Here's something you might be interested in.
"I live in Santa Monica now, but I'm originally from La Mesa."
Tiff Jimber is a pop music singer/pianist in the image, somewhat, of Ben Folds. Her music is both wry and intelligent to the point, at times, of introducing unexpected rudiments into the dialogue. She takes risks: consider "Civil War," by Guns 'n Roses, which she covered solo on her Yamaha P140.
"Mount Helix," she says, which is East La Mesa, a pricey sort-of inland La Jolla. "I grew up in a house at the bottom," she says, as if to discourage any image that she was raised in luxury. "Nowhere near the top of the mountain."
I'm watching the video for her cover of the song "Dynamite" while we talk. In it a couple more or less undresses each other while the song unfolds. It gets steamy. I tell her I can't talk to her and watch the vid at the same time.
"Why?" she says. "That's not me in the video."
"No? Well, all the same, it feels like I'm getting busted for watching porn, or something."
Jimber laughs freely in an interesting, effortless manner. I ask her to peg her music with a single word.
"One word? You're gonna hold me down to one word? That's pretty rough." She thinks about it, then finally comes up with this: "Introspective."
Jimber (Tiffany Anne Gyomber) was born in Denver but raised here. She cut her teeth at open mic nights in San Diego, including the old Java Joe's in Ocean Beach. She's a Berklee College grad. After, she moved to Los Angeles and landed a job doing sound at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Hollywood. She joined Jera, a pop punk band for a while before going solo. Her debut album Obstacles was released in 2004. Her current album is Burning at Both Ends.
I tell Jimber I'm interested in her gig with Sammy Hagar. It came about as a result of her part in a reality TV show called Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp, on VH1. "They had different musicians," she says, "and we were split into three bands. I was in one called The Bad Kick." She shudders at the mention of the name. "That was last year."
Each band, it turns out, backed a celebrity rocker. She recalls Hagar as being the most fun of any of them (Matt Sorum and Duff McKagen, for example) to jam with.
Jimber, 30, says she's starting work on an EP that she expects to have finished in a couple of weeks. She thinks it will be made for digital release, and then, followed with a tour. Her show, she says, "is just me on a keyboard. I also do a couple of songs on accordion."
Accordion. We talk about how certain instruments take a listener to a universal place almost instantly. Pedal steel guitar, for example, spells tears and country music, harmonica presages the blues, and tenor sax equals jazz. Mandolin, and bluegrass. Cello, and classical. Banjo, and "Deliverance."
But nothing, I say, brings on the red-checkered tablecloth fantasies better than accordion.
"And fear," she says. "The accordion concerns most people. I usually see a look of terror on faces in the audience when I put one on."
Jimber's family still lives in La Mesa. She admits she doesn't come back to San Diego as often as she'd like. "I really should go down there. I just fall asleep when I do. I can sleep all day long there. Maybe it’s the warm weather."
What does she miss? Hodad's, an eatery in downtown La Mesa. "And the beach. San Diego has the best beaches. In L.A. she says, you have to walk 200 yards before you get to the sand. The first time I went to the beach in L.A., I'm like, shouldn't we already be on the sand by now?"
Tiff Jimber: Sunday Sept. 16, Lestat’s, www.lestats.com, all ages
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/aug/23/30181/
"I live in Santa Monica now, but I'm originally from La Mesa."
Tiff Jimber is a pop music singer/pianist in the image, somewhat, of Ben Folds. Her music is both wry and intelligent to the point, at times, of introducing unexpected rudiments into the dialogue. She takes risks: consider "Civil War," by Guns 'n Roses, which she covered solo on her Yamaha P140.
"Mount Helix," she says, which is East La Mesa, a pricey sort-of inland La Jolla. "I grew up in a house at the bottom," she says, as if to discourage any image that she was raised in luxury. "Nowhere near the top of the mountain."
I'm watching the video for her cover of the song "Dynamite" while we talk. In it a couple more or less undresses each other while the song unfolds. It gets steamy. I tell her I can't talk to her and watch the vid at the same time.
"Why?" she says. "That's not me in the video."
"No? Well, all the same, it feels like I'm getting busted for watching porn, or something."
Jimber laughs freely in an interesting, effortless manner. I ask her to peg her music with a single word.
"One word? You're gonna hold me down to one word? That's pretty rough." She thinks about it, then finally comes up with this: "Introspective."
Jimber (Tiffany Anne Gyomber) was born in Denver but raised here. She cut her teeth at open mic nights in San Diego, including the old Java Joe's in Ocean Beach. She's a Berklee College grad. After, she moved to Los Angeles and landed a job doing sound at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Hollywood. She joined Jera, a pop punk band for a while before going solo. Her debut album Obstacles was released in 2004. Her current album is Burning at Both Ends.
I tell Jimber I'm interested in her gig with Sammy Hagar. It came about as a result of her part in a reality TV show called Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp, on VH1. "They had different musicians," she says, "and we were split into three bands. I was in one called The Bad Kick." She shudders at the mention of the name. "That was last year."
Each band, it turns out, backed a celebrity rocker. She recalls Hagar as being the most fun of any of them (Matt Sorum and Duff McKagen, for example) to jam with.
Jimber, 30, says she's starting work on an EP that she expects to have finished in a couple of weeks. She thinks it will be made for digital release, and then, followed with a tour. Her show, she says, "is just me on a keyboard. I also do a couple of songs on accordion."
Accordion. We talk about how certain instruments take a listener to a universal place almost instantly. Pedal steel guitar, for example, spells tears and country music, harmonica presages the blues, and tenor sax equals jazz. Mandolin, and bluegrass. Cello, and classical. Banjo, and "Deliverance."
But nothing, I say, brings on the red-checkered tablecloth fantasies better than accordion.
"And fear," she says. "The accordion concerns most people. I usually see a look of terror on faces in the audience when I put one on."
Jimber's family still lives in La Mesa. She admits she doesn't come back to San Diego as often as she'd like. "I really should go down there. I just fall asleep when I do. I can sleep all day long there. Maybe it’s the warm weather."
What does she miss? Hodad's, an eatery in downtown La Mesa. "And the beach. San Diego has the best beaches. In L.A. she says, you have to walk 200 yards before you get to the sand. The first time I went to the beach in L.A., I'm like, shouldn't we already be on the sand by now?"
Tiff Jimber: Sunday Sept. 16, Lestat’s, www.lestats.com, all ages
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/aug/23/30181/