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Noah Vonne Gets to the "Heart Of It" |
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Noah Vonne a native of Texas, who has called Nashville and Los Angeles
home was our guest recently at Riveting Riffs Magazine and the reason we
were excited about her joining us is her vocals remind us of a mix of
Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse, and Taylor Dayne, not that she sounds like a
clone of those singers, because she does not. We use those comparisons,
because Noah Vonne’s vocals are powerful, soulful, and emotive and at a
standard that already reflects the vocal abilities of those three
artists. She is a splendid songwriter who can accompany herself on the
guitar or keyboards and she has a knack for knowing what works best with
her music videos.
Most of her childhood and teenage years were spent growing up in New
Braunfels nestled between Austin Texas and San Antonio, in a family with
five older sisters. All of them were softball players, almost enough to
form their own team.
When asked if she was spoiled, being the baby of the family, she says
while laughing, “ It is true. All of my sisters would say one thousand
percent. In comparison to some of my friends, maybe not so, because my
parents were pretty strict for the most part. Compared to my sisters I
was very spoiled.”
A familiar story for many great singers, Noah Vonne’s journey began as a
child singing in a large church in San Antonio, the Community Bible
Church with by her estimates 2,000 people attending for services.
It was beautiful and the music program was really, really strong. One of
the choir leaders was also my voice lessons and piano teacher in senior
high school.
We drove from New Braunfels to San Antonio. It wasn’t too bad, because
New Braunfels is wedged between Austin and San Antonio and just barely
closer to San Antonio. It was like a thirty-minute drive. In Texas time
that is not much.”
As for the first time that she recalls singing in front of other people,
“When I was really, really little I remember singing “King of the Road,”
by Roger Miller at karaoke with my dad when I was five or six. You know
that song. It is a classic. It is one of the best. I sang peppermints
instead of cigarettes, because my parents didn’t want me to sing the
cigarettes part.
Fast forward to the ripe old age of whatever you are in grade four and
Noah Vonne had her first co-write of a song with a friend.
“It had about ten verses. I didn’t really get into diving into my own
sound, until I took piano lessons. Then I could put some type of chord
progression or other type of melodies behind what I was hearing vocally.
It changed the way I thought about music as well when you get down to
the nitty gritty.
(She laughs lightly, as she talks about the song) It is really funny,
because we had a lot of friends, but we wrote the song about not having
any friends. We were in fourth grade class, and they brought those
little, tiny guitars in and it was guitar day, so you got to try it for
that day. We didn’t know how to play anything, but we would strum
something, and it must us think of a melody and we put together a bunch
of verses. The chorus I still do remember, and I can sing it for you,
because I still remember it. It is very 2000s Country, because that was
my vibe. (She sings it with the last line, blue sky blue),” and she
chuckles.
Noah Vonne continues, “I started playing the piano in fifth grade and it
was all because I wanted to sing. All we had in the house was an upright
piano. I actually wanted to play the violin, but you can’t sing and play
the violin very well. I then got a connection with a piano and a lot of
my inspiration growing up was piano based music, like Sara Bareilles
or Norah Jones, and kind of Jazzy Rootsy piano.
I took a year of piano first (fifth grade) and then I started the next
year with voice lessons. I took piano and voice lessons up until my
senior year (high school).
When I went to college, I was still playing the piano and fronting
little bands, while playing my own music as well. I felt really trapped
behind the keyboards, even though I had transitioned from sitting to
standing and I had my shoulder movements in right.”
Let’s stop here for a moment, the studied the business side of music at
Belmont University in Nashville between 2013 until 2017, so what was
that like?
I think it depends on where you are taking the program. Belmont and
Nashville were great in my eyes. It was very active and incredibly
gifted people were there. You were surrounded by learning about music
regardless. There were (also) people in real time all around you who
were looking to get into the music business. That was the best part of
being in a school is the people who you are around. You can all grow,
because of each other.
