Arrica
Rose - "Let's Live In A Bigger Picture That Paints Us Lucky"
Arrica
Rose - "Let's Live In A Bigger Picture That Paints Us Lucky"
“I
always try to come up with a way to say something that would not be your first
choice. I think that it helps the listener to understand what I am trying to
express. I think it gives them a new perspective, a perspective that I have, but
that they may very well relate to.
I think of it as painting a
picture and using colors that maybe quote unquote aren’t the proper colors, but
somehow you still feel what the person is trying to paint and you see even more
of what they are trying to paint based on the choices that they make,” says
Southern California singer-songwriter Arrica Rose.
Some of Arrica Rose’s
songs such as “Microscope,” and “I Wasn’t Done Dancing,”
from her new EP
Lucky, explore the side of
relationships and life that is not always fun and yet when set to ethereal
vocals and more upbeat music listeners never find themselves bogged down in
gloominess.
“It is by design. I really
enjoy that juxtaposition (in a song). They do have dark lyrics that you don’t
necessarily notice. You can enjoy a song on one level and then all of a sudden
you listen closely and you say wait, is that what the song is really saying?
That is something that I do play around with. It is no accident that you would
notice that with my songs.
(The song) “Microscope,” began with me saying to someone else, just put away the
microscope and let’s not dissect this thing. That just stayed in my brain,
put away the microscope and to the
point that I ended up writing it down on one of the many pieces of paper that I
write things on. Really what I was saying is look at the big picture, don’t try
and over analyze every tiny little detail to the point where everything is just
this big mess. That’s where “So
put away the microscope, let's live in a big picture that paints us lucky,”
came from. From that point on I had the idea of a microscope, so I wanted the
rest of the song to have scientific references too, to (express) this feeling I
had that you would get the bright side, the bigger picture. I needed the
scientific terms to describe being a little too analytical about your
existence,” she says.
Continuing to talk about her songs she explains, “The whole concept of “I Wasn’t
Done Dancing,” is a song that isn’t about dancing, it is about keeping on and
continuing the struggle. It just came out in the metaphor of dancing. That song
for me is very much about just feeling like you are over it, so you switch your
perspective. I am not done. Life may not be what I always want it to be, but I
am not done with her yet.”
For Lucky, Rose once again teamed up
with producer Dan Garcia (Rod Stewart, Helen
Reddy, Toto, Glenn Frey, Starship, Boz Scaggs)
who also produced her albums La La Lost
(2008), Pretend I’m Fur (2009) and
Let Alone Sea (2011).
“I think Dan really understands what I am going for and
it is great, because he helps me to attain that. We have the same vision in a
lot of ways. He is one of those people who can really dive into a song and he
comes up with a way to present it, so that it is everything that you hoped it
would be. That is an exaggeration, because as an artist nothing will ever be as
you hoped it would be completely. It is communicating the song the way it was
mean to be communicated. He is great at that and we work really well together
and we respect one another’s ideas. We are very comfortable with one another and
we listen to one another. We come up with a great product because of that,” she
says.
La La Lost
had a song with an interesting title “Porcupine In The Petting Zoo.”
“That song was inspired by
something that someone said to me. They said that they went to the zoo on their
way from Vegas back to L.A. It was some weird place off of the beaten path and
there was a porcupine there. I just had this idea stuck in my head, this idea of
a porcupine in a petting zoo. In my mind it was the perfect way of explaining
that feeling of not feeling like you fit in and feeling that everyone belongs,
but you. Somehow you know that feeling is universal and everyone has experienced
that and not just you. You aren’t the only one. That song is about feeling like
an outsider and it is about embracing that it is okay to feel like the
outsider,” says Rose.
In 2009, Arrica Rose went from quills to fur with the release of her album
Pretend I’m Fur.
“It was something that
just popped into my mind at some point and I just couldn’t get the phrase out of
my head. To me it signified being vulnerable and pretending that I am something
soft and something sensitive. It evoked the sense of vulnerability,” she says.
