REVIEWS OF

THE ROCK N WRESTLE ROADSHOW

A ONE-MAN MULTIPLE-PERSONALITY MENTAL HEALTH COMEDY

BY COLLIN CLAY CHACE

“Collin Chace pushes every boundary and every button of political correctness with sharp insight and wild humour as his energy transforms time and again on stage.  He takes us into labyrinths,  tangents and sharp demanding insights of struggling minds. We laugh, we hold our breath, we gasp, we nearly can't bear it and roars of applause and laughter climax time and again as nerves of unsayable but familiar mindsets ripple into the metamorphoses of his performance. See it and be challenged, see it and be changed.”

1. -Jill Lewis
   

Professor of Literature & Gender Studies, School for Interdisciplinary Arts, Hampshire College
Executive Producer, PROTECTION: Men and condoms in the time of HIV and AIDS (Fireworx Media)

“Amazing heart.  Collin Chace is the most talented storyteller/actor I have ever seen, live or on screen.”

- Margie Pivar
Co-author, Fourth Uncle in the Mountain: A Memoir of a Barefoot Doctor in Vietnam (St. Martin's Griffin Press)

“Chace brings both humor and pathos to his crass menagerie of characters, all of whom are coping with some type of mental illness.  Their one bond is that they are all survivors, and heroes, in a world which is often hostile to those among us with mental challenges.  You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll think and perhaps, like me, you'll recognize someone you know and love in Chace's sensitive and inspired performance.  This is not a ‘politically correct’ show... it is simply accurate in its representation of life on the fringe, warts and all.  I dare you not to want to hang out with these lovable and bravely flawed characters more than once.”

- Richard E. Bump
Fanorama

“He didn't hesitate to go for a full and robust expression as he moved from character to character.... Collin's performance was deeply personal, yet not alienating or ‘too much.’ He told some pretty difficult truths, both in character and out, and shared of himself in ways that are too rarely seen in any artistic medium.  It was, at times, a classic ‘you could hear a pin drop’ kind of performance, but the tension was quickly disrupted by humor or a quick shift into the next character.... He could dance right up to the line of ‘oh-my-god-is-he-really-going-there?’ and lay it softly on the audience. Dealing with some deeply challenging issues of being alive on the earth in its current weirdness, and from that place of raw emotional soup, [he] conveyed a message of acceptance, understanding, forgiveness of one's self, and the pain and release of coming face-to-face with oneself. Doing it with aplomb in front of a room full of people is a skill that few have.  I recommend it to anyone who craves honesty, wit and genuinely well-written characters.”

- Steve West
Radio Talk Show Host, Live And Local
WKVT-AM 1490 Brattleboro, Vermont

“There’s really only one thing to say about this show: Collin Clay Chace is a phenomenal performer. In a hugely energetic 60 minutes, he presents characters so different from each other you wouldn’t think it was possible they could all end up in the same show. The Rock N Wrestle Roadshow promised to ‘offend all races, genders, and sexual orientations equally’. It did, but it did so much more. I left the Cobalt Café having cried, laughed my socks off, been educated and, most importantly, been thoroughly entertained for the full 60 minutes.  A lot of shows claim to have ‘something for everyone’ – but this one really really does. And what’s more, it’s presented with incomparable energy and dedication.  It’s dangerous, sassy and hugely important.”
- Dublin Gay Theatre Review

“I could have watched Collin Chace for hours.  There's a kind of plankton that luminesce in the ocean when they are disturbed, and you can literally make incredible patterns in the dark water of light with your hands and body just by moving around.  That is The Rock N Wrestle Roadshow for me.  Disturbances creating moving light.”

- Ellen Donkin
Dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Professor of Theatre
Editor, Upstaging Big Daddy (University of Michigan Press)
Author, Getting Into The Act: Women Playwrights In London 1776-1829 (Routledge)

“One of our sons is gay, the other is psychotic.  This show is the perfect family entertainment for us.”

1. -Couple in the audience
   

Brattleboro, Vermont (USA)

REVIEWS OF

BE MY HUSBAND

A JUHA SINGLE WITH 5 REMIXES

Ambitious musicians can sometimes be too ambitious for their own good; their intentions might be admirable, but musical ideas that sound great on paper don’t necessarily work out so well when the musician actually does some recording.  However, London-based American expatriate musician Collin Clay Chace, a.k.a. Juha, scored an artistic home run when he recorded his wildly ambitious late 2007 release, The Grooms of God.   That rollercoaster of an album drew on everything from soul, funk, hip-hop, alternative rock, reggae and dance-pop to contemporary Indian pop, and Juha pulled it off magnificently.  Juha’s ambition served him well on The Grooms of God, which made it clear that the singer/composer/producer thrives on variety.  And he also achieves variety on this release, which lasts 25 minutes and contains six different mixes of his interpretation of Nina Simone’s bluesy, dusky “Be My Husband.”

