Walking on white sandy beaches, soaking up the sunny wind-swept ambience, dining on sumptuous seafood and travelling the coast–these are just a few of the activities one experiences when you head down South to points of call like Orange Beach, Alabama. It’s a great spot located along the Gulf of Mexico where, driving along Perdido Beach Boulevard, you will find seemingly endless rows of luxury resort hotels and condos that will take your breath away.
Celebrating 25 years of wedded bliss, my wife Lisa and I wanted to travel somewhere we had never been. We’ve loved other regions of the Southern U.S. but had never been to Alabama. We booked a trip and wanted to stay somewhere special, and we did in the Perdido Beach Resort. It proved to be a smart move for a number of reasons, not the least of which was our discovery of some great live music featured in the hotel lobby at “Ms. Nancy’s Lobby Lounge.”
One night, echoing throughout the expanse of the resort’s main floor, adjacent to the sunken bar, was a big booming voice accompanied by a finely tuned grand piano. Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic,” Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick of Time,” and some swinging New Orleans-flavored blues was the kind of fare Mobile, Alabama’s own Lisa Zanghi was laying down.
I Love Loving You by Lisa Zanghi
For the past several years now, Zanghi has been entertaining vacationers, conventioneers and the like, with her seasoned jazz, blues, and adult contemporary vocal and piano stylings at the Perdido Beach Resort every Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday 6-10pm. It’s a gig she treasures and has thrived in, built on a musical foundation that professionally began nearly 50 years ago.
“The first thing I can tell you is there are a lot of different people in this world,” laughed Zanghi in describing her experiences playing the Perdido Beach Resort lounge. “I get requests for stuff I know and for stuff I’ve never heard before. The other night this guy came up and wanted to sing with me. He’s with a convention and everyone’s having fun. And I made the mistake of letting him sing with me. He wanted to sing ‘Sweet Caroline.’ A friend of mine videotaped it and sent me a note saying I was a saint (laughs). So, you get those people and then you get some that are really good. This guy Roger Rupert from Chicago plays trumpet and is great. He’s a player that likes to sit in with me and it is always a pleasure. But it’s people from all over the country and it’s a well maintained group.”
Zanghi began with formal piano lessons as a kid, picking up guitar from local players. James Taylor, John Prine, Dan Fogelberg, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, Rickie Lee Jones, and Joni Mitchell influenced a lot of her formative years and helped shape her performance and writing style.
The dulcet toned songstress grew up in Mobile where her father was a hairstylist and ran a family salon business. While a number of her siblings worked at the salon, the music bug bit Lisa early on. And it’s been nothing but music ever since.
Fool’s Lullaby by Lisa Zanghi
“I started making money in 1979 opening for Johnny Paycheck at Kenny Stabler’s Endzone in Gulf Shores, Alabama,” says Zanghi. “I also put bands together backing Percy Sledge and we opened for Jimmy Hall and the Prisoners of Love at Mardi Gras in New Orleans at the Riverview. In 1982 I opened a business account called Luxury Liner, after the Emmylou Harris album. By 1984 I moved to Gulf Shores and music was my main income.”
Living and playing in the Gulf Shores area, Zanghi travelled up and down the Gulf coast, from Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi to Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Florida. She cut her teeth performing a wide variety of cover material, but really wanted to show her hand at writing original songs and trying to establish herself as an artist.
Fate, indeed, played that hand when she was performing at a local club one night in the late ‘80s. Some influential people from Nashville caught her show and suggested she cut some songs in Music City. The journey turned out to be an eventful one, as she recorded some demos and signed a management and publishing deal. Zanghi started meeting some heavy hitters in the music industry, scoring a production deal with Larry Butler, who had some success with Kenny Rogers and Dottie West back in the day.
A Little Bit of You by Lisa Zanghi
“Larry produced one of my first studio sessions on a song called ‘Chains on the Wind,’” says Zanghi. “So, I had some deals but they didn’t want me to move to Nashville. I was still playing in Gulf Shores and they’d promise label reps would come hear me play, and then I’d never hear back from them. So, finally, around 1993 I decided to pack up and move to Nashville. And that’s when reality hit—how tough the music business really is, how many good players there are, and just how deals are made, and let’s just leave it at that (laughs).”
The versatile and industrious singer-songwriter got caught in the crossfire of label politics when she was on the verge of signing a record deal. When she moved to Nashville she arranged meetings with Warner Brothers who told her that they already had a Bonnie Raitt. “I did kinda sound like Bonnie, but they all told me they already had a Martina McBride and everyone wanted to sound like her too (laughs).”
