Singer-Songwriter Turns “Chameleon”
March 20, 2009
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YahooMyWebVictoria Vox was just another singer-songwriter with a guitar until one moment a few years ago that changed the focus of her career. She was playing the version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” made popular by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole on her guitar, when a friend gave her a ukulele.
She laughs as she says that if you give any songwriter a new instrument, the reaction’s pretty much the same: “You pick it up and start messing around with it. And I’m like, ‘I feel a song coming on!’”
The ukulele lightened up her music, and composing on the four strings of the ukulele simplified her songs “instead of getting lost in the complexities of the guitar.”
Her mom heard the songs and urged her to play them at her shows.
“I started slowly, doing two or three songs in a set,” Vox says.
Audiences gave her immediate feedback.
“People loved it and asked for more,” Vox recalls. “I started playing ‘Over the Rainbow’ two or three times a night. Finally I said, ‘I need to make a ukulele CD.’
“It’s such a rhythmic instrument. You play it in the clubs and people get up and start moving.”
She had released four guitar-based CDs, but in 2006 she released a ukulele-based CD, “Victoria Vox and her Jumping Flea.” The CD was featured on NPR’s “the Best of Our Knowledge” and the songs were used in television and independent movies. One song, “My Darlin’ Beau,” was a runner-up in the International Acoustic Music Awards.
Recently, the 30-year-old Baltimore resident released her new CD, “Chameleon,” on her own label. In addition to the ukulele, the songs, all of which she wrote, feature drums, bass and the electric guitar.
“I get my inspiration from everywhere,” she says, “from travel, love, family and relationships - even from peeping Toms” — a reference to her song “Peeping Tomette,” written from the point of view of a female voyeur.
Vox, a self-described “band geek,” started playing the violin at 9. She recently retrieved her violin from her family home in Wisconsin and brought it back to Baltimore.
“Who knows if that will show up in a Victoria Vox song,” she says with a mischievous smile.
Vox, who also played the oboe, took up trumpet in high school, which led her to a jazz band. When she heard jazz standards, she said, “Hey, I can sing.”
After high school, she earned a degree in songwriting from The Berklee College of Music.
She plays some 150 shows a year throughout the U.S. and France — she’s fluent in French and played six shows there in November.
While observing that the music scene was building on the East Coast, she settled in Baltimore in 2005. She recently bought 6,000 square feet of space in the arts district, and she’s excited about remodeling plans that include ample studio space.
Baltimore fans will get a chance to hear her on March 26, when she plays a benefit concert at 7 p.m. at the Baltimore Maritime Museum at the Inner Harbor. On April 19, she’ll be part of a regional program feature nine singer-songwriters at the Metro Gallery on Baltimore’s North Charles Street.
One of the hardest things about building a full-time singing career isn’t music, it’s the business aspects, especially in a world where new technology changes how music is heard and distributed.
“The Internet has been great for independent artists,” she says, “but labels have had to change the way they do business, and everyone is scrambling. It takes a lot of time when you’re the artist and the president of your company — it’s like two 80-hour jobs.”
And then add touring.
“You realize if you don’t tour and do shows you won’t sell albums,” says Vox, who described her success as a grassroots movement, where somebody tells someone else about her work.
But she loves the energy of touring and having a good time with the audience.
“I’ve always wanted to sing since I was 6 years old,” she says. “Singing makes me happy.”
The choice to perform with a ukulele makes her fans equally happy.
“The ukulele has been a really great thing for me,” she says. “It just happens to be my instrument of choice. The ukulele can be cool and hip in a contemporary rock way.”
Learn more about Victoria Vox and hear songs from “Chameleon” at www.victoriavox.com.
“It’s such a rhythmic instrument.”
It’s so good to see a ukulele star who *gets* that.