COMMUNITY
JUKEBOX
Time To Go
Marissa Guzman: Joy Road album review.
By Natalie Sugarman
1? orn and raised in Detroit, Marissa Guz-
1) man grew up immersed in music and
Lit art. Her late father, percussionist Eddie
Guzman, was on the Motown label in the
group Rare Earth; and her mother, Barbara,
who is Jewish, is a painter and interior
designer.
Marissa Guzman currently runs her own
record label, Juicy Lucy Records, and has
just released her debut album, Joy Road.
The album is 100 percent produced and
arranged by Guzman.
As stated in her bio, Guzman has a
strong passion
for writing (she
majored in jour-
nalism in college)
and music. She
landed her first
job in advertising,
working for the
Ford Motor Co. In
her spare time, Ma-
rissa pursued her
true passion: music.
She started writing
vocal tracks for
instrumental house
tracks and along the
way became friends
from t
50%of the
with legendary De-
troit techno producer
Derrick May.
It was May who steered her in the direc-
tion of starting her own record label to get
her music out there. She started her label
in 2007, and her mom gave it the name
Juicy Lucy Records.
Due to the struggling economy in
Michigan, Guzman was laid off from her
job at Ford and was forced to look for job
opportunities out of state. She landed
a job in San Francisco, a hub for artistic
creativity.
Sometimes you end up in the right
place at the right time, and the pieces
come together.
After a spiritual retreat, Guzman realized
she needed to make music her priority.
Her debut album, Joy Road, travels in
waves of sultry and sweet with a bit of
sass. It has a strong base in electronic
www.redthreadmagazine.com
composition but is not limited to a strictly
electronic sound. The songs on the album
range from electro-pop and down-tempo
to house and more.
The album is 11 tracks of very visceral
and pure musical enjoyment.
The first track on the album, "Free To Be,"
opens up with a head-nodding beat into
which the vocals flow seamlessly.
The second track, "Song for Eddie
G," starts in with acoustic guitar that
segues into mellow percussion and is a
tribute to Guz-
man's father.
In 2011, Black
Coffee Band's remix
of"Time To Go;'
the first single off
the album, went
straight to No. 1
on Traxsource.
corn.
It's a song
about a rela-
tionship gone
wrong but also
could refer to
Guzman's deci-
sion to leave
Detroit to fol-
low her musi-
cal passion on the West Coast.
Joy Road wraps up with the very upbeat
"Magic Door," which has a nice dance-
groove feeling to it.
This is an album that will appeal to a
number of musical palates.
Fifty percent of the album proceeds will
benefit NextAid, which supports sustain-
able development projects that serve
vulnerable children, youth and women in
Africa.
Also on the horizon, Guzman will be fea-
tured in the upcoming documentary Girls
Gone Vinyl, about women in the electronic
music business.
Detroit-area Jewish DJ Jenny La
Femme is producing the film. For more
info on the documentary, visit
girlsgonevinyl.com .
For more info on Marissa Guzman, visit
juicylucyrecords.com .
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