This was a period of time when there was still a traditional record business and careers hung in the balance of a label’s decisions, choices, power, and influence. And that was certainly the case in the early ‘90s at this pivotal time.
“They actually stopped doing showcases because they told me people walk in here with money,” reflects Zanghi on her early days in Nashville. “They walk in with $100,000 and say they want you to give their girl or guy a shot. And that money pays the studio musicians, the producer, the record label, and the songwriters get their songs demoed for free. It was a totally different ball game, but then I landed a gig with country artist Doug Stone and decided to stay.”
I Wanna Feel That Way Again by Lisa Zanghi
Zanghi was playing in a band called The Swing Street Six. Some of her strongest original material like “Fool’s Lullaby” came out of jams and recording in their drummer’s basement. The bass player in that band was also out on the road with Stone at the time. Stone’s keyboard player had a family business back in Illinois and had to take a week’s leave. The bassist asked Zanghi if she wanted to sub and she agreed. This was 1998 and one week eventually turned into six years.
She played piano and sang back up with the Doug Stone Band. Zanghi was even regularly featured with the band in concert and pitched one of her songs to Stone. “I wrote a song with some other songwriters called ‘Lying to Myself’,” says Zanghi. “ I took the lyrics to Doug. I did it as a gospel-like song, but he recorded it as a ballad. He put it on one of his albums called ‘The Long Way.’ It was up for third single and I got one royalty check for it.”
But before a head of steam could really build behind the song it was pulled from shelves almost as quickly as it was released. Apparently there was some sort of political snafu on Stone’s side of things and, as they say, that’s show biz!
Crystal Clear by Lisa Zanghi
However, Zanghi did not put all her musical eggs into one basket. In her decade of living in Nashville she arranged several writing appointments with some notable and up and coming songwriters. She collaborated on a number of well crafted songs and was able to perform her stuff live all over Music City.
“One guy I wrote with was named ‘Big Al,’” recalls Zanghi. “He would come over to work on stuff. And, I don’t know if they pressured him at his publishing company, but he would get $200 a week to write for them. And I think he had to write so many songs a week. So, we would write a song and I’d wanna sit on it a minute, you know, maybe change a line or chorus in the song. And he’d question that hesitation because he wanted to submit something right away. Lindy Gravelle was another person I worked with. She was a professional writer with Tree Publishing and Warner/Chapelle. We wrote ‘Fool’s Lullaby,’ ‘Consider Me Gone’ and ‘I Love Loving You’ together. Another guy named Doug Summers wrote ‘Just Me and You’ and ‘My Side of the Bayou’ with me. And then there was this guy from Montana who would regularly fly to Nashville and book appointments with songwriters named ‘Mighty Big’ Jim Devine. He wasn’t such a great musician but he knew a lot about what makes a good song work. We wrote some great ones with ‘Lying to Myself,’ ‘Crystal Clear’ and this Marcia Ball-type thing called ‘A Little Bit of You.’”
My Side of the Bayou by Lisa Zangi
Aside from her songwriting ventures and touring exploits with Doug Stone, Zanghi did everything she could to stay in the game while living in Nashville. She waited tables, cleaned houses, and did most of the booking for the bands she worked with.
“You learn to live below your means,” reflects Zanghi on being a full-time musician. “When I was in Nashville I couldn’t play music for a living because there you just can’t. You can work all the time but the jobs don’t pay. The band had to pay the soundman, you had to pay to park and pay the doorman. It really adds up. A lot of times the club would pay you $25 a piece and a sandwich. There’s a point where you ask yourself ‘why am I doing this?’”
Today Zanghi lives in Mobile and commutes to Orange Beach, almost returning to a kind of musical life where she began. However, she is instilled with more wisdom, gravitas, and focus than ever before.
Lying to Myself by Lisa Zanghi
“I don’t consider myself a songwriter like Randy Newman, Willie Nelson, or John Prine,” says Zanghi. “But what I write has gotta last. It’s not gonna come and go. I still enjoy singing ‘Fool’s Lullaby,’ ‘A Little Bit of You,’ ‘Crystal Clear’ and ‘I’ve Got You.’ A lot of these songs are 20 years old or more. You would think that I’d be sick of them by now (laughs). But people that know me still request my stuff and I’ll always include them in my sets.” That’s the sign of a dedicated and creative life-long songwriter and artist. She never gave up on her dreams.
For more information on Lisa Zanghi, kindly head on over to www.lisazanghimusic.com
