WL2P Featured Artist - Victoria Vox

I can admit, without the least bit of shame, that I have never taken the ukulele seriously. What would you expect? My only foggy recollection of anyone actually playing what appears to be a guitar that was picked before it was ripe was Tiny Tim. Hearing and seeing him sing, "Tip Toe Through The Tulips," in a wavering falsetto, was frightening to say the least. I was traumatized for life—or at least until I heard this new CD by Victoria Vox.

Over half the songs on Victoria's new CD, Chameleon, are ukulele driven (that just sounds weird).

How does she pull it off? She writes beautiful songs and has the voice to pull it off. On the folk-pop-rock scale, this CD is solidly pop, leaning toward the rock side. Every cut is different enough from the last to keep your interest, and Victoria works with dynamics the way a potter works with clay - it's her true medium. Producer Mike Tarentino deserves credit as well for really understanding what the artist was looking for and then nailing it dead on.

So why the uke?

Vox's first stringed instrument of choice was, the guitar and she released several guitar based DIY CDs. Then, after receiving one of the little 4-stringed marvels as a gift, she found it the perfect compliment for her rich voice.? “The ukulele doesn't interfere with my range as much as a guitar, and because it's more simplistic, I feel that I move to different melodies than I would on the guitar,” she says. “The ukulele has given some of my songs more of a jazz feel, all of a sudden there was room for solos (which I do with my trumpetless trumpet.)” In listening to the new CD, you may not even recognize the ukulele on certain tracks—it fits in that well. “I'm finding that non-ukulele listeners are converted daily,” she says. “It's really fun to give people what they weren't expecting.”

Trumpetless (mouