Cannonball Jane
The DIY beat maker is a one-woman sound machine
By Chris Chagaris
Published: October 12th, 2007 | 1:32pm
Sharon Hagopian’s life is all about music. By day, she teaches music to elementary kids in Bridgeport, Connecticut. By night, she becomes Cannonball Jane, a one-woman sound machine who combines samples with a number of instruments and gadgets, in Solex fashion. But with all the music in her daily schedule, she doesn’t own up to any particular musical influences. “I don’t think I listen to music that often,” she says. “But when I do, I take a particular element — say, a bass line or the way someone incorporates a background vocal — and use that.”
Her second album, Knees Up! — British slang for “a lively party” — is an innovative mélange of infectious pop, hip-hop, girl-group sensibility with jazz and bossa nova inflections. A musical virtuoso, Hagopian plays all the album’s instruments — including keyboards, drums, and guitar — and sings in a clear, lilting voice. “I record at home, so I really have to pay attention to how things are mixed and, ultimately, how the songs will sound,” she says. “One of my strengths is melody, and I choose different instruments to fit the melody lines.” The result is best charactarized by Kathleen Hanna, who describes Cannonball Jane as what Carole King would sound like if she had a sampler and was really into Françoise Hardy.
Knees Up!’s catchy songs include the bouncy “Take It To Fantastic,” with its James Bond-ish–themed introduction, to the percussion-driven “Bossa Tug,” which brings to mind Sergio Mendes and Brazil ’66. Though she recorded the entire album at home, she received some mixing help on “Take It To Fantastic” from Adam Ad-Rock Horowitz of the Beastie Boys. “It was great to have him remix the song,” Hagopian says. “I definitely think he made it more of a ‘club’ mix, which is good.”
Hagopian, who grew up in a musical family in Ohio, says she idolizes her dad, who is an exceptional violinist. As a child, she excelled at guitar, flute, and piano, and also showed tremendous vocal promise, which she honed in high school choir.
Hagopian has managed to balance her teaching and music gigs without her students learning of her career as Cannonball Jane — yet, anyway. She does, however, incorporate a demonstration of her sampler and beat box into her classes. Hagopian’s students tend to get excited but suspicious. “I think they were surprised as to how easily the beats, patterns, tempo and instrumentation could be changed,” Hagopian says. “To them, it was fun to have this little machine that made beats and sounded just like the music they listen to on the radio. I am sure it was a bit of culture shock to have their music teacher in front of the class making beats.”
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