Interview: Anna Vogelzang

Anna Vogelzang is what we in the industry call “the total package.” She writes her own songs, she plays a variety of instruments with impressive skill, and she’s a charismatic, compelling live performer. She’s someone to look out for on the current indie scene, and she has a new record coming out this year called Paper Boats that mixes the unvarnished honesty of her earlier work with a more polished and professional sound. Ms. Vogelzang was kind enough to share some early mixes of that record with us, and I’m happy to report that it’s one that’ll definitely rack up massive play counts in your iTunes when it drops a little bit later in 2010. She was also nice enough to answer some of our questions via e-mail, the transcript of which is below. Enjoy:

AssaultBLOG: How long have you been making music for?

Photograph by Anna Dakini

Anna Vogelzang: I’ve been writing for about ten years, but I’ve been making music my whole life. I always sang and took piano lessons growing up, and our entire family is musical. Pretty much my entire extended family — grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles — are all musical in some capacity; my mom is a professional singer and conductor, and my dad sings and plays a few instruments. It was just inherent. I always wrote poetry, and I started writing songs on piano and guitar in my freshman year of high school. I joined a rock/funk band as their lead singer when I was about sixteen and loved it — the band co-wrote songs and I loved being part of a group. When I got to college I started digging into writing and performing as a solo singer/songwriter, and that first fall of 2003 I put out my first “real” CD for sale. I’ve been going on guitar, piano, banjo & baritone uke since then.

What is the scene in Madison like? What made you choose Madison as your home base?

I honestly never thought I’d end up in Madison. Due to a long series of unexpected events, I just kind of landed here. When I moved here from Chicago I had visited quite a bit, and had even traveled from Chicago to Madison to see shows in cheaper and smaller venues. Because of the student population, most acts who stop in Chicago make the extra trip up to Madison, and similarly, people actually come out to shows here. There’s always a good crowd for good music. It’s also quite a bit cheaper to live here, which has made it much easier to tour. I think the proximity to Chicago (not to mention Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and other Midwestern havens) is unbeatable, too — I’m usually in town (Chicago) at least twice a month to play. When I lived in town I never liked playing more frequently than that anyways because your friends start to get irritated with you. I do miss Chicago, though. Especially the Lula breakfast burrito. Oy.

Who are some of your biggest influences?

I love ladies who sing, hands down. I love people who write songs like poems. I love jazz. I love sing-alongs and songs that you want to yell along to in the car. I love a good pop riff that gets stuck in your head. I love folks who mess with their instruments & make you say, “whoa, I didn’t know a (insert instrument here) could sound like that!?” I love musicians who make me want to go play. That’s really the best. Today I?m on a flight to California. So far on this flight my iPod has shuffled through: Billie Holiday, Jason Anderson, Ray Charles, The New Pornographers, Emily Hope Price, The Mountain Goats, Aretha Franklin, Ani DiFranco, Thomas Fersen, Devendra Banhart, Etta James, Regina Spektor, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver, The Decemberists, Lyle Lovett, Beyonce, Andrew Bird, Lucinda Williams, St. Vincent, Mirah, Emilyn Brodsky, Radar Bros., Sufjan Stevens.
Cartography has a nice, stripped-down sound & home-made feel. Is that something you’ll continue with your new album, or was that out of necessity?

Thanks! It was kind of both. On both Nesting and Cartography — my 2 at-home recordings from the beginning of 2009 — I wanted to recreate what had been happening with me in my live shows — kind of messy, lots of folks singing & stomping & clapping, the human slip-ups here and there. On The Things That Airplanes Do (2007), I made the best studio album I could make, and I really love that record. I was surrounded by a music conservatory, I was working with some of the best players possible, and we made it a really full, lush sound. But it was hard to recreate the songs live without a full band, and even sometimes when all of us were together (which was rare since I moved right after we released it), it still wasn’t the same as the record. It was a completely different live experience. Obviously I almost always play songs differently live than they sound recorded, but sometimes you get lonesome up there by yourself once you’re used to such a full sound. When I record at home, I mess around, I’m less picky, and it feels that much realer to me. That’s what I was going for with the Nesting EP. Cartography was a bit more necessity than anything — I was making that project for New Hampshire’s RPM challenge (www.rpmchallenge.com/), and I only had about a week to finish the project as soon as I got home from tour. So the bare & messy quality is something I really like about the record — I feel like you actually hear the pieces coming into being on tape, as opposed to records that you think about or plan out before laying anything down.
The new record, Paper Boats, is a compromise. There are sing-alongs and songs where I passed out different percussion instruments to each person and let it run just to see what people came up with. There are songs where we experimented with singing into piano strings & recording the vibrations; there’s quite a bit of improvisation and there’s definitely the act of figuring-it-out-as-we go (as a lot of songs were written once I’d arrived in New Hampshire, preparing for our sessions). I really like being able to hear that process on a record, I think it makes it that much more relatable to the listener. Because we were in a studio, though, & because we did have more of a gameplan, the record also has a really nice full sound to it, kind of a combination of lush studio sound with the realness of an at-home recording. I am so excited about this new record. It’s absolutely my favorite thing I’ve ever done. I’m really excited for people to hear it. It looks like it’ll be out in late March or early April, on Slothtrop Music (www.slothtropmusic.com) here in Madison. We’re also releasing a single for a small February tour here in the Midwest, which I’ll be selling on 7″ vinyl at my shows! I’m stoked.

