My 5 Favorite Things: Kendra Morris
If you like music from the heart, then rising New York City songstress Kendra Morris is someone to keep your eye on this year. Blessed with a rich, soulful voice that spans the fertile sonic realm of soul and R&B, she's already turned a few heads thanks to "Concrete Waves," the first single from her upcoming album on Wax Poetics. Before her show this Friday at Mercury Lounge, we checked in with Morris to find out five things that rock her world.
1. Weekend activity: Treasure Hunting At The Ave A Fleamarket: Every Saturday morning after I pull myself out of bed, pick up a huge cup of coffee at my corner deli then walk up to the Avenue A Fleamarket with my dog Taco and search for special discarded treasures. Last week I found an old Heather Locklear tabletop painting. It doesn't even look anything like her. There is just something magical about the fact that someone was a big enough fan of hers to paint her face with along with a pony that morphs into her trademarked wispy as their kitchen table. I now have it leaned up against the wall in my writing cubby. Hopefully she will lend some musings to a new song or two.
2. Jewels: Bittersweets NY: I have a few amazing pieces from designer and company owner Robin that I love like a tiny hand giving the horns charm that I wear all the time and these amazing super large and extremely thin as hair gold hoop earrings. The idea behind Bittersweets NY is making something exquisite out of everyday objects and designs that are taken for granted. I think I was just immediately attracted to that aesthetic as I am a lover of finding and cherishing other peoples losses.
I've been collecting and trading all kinds of pins for an old denim vest of mine, but it is almost completely filled up so I think my next hobby is definitely going to be loading up on charms for bracelets and necklaces of things that are individually special to me.
3. Five Dollar Goodtimes: UCB East: Upright Citizens Brigade East opened a few months ago near my apartment in the East Village. Tickets are rarely more than five dollars for a show on any given night and you can just buy them five minutes prior to showtime. I usually smuggle in a ton of candy and then proceed to laugh my ass off over crude jokes and stories for a full hour. It beats Dancing With The Stars any night.
4. Bar: Library Bar: This bar not only has paid my bills from bartending while trying to make it as an artist in New York City, but it has leant itself as a huge inspiration about what makes New York City amazing. It's dingy, dark, cluttered with collected odds and ends over years of bar randomosity and I have met some of the most colorful, driven and talented people hanging out in the worn out old booths in the back watching B horror movies on the big screen and listening to one of the best jukeboxes in the city. Now that Mars Bar is gone, and Max Fish' impending doom is upon us, I truly will feel like I will need to chain myself to the front of the building if anyone ever tries to knock out one of the last amazing haunts of the artful East Village legacy.
5. Massage: Any of those 40 dollars for an hour, hole-in-the-wall massage parlors are my favorite for an hour of relaxation. The ladies that run them are always super nice, and I love just stopping off in the middle of whatever insanity I am currently absorbed in to let my thoughts and stresses float away. I actually stumbled over to Koreatown last weekend and got one of the most amazing massages at the 24-hour Juvenex Spa. I got there at 10 pm on a Sunday night, and they ushered me and a friend right in where we got to hang out in the steam room until they called us in for what wound up being one of the most relaxing massages I have ever received. I felt so out of it afterwards that I couldn't even lift my arm to hail a cab home.
Image by Janette Beckman