It is like a business degree. I had to do all of the accounting, finance
classes and all of the good things, but it is also specialized in the
music business. For me that meant making sure I don’t ever get screwed
over. You take copyright law classes and contract law classes. You take
a demo production class. You take little pieces of what you need to know
about the industry to find out if you want to make a career in it or
not. There is a lot of accessibility to start your career. I won’t lie,
there is also a high transfer out rate, because it is a hard industry. I
think people start to realize that a couple of years into the degree.”
“I sang and played keys on the cruise ship for a while (2018 and after a
while I thought I can’t stand being behind the keyboards anymore. I want
to be a front woman, or I need to learn how to play the guitar. While I
was thinking that and when I came out of the cruise ship contract, an
opening slot for this artist named Shawn James opened and it was for an
acoustic guitar player and someone else doing harmony or another
instrument.”
Wait! We are not going to let you off that easy. We heard you wore a
construction hat on that cruise ship.
“(She laughs lightly, acknowledging that was right) It was a brand-new
fleet for the company, and we were on the coast of France in a small
ship town, while the ship was being built and the audio equipment was
being tested. We were rehearsing and all of that good stuff. It was a
crazy time (she extends the word crazy to add emphasis). I think I
needed that time too to break out of a lot of anxiety, if I am being
real. That cruise contract really changed me.”
Now back to the guitar and the tour, “I
thought okay, this means I have to do it. I had been noodling with the
guitar here and there trying to teach myself. I went out for three days
with Shawn, playing the guitar and I couldn’t even play with a pick yet,
so my fingers bled almost every show. I was already writing songs on it,
but I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought I knew enough theory that
I could wrap my head around learning this at a realistic level. I could
learn to accompany myself without (lugging) a keyboard around
everywhere.
I have had so much fun (with the guitar). I can move around the stage,
and I still can be the front woman and have a full-on performance (hmm
we wonder if she was wearing the construction hat from the ship). I can
connect with people’s faces from time to time when the moment is right.
I think that is important, so I try to move around and stuff. My vocals
are my most important thing to me as far as my music goes.”
Everything seemed to be rolling along nicely for Noah Vonne fresh out of
college, a gig on a cruise ship then a tour with an established artist.
Then the world changed in 2020 and if you were a performing artist, you
were out of work, due to the COVID pandemic.
“It was a pretty rough time in my career, and I feel like for the
careers of a lot of people. I was about to drop my first EP, and the EP
show was slated for two weeks after everybody went into lockdown. I was
also supposed to be playing at SXSW the same week. I was slated to go to
Europe later that year too. It kind of threw a huge wrench into
everything that I had been planning. I had to realign and recourse. I
rebranded and at the end of the day I thought it was important that it
happened (not COVID, but the rebranding). Then I moved to LA, and I got
a deal with an incredible producer, to cut my debut album. I had been
writing a lot, so I had a lot of songs stockpiled for me to choose from,
to put on my album.
That really did change the course of my direction. I am always creating.
There is always another step above what I am already doing, so I am
planning for that. It might change, but it is hard for me to stop
creating. It is part of how I process,” she says.
To say that Noah Vonne’s music is eclectic would be an accurate
statement
She reflects upon our question and says, “It has changed throughout
life. I guess I am a little obsessed with vocals and the emotions that
are portrayed behind the vocals. No matter how well you are hitting it
or how beautiful your pitch is or your tone or your vowel sound or
whatever it may be there is nothing that compares to that raw feeling of
the emotion that you can feel underneath the vocal. That is why Joss
Stone and Amy Winehouse are big inspirations for me. Also, Janis Joplin,
Alicia Keys, Sara Bareilles and Nora Jones. Sara Bareilles does some
crazy stuff on the piano also. Not only is she vocally incredible, but
to me personally, her piano playing was always a different style than
anyone else I heard playing piano. She incorporated a Classical and
Jazzy bit in there. That is also what drew me to Sara Bareilles. She is
truly so talented. My favorite song of hers is “Stay.” The chorus and
sweeping melody give me chills every time that I hear it.”