     In the R&B/hip-hop/dance-pop realm, hearing six different mixes of the same song can easily grow tiresome if the song isn’t really memorable.  But Juha’s take on “Be My Husband” is memorable.  Juha’s interpretation of the song has a strong Prince influence as well as a strong Parliament/Funkadelic influence; it is an engaging blend of George Clinton’s p-funk and Prince’s Minneapolis sound, which is not to say that Juha is actually trying to emulate any of his idols.  Juha has his influences, certainly, but he is his own person.  And during the course of 25 minutes, he offers an interesting variety of “Be My Husband” mixes and remixes.

     The Album Version of “Be My Husband” is perhaps the most radio-friendly of the six different versions.  That version isn’t overly club-minded and is essentially a version to sit down and listen to rather than dance to.  But “Be My Husband” becomes much more danceable and much more club-friendly on Eddy J. Free's Infidelity Mix and Lin Sangster's Rockatoms Mix; both of those versions increase the tempo, and both of them would easily work well on a dance floor.   Lin Sangster's Rockatoms Mix has a strong Indian pop/bhangra influence, which is quite appropriate considering that Juha now lives in the United Kingdom.  London has one of the world’s largest Indian communities outside of India, and Lin Sangster's Rockatoms Mix of “Be My Husband” is a reflection of the popularity that contemporary Indian pop (as opposed to traditional acoustic Indian raga music) enjoys in London and other British cities.  Lin Sangster's Rockatoms Mix is by no means an example of traditional acoustic Indian music; Juha isn’t trying to be Ravi Shankar, but rather, is acknowledging the way that bhangra and modern Indian pop are uniting eastern and western elements. 

     The Chops Mix of “Be My Husband” is the most overtly rock-minded of the different versions.  Juha doesn’t sacrifice a bit of funkiness on the Chops Mix, but he definitely turns up the rock appeal.  And that makes perfect sense given his appreciation of Parliament/Funkadelic and Prince. George Clinton and Prince are both funksters who were greatly influenced by the iconic Jimi Hendrix; Juha is obviously well aware of that, and the Chops Mix celebrates the influence that rock has had on funk over the years. 

     Brett Basil's Dance With the Husband Mix of “Be My Husband” and Bridgeport's Mile High Mix of “Be My Husband” both point to the fact that club music doesn’t have to be ultra-fast.  Both of those remixes operate on the slower, more pensive side of electronica, and they add to this release’s variety. 

     Over the years, “Be My Husband” has been covered by a wide variety of artists ranging from Jeff Buckley to jazz/R&B vocalist Dianne Reeves to rocker Grace Potter.  The Nina Simone favorite has a long history, going back to the 1960s.  But Juha, much to his credit, manages to inject some freshness into a very familiar song.   And while The Grooms of God would be a better starting point for someone who is exploring Juha’s work for the first time, this release is an intriguing example of what the chance-taking American U.K. resident has to offer.

- Alex Henderson (Billboard, SPIN, Allmusic)

REVIEWS OF

THE GROOMS OF GOD

AN ALBUM BY JUHA

What a gift!  Juha is a brilliant little genius.  There is no one quite like him.

- Marc Almond

Queer dub. Butlerian dancehall stomp. Bengal barbershop. Hybrid forms you didn't know were missing, didn't know were possible, a world music not of smash and grab or cut and paste but of warp and weft.  Newly transplanted to London, needed like a fresh kidney, Juha brings his extravagantly gonzo take on hip hop to clubland, right NOW.

- Plan B Magazine | London

Take the soul of Prince, the mercurial energy of Eminem, the electro-noisiness of Xiu Xiu, and the Gothic complexity of The Arcade Fire… and you can start to imagine Juha's newest album, The Grooms of God.  It's all that and a lot of bass.

     It's a tightly-knit, complex, and highly analytic album with a roughness, honesty, and immediacy that makes it an essential listen.  The generally hyper-sexual lyrics soar in both imagery and cadence, celebrating the sexual, the animalic, the ignoble, the transgressive….  While the tracks display a large diversity of talent on Juha's part, the choice of a Gothic aesthetic and the maintenance of it adds to the weight of the already heavy message…. Oh, and the soul! Far from cold and detached, Juha's roughness of voice and non-traditional vocal style make the often abstract message intimate and urgent.

