Vocalist/trombonist Natalie Cressman will not only be busy with the Trey Anastasio Band this year but also with her own projects. Cressman will release a new EP dubbed The Traces EP on March 3 and will drop its first single on January 24.
The new EP brings together a live band with electronic elements and is said to feature “a refreshingly danceable and indie-modern vibe.” Natalie will release the single “Radio Silence” on January 24, at which point it will be available online for purchase and streaming. On New Year’s Eve Natalie was a special guest of Phish at Madison Square Garden in New York City and will return to the venue with her own band on January 27 to perform at halftime during the New York Knicks game.
Here’s what Natalie had to say about her new single, “Radio Silence”:
I wrote “Radio Silence” about the trials of being a female instrumentalist in the man’s world that is the music business. I often feel a lot of frustration about being being pre-judged because I am a woman playing trombone. The discrimination shows itself in many ways: either by people under-estimating my abilities, or hiring me just because of my gender and looks, as the “token” girl in the band or part of a miniskirt-clad chick horn section, not because of what I can do musically.
I’ve been kicked out of backstage multiple times at a gig because the assumption has been made that there was no way that I was one of the performers, because the prevailing and sometimes subconscious assumption is that being a musician is a “man’s job” if you’re not a singer.
This song was about not really feeling “seen” or “heard” for who I really am and for what’s really important, the music. And that one day people would come to regret their small-mindedness and prejudice. I think many women both in music and beyond encounter sexism at work in their day to day lives so I wanted to put these feelings into a song in the with the hope that it might contribute to better treatment of female musicians in the future.
Watch Natalie and Mike Bono perform “Trapped In Forever” at JamBase HQ:
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