Margaret Cho – The SoCal Sound session highlighting new album Lucky Gift

Interview with Nic Harcourt and a 4 song performance

 Written by: Matt Blake

Margaret Cho can be considered a polymath, excelling in stand-up comedy, acting, as well as songwriting and music, and she is out with her third full length music album titled Lucky Gift, and she joins More Music in the Morning host Nic Harcourt for an interview and live performance as part of The SoCal Sound Sessions!

You can listen to The SoCal Sound locally in Southern California on 88.5FM, stream online, or through the free SoCal Sound App! Available for apple and android devices!

Deep Music Connections

 Harcourt, like many, knows Cho from TV and comedy, and might not realize that she is also a musician. Discussing how she actually comes from a deeply musical family, “I come from a very musical family, and my parents are both singers, and they play music. My dad's a pianist and my mom's a guitarist, and they both sang. And so there was music in our house always”.

Watch the full SoCal Sound Session here

Margaret Cho Performed 4 songs in The SoCal Sound Performance room, accompanied by songwriter, producer, mixer, arranger, composer Erik Kertes on piano and Garrison Starr on guitar and backup singing.

• Stevie – Cho explains this song “is about my meditation teacher moving and not being able to take a feral cat with him. It’s really also about staying in the moment.
• You Can Be You (feat. Garrison Starr)- Margaret emphasized stars role in her creative process, describing her as “my Robbie Robertson” and discussing her contributions on “You Can Be You” she remarked “I am so indebted to her”.
• Lucky Gift – “This is [Cho’s] power pop love song about the pure feeling of falling for someone! It’s written on the double neck mandolin guitar and it was almost written by the instrument itself!”
• Between The Bars – this was a special performance recorded exclusively for Musicians For Fire Relief: A Livestream & Auction to Benefit LA Music Industry Workers, which Nic Harcourt also hosted!

Click Here for more photos including BTS!

Lucky Gift 

Lucky Gift is Margaret Cho’s third full length music album, and comes nine years after the previous album American Myth. When Nic asked why the long gap, Cho explains using a baking metaphor “Yeah, I knew I would make another record. Usually when I'm done with one record, I still have a couple of things left over. So I have sourdough starter for the next record. Okay, so it's like baking another loaf of bread. I love it. And, I have like these songs that I want to like, create and it'll make a record, and so it’s just like trying to figure out where it actually will bake”

She enlisted some help to get this album, asking Garrison Starr and Erik Kertes to help on this record. Garrison had worked on Margaret’s first record, and describes the collaboration as “She is my band”, and discussing Erik’s contribution, “Eric did the mastering and, the other, sort of that sort of broken up too, like from piano to guitar. So there's this guitar and then the piano side is songs that I wrote with Roger Rocha from 4 Non Blondes, and he's just amazing too”

What’s Next for Margaret Cho

Continuing to balance her career between comedy, acting, and music, Cho discusses the next logical step is to create “a big revue where comedy and music can coexist” and have big theatrics and comedy, of course starring Cho’s amazingly photogenic dog Lucia!

Margaret Cho will be performing at The Grammy Museum on April 1, 2025
Tickets and information can be found at HERE

Lucky Gift vinyl LP is available now on Clownery Records, and streaming everywhere.

The SoCal Sound Sessions, interviews, and performances are filmed and edited by Matt Blake, recorded and mixed by Tristan Dolce. 

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