Continuing she says, almost like we are sharing a big secret, “I can let
you in on a nerdy childhood secret. (As for) my emotions as a younger
kid who lived out in the country; before we lived in New Braunfels, we
lived on five acres and everybody around us lived on ten plus acres. We
were really just out there and at times emotions were really high. In a
big family sometimes, your emotions aren’t always able to be heard.
I would go outside in the back and sing scream my emotions out. I
would come up with melodies and that is how I (found) peace. I think I
always draw from my insides to be able to sing. It feels like that is
not only a relief for me, but some sort of when I lose myself and that
is the best time. I try to get it from the inside and what do these
words actually mean to me, visualizing it and going from there. I am
glad that it rings true.
When you listen to
Noah Vonne’s song
“Heart Of
It,”
you hear the raw edge of a Joplin, the Soul of Joss Stone and where
those two meet not unlike Amy Winehouse. Yet in songs like
“To Do’s,”
the sound straddles Pop meets Rock, and that powerful vocal rises to the
surface still. Noah Vonne is a star on the rise, and she has arrived. It
is her time in the spotlight.
Noah Vonne did not
let the pandemic, the lockdowns or the interruption of live music being
played stop her creative process and October of 2020 she released the
beautiful song
“Sunset
Inn.”
The music video opens with her walking towards a room on the second
floor of a motel and now the emotive vocals come from a different place,
the are from a broken heart, emotions that come from a real-life
relationship that ended. Waiting in “room 152,” for her to show up,
because there are two keys. It is an invitation from a heart breaking,
knowing deep inside that this is not going to last.
“This one is an intense one. I was in a pretty toxic relationship, and
we lived together. The song came from the song title I just wrote,
one-time when we were on a road trip. We were constantly arguing back
and forth, and we were in the middle of nowhere and I just looked up and
the only thing that was there was the Sunset Inn. To me at that moment
it felt like a haven, so I just wrote in my notes Sunset Inn.
That snapshot was in my memory. Way down the road, probably a
year later we broke up. We went our separate ways, and I felt this hurt
and this attachment. I knew I shouldn’t reach out to her, and I was
remembering that moment and putting myself back into the Sunset Inn,
which is where I remember at that moment was going to be my haven.
I had written the guitar part a year earlier, but without a melody. I
was trying to come up with a love song for the same relationship. It
never quite turned into that. I
could never find the right thing that felt (okay) with it. Then “Sunset
Inn,” just poured out. I got it altogether. Then my friend Emma said you
should switch the first verse and the second verse and it was born. It
has changed throughout my life with how it feels, but that is where it
came from,” she says.
One year later in
the fall of 2021, Noah Vonne released
“Careful
With My Love,”
a song that in many ways serves as a bookend to “Sunset Inn.” The music
video opens with two young women (one of them Noah Vonne) on roller
skates in a park and the opening vocals are deliberately uneven and
might be described as staccato in nature.
“It was really a note to me to not fall so deep into love so easily. I
have had issues with that. I love to love and sometimes that messes with
you as well. You have to be careful with that. That is a great way of
putting it that it is a bookend for “Sunset Inn,” she says.
Noah Vonne and her videographers have the ability to create scenes that
an everyday person can easily relate to. As she says, “I don’t know if I
always make it deliberately that way, but I do always want to make them
in an environment that if I was (the person watching) I would understand
it. They are unintentionally deliberate if that even makes sense.
“I just want to portray a more realistic approach with the song. You are
supposed to connect with all of the pieces that I put out and what it is
intended for a more realistic approach to life,” she says.
This would be a good place to give a shout out to her dog Lennon Lemon
who appears in one of her videos, and if you want to know which one you
will just have to visit YouTube and listen to Noah’s music.
We turn our attention to the song “Heart Of It.”