Photograph by Anna Dakini

You’ve played with some of the current indie scene’s leading lights. Any good stories?

I’ve been really lucky & have known, and still know a lot of talented people. It’s awesome to see folks you know succeed at what they love. Mostly I’ve just gotten great advice over & over again.

What lessons did you learn while touring w/ the Dresden Dolls, and how have you incorporated them into your current attack plan?

The Dolls are a band that always put their whole selves on stage and made every single live show an event, when they were performing in a basement of a goth clothing store or in a sold-out club. There’s a lot of business that I learned from them by watching their transition from independent to label and by helping out at their merch table, but their passion was really what struck me. I still admire their example of making each show really special for the crowd, of leaving it all on the stage.

Which artist’s career trajectory would you most like to emulate, if any?

There’s a lot of folks that I admire. I think that Ani DiFranco is pretty much every singer/songwriter’s business icon. She owns all of her shit, she tours all of the time, she puts out a record a year, and 20 years later she’s still going strong. There’s also quite a few people who are making their careers happen on a smaller scale, making a decent living in music, and I think that’s just as respectable. There are so many tools right now to make a successful career happen independently, especially with social media, independent distribution opportunities, and blah blah blah. We’ve all heard it, the different ways to take advantage of this “golden age of the independent musician.” And because of that, luckily there are plenty of folks that I look up to, especially many of my friends. Honestly, as long as I can make a living doing music, I?ll be happy with my career.

You’ve released music through your website with the somewhat controversial “pay what you want” plan. How do your personal experiences with this format stack up? Do you think it’s a successful distribution method for unsigned artists?

I think when you’re releasing something without support of a label, it’s absolutely something worth trying. I released Cartography for free with an option to pay, because it was a fun project for me, and as I said about recording it in 12 days at home, I really figured it out while the mics were rolling, so it’s messy. I’m proud of it, but I also view it as an experiment, & don’t mind people having it for free — I’d rather just have people listening to the songs. Similarly with the Nesting EP, I give folks an option of a minimum, which I think is $1/song (rather than just a total pay-what-you-will with a free option), since I went through the process of pressing those CDs, making t-shirts, having other people mix & master it, etc. There were more people involved on that record, and I feel like when there’s a group of people making an intentional body of work, then a small payment is a courtesy — paying folks for their time, really. You don’t expect your baker acquaintance to give you their newest, most beautiful, elaborate cake for free. Cupcakes, maybe. Or the baker can give them a discount, or an option on the cake size. I think that if folks are willing to pay the minimum, then it works as a compromise for me, & if they aren’t, then they have the option to stream the whole thing online anyways. I think the pay-what-you-will option has a lot of freedom in it that the musician can really play with to their advantage, & it will depend on what you’re willing to give up for free. That said, at this point in my career, and a lot of new artists’ careers, I think you need to sacrifice as much as you possibly can for free. It’s not about the money, it’s about the number of people who can access your music, and who want to pass it along to their friends. To do things truly grassroots, your only option is really to make things as affordable as possible so more people will want to own it. I’ve also found that when you give folks an option, more often than not the people who buy the record pay more than the minimum you ask for, and sometimes it’s much more than you as the artist ever would have asked for. The people who are going to pay for the download at all are the ones who tend support the arts & so often they will add an extra donation to support you in your endeavors. I think it’s been a really interesting way to release music, and I?m proud that I had the opportunity to do it on these last few at-home recordings.

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As a bonus treat, check out Anna covering Lada Gaga’s “Bad Romance” in a laundry room:

Get Your Vogelzang On:

• Twitter
• Official Website
• BandCamp
• Facebook

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About the Author

Oswald Hobbes is an award-winning journalist and internet celebrity. His best friends include Pete Wentz and Thomas Pynchon. He's intense, and a show pony. He's the music editor for Assault.it. Follow me on twitter
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