Gabby La La 'Be Careful What You Wish For' album

Laced with sitar, accordion, ukulele, Theremin and toy piano and full of stories of elves, boogie woogie men, pirates and little doggies, Gabby La La's debut album, 'Be Careful What You Wish For...' is a wildly fun, endlessly charming and musically off-the-wall debut that's rooted in everything from George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and classical Indian music to the works of such out-of-the-box genre-benders as Bjork and Primus.

The album is the product of her collaborations with one of her childhood heroes, Primus frontman Les Claypool who produced the disc, and it features 11 original songs written by La La.

The first new artist to debut on Claypool's own Prawn Song in 12 years (since the debut from Charlie Hunter), Gabby La La and her band Love Balm scored a fateful gig opening up for Claypool at the Fillmore in San Francisco a few years ago. After the show, Claypool asked multi-instrumentalist La La to add sitar to Purple Onion, the 2002 disc from his Frog Brigade.

Two years later, while cutting 'The Big Eyeball in the Sky,' the debut from his new Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains, he asked La La to guest once more, this time as a backing vocalist. After that second session, Claypool inquired as to whether she wrote her own material and 'Be Careful What You Wish For...' began to take shape.

Claypool and La La decided to set aside some time to record her material, just to see where things might lead. "After about three songs," says 25-year-old Gabby La La, "he was like, 'Okay, what are we doing here? Let's just do this. Let's just do the whole album.'"

With Claypool chiding her to get to the "real" Gabby La La‹saying "I want to see that character I see in front of me"‹he and La La sought out to flesh out the bare musical accompaniment she had written for her whimsical, fun and comical lyrics, stories about walking her dog, Crispin, or dreaming of a boogie man wearing a black dress: "I'd come into the studio with pretty much the whole song written‹vocals, lyrics and one instrumental part on ukulele or guitar or accordion‹and we'd play through it and just kind of jam on it, with Les giving me some pointers."

"He's an amazing creative force in music today, and really open to all my ideas," La La says of the Primus frontman, who produced the album and contributes bass, percussion and drum. "He encourages me to be creative, and to be myself."

That clever point of view is manifested in the album's funny and often absurdist lyrics, all written by La La, save a collaboration with her sister, Mimi, and a cover of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams."

"Most of my lyrics are totally fiction," she says. "I'll just see something or have a vision of an elf or the Easter Bunny out the window, different things like that. Usually I'll just wake up and have an idea. With the song 'Elf' for example, I thought of the things that go on in an elf's world. I just delve into different creatures or imaginary worlds and try to put myself in the shoes of an elf or something like that," she notes with a laugh.

Featuring La La on vocals, sitar, accordion, toy piano, ukulele and Theremin, 'Be Careful What You Wish For...' bears the fruit of a lifelong obsession with music that began when La La fell in love with Annie as a child, incessantly singing the songs from the rags to riches orphan tale around her Bay Area home, before a piano teacher neighbor (after hearing the yelping La La from across the street) prodded her parents into getting her piano lessons at age 5. She took to it so well that it wasn't long before she and some friends were playing music on the street in front of their home for tips.

By the time La La was 12, she was playing guitar as well, and after stumbling across All Things Must Pass, she developed a new obsession: sitar. Spending a year warming her parents to the idea of letting her expand her music education, she began studying the Beatles/Harrison-popularized instrument with one of its masters, Ali Akbar Khan.

Ironically, it was after attending a Bay Area Primus gig during the band's Sailing the Seas of Cheese period‹the very first concert that the young phenom was allowed to attend without a chaperone‹that La La was ready to devote her future to music. Little did she know that some 10 years later, she would be regularly collaborating with Primus frontman Les Claypool, and debuting on his Prawn Song label.

Her first professional forays into the music world came with her work with San Francisco beatmaster DJ J-Boogie, and his Dubtronic Science outfit, with whom La La laid down sitar picking over downtempo grooves. Faithful to her eclectic tastes and interests, she would later join the lauded, sprawling boho collective Dakah Hip Hop Orchestra as one of several female MCs, before enlisting in Weapon of Choice featuring Lonnie Marshall (of Perry Farrell and Joe Strummer fame). Lonnie and Gabby later formed the duo Love Balm. Her credits also include an appearance on Macy Gray's 'The ID' and a performance with Snoop Dogg on The Tonight Show.

Fans attending the summer 2004 jaunt by Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains got an early preview of the quirky, elf and pirate stories 'Be Careful What You Wish For...' as La La opened the entire trek, drawing raves and encores at every stop.

"I'm just pretty much trying to share some interesting new sounds with everyone," she says of her refreshingly original style and crush-worthy charm. "I hope that people who hear my music are inspired to just be themselves and enjoy life."

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Gabby La La - Be Careful What You Wish For