Victoria Vox | Ukulele Player and Singer/Songwriter

October 8, 2009

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show of course, as always, is a musician. The show is called Sound Authors, and that goes for sound authors and authors of sound both. And Victoria Vox is certainly an author of sound. She has beautiful music, and I’m going to play a track from her album, and this is called Jessica. And after we listen to that track we’ll be talking live to Victoria Vox, and come on back for that. And listen in to this song from her latest album called Jessica.

(music)

Dr. Kent: Well that’s a beautiful track from Victoria Vox. She’s got a brand new album out, and she’s a ukulele player and she talks about that “sad songs are hard to find” on the ukulele, but that was a gorgeous tune, and I’m really excited to be talking to her live on the air in just a minute. Are you on the air with me Victoria?

Victoria Vox: Hello.

Dr. Kent: Hi, how are you doing?

Victoria Vox: Can you hear me? Good, how are you?

Dr. Kent: I’m great. And you are my Twitter friend, and that’s how I found out about your music. So social media does indeed work.

Victoria Vox: (laughter) I like to Tweet.

Dr. Kent: And tell me about this latest album. It’s such a gorgeous sound. Is the sound kind of emerging from your ukulele playing in some ways?

Victoria Vox: Yeah, thank you. It’s that, my latest album is called Chameleon and it’s, my debut ukulele album that came out in 2006 had a kind of retro feel to it, a little more sparse production. And I wanted people to, I guess I’m kind of an ambassador for the ukulele in that I feel that the ukulele is a completely legit instrument, and as a singer songwriter performing, you know, kind of a little off the center pop rock, that the ukulele can still be used and with drums and bass can sound really cool.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, and it’s got, that last song that we listened to, Jessica, which is from the album Chameleon, of course, it has kind of the jumpy feel of a ukulele. And I like the first line of your bio that says that sad songs are harder to come by on the ukulele.

Victoria Vox: Yeah, they are. I don’t know if you, there’s a lot of artists that use, you know, that will have a ukulele song, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard any. But when they have a ukulele song it’s like the one happy, upbeat, fun song of the set. And that’s because it just, it naturally brings out this kind of old timey jazz, fun, light, happy sound. So I’ve been now playing the ukulele for almost six years, and pretty much play that primarily as my accompanying instrument live. And so yeah, it is, you know, because of my time growing with that instrument and just really embracing it, like now it’s, you know, I can write about anything and it can be sad or happy, and it can go always, just like a guitar.

Dr. Kent: Well, and you’ve had a lot of success in sort of fun places. Your first album was featured on NPR which is a huge honor, of course. And tell me how this album came about, Chameleon.

Victoria Vox: Well, Chameleon was just, it was a follow up to Jumping Flea, and I knew that I had kind of established, people seemed to really latch on to the ukulele playing and they loved my voice with it, and I did have, I did produce four acoustic guitar driven albums prior to my Baby Ukulele album, and some people were, you know, they were saying, “Are you going to bring the guitar back? What’s going on?” I really would say I’ve written some new songs with the guitar, but that missed that release because it was an all ukulele album. So I knew with Chameleon I wanted to do, it was kind of like a half and half. It had some guitar songs on it and then the ukulele tunes, and yeah, I just wanted to give it kind of a fresh new feeling. (inaudible) had heard of me doing Somewhere Over the Rainbow or a couple songs from the 20’s, and then my originals, to the do a full original album and you know, just kind of funk it up a little bit. And just keep some, cause you know some songs still have that kind of old timey vibe, but then there’s other stuff like Jessica which is definitely more contemporary.

Dr. Kent: And when did you pick up the ukulele?

Victoria Vox: Someone gave me a ukulele in September of 2003. And it goes back to that Somewhere Over the Rainbow song, I had started performing that on guitar, but in the style that is real kamakazebo ole style on the ukulele. And someone heard me do it and said, “Oh, you have to do that on the uke, here’s one to play it on.” And then I just started writing songs immediately, as a new songwriter does when they pick up an instrument that’s completely unknown. You know, you just start making mistakes that sound good.

