Thanks To: Alice for the great interview!
I grew up in Minnesota in a town called White Bear Lake. You know, the lake of the White Bear. We moved to Wisconsin my Junior year of high school, so I finished up high school in Wisconsin. I went to college in Wisconsin at Lawrence University, where I studied theater.
I thought I was going to be an actor or something like that, or maybe do musical theater, but music was definitely more where my soul was. I loved performing, but I think for me, artisticly, in the years after school, it was important for me to kind of figure out what my voice was, and what it was that I wanted to say as an artist.
As an actor/actress, you're saying someone else's words, and they may be wonderful words and powerful, but I felt like it was really important to write my own. I just knew some basic chords and played piano a little bit by ear.
I started writing songs, and playing them for friends and at open mic nights and things, so being a singer/song-writer just sort of evolved for me. I didn't wake up one day and say "I'm going to be a singer/songwriter". It just kind of fed out of chronicling my own thoughts and feelings about things in a musical way.
Have you taken singing lessons?
I did, yeah. In college I took a semester's worth of singing lessons with Mrs. T. Mrs T. was about 80 years old, and she still could sing serious opera, so I figured she was doing something right. However, her whole method was that the first two years of study with her, you really didn't utter a note. It was a lot of breathing. That really didn't work for me. She also didn't really like the fact that I was in a rock band, I was in the jazz group, and I sang radio commercials, because I was uttering notes when I was supposed to be breathing. So that was short lived.
Then when I moved here to Chicago, I studied with a teacher named Ed Furon for about a year, year and a half. He was a professional singer, had been in a group called The Arbors in the 60's. He just knew a lot of tricks, you know, like what do you do when you've got a cold, and you get called in to do a morning radio show or you gotta do a gig and you have no voice, and how do you get through it.
I really wanted to learn more about the physiology of the voice and just make sure I was singing correctly and all that. So, I studied with him for about a year, year and a half and that's sort of the extent of vocal lessons. Most of it I sort of copped from listening to my favorite singers.
Who are your musical inspirations?
There's so many. I mean, I listen to all kinds of music. There are two kinds, good music and bad music.
When you think about singers, the great jazz singers, interpreters or standards like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, they made it sound really easy. Some of that stuff that they were singing, melodically, was pretty tough. You need great air control to get through those songs, but they made it sound really conversational, so I loved listening to them.
Writers like Tom Wake (?), Bruce Springsteen, Neal Young. Neal Young is a big hero of mine, Joni Mitchell, Carol King, you know, great pop writer, writing since she was a teenager, these smash hits. So a lot of different music. Some old country stuff, blue grass, blues singers, a lot of different things you just sort of draw from and then out of that you get your style.
How would you describe that style? How would you describe your music?
I would say that it is very passionate, heart felt pop. Pop in that it's full of hooks, and it makes you want to sing along. It's memorable. I mean, I love Bob Dylan, but he goes on and on with lots of verses and things like that, which is great and it's his style. That's not my style. I'm definitely more of a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, chorus, chorus gal [laughs]. Get that chorus, and pound it until it's bloody.
Have you ever had any embarrassing stage performances?
Um, let me think. Yes. I was on tour with John Mellencamp, and I was on stage with him singing "Pink Houses", and someone sling shotted a bra, and it hit me right in the face. And John turned to me and says "Um, Are you missing something?" [laughs] That was funny.
Have you had any weird fan encounters?
[Street Team owners laugh] You mean like the weird people with us in the room, while we're giving the interview? [laughs] No, actually, ladies and gentlemen, they are members of my street team, and they are all very respectable. But they have an order to stay at least 100 yards away from me. We have a restraining order against them. It's all good. It seems to be working out well, though. [She was joking!]
No, seriously, my fans are great. I mean they really connect to my music. The musicians I like are people I really feel like, "Wow, they're reading my mail!" [laughs a little] You know, really connect with me. The people that will come up to me after a show are great. You wouldn't have a career if you didn't have fans.
What do you feel makes you any different from other female singers out there?
I think that I've got a lot of soul. I think I give it everything I've got. I think that makes me special, and I think it makes it very honest. This is a business, and I think there are a lot of people out there that may be not so honest. They're in it for the wrong reasons. I think that sets me a part.
You know, I just do what I do. I think my music is influenced by certainly a lot of different people, and people can categorize and say "Oh, she sounds like so-and-so", or "kind of like so-and-so meets this", and that's all fine and good, but I think, ultimately, I'm just getting my own style, and I think my stuff is very real.
What are your goals/hopes to accomplish with your music?
I hope to just keep writing and inspiring music for myself, and keep moving myself. When I write something, I'm really excited. Like the other day, I wrote this kind of kid song, of all things. It's sort of this Randy Newman-esque piano tune song called "Might as Well Have Fun While You're At It", because a friend of mine's mother has terminal cancer and she said "remember to have fun" in her last days.
She said "you need to write a song about that". I was just thinking about that, and it's like, remember to have fun. I went back to my house, and I wrote this song, and it really got me excited. I was really giddy, when I was writing it. My husband thought it was really funny, because I was jumping around the house like, "Hey, check out this verse!"
It's important to entertain and move yourself, and then I think, if you're having fun, then other people will have fun. So, I just want to grow as an artist. I certainly would love to have a lot of peope hear my music, because then it would mean that it's touched a lot of people. That would be great.
Do you have any tips for aspiring singers/bands, trying to make it in the music industry?
Just play. Just do it. Just get out there and play as much as you can. Write as much as you can. Have fun. Make sure it's fun, and love what you do. And be brave, because there are a lot of people in this business that don't know anything about music, and they're going to give you their opinion. They're going to tell you you're good or you're bad.
You just you need to know it's in your heart that what you're doing is very real and very good. Just keep at it, because if you love it and it's important to you, then that's what you need to be doing. People will connect with that, and you'll have an audience.
Do you have a message for your fans?
Wow, well, thank you. Yeah, just thanks. I mean it's really cool at shows to find out how people heard about me. Somebody's friend told them because they saw me at this little place there or in the early days, playing at a starbucks or a coffee shop, so it's kind of neat how they turned onto my music. SO I really appreciate that people have listened and that they've enjoyed it and they come to shows and come say hi, and so thank you.
That's it! Thanks for the interview!
Alright. Thank you!
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