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SCOTTY MORRIS: What's really good is when you work somebody in a collaboration. It's
a totally syncopated freedom. MELINDA SULLIVAN: Everything stems from the music, the story, the energy,
the vibe, it all comes from the music first and then I, as the dancer, I am an extension
of that. SCOTTY MORRIS: The approach is to see what she does and then to surround it
with what we do. It should be great. MELINDA SULLIVAN: You have to take the sound into account,
especially when working with musicians you wanna think about how are the dynamics of
my feet going to blend well with this instrumentation. SCOTTY MORRIS: I love going into new experiences
like this and just being open and trying to like get something from it. I'm actually blown away.
SCOTTY MORRIS: My name is Scotty Morris and I am the lead singer and song writer for
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. MELINDA SULLIVAN: My name is Melinda Sullivan, and I'm a tap dancer.
SCOTTY MORRIS: When I was about five years old my brother, who was then eight, started
public school. My brother came home, obviously three years older than I, with the trumpet.
He's beating on this thing making no sense on it. So I went and grabbed my brother's
horn and I could make sounds on it where he wasn't making any sounds on it, and it felt
really natural to me. MELINDA SULLIVAN: My parents and my entire family have always been
very supportive and my brother, sister and I were all required to take an instrument
when we were younger and I studied the piano. And then after a few years I decided that
I wanted tap dance to be my instrument. I like to think of myself as a musician as well
as a dancer. SCOTTY MORRIS: In '89 I graduated from music school and I had this idea in my
head that I wanted to play swing music. I didn't wanna play a jazz swing, I wanted to
play this new kind of swing. And I heard these tunes that were rolling around in my head.
So I started writing these tunes and sort of getting these things together. I was kind
of putting the feelers out with my friends to sort of see like who would be interested
in that kind of thing. By '93 we had the original five guys in the band. We're a group and we've
been together now for almost nineteen years with all the same dudes, almost twenty five
hundred gigs that we've done together. MELINDA SULLIVAN: One of the first companies I worked
with that introduced tap dance to me as an instrument was the jazz tap ensemble, and they
had a group called the Caravan Project, which was a training group for teens. They allowed
us to work one-on-one with um jazz musicians and they opened my mind to tap dance as an
instrument and approaching the dance form as a drummer would approach it or even as
a horn player or a pianist would approach it and thinking about timing, thinking about
tone and phrasing and stealing you know the musicality that even a horn player would
use and applying that to my feet. That just totally opened my mind. Some of the highlights
of my dance career so far would have to be being on So You Think You Can Dance. I was
the farthest that a tap dancer was able to get on the show and I think that was really
exciting for me but also for the tap community. I've been really fortunate to work as a tap
dancer in the commercial world, so on Glee and Dancing with the Stars. It's exciting
to expose people to tap dance. A very common conception about tap dancing is that it's
old fashioned and it's a dance form of the past, um and it's very dated, but I disagree.
I think tap dancing is exciting, fresh, young, sexy and I have never had an experience where
I've tap danced and people haven't enjoyed it. I think it can definitely have a resurgence
in today's popular culture. SCOTTY MORRIS: Music for me usually it'll just happen to
me and I'll just start singing music in my head and I'll hear this song and it'll be
as if I heard a song on the radio and it's all there, all the parts, everything. And
then another process will happen where I'll hear somebody play something or I'll see a
clip of somebody doing something and there'll be something about one chord or one sound
that sparks something in me. It's funny cause then I'm chasing it. I'm chasing this thing
like I'm trying to find this thing. And then all of a sudden it happens. I'll either get
to my phone or I'll get to a recorder or I'll sit in my studio and I'll hammer it out
and I'll just I'll just demo it out. MELINDA SULLIVAN: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is an amazing
band. I actually grew up listening to their music and one of my first tap dances was actually
to one of their songs, "Go Daddy-O". SCOTTY MORRIS: Melinda Sullivan, the very first time
I saw her, I saw her on a television show. I really liked the way she danced. She dances
like a musician to me. MELINDA SULLIVAN: Having a background in music is the most important
foundation being a tap dancer. You are a musician with your feet. The sound and your rhythm
and the musicality is just as important as the actual step that you're doing.
Leading up to this performance and collaboration I definitely have some nervousness about collaborating
with a band that rehearses together a lot and has a lot of history together. Because
it takes a lot of time to get that sort of cohesiveness and that sort of groove going.
It's definitely nerve-wracking to have that sort of responsibility. But when you take
risks as an artist it's scary because there's not always a road map in front of you that
tells you what to do and how you're supposed to do it. And the flip side of that is that
it's exciting and you're opening doors for yourself. We don't have that much time together
but I've listened to their music before and I know that if they're open to the collaboration
process like I am it could be a really fun experience.
SCOTTY MORRIS: When I was writing "Devil's Dance," the song we're doing, I had a visual for one of the
sections of the song, two skeletons dancing next to each other doing this like crazy like tap dance thing. And
so the approach to this tune is a lot of rims, a lot of kind of tap dancing rhythms.
With a dancer, basically it's gonna be tailor made I think. MELINDA SULLIVAN: Hey guys. BAND: There
she is. How are you? MELINDA SULLIVAN: Hi, I'm Melinda. First off I met Scotty and Josh
and they're great, really cool guys. SCOTTY MORRIS: Do you listen to traditional music
to get inspiration, like in drummers for your tap? MELINDA SULLIVAN: Yeah, I love jazz music.
