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| Funky Stella is a 3-man, 3-woman, very hard-working, six-piece original rock band that began as a lark at a birthday party 6 years ago and continues to thrive. Husband and wife team Nancy Coleman and Tom Babbitt write original material (she's a poet that sounds like EmmyLou Harris, he writes jazzy, forceful intelligent Pop). Drummer Rob Rand is a multi-instrumentalist and a pro sound engineer who works tirelessly on Stella's live sound. Terry Morgan (percussion, vocals), Jo McAllister (lead and backing vocals) and Steve Chapman (veteran Boston bassist and now, contributing songwriter) round out the sextet. Cover songs from folks like R.E.M., Tom Petty, Coldplay, Jimi Hendrix, and Melissa Etheridge complement original material. The idea is a fun, ultimately listenable and danceable entertainment from actual grown-ups (like yourself!) - yet all ages enjoy a Stella show.
Played occasionally on WCLZ, their CD "Debutiful" features eight original songs written by Tom and Nancy and has been in heavy rotation at such local Places of Interest as Gary Lawless's Gulf of Maine Books and The Green Store. The band members are thrilled about their partnership with the 11 Pleasant Street Arts Center, as they have searched far and wide for a local venue where folks could gather informally and create community outside the boring routine of beer-soaked honky-tonks and chaotic Portland clubs. Your participation is essential to make this kind of thing work - it's close to home, it's better than the cinder-block Cinema 8's and rented DVDs... Give Stella and 11 Pleasant Street a go! |
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The sole studio recording from the band to date is the beautiful debut disk "Debutiful," and features 8 original songs from Tom and Nancy. The CD can be purchased right now at CD Baby , where song samples can also be heard. Four members of the band (Tom, Nancy, Rob & Terry) also recently performed original music written with Lee Perlman for a dance choreographed by Lee's wife, Deborah Abel, and performed at M.I.T.'s Kresge Auditorium. This recording may soon be available as well. Stella is always writing new music, however. New songs can be heard currently in the set list at gigs. Examples include, "Mirror of Love" by Tom, a snappy, jazz-tinged rock tune about the impossibility of escaping one's reflection in a lover: "He's got a real neat scooter, he smells like Italian Vogue / Somebody's always cooler and now it's this element rogue / Ahh but you're looking such a fright / in the disco bathroom light..." And Steve Chapman's first contribution, "Final Words," a blistering rock tune with a mythic theme... From "Horizon" featured on the Debutiful disk: From "Carry Me Down" featured on the Debutiful disk: From the new tune "The Sweetest Thing" (for Stella): OTHER MUSIC by individual members of Stella exists as well, of course, and this list will be continually updated as recordings become available. Click the links below to have a listen: NEW DAY - Studio recording of Tom's, overdubbing himself. ©2007
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Phone: Tom and Nancy at 207-729-5569 NOTES:
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| Rob writes: I grew up in a musical home. My father loved bluegrass and the old country music, the kind they used to sing before country got ruined by big business. My mother played classical piano at home. My mother and father would sing harmonies together, old country ballads, that sort of thing. I had the usual insufferable piano lessons when I was small which almost turned me off to music completely. But there was one rag tune called "The Banjo Picker" that was syncopated between the left and right hands- I played it constantly, and knew from that one song that I had a gift I should not forsake. I sang in choir and barbershop quartets as a young teenager. Later in 1970 when I was 18, my father gave me his old Kay guitar, and I when to college, I ignored my class schedule and started playing every day listening to John Lee Hooker, BB King, and Muddy Waters. I started studying acoustics, reading everything I could find. I played (variously) guitar, bass guitar, pedal steel, and drums in a dozen or so blues and r&b bands over the next twenty years until the mid 1990s. Then I got interested in afro-cuban and middle-eastern percussion and over a perod of five years, played in afro-cuban and ecstatic-dance events. I became aware of the power of music to heal, and I created a set of audio compositions commissioned in an exhibition "Sound of Spirit" at the Peabody-Essex Museum, 1999 - 2000. In 2001, Funky Stella asked me to join the group as the kit drummer, and along with that, I contribute harmony vocal lines, and design and manage the group's live sound. |
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| Terry Morgan had her early roots in music as a California native growing up listening to live rock, folk and blues in San Francisco and Berkeley. She was once a neighbor of the early Doobie Brothers, attending impromptu house parties and listening to them jam. She was a founding member of the women's drumming circle, "Free-Range Rhythm," that played Grange-hall gigs opening for Stella in the band's infancy. Her passion for drums and percussion continues in Funky Stella, in addition to a burgeoning career as both a lead and backing vocalist. She currently lives in Brunswick, Maine and works as a Massage Therapist and Astrologer. |
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| Tom Babbitt has been playing guitar and writing and recording songs for 3 decades. He grew up in the seventies listening to the Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin, etc. in the frigid hinterlands of Upstate New York. In college, he discovered fusion groups like King Crimson, Weather Report and Miles' "Bitches Brew" sessions and began listening to a lot of Jazz. Then the late seventies brought Talking Heads and XTC - so-called "New Wave" bands. All these influences can be heard swirling through the songs he writes for the band. His true aspiration is to be a lead player in the tradition of Jeff Beck and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (of early Steely Dan) - admittedly a tall order. He also loves roots folk (a la EmmyLou Harris and Daniel Lanois - Tom and Nancy sometimes pretend they're them). A former senior Art Director, he now works as a Counselor in Topsham. His art site can be found here at: www.artisanking.com |
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| Nancy Coleman has been singing and writing songs forever, started to play piano when she was 7 (and stopped when she was 11), was given her first guitar when she was 13, and danced around the living room as early as she could and as often as she could get away with it. Her songs began as poems which sounded like songs, and her poems began as songs which sounded like poems, until somewhere in the last 15 years, the two streams came together. She sang in a never-named band in high school, played and sang in Hoi Polloi in college and on several recordings of other peoples’ music, but Funky Stella has been the first long-time ever-expanding commitment for this previously primarily solo singer-songwriter. In the band, she writes songs on her own and in collaboration with Tom, sings lead and backing vocals, plays keyboard and (of late) acoustic electric guitar. Nancy’s early musical years were spent with the Weavers and Pete Seeger, Buffy Ste-Marie, Richie Havens, and the Blues Project, followed quickly by Jefferson Airplane and Cream and Led Zeppelin. And all along the way, the voice and the songs of Emmy Lou Harris were influencing her own sound. In recent years, singing the sacred songs of many traditions has opened her to wider and deeper channels in the world of music. And still and always, she is a poet, seeing and writing the world in the languages of beauty and mystery. |
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| Steve’s musical career began with guitar lessons when he first became aware of the British invasion in late 1963. He later discovered an interest in classical music that culminated in a long tenure as first bassoonist with the Freedonia Symphony Orchestra. In 1977 he was terribly bitten by a member of the Vampire Lesbos which led to a total reversal of musical interests and participation in a succession of punk and new wave bands in both the Boston and Portland music scenes as well as a curious interest in moonlit settings. And now, after numerous attempts on his death and a long stint as Information Technology Manager and Programmer at a large Maine distillery, he is back at it playing bass with the Stellas. |
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| When JoAnn McAllister is not working as a talented and highly intuitive Massage Therapist, she sometimes stands in for Catherine Willows on CBS's "CSI." | ||
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