“I wrote “Heart Of It,” over COVID on Facetime, but I woke up singing
that chorus. It is funny, because I did that with, “Let You Go,” as
well. That was a strange time over quarantine and everything. I just
woke up with these melodies in my head. I went to my guitar and put
together little parts of it. I had little ideas here and there. We
jumped on Facetime, and it came out so fast. It came together, very,
very fast. I wrote that over Facetime as a trio write with Matt Bauer
and Malena Cadiz. It was wonderful. I had never met Matt nor Malena in
person, because they lived out here in LA and I was still in Nashville
at the time. That one (song) felt like I knew I was getting down to
something, before I came up with the We Weren’t Sober (album title we
will get to in a minute) concept. I knew I needed to get down to the
roots of why I was feeling so intensely about certain things in
relationships. I just knew I needed to get down to the freaking root, to
the heart of it. That song came out and it was just right.
When we took it into the studio, Jimmy Messer my producer said I know
this incredible horn section that would be really awesome, and I think
we should add some horns in. I was all in for that. I think the horn
section for “Heart Of It,” gives that song a seventies feel and that
rootsy feel, without making it Country.
For the video, I met the videographer (Ben Danielson) at an acoustic
show I was doing here in LA and he heard that song and loved it. I knew
I was going to put it out soon, so we got together, and we came up with
an idea. We scouted a couple of locations, and we found this beautiful
place out in Malibu. My friend Natalie Delgado is an actress and model
out here and she said she would be down with being in the video with me.
I thought perfect, we are going to make it happen. We wanted it to be
visually right and it is more about the visual landscape with that one,
because it is more about what is in your head and how you are going
through it.
We had talked about the process for shooting the music videos, but now
we wanted to know more about Noah Vonne’s songwriting process.
“It is hard to stay what inspires me, because sometimes just a shadow of
a tree on a building inspires me to think of how that shadow is
portrayed differently. I think there are so many different ways to find
inspiration. It is about finding the inspiration or looking for it. I
think most days I write something in my notes that inspired me. If I am
not in the space to write or not, I want that idea still somewhere. I
have a bunch of little notes. Sometimes I sit down and go I have to
write today, but I am often already feeling the inspiration most days. I
try to write as much as possible. It is really hard to say, because
Sometimes I get my emotions out without even knowing what they are
(before doing that). If that makes any sense,” she says.
Unless someone is totally tone deaf, you will have noticed that the
romantic interest in Noah Vonne’s videos, if the music leans that way,
are women. She is LGBTQ+ or as she simplifies it, a lesbian. Therefore
it would be natural for her love interest in her videos to be women.
“Definitely and my music is really personal. I think if I was maybe
making a different type of music, it might not have meant so much to me.
I am writing songs about girls and a lot of my understanding about
relationships are about women. I just like to be very real and honest
about who I am. I only ever did hide it before I was out to my parents
and family. That was a hard time to overcome, but it made me even more
proud and comfortable to be myself. I am not trying to be over the top,
I am still human. I am not trying to be that is the only thing about me.
I did not grow up seeing a lot of people who were able to be free and
gay and not being worried about it or being angry about it. There is a
lot of anger that comes along with it. I feel I get that out in my
music, and I think that is why I push a little of the Rock edge. I don’t
want to dull any other false sense of who I am.
I don’t want to build something off of a falsity,” she says
before talking about if her fans who have stayed with her, “They have
and I think it has really been a beautiful thing, because I am not
hiding it. I have a lot of male fans who you wouldn’t necessarily think
would be fans of a lesbian artist. Motorcycle guys love my music and a
lot of, for lack of a better word, bros, they love my music too. I
understand and we can have a perspective that is similar, and it doesn’t
matter who we are. I feel that in and of itself has been really
beautiful to see. A lot of my friends and other people as well have been
really excited that I have a song called, “LA Witchy Woman,” that they
can connect to for themselves and their emotions of how they feel
attracted to a woman or anything like that.
