Former front-woman, songwriter and bassist for Concrete Blonde, Johnette is best known for her signature throaty and emotionally charged voice. Recently Napolitano has been spending her time in the studio working on her second solo album, a follow up to last year's critically acclaimed solo CD Scarred, along with a lyric and art book titled Scarred, due out in 2009. Napolitano will also release the third installment in her Sketchbook online CD series. Look for Sketchbook III on CDBaby.com in December 2008.

For her latest musical endeavor Napolitano has teamed up with UK artist Will Crewdson (guitarist, writer, producer and co-founder of glam band Rachel Stamp). Recently the duo recorded a new version of Midnight Oil's classic hit "Beds Are Burning" which will be available shortly on CD Baby and is currently streaming at her Myspace. Notably Crewdson will make his way across the pond to join Johnette at her special one off show. Also joining the band will be Maria Fatal drummer Gabriel Ramirez-Quezada (co-writer and producer of Scarred).

"Will and I are online a lot, and I love his sound, I love the tracks he sent me that wound up on 'Scarred'. I always thought that Oils song was genius: a great dance track, great bass line, and a political message�Native Rights, something I believe in strongly. I'd been inspired from recording John Trudell out at my cabin, and am always trying to fuse the right balance of thought, subject, emotion and badass groove into whatever I put out...Will and I talked about it, and sent me this track and I flipped, it was so great. I love what he did to the choruses, they're very female; sad and pleading where the Oils' is more demanding and macho...Will's sounds are more industrial, more Modern War."

Napolitano will also be showing her conceptual artwork at a gallery show during the month of October at Art Queen in her current hometown of Joshua Tree. Utilizing the medium of wood and tin, the show will explore the art and symbolism of the cross while also acknowledging the contributions of a few of the lesser-known Saints. As the show will coincide with Day of the Dead, the gallery will feature an altar where people are welcome to bring photos of their loved ones for the duration. To kick off the show on October 4th, Johnette will perform live Flamenco with Ben Woods of Flametal.

Check out Johnette and neighbor Dave Catching (Eagles of Death Metal) in their recent PSA http://www.box.net/shared/t9b2h3xhu8 regarding a proposed dump site in their desert home.

[editor's note: as a neighbor of Johnette myself, I have to add "f**k L.A., they can keep their own damn garbage." I'm about as far from a tree hugging hippie as you can get but I'm strongly opposed to letting LA use our area as dump! If anyone else from the area reads this, you should vote out any local "representative" that supports this trash. If you too are against this, find out where your local reps stand and what they are doing about it. We found a little background on this on a website promoting a concert that took place in April to raise funds to continue the fight against this. While the info is of course biased against the "dump," it gives some background information about the fight. more.

Wikipedia has some additional information that says that LA Sanitation has another landfill in Imperial County that they have purchased that may negate the need for this one. read it here.

The town of Joshua Tree's local paper hasn't really kept up with this story. But here is a link to the last article they ran on the legal appeal. Though we usually stay away from anything political with a ten foot pole, we included all of this info because the local press doesn't seem care. It is pretty sad that as an area resident I had to find out about this from a music press release.