Helen Sventitsky aka Shaky Tee
A traveler at heart, Helen recently left her old life behind and made her way west to LA to pursue her career as an actress and songwriter. Many who have been around the mp3.com BB for since the beginning will remember Helen from her smash hit Insecure Single Girl... these days she's left the High Five Orchestra behind and has launched a brand new sound under her real name. I chatted with Helen after knowing her for years......

Mb: Hey
Helen: Heya! What sort of terrible rumors do you wish to have me quash today, LOL!!!
Mb: You still fighting with FT? lol
Helen: He and I have our differences. He sees things one way, I see them another. LOL
Mb: What do you think of the BB world in general?
Helen: It's a great source of information and networking. It's also a trap from which one sometimes has difficulty getting out. LOL
Mb: What kind of trap?
Helen: You can either make lots of friends or lots of enemies... depending. If your entire reputation in the world of
music depends on what you said on a BBS last week, you are in a hell of a lot of trouble, LOL!!!
Mb: What's been it's main purpose for you?
Helen: Networking...getting my music and opinions out. Meeting people. I don't meet a lot of people in my day to day living who aspire to do what I do.
Mb: And what about your music? What's happening these days?
Helen: The music of Shaky Tee has been put on the back burner while I give my "alter ego" Helen Sventitsky a boost. It's more experimental, rock oriented...pop oriented. I seem to have more to say in that vein these days.
Mb: Is it working for you?
Helen: Lately, yeah!
Mb: What kind of comments are you making?
Helen: Oh...I wrote a song about life in LA that was a big hit over at Artistlaunch.com, LOL! The stuff's more personal. Less "catty". I'm more real using my real name.
Mb: How is life in LA?
Helen: A bitch, LOL
Mb: Reflected in the song?
Helen: Pretty much, yeah. The song is called "It Got You Too."
Mb: The allure?
Helen: I wrote after hearing about various peoples experiences, or their friends experiences of going to LA and having the life there change them completely. I saw all that first hand as an actress in
San Francisco.
Mb: What happened?
Helen: They get caught up in the star chasing scene there...they get one break and all of a sudden their world view changes and they think they're hot shit. Or they go to work for Jay Leno, and
when they go home and visit friends, it's "Jay Leno" this, Jay Leno that.
Mb: Egos take over?
Helen: yep! Except, my song's a little darker.
Mb: But isn't ego what this business is about?
Helen: Well...it's about being stuck in the reality of it...going to work everyday or trying to get work in a town that bases everything on who looks good, or looked good last week. I also got a little of it's influence from watching the Playboy Channel, LOL Getting stuck in a situation you THOUGHT you wanted, but, for financial reasons, can't get out. You know that song "Leaving Las Vegas" by Cheryl Crow? It's similar in that vein.
Mb: So should we talk about the website? Have you officially launched?
Helen: The website is still being worked on. I haven't officially launched it yet. But I have it in all my sigs on EZBOARD,
LOL
Mb: ETA?
Helen: I need another month. I gotta get content together. Ogg vorbis files, lyrics, features, things like that. I also have to put a CD together. I had an EP on Mp3.com called Altered
Egos.
Mb: You write a lot?
Helen: I write just about every day.
Mb: And record/demo?
Helen: I record about once a week. Didn't you get some new gear awhile back? I seem to remember mentions on the bb...
Helen: Yeah...when we moved into our RV, I had completely start from scratch. I've got a bunch of soundcards, a new Taylor Baby guitar, several new mics (an Octava MK319 and a Studio PRojects B1)
Mb: Recording to hard drive or tape?
Helen: Hard drive. Never tape. All stuff these days is done on my laptop.
Mb: Did new gear inspire you?
Helen: Actually, it does...not so much the new gear, but the knowledge I've gained from tweaking it. I also got new software. I am SO in love with Fruity Loops. Damn easy to use.
Mb: Tweaking sound or arrangement?
Helen: These days, I"m tweaking arrangements. My work these days involved redoing songs I've been working on for a few years. Or finishing songs I started writing years ago.
Mb: Therapeutic?
Helen: It is. I hope to have a new CD in May. It'll be an EP called Desert Suite based on songs I wrote while traveling in the Mojave Desert a year or so ago.
Mb: Do you work with others?
Helen: When I first started going on line with my music, I did a LOT of collaborations. I'm still open to them, but I primarily work with people whom I"ve known for a long time. My primary collaborators are Rick Kleffel and Jinny Royer. They run a project called Trashotron. Rick Richards just remixed one of my songs. And MA Griffin and I have, and will have, worked on some songs. I also did some work with Phil Traynor. He redid the backing on my Shaky
Tee tune Foxglove Blues, and was sweet enough to redesign my Shaky Tee website. I've also done some songs as Shaky Tee with Paul Toner, and Davey Boy Crocky (All Night Blues, perhaps the grittiest Blues song I've ever done).
Mb: And so what's the future hold for you?
Helen: The future...after I get my EP released, my goal is to get my butt out and do some gigs. Start selling CDs that way. Get my work to music publishers. See if anyone wants to record my stuff.
Or if not, if anyone wants to buy it with me singing it, LOL In the late fall/early winter, I hope to reissue my EP Altered Egos as a
full length, and hopefully, real world CD release. I hope to get some
distribution going on that.
Mb: Someone buys your CD.. takes it home... how do you want them to feel?
Helen: That they've just learned something...if not about me, then about my world view in general. I want them to feel stimulated.


Visit her websites: www.shakytee.com | www.helensventitsky.com