As for how she approaches
her songwriting she says, “I think I am very inspired by something that someone
will say or something that I will come across when I am reading something or the
way someone said it evokes a certain emotion and that for me is where most of my
songs start. Then I explore why I got attached to that particular phrase or that
particular word that someone (used). That
is usually where the song comes from.
I write with both the
guitar and piano, but I would say that the majority of the time it is with
guitar. Once I switched to guitar that became my main instrument and that is
what I tend to play in performances, so I do gravitate towards writing on the
guitar. I do sit down at the piano and sometimes I attempt to write a song on
the piano, because I know I will have a different outcome than if I write on the
guitar.
I think it is useful to
have different tools at your disposal to write with and I definitely find myself
making different choices when I sit at the piano versus when I pick up my
guitar. In regard to performance I don’t play piano live. It is something that
we talked about working towards, but we have yet to explore. There is the
complication of having a keyboard and piano at your disposal. I do appreciate
having the main instrument for my songs sometimes being piano and sometimes
being guitar. It gives them a different life, a different texture and it is nice
to change it up like that.”
When she was fifteen years old after acquiring her first
guitar, Arrica Rose, Stefanie Drootin and Kerri Drootin, formed the Punk Rock
band Uxby.
“We played at the Cobalt Café a big all ages thing in
the San Fernando Valley. We played all kinds of Punk Rock shows all over the
place. We played at Huntingdon Beach Library and we played at all of these
places that had all ages shows. We were always doing shows and we really enjoyed
it.
We were writing all of our own songs and we never did
record any of them, so they don’t live on, except in our hearts and minds. We
all went our separate ways after high school. We never got that opportunity. We
learned a lot working on songs and writing them together. It was great for all
of us to be involved in that.
I still enjoy Punk Rock. It was a huge part of growing
up for me and it was something that influenced my music. There are so many bands
I used to listen to Beat Happening
and a band called Slint. At the time
they were all on independent labels. I was ordering records from these labels
and I fell into the Punk genre. When I heard Elliott Smith for the first time
when he did his whole foray into the Punk Rock community that is when I had this
light bulb go off in my head, oh I can still love Punk Rock and do more singer –
songwriter driven music,” she recalls.
Where did this all begin
for Arrica Rose? She says when she was pursuing a career in film at university
she felt the tug back to music, but the seed had been planted many years before
that.
“It was very clear to my
parents that singing was what I enjoyed doing most. When I was five years old as
soon as there were a few people in the house I would sit them down, put on my
parents’ Sinatra records and sing-a-long. My parents like to talk about that,
sometimes to my chagrin, but it was probably that which inspired them to enroll
me in voice classes. They also thought it would be good for me to learn an
instrument as well, so two years after that I began taking piano lessons at the
age of ten,” says Rose.
Arrica Rose’s father was
her voice teacher for the first couple of years and she says it was in those
early years that she discovered her own voice versus wanting to mimic the vocal
styling of other singers.
Music it seems has always
been a part of Arrica Rose’s family. Her great-uncle Lou Monte was what she
describes as an Italian American novelty singer who was one of the first artists
signed to Frank Sinatra’s Reprise Records. It is estimated that Lou Monte sold
eight million records.
“My father did some
singing, but he focused more on acting. He was a working actor when I was a kid.
I think when you say to some people you are an actor they think of all this
fame. My dad was one of those people who worked really hard and was an actor,
but not necessarily a household name. I was definitely surrounded by people who
loved acting and performing and of course that influenced me a lot,” she says.
On April 13th
(2013) Arrica Rose officially released her new EP Lucky, during her concert at
the Hotel Café in Los Angeles.
Arrica Rose describes her
music as a hybrid of Dream Pop, Americana and Vintage Rock, genres that she
loves and says have greatly influenced her.
Please visit the
website for Arrica Rose.
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