René Marie Playing at Modlin Center

While singer René Marie has gained significant renown as a jazz singer since the release of her 1999 debut album, “Renaissance,” there have been a number of other notable influences along the way that played a key role in her development as an artist.  She feels that they were pivotal in helping her latest album, “Black Lace Freudian Slip,” to stand out among last year’s releases.

“It seems like with each CD I do I have less and less fear,” explained Marie, speaking from Fredericksburg.  “For instance, on ‘Black Lace Freudian Slip’ there is one song that definitely sounds country-and-western.  I’ve never done that before, wrote a song to make it sound deliberately country-and-western, but those are my roots.  I didn’t start listening to jazz until I was 17, 18.  The background music of my life is bluegrass, country-and-western, folk, and classical music.”

Among other memorable aspects of the album are the suggestive visuals, which take their cue from the title.  “The picture on the cover and inside of me smoking a cigar.  It’s just a lot of fun and I was totally into the role, the playfulness of it.  With a title like ‘Black Lace Freudian Slip’ you’ve got to have something to make it!  You can’t just have your picture on the cover.  I really like the way it turned out.  My mother, of course, has a different thought about that.”

Marie decided that she wanted to record an album of all original material and to bypass the standards this time around.  “Black Lace Freudian Slip” features a group of Marie-penned tracks, along with a couple of songs by other songwriters that have not been widely distributed, and she’s pleased with the end result of making a more personal statement.

“I have a lot to say, it seems, and I rather like the challenge of figuring it out for myself,” said Marie.  “The voice can do all kinds of things.  It can growl, it can purr, it can sing without vibrato, and it can sing with a great deal of vibrato.  It can speak.  It can soar.  And when I do write, I think I do try to incorporate all the different things a voice can do.”

As strange as it may sound, considering Marie’s accomplished work as an original songwriter, there was one particular instance where she met with complete resistance to a performance of her own songs.

“We were at the club working on these originals,” she recalled, “and I got some push-back from the club owner who told me it was turning his stomach, and that none of the famous people pictured on his club walls had gotten where they had by doing original material.  That I needed to just do the standards and sing them the way they’re supposed to be sung.

“I was grateful to him for telling me that, in the end.  I can’t say I felt grateful right at the moment; that wouldn’t be honest.  After I got over the hurt of it and the shock of it I decided I was going to sing my songs anyway, because I realized:  I sing the standards at your club and I come outside and get hit by a bus, who’s going to sing the songs I’ve written?  Nobody’s going to do that, so it’s up to me to be to be my own advocate and to be true to my musical voice.”