LAYLA

John LeKay How and when did you meet the other members of the Orlando Rock Band?

Layla . Cole [guitar]...met him through friends years ago...played in his band about 6 years ago.  Tim [drummer]--met him when he and I were in Cole's band.   Mike--met him at my friend Way Davy's house...we jammed, did some recording...I asked him to join the band. Pete [violin] Pete is one of the 'original' members of ORB.  I met him when our mutual friend-musician, Glenn Lee brought him over for a visit.

ORB has been through 4 incarnations...with the guitar player being the pivotal person in each incarnation... since I started the band in oh I guess...1992.
The latest line-up ...we've been together for the last 4 years or so....off and on. with 2 bass players coming and going, and 3 guitar players coming and going.  Everyone keeps saying that bands are like marriages [without the sex] and wow is that true! ORB has had 4 guitar players and the last three were like 'boyfriends' I guess where you have one, break up, get a new one, break up, go back to the first one, break up, get another one, break up, go back to #1, break up...ON AND ON AND ON.  I wish I were making this up

JL:  How did you get your band name?

Layla. There was this columnist who ran "Column World" in the Orlando Sentinel...Bob Morris.  He kept writing week after week after week...'Orlando needs its own band--Orlando Rock band...please apply...please apply...' all that.  I was the ONLY person who bothered to call in...I formed the band.  Love the name...
 

 

JL: Do you write the songs?

Layla. Yes!

JL: How would you describe your music?

Layla: To me, it is the air I breathe! Others say--it's like:  the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Enya, psychedelic, transporting, hypnotic, the Velvet Underground.

JL: I know you were musically influenced by Rural blues of the ‘30s and ‘40s: Robert Johnson, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi John Hurt- all the great bluesman and others. What other kinds of people have had an influence on your music that are not necessarily musicians?

Layla:  SONGS

 

1. from the Spoonful Album, Vol. I    "Queen Annie"  my friend Melanie Mayberry was soooo beautiful!!! she was always so overweight, but always so beautiful!  she went on weight-watchers and lost so much weight that she just looked like someone so beautiful that she was not of this world. Almost as soon as she lost it, she gained it right back!  I felt that she was so very beautiful that she just couldn't handle it, so I wrote "Queen Annie" for her.
                       

Lyrics:  I bet you never wanted to be Queen Annie...hey, Annie.   

I bet you never needed to be:  Queen Anna...hey, Anna?   I bet you never knew you could
be...really, really free.        

 

So take off your shoes and dance hey Anna, Queen Anna...

so take off your shoes, take a chance....hey, Anna, Queen Anna....hey, Annie...Queen Annie..

 2. same album  -- "Someday Club"  I had this friend, a biker, named "Buffalo Bill" Fuller. He was ALWAYS helping people...never waited;  if anyone needed help, they got it NOW!  right then!  He was a person who NEVER said oh I will do such and such 'some day'....he just always took care of what needed to be done RIGHT THEN AND THERE!   ...a beautiful human being.  When he was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident I wrote this song in honor of him:
                       

 Lyrics: Members of the Someday Club soon your days will be over...members of the Someday Club soon your days will be gone..     Don't think about tomorrow; just do what you need to do...Someday Club, some day tomorrow may never come.... yeah... Someday Club, someday tomorrow may never come...

4. "Don't Take a Life:  Look to the Spirit" I give credit to the Holy Spirit who gave me this song; and the great example of the Dali Lama whose
life inspires this type of thinking.

5.  "To the FBI:  Love from Leonard Peltier"  of course Leonard was the inspiration for this song...his life, his witness, his beautiful 'being'
which I experienced when he called me from Leavenworth one Thanksgiving morning about 18 years ago.   see www.leonardpeltier.net

My best and first inspiration came from my sainted Uncle Jay Bennett who was a consummate musician, and had my cousin Wanda and me performing with him professionally at All-Day Sings in Miami, Florida, in a Gospel trio, when we were just little bitty girls..4 years old.

 

JL: . You have met some really interesting people over the years. Musicians, poets, etc.  What was Tim Leary like?

 

Layla: He was truly the coolest guy I ever met...no pretense, no affectations...just sweet, and smart and lovely.  I read in Rolling Stone magazine that the last word he spoke in this life was "beautiful"...that was Tim.. BEAUTIFUL...a really truly beautiful person.  When I first met him I had gone up to Millbrook just to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city. An acquaintance, this poet, and I took the bus up. It let us off at a little market and we hitch-hiked out to the estate, getting out at a back service road...not going through
the main gate.
 

We parted ways almost immediately. He was older than me, and heavy set; we walked in from the highway down this dirt road, and when he saw 'the chicken coops' he stopped there to rest.  They were in fact, old chicken houses that the various visiting hippies had turned into little camp sites with mattresses inside, etc.

Millbrook was a large estate and there was lots to see and do.  First I moseyed over to the hunting lodge.  It was a very large building with a huge Great Room, a very large kitchen, and I guess, rooms off to the side;  I don't know as I didn't snoop around or anything.
Anyhoot, there was some stuff going on outside there--a handful of people gathered outside in the misty rain, listening to this very old man play one of those weird little organs. a harmonium?. and singing Hindu songs. He was set up under the porch to avoid the drizzling rain.  I went up close to check him out and when he had finished singing, he started talking to me, then immediately asked me to MARRY HIM ...saying that he was a famous Sadu from India, that we would have a good life together, and that we would be
"as Adam and Eve"! He was sort of toothless, and he let me know that one of my jobs as his wife would be to crush cashews for him to eat...very strange.

 Well, I politely declined and went into the Lodge.

 

JL: Was Ram Dass around at the time?

 

Laya: No
 

JL: .Can you also tell me about some of the causes you are involved in?

Layala: Leonard, of course..Coat-a-thon [see www.layla.org under 'causes']...Freeing Tibet.     I am just sort of a free agent, doing whatever I can whenever I can.  I held some Coat-a-thons in Orlando awhile back and dedicated them to Tibet and the Dalai Lama to spread publicity for his cause; I pass as much information about Leonard and Tibet along on the internet as I can.  I held a concert for Leonard  myself, and then put together a concert for AIM in Orlando when Dennis Banks was traveling with his "Spring Peltier" revue a few years back.  Mostly I just pray when I don't know what else to do.

Tibet and Leonard are both DEEP causes, and the more I try to help, the more complicated it all seems to be.  I constantly wish I could just wave a magic wand and have Leonard free and Tibet FREE!!!!  Of course I am praying for Garvard and Charmaine, and the Defenders of the Black Hills.  I really took them into my  heart after spending time out there.  They are both wonderful people, and I hope, my friends for life.
I am involved in the healing ministry at my church and pray with people for their healing twice a week during Mass.  I love to do that as I have great faith for people to be healed through prayer.


JL: Are you writing any more Layla chronicles?

Laya: The Layla Chronicles are really just chapters of the book that Harvey Arden (Leonard Peltier's editor) asked me to write a few years back....my memoirs really.  he gave me the title--I wrote him one day:  "God is so cool"    He said I should write a book and call it "Confessions of a Hippie: God is so Cool"
 

Leonard Peltier

Rolling Thunder

 

JL:. What else are you working on these days?

Layal: We have a Coat-a-thon coming up on Nov. 20 at my church.  ...my first one since I moved over here 4 years ago.   My new friend Sherry and I have begun work on ROLLING THUNDER: THE MOVIE.   She LOVES Rolling Thunder and when she heard through  a mutual friend that I had lived with him and his family, and studied Indian medicine, she volunteered to take me to the airport last month when I went out West to sing at the Defenders concert, and we hooked up for that project.  I continue to scout out radio play for our latest Orlando Rock Band album: LONG LOST LOVES.

I just sent a CD out to a Mohawk Nation radio station in New York State. That is the only way I know how to help Leonard Peltier www.leonardpeltier.net now...by getting his song on the radio so that more and more people will be aware of what our government did to him;  that and prayer.  The song I wrote for him "To the FBI :  Love from Leonard Peltier" is on the album.   That's how I met Garvard and them:  I found KILI at Rosebud Reservation on the internet listed as a Native American radio station, emailed Richard for permission to send him a CD;  he liked the music, played it, and then invited me out to do the concert.
 

JL: What about the recent Black Hills benefit concert that you participated in and what this experience was like for you?

Layla: This whole trip was Magical. The nuts and bolts of getting there, etc.,fell into place in a few minutes time:  flight [on sale/almost half price!], long  trip to the airport, someone to fetch me there, a place to stay; a
band to back me up...boom, boom, boom,,, meant to be!   I went to the river to pray before I accepted the gig. I heard Great Spirit say, "I am the one who sent you the invitation; of course you should go!"  As I drove away from the river I saw my totem animal--the armadillo; so I knew that all was perfectly right.
 

For more info visit   www.layla.org