Dr. Kent: (laughter)

Victoria Vox: And then you have a song.

Dr. Kent: And what’s the, you must have had tons of people ask you since then all about the instrument. What do you know about its history and all of that? I don’t know much about the ukulele.

Victoria Vox: Well the ukulele, ukulele as it’s correctly pronounced in Hawaii, it actually originates from Portugal. And it was brought over to the Hawaiian Islands in 1879. And it was kind of like it was, the ukulele was a cross between Portugal’s machete and braguinha. And then that became the ukulele and so now it’s, for what we know it, it’s a Hawaiian instrument. But I always thought that was funny because the very first time I toured to Hawaii in 2005, kind of as a pre-release tour for that debut album, the very first show I had a string of 12 dates over there, and my very first show I was asked to stop playing the ukulele because I’m a white girl from Wisconsin, you know. And some local guy walks in and he’s like, “What’s she doing playing.” So I had to finish the deal on guitar, and I thought the tour was going to be absolutely doomed, and then four days later I was on Maui. And then I got an email from Koaloha Ukulele, from Honolulu, and they wanted to sponsor me.

Dr. Kent: Wow.

Victoria Vox: At that point I figured I was doing something right. At least 99% percent of the people liked what I was doing.

Dr. Kent: It’s a fascinating little instrument. And I’ve played around with one, how do you find enough chords on it?

Victoria Vox: Well, I think the beauty of it is that it’s so simple that it really makes me get down into the song and the songwriting. And so I feel my songwriting has improved drastically since I picked up the uke. And then because there’s only four strings, being that there’s only four notes that can be played at once, and depending on the arrangement of those four notes, it could be a different chord. So it just depends on the key you’re in, so you could finger a chord the same way but in another key it could be a completely different chord. So you know, it’s kind of confusing, but I love it. The most thing I love about the ukulele is just its percussiveness. It’s just a very rhythmic instrument, so when I do a lot of shows solo it’s like I can, the one thing I’m missing is bass, but I can do chords, but then I have a back beat constantly going with what I call a chalk, which is just kind of kneading with my nails on the strings, so it has a certain beat.

Dr. Kent: And you went to Berkeley, which of course is the place where all amazing musicians go, and it didn’t kill you as a musician, which is saying a lot

Victoria Vox: Yeah, I think with my Berkeley education, when I started Berkeley I had only been playing guitar for a year. I had been songwriting since I was 10, but it wasn’t, you know I didn’t really know anything about songwriting. And so when I showed up, I grew up in a very small town in Wisconsin, where no one really even knew what to do with me and my musical journey and here I show up in Boston and there’s this amazing talent around me left and right. And you know, it’s hard to stay in that kind of school just even emotionally. Because everyone is so good.

Dr. Kent: Yeah.

Victoria Vox: So I think all I could do while I was there is focus on myself and just say ok, what am I getting out of this and what do I want to do with this. Instead of constantly comparing and trying to be or sound like someone else. So I just kind of took what I felt like I needed at that time. And I think that it ended up being a really good thing.

Dr. Kent: Cool. Well, I mean, the music is amazing on this record, Chameleon, and you must be proud of it also. You had a great producer.

Victoria Vox: Yeah, everything, you spend quite a bit of time on it, but it was, I was really glad we could take the time and really, Mike Tarentino was very generous with his time and really explored the song. There’d be days that we’d be in the studio recording something and then you know, we got completely distracted and be like no, that’s not it, let’s try something else. And that doesn’t happen every day, to have the opportunity to discover the songs, as you were quoting.

Dr. Kent: You’re on the hard touring circuit, you’re in the dues paying days still. What is it like being a touring musician?