I haven’t seen any backlash. Maybe my friends from high school don’t
follow me as much, but (nobody) has ever been in my face about it,” she
says.
The song, “Worth the Wait,” co-written with her friend Whitney Fenimore,
is partially autobiographical and is one of the prettiest love songs we
have heard in a very long time.
“When I co-wrote this one with my friend Whitney back in Nashville, he
and I were both in long distance relationships at the time. It was our
love song to our long-distance relationships. It was you are worth it no
matter what. I’m not going to do anything or need anything now, because
you are worth it. I could not stop singing that song. We had only
written half of it. I think we only wrote for one hour and a half or two
hours. Then we said we would come back to it. I could not get it out of
my head. We came back to it six months later and finished that song. It
rang so true, and it gave me the same feelings every time. To me I like
to call it the wedding song that I have written. I have always wanted to
write a wedding song and to me that felt like a wedding song.” (Editor’s
note: We think you will agree.)
As for her current album and the title We Weren’t Sober, she explains,
“When I was compiling all the songs that I had written, I had this a
cappella title track thing, jumping around in my head, before I realized
the whole sentiment of what I was singing about was dealing with my own
codependence within relationships and finding my way in and out of
those. I realized in my relationships we weren’t sober in love. We were
just drunken in love, without sobering up and saying what we needed to
fix or work on. We were just happy in love, which isn’t necessarily how
life goes. I had also just
gotten out of a relationship with a girl who was sober. That was
thematic in my life and understanding what that meant and why we do have
to be sober from certain things in our lives for different people. That
came together for me in understanding and wow! I have some codependency
issues, and these are a lot of the emotions around that codependency.
The album track is my clarity moment. We end with “LA Witchy Woman,”
feeling a little bit freer and trying not to do that again.”
For the music
video
“Can’t
Stay In the City,”
Noah Vonne plays the part of a fortune teller. The video which was
directed by Larissa Pruett and Nathan Trumbull (Pierre Habib as the DP),
intersperses live footage of the band, Noah Vonne, Warren Barrow, TC
Carter and Becca Maddy.
“It was scary sometimes when we were riding in the back of the truck on
a bumpy street (editor’s
note: She was in a very small booth) I was like, I hope they strapped us
in well enough. It was fun. It was really hot in there sometimes (she
laughs), but aside from that it was a pretty chill job being in there
thinking of fortunes,” she says.
If Noah Vonne could for a day be a fortune teller, but not stuck in a
booth, would that be fun?
“It could be fun, if I could only give positive fortunes. Then let’s do
it and make some people’s days.”
As for the lines from the song, “I just need some clarity / Days get
foggy on the streets of west LA,” she says, “I messed up and I did
something not so great, because I was not paying attention to a lot of
things in life. Things felt foggy and hazy, and I really made a terrible
mistake. I felt like I needed clarity in my life and not see my life as
foggy. I needed to center again. This is what the song is (about).
I find my peace out in the country or a little bit outside of the city,
where things aren’t moving so fast. I need to get out once in a while
and I need to feel that clarity. That is really where the whole song
came from. It definitely shows through in that line. It is more about my
mental clarity and visualizing that with the haze that kind of goes over
West Hollywood and West LA in the morning.”
There is so much
more that we could say about Noah Vonne, but maybe you should explore
her music a little more by following her on
Instagram
or
Facebook
and listening to her music on YouTube, while buying it on pretty well
any of the major online places you buy your music.
Top Photo by Niguel Photography, protected by copyright ©
All Rights Reserved
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She
was the trailblazer in her family as far as someone having artistic
leanings and says, “What I was going after was very different.”
It
is very soulful and there are a lot of elements to that album, We
Weren’t Sober that sound like Soul music. I was primarily raised
listening to seventies Rock, Soul and Folk. My parents were high school
sweethearts, and they grew up in the seventies, so that is what they
were always listening to. I grew a fondness and connection to that time
period of music. I feel there is something special about it. People had
some real things to say and would record them,” says Noah Vonne.