     The main strength of this album is the diversity of the tracks. "Akhar Virgin" is a funky, rough, and fast soul track with an engaging toy piano melody that makes the album worth its time in and of itself. "Weasel” mixes an Eastern beat into a Western idiom, with fast verses working into a slow and thoughtful chorus… "Ain't Nothin Goin On But The Rent" is a Gwen Guthrie cover whose bluesy beat, repeated keyboard loop high in the mix, and prostitution references make it sound like it was coming straight from Madonna's Erotica album. And "Paul in Swan Lake" is a simply breath-taking recounting of an old lover lost to AIDS set over the theme from Tchaichovsky's "Death of a Swan." So vivid, passionate, and real is it in its rejection of the standard AIDS narratives that when Juha sings "And when it comes to leaving planets, why wait?,” one takes the sentiment personally.

     While marketed as "hip-hop" and "soul," it seems reductive to place this album in any genre box… I could see The Grooms of God causing hipsters in Minneapolis to jam while listening to it on their off-brand mp3 players, Californian hip hop fans from across that genre's spectrum to become engaged in this album's lyrical content, and queeny Parisian intellectuals to dance in their underwear (actually did see that one last week)… This album is awesome and essential.

- The Bilerico Project | Paris

Juha has reemerged with an even more sprawling, dense, and kaleidoscopic take on many of the themes explored in his classic debut recording, Polari.  This time around, he’s further explored and extrapolated the sonics of his ‘gothic soul’ stylings…. Deeply personal while remaining musically and lyrically accessible, The Grooms of God bravely maps out an immediate call to self-love… subverting a patriarchal God-as-father theology through race allegory, feminist homage, and overt homoeroticism.  The Christian church, dance clubs, mosques and men’s bathrooms all serve as interchangeable backdrops for the stories, which are delivered through a pitch-shifting, androgynous baritone that recalls Sarah Vaughan and Grace Jones.  Whether through the Quranic imagery of the slinking, burbling “Akhar Virgin” or the cleverly minimalist cover of Gwen Guthrie’s “Ain’t Nothin Goin On But The Rent,” he skillfully manages to keep it light when the concepts get heavy.  Self-seriousness is often the undoing of many a project as ambitious as Grooms; hearing Juha rap “I am: the bridge between ghetto and high falootin/between Huey Lewis and Huey Newton” makes it clear that he wants the listener in on the jokes as well along the journey.  By the last track of the album, it feels like just the beginning.

1. -Juba Kalamka, Colorlines Magazine
   

Some artists are quick to describe their work as “hard to categorize” or “beyond category” when, in fact, they are easy to categorize; in other words, the artists aren’t as daring or unorthodox as they like to think they are.  But singer/composer/producer Juha really is.  The London resident, who was born and raised in the United States, has described his second album, The Grooms of God, as “gothic soul music.”  But does that mean that he sounds like a cross between Maze/Frankie Beverly and Bauhaus, or a mixture of Donny Hathaway and Black Tape for a Blue Girl?  No, that isn’t what’s going on, but what does transpire on The Grooms of God is certainly ambitious and full of intrigue.  Juha offers a quirky, theatrical blend of funk, hip-hop, alternative rock, dance-pop, reggae and world music.  A wide variety of direct or indirect influences can be heard on this album, ranging from Prince and Parliament/Funkadelic (as well as George Clinton’s solo output) to Bob Marley to alternative rappers (De La Soul, Digable Planets, A Tribe Called Quest) to G. Love & Special Sauce to Bollywood and modern Indian pop.  G. Love, in fact, is a valid comparison because like G. Love, Juha is all over the place stylistically and refuses to confine himself to one genre.
     As quirky, experimental, and eccentric as he can be, The Grooms of God is, for the most part, relatively accessible.  Juha, for all his quirkiness, maintains a strong sense of groove, and that yields infectious results on funky originals such as “Akhar Virgin” and “Dip Dip” (which borrows and reworks some lyrics from Michael Zager’s 1978 disco hit “Let’s All Chant”).  Juha also lets the funk flow on an unlikely remake of the late Gwen Guthrie’s 1986 hit “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But the Rent,” which was considered the golddigger’s national anthem in its day (along with Madonna’s “Material Girl”) and found Guthrie portraying herself as a woman who was after one thing only: money.  The very fact that Juha is a man makes his decision to record “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On But the Rent” ironic, and he has a lot of fun with a song written from a female perspective.
     Juha successfully puts a reggae spin on bluesman Willie Dixon’s “My Love Will Never Die,” which was recorded by Magic Sam, Otis Rush and other Chicago blues singers.  On “Paul in Swan Lake,” Juha even draws on Euro-classical music, sampling an excerpt from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s  1875/1876 ballet “Swan Lake.”  Uniting Tchaikovsky with a funk/hip-hop beat might have been a train wreck coming from someone else, but Juha makes them sound like a perfectly natural combination.
     Juha’s adopted home of London has had a large Indian community for many years, and the influence of Indian pop is especially evident on “Weasel (A Begging Brother in Line),” “We Become the Men We Hated,” and the a cappella “Can the Bengal Bend All Day.”  Meanwhile, “Dip Dip” contains a sample of the late African pop star Miriam Makeba along with the abovementioned Michael Zager reference.  Never let it be said that Juha isn’t multicultural in his outlook.
     At times, Juha can be self-indulgent, but never to the point of turning the listener off.  And because he has so many interesting ideas, one can easily live with that self-indulgence, or even appreciate it.  Juha takes plenty of chances on The Grooms of God, and they pay off for him in a major way.
- Alex Henderson (Billboard, SPIN, Allmusic)

REVIEWS OF

POLARI

AN ALBUM BY JUHA

Fusing Eastern & Western music, theater and performance art rabble-rousing, Juha is a funky pie bursting at the seams with irresistible beats and attitude.

- Neva Chonin, San Francisco Chronicle (Critics' Picks)

Try to peg down Juha... and you'll likely be so far left field or right field or not even in a field at all. If anything, Juha is the brilliant corsage bobbing in the junk-strewn waters of hip hop... one of the most intriguing imports in a very long time.

- Good Times | Santa Cruz

Juha's Polari is a brilliantly eclectic fusion. Juha is able to seamlessly walk the line between gaiety and gravity.
- Out Magazine

Juha blessedly defies simple categorization. In a world that allows Britney Spears to time-travel on behalf of Pepsi to become the reigning pop queen of every American generation, something this fresh and unexpected is a welcome treat.

- The Washington Blade

Juha whips samples, rhymes and beats into a sit-up-and-take-notice stew that the listener will want to devour...

- The Windy City Times | Chicago

Juha is a name you're going to be hearing a lot... Juha is wickedly intelligent, with talent and intensity and - balls. Musically, Juha toys with the fringed edges where hip-hop is barely distinctly itself, not just bringing together but actually using and fusing an impossibly broad range of influences. Ready? No, you're not. Not for this. Juha braids together the causes and music and dreams of Hawai'i and Palestine and gay youth; the sensibilities of radical performance artists and sensitive musicians; and ties every knot so neatly at every crossing of the fibers that you see it all as a seamless whole, a single cause, a perhaps inexpressible but nonetheless whole idea. There is no compromise anywhere in the CD, Polari. Juha is shockingly good.

- Out In Maui

Aptly named for the trickster in Islamic folklore, Juha leaves you guessing. Polari is a cotton-candy swirled concoction of Eastern and Western styles thrown forth like dice in an art-performance carnival atmosphere. Outspoken politically and all-over-the-map musically, Polari is one of the most interesting and satisfying albums we've heard in years.

- Outvoice

A sprawling, rollicking, giddily theatrical and complicated tapestry of words, sounds and ideas... an intensely complicated conversation. A bit of everything gets covered here, from dialogues on misogyny and sexism among the "revolutionary activist" hip-hop set ("Melt By Your Mouth") to the consequence of militarily and religiously influenced closets (the scathing traditional cover, "Iko Iko Phalastini"). Recorded in Maui, Hawai'i, the island's post-colonial history serves as a backdrop for a number of tracks, most notably the deceptively sing-songy lament "Hawai'ian Love Song" ("Hawai'i/The lovers the dreamers and Elvis so blue/ pineapples are native/the labor is too.") Well-placed live instrumentation and tight vocal arrangements allow the musical backdrops to do justice to the density of their lyricism.

- Juba Kalamka, Colorlines Magazine

For all of hip hop's thuggish wordplay and stances, there are those whose mission is to infuse the culture with new visions, rhymes and beats. Juha creates music that stretches the boundaries of hip hop. Polari is a exciting musical journey that says more on its 14 tracks than most hip hop artists do on their entire oeuvre.

- The Tablet | Seattle

People are always chewing their fingernails, speculating on the state of hiphop; I don't so much worry as long as artists like Juha "just don't give a fuck" (a central tenet of vital hiphop) and thrive on the fringe of hip hop culture.

- The Portland Mercury