| Issue #39, December 22, 2006 |
Who’s Here
Alexa Ray Joel
Songwriter/Singer
By David Lion Rattiner
You know her father and you know her mother, but very soon, you are going to know Alexa Ray Joel. When you are the daughter of Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel and put out a hot selling record by the time you are twenty-one years old, people are going to start talking about you.
Alexa Ray Joel, like her father, is a very talented musician with deep roots in Bridgehampton where her mother has a house and where she comes out for visits all year long. Her father used to have a house here as well, and was a Hamptons staple, until he sold it to Jerry Seinfeld in one of the most interesting real estate transactions that has ever happened out here.
Don’t let the glitz and glam that surrounds Alexa Ray fool you. She is one of the most down to earth people that you will ever meet and is an artist, plain and simple. Most of her childhood was spent out in the Hamptons. Even this reporter remembers riding the school bus to St. Andrews (now Stella Maris in Sag Harbor) and hearing that Billy Joel’s daughter was taking another bus to school with my younger brother.
She spent her first years of school at the Waterfront School in Sag Harbor and then at the Amagansett Grade School up until third grade. By fifth grade, she was in The Ross School in East Hampton, where she remained until her junior year of high school. She ended up spending her senior year at PCF in Manhattan and then, after being accepted by NYU, spent her freshman year there, but left to pursue her ever-long desire for a musical career. “I skipped around a lot, but spent the majority of my schooling in the Hamptons.”
Alexa Ray has been writing songs for quite a while. “I officially started writing songs when I was fifteen,” she tells me over the phone just days after a special performance in East Hampton at the Starlight Ball for the Ross School that drew over five hundred guests.
Passion for music pours out of Alexa Ray like a waterfall. The classically trained pianist is well aware of the success that her father has had in music and is up front about making music that is original, and that people will like because they think it’s good, not because they simply are fans of her father. “Every now and then it really freaks me out, because he is just so great. I’ll always admire him as a songwriter.”
Her father’s success has not scared her away from entering the tough world of the music business, but instead has inspired her to go into it head first. She put out her new album, entitled Sketches last year. Alexa Ray has an innate ability to write songs as a form of self-expression, writing a song entitled “Now It’s Gone,” one of the most popular songs on the album, that is about her feelings on the split between her mother Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook. “I wrote that song in a matter of hours,” she tells me.
The album is out for the world to hear and the fans of Alexa Ray have spoken, with sales of the album doing great and concert dates lined up. Her parents could not be more proud, having said in countless interviews how happy they are that she is taking this route and in some cases, they have been brought to almost tears during a news interview after Alexa Ray’s performance in Oyster Bay, a town her father keeps close to his soul. “My Dad tells me that he hopes to one day be known as my father and not as ‘Billy Joel,’” she laughs on the phone.
It may be obvious where Alexa Ray’s musical influence came from, but what is not obvious is just how much music was a part of her life growing up. Her dad would play the piano for her and she would sing along at just two years old. Her house growing up is described as a musical household and after noticing that she had an interest in music, she was given classical piano training for a number of years. Now she is incapable of imagining life without music. Like so many other great performers, it is just a part of who she is.
You may find it surprising to hear, but Alexa Ray was more than happy to be out in East Hampton doing a show this time of year. She likes to think of the Hamptons as a secret place that nobody knows about it. “I almost prefer it this time of year. Of course summer is great, but I like how it is more of a secret.”
During the summer, Alexa Ray comes out to enjoy the Hamptons, like so many others, spending a lot of time at the beach, especially Long Beach in Sag Harbor, to soak up so much needed summer sun and enjoy the serene lifestyle that we all share.
But now you can find Alexa Ray on her website and order her album at www.alexarayjoel.com, on iTunes or at Target stores all around the country. I purchased the whole album myself on iTunes. The songs on the album are filled with a realness and a passion that is a sound all her own, which is a breath of fresh air in the machine produced music world of the day.
I’m sure that we’ll be hearing a lot more about Alexa Ray in the future, as this young lady simply loves to share her passion with the world. We’ll be waiting for the music.
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