In what amounts to joining the family business, Alexa Ray Joel — daughter of Piano Man Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley — is in the midst of a 16-city run in support of her independently recorded and distributed debut EP, “Sketches.”
The songwriter/pianist/vocalist’s fall tour includes her first West Coast dates and is set to wrap Nov. 11 at the Sellersville (Pa.) Theatre.
“It’s going great,” Joel said from the tour’s stop in Los Angeles. She said a brief tour of Hard Rock venues last May was good preparation for this run.
But Joel admits she’s still coming to terms with life on the road. “Honestly, I kind of have a love/hate relationship with it, but more love,” she says. “If it’s a great show I’m always on such a high, but there are still certain things I’m adjusting to, like always being in a different place and living on a crazy schedule.”
Joel calls the EP a “preview” of a full-length album she hopes to begin recording by the end of the year. “It’s called ’Sketches’ because it’s like raw sketches, pretty much what we sound like live,” she explains. “About three of the songs, actually, were done in one take.”
Despite her professional musician pedigree, Joel says she’s still going through a considerable learning curve about the business. “It’s hard. I’m just learning about going through the process of hiring different musicians,” she says. “I’m finding it’s very hard to find guitarists, because my style of music is more bluesy, and some of the songs require a more gentle, kind of jazzy touch.”
Asked if her father has any advice, she says, “He’s very much not like a stage father. He’s not always calling, checking up on me, because he’s been there and he knows what it’s like to be on the road, and he knows when you’re on the road you need your space. He’s completely respectful of that.”
That’s not to say Billy Joel doesn’t weigh in with his opinion.
“The best advice he gave me was treat your songs as if they were your babies — really protect them,” his daughter says. “Because if you don’t, a lot of other people will want to take control. In that sense, he’s completely my role model because he was always in control of the production, of what happened to his songs and his performances. He really controlled every single facet of his career in terms of his material and his songs.”