Freda Love Smith - Red Velvet Underground: A Rock Memoir, with Recipes
Freda Love Smith, Juliana's colleague in Blake Babies and Some Girls, has a new book out - Red Velvet Underground: A Rock Memoir, with Recipes.
You don't see enough of the memoir / recipe genre these days.
From the promo blurb:
Red Velvet Underground tells the story of how Smith's indie-rock past evolved into her domestic present. Loosely framed around cooking lessons she gives her older son, her story moves back and forward in time as she recollects how she got started in music, and how her career in rock eventually dovetailed with her passion for cooking and, later, the growth of her family. The book intersperses forty-five recipes with personal stories about her music career, cooking, eating, and family.
Here's a bit from TheTalkhouse, where you can read a fuller excerpt:
The Blake Babies and the Lemonheads had formed in Boston at about the same time, discovered each other quickly and become fast friends.
Evan and his Lemonheads partner, guitarist-singer-songwriter Ben Deily, attended one of the first shows the Blake Babies ever played, at an arty café called She’s Leaving Home. Evan stood front and center, enthusiastically rocking out, and Juliana was smitten from that moment, and far into the future. Of course, it was hard to meet that golden boy and not be smitten. Few people will ever gaze upon a human more beautiful than nineteen-year-old Evan Dando. And Evan wasn’t just a pretty face —he was an uncanny talent with a killer voice, a knack for melody and great taste in music. I will love him forever for bringing his copy of Big Star’s Radio City over to the apartment I shared with John and Juliana. “You guys are going to freak out,” he said. “I promise.” He was right. When Evan agreed to join the Blake Babies after we had unsuccessfully worked with two other bass players, we were delighted. As it turned out, it was only the beginning of a long cross-pollination between the two bands. John would later join the Lemonheads on drums, and years after that he would return as a guitar player. After the Blake Babies broke up, Juliana was an integral part of the Lemonheads’ classic record It’s a Shame About Ray.
Juliana, having read an advanced copy, has said:
These are sweet, unsentimental scenes from the ever-evolving life of a woman of many shifting and balancing roles: mother, wife, drummer, student, teacher, friend, daughter, food enthusiast. It’s all tied together with tantalizing recipes that have been lovingly improvised and tweaked into a life-affirming doneness.
The book is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon USA and Amazon UK
There's also an Apple iBooks version.