It's where I try to get most of my phrasing from, timing from. That's the sort of foundation
for all the music we have today like SCOTTY MORRIS: It was fun to sit down to see what
the other person, you kind of just check out the other person. MELINDA SULLIVAN: I can
do your like classic (SINGS) and do a little swing with brushes but SCOTTY MORRIS: Right.
MELINDA SULLIVAN: these are these are my… SCOTTY MORRIS: Yeah that's your instrument right there.
And then we just listen to the track. It's got that twenties, thirties traditional
kind of jazz thing. MELINDA SULLIVAN: I just heard the song for the first time, and I was
really excited. It has horns in it, um there's not gonna be a drummer so that's where I
come in. SCOTTY MORRIS So you're gonna be our drummer. So if you would be the pulse
for this, you setting it up up front and you can take as long as you want. MELINDA SULLIVAN:
Okay. SCOTTY MORRIS: And then you let us know when we're gonna come in, we'll start the
head of the song MELINDA SULLIVAN: Cool. SCOTTY MORRIS: there. So you will actually open it,
create the vibe and then we sort of kind of will then follow you. MELINDA SULLIVAN: I like
it. SCOTTY MORRIS: And then that… She knew the style right away and just immediately jumped in.
MELINDA SULLIVAN: We spent some time figuring out the form, you know the trades
and improvising through that and um just figuring out the sort of groove I wanna um play with.
SCOTTY MORRIS: Cause like you said before, grooving is essential. MELINDA SULLIVAN: Yeah.
SCOTTY MORRIS: If everyone's not shaking their *** to this tune MELINDA SULLIVAN: Right,
exactly. SCOTTY MORRIS: we're doing something wrong. MELINDA SULLIVAN: We also talked about me even
playing around with different sounds on the sort of props that are gonna be on the stage.
I actually kind of had an idea not to wear tap shoes and wear shoes that I'd be able
to dance on different type of surfaces, so I'm really inspired by sand dancing right
now. SCOTTY MORRIS: Okay. MELINDA SULLIVAN: So more of like the sort of like brush movement,
but yeah, I'm down to dance on anything, like SCOTTY MORRIS: Cool. MELINDA SULLIVAN: crates
or boxes or. SCOTTY MORRIS: Right on. She was finding the groove of the song and it was
cool because her well is pretty deep with what she's doing rhythm wise. The funny thing
is that she showed me some steps. Show me the technique of the heels, because that's
the one thing… MELINDA SULLIVAN: So you wanna just toe, toe and then
you just drop your, exactly. SCOTTY MORRIS: Okay, so it's drop it. Okay so it's…
MELINDA SULLIVAN: Exactly. Toe, toe, heel, heel. A toe, toe, heel, heel. SCOTTY MORRIS: When she showed
me this I realized that just the simplest thing she could show me was already way too hard for me.
Lack of technique. MELINDA SULLIVAN: Dude, I didn't know. SCOTTY MORRIS: I didn't know either.
She's a really open artist and the collaboration as an artist
I think it fits in great because I'm always looking for something new. I love going into
new experiences like this and just being open and trying to like get something from it.
I'm not sure how much that gets done. At least not in this kind of music. When all of the
success hit with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy it was interesting, because at that point we had
always tried to be unique and different and try to do this thing that we had a vision
on. It seemed to me that the more success in the media that we got the less creative
was really happening. So we just decided we just take it to the street like we did in
the beginning, just play for people that wanna hear this band play. The hurdle for me was
not worrying about what anybody else thinks. It just is liberating, and you get into a position
where I'm gonna go for it.
MELINDA SULLIVAN: I'm really thrilled to be working with this
band because they're really passionate about bringing a like a old style of music to popular
music and to audiences nowadays. That's something that I'm really passionate about as well.
BAND: Here comes the break. MELINDA SULLIVAN: And it's cool to meet somebody who's had that
much success be so down-to-earth and still so passionate about their art and the music.
It goes to show like no matter how big you get it's all about the art.
SCOTTY MORRIS: By the time we got to the end she felt good and safe enough to wanna sing on this as well,
which is something that I was hoping that we were gonna get to that point.
MELINDA SULLIVAN: I'm very inspired right now. And that's always the best thing to have before you get into
the studio and start creating, because at the end of the day you have to create from
a place of emotion and of truth and of joy. SCOTTY MORRIS: You will be totally inspired
by the instruments, too, so. MELINDA SULLIVAN: Yeah, so excited. SCOTTY MORRIS: And again…
MELINDA SULLIVAN: Scotty said it really nice, he was like you know go out there and just
really express yourself and then we'll be there with you. And that's I mean all you
can ask for. MELINDA SULLIVAN: Shake it never fake it.
SCOTTY MORRIS: That's it man. On all accounts. I have no concerns for the performance. I'm just really
looking forward tomorrow to watching all of us get together and create some sort of internal
shine that's gonna make this thing pop right out at whoever is watching.
SCOTTY MORRIS: When we rehearsed this, I need to see what she's gonna do, because at rehearsals her
and I were like I was clapping rhythm time with her.
SCOTTY MORRIS: That was fun, that was a good connection actually. She's a great dancer, I mean she's
an incredible dancer and her rhythm is amazing. The textures and all her different things that she was
making noise on, to see this song actually performed as a tap was was pretty incredible.
She hit all of the things that we were sort of really going for. It makes me want to collaborate
with her again for sure. MELINDA SULLIVAN: This has been very inspiring for me to keep
at it. It takes experiences like this that are really magical and really full of joy
and the more inspiring as we kept going and I kept finding new moments with them.
All I have to say is that was so much fun.