Victoria Vox: Well it’s a full time job for me, I’m a full time touring musician and I’m also a full time booking agent, and I do what promoting I can. So I kind of wear all the hats, so that’s probably, you know, the hardest part. I love the business aspect of what I do, and I almost wish I had more time for that, and then I wish I had more time to just focus on songwriting or just focus on practicing, playing. But it’s fun to, I rarely, I probably pay for two to three hotel rooms a year. So I have this amazing network of friends and strangers that, you know you get a good vibe from, and have slept in all different houses and interesting places. And it’s just really cool to get to travel and see how other people live, and just meet amazing people from all over. So I feel very lucky.

Dr. Kent: And what’s your, what’s coming up next? Are you going to keep hitting the road and building your following?

Victoria Vox: Yeah, I’m going to be touring through October, and then I’ll be taking a little break to start working on the next album. So I have, at this point I have about 9 songs ready to go, and I’ll just see what I write or see what happens between now and October and then hopefully get in the studio sometime in November for like an early 2010 release.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s very cool –

Victoria Vox: And then I’m back on the road.

Dr. Kent: I’m going to play one more song here, and it’s called, and I don’t speak French, maybe you could say the title.

Victoria Vox: It’s called C’est Noye.

Dr. Kent: And you spent some time in France and your website is translatable into French. Tell me just a bit about that.

Victoria Vox: When I was 16 I left the country for a year and I went to live with a family in France who didn’t speak any English, and went to high school there, just to learn there language and culture, and that I think to be the best year of my life, moving over there. I learned so much on so many levels, and I go back probably about once a year. I got to go back twice last year, once for the Paris (inaudible) Festival and then another time just for six days in France. And I started performing more French songs for high schools and universities and full sets of French music, but C’est Noye I was at a songwriting festival in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin and just had the inspiration from the water and the bridge, and the festival is a fundraiser for the old steel bridge in Sturgeon Bay. So the song is about being free out at sea, where there’s the wind and the sun, and if I have troubles they’re drowned.

Dr. Kent: Well, I’m excited to listen to that, and the album of course is called Chameleon. And we’ll wait to hear the next album. And her website is victoriavox.com, and if you want to follow her on Twitter like I do, it’s twitter.com/victoriavox. And I’m excited to see what you write next on Twitter. You do indeed like to tweet, I think.

Victoria Vox: I will @reply you.

Dr. Kent: Very nice. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me on the air.

Victoria Vox: Thank you, Kent.

Dr. Kent: And we’re going to listen to a song from Victoria Vox’s latest album, and the album is called Chameleon, and it was produced by Mike Tarentino, who also produced James Blunt and a bunch of other people. And here’s a song called C’est Noye, which is completely wrong, but let’s listen to the song, it’s a beautiful track. Thank you so much for being on the show, Victoria.

Victoria Vox: Thank you.

Dr. Kent: All right.

(music)

Dr. Kent: What a beautiful track from Victoria Vox. Check out her Twitter account at twitter.com/victoriavox, that’s v-o-x, or her website. Google her online, there’s some amazing songs on there, and you should go check out one of her concerts, she’s all over the place. It’s been an honor chatting with her today, as well as my other author guests, they’re all Sound Authors in some way or another. The first guest on my show was Adrian Goldsworthy, he’s the author of How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower. Then I talked to Lynne Serafinn, the author of Garden of the Soul. And then I spoke with Michelle Karen, author of Astrology for Enlightenment. Very interesting speaking to her. I’ve never been a huge fan of astrology, but really some incredible insights that she gave me, and she has such a beautiful book. I’ve already paged through much of it. And of course at the end has been Victoria Vox. Incredible ukulele inspired music, beautiful songwriting ability. Check her out on the web and buy her latest album called Chameleon. So until next week, pick up a good book, and I hope you’ll all be very safe. Have a great Fourth of July weekend. We’ll talk to you the next time.

Posted by jamie | Filed Under Pop, TRANSCRIPTS, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST