The Tonight Show's Vicki Randle (page 3)
by Suzanne Corson, October 10, 2006
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During high school, many of her friends were being drafted. “I was a math geek, addicted to logic, and logically, the [Vietnam] war didn't make sense, the way people laid it out.” In between club gigs and studio sessions in the '70s and '80s, Randle was often at marches and rallies for various causes.
Randle realized that she was a lesbian after high school and began performing with lesbian and other women musicians. She values her friendships from those days, such as the one with Cris Williamson. She speaks with pride and admiration about her friend: “Cris is in charge of her own music now, with her own label, Wolf Moon Records.”
Though Randle does have her own publishing company, Raging Hormones (“because hormones will always be in play in my life”), she didn't want to establish her own label for her CD, so she was grateful to Williamson and to Judy Werle for allowing her to release Sleep City on Wolf Moon. “My shipping and receiving department is Cris Williamson. There is something so exquisitely ironic about that, but Cris packaged up and mailed all the pre-orders on my CD. How can you quantify that kind of relationship?” Randle asks.
Her long-term friendship with Bonnie Hayes is another that Randle treasures. “We worked well together on this CD. She found the heart in the project and stayed close to it.” Though common wisdom says it can sometimes be challenging to work closely with friends, Randle says she and Hayes both know how important their friendship is and that it is worth working on.
A seasoned producer, musician, and singer, Hayes may be best known for her songwriting, like “the song that bought my house,” as she remarked at Randle's gig in Berkeley — “Love Letter,” which was popularly sung by Bonnie Raitt.
Hayes is also a songwriting teacher, and though Randle usually writes songs first on guitar (“It was my first instrument, kind of like my first language”), Bonnie encouraged her to try different beats, such as starting from a rhythmic perspective. The liner notes of Sleep City give a song-by-song synopsis of each track's genesis, and Hayes' influence is duly noted, as are the contributions of the other musicians.
The musicians, including Julie Wolf and Barbara Higbie — both also participants on the recent Cris Williamson tour — are all excellent on Sleep City. And Randle's vocals are fabulous, especially on the tracks “I've Been Thinking” and “Next Big Thing.” The sound on the CD smoothly shifts in mood and style in the instrumentation, vocals and lyrics. Several tunes, such as the lovely “Back Into My Arms,” feature syncopation, resulting in a jazz-informed, upbeat folk style. My only wish would be for more than nine tracks, but then I'm greedy for great music.
Sleep City is full of stories — about loves lost, loves remembered, and difficult lives — with some social commentary thrown in. In the notes for “Carry On,” Randle says, “I come from the kind of family that virtually insured that I would become a songwriter. I needed to write about these things mostly to explain them to myself.” An avid reader of “Actual Books” (as Randle's website emphasizes), the song “Don't Let Me Fall” was inspired by James McBride's memoir, The Color of Water.
The title track, which is more funk than folk, addresses some of her political feelings in a tongue-in-cheek way. She wanted to use the words “sleep city,” which she saw on a marquee, as the title of her album since it would be an inside joke about her insomnia. Her friend Lynnly Labovitz, a photographer, came up with the cover concept immediately, which Randle explains as “Awake, in bed, with my guitar, honoring my first and enduring love, music.”
Speaking of love, Randle is currently single. “I haven't been able to date in a long time. In a way, it's protective of others,” she says, laughing. In fact, she's been intentionally staying celibate for more than a year. “It's for me to look at what I bring into a relationship and if I even want one,” she explains. “We don't usually think in terms of how to share our lives with somebody long-term and whether or not we want to do that. I want everything I do to be intentional, as much as possible.”
Randle divides her time between Los Angeles, where The Tonight Show is taped, and the San Francisco Bay area. She runs and bikes, loves spending time with her two Siberian huskies, and rides a custom 1994 Harley-Davidson FXR motorcycle. She has been in both the Los Angeles and San Francisco Pride parades, riding with Dykes on Bikes. “The last time I rode in L.A. was when The L Word was filming. We were unpaid labor for them, lots of waving, etc.”
This December Randle will turn 52, and she wants to emphasize that life does not stop at 50. “When I was younger, I thought that getting things, having autonomy in the world, having material possessions, would make me free.” She used to joke that she wanted a chance to prove that money can't make her happy, and with her current steady gig at The Tonight Show, “I've proved it. Money can't make me happy, people can't make me happy.” But she concedes with a smile, “My dogs can make me happy.”
Now, Randle says, “being physically active is really important to me. Being spiritually aware, having a spiritual practice of some kind is important. Living life in service and love is very important.”
She has three more years with The Tonight Show and is planning another solo album. When first planning Sleep City, she had a wealth of material to choose from but needed to decide on a focus for the CD. “I spend a good portion of my professional life singing R&B, but when I'm writing, I think in terms of folk ballads. … I decided to restrict this record to my singer/songwriter life, rather than the percussive, jazz life.”
But that will be explored on her next solo outing. “I'd like to be able to move between the two styles, since I've done just as much jazz work, and scat singing is something I enjoy. I've written a lot of Brazilian-type tunes, percussion-heavy, so the next effort will include those.”
Until then, you can explore her folk tunes on Sleep City and witness her percussive and vocal stylings on The Tonight Show — and celebrate the longest-running gig of an out lesbian on television to date.
For more information on Randle,
visit her website
at VickiRandle.com
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