records) earned strong reviews and propelled her onto the national stage. She followed up with 2006’s “A Sonny Day,” a tribute to her late, jazz-loving father, Frank “Sonny” Lucia. Lucia completed her jazz trifecta with 2008’s critically hailed “Let’s Live Again,” a tribute to the sensuous George Shearing Quintet albums with singers such as Nat “King” Cole, Peggy Lee, Dakota Staton, and Nancy Wilson. She didn’t know it at the time, but she offered a sneak peek at her musical future with the concluding track, her original song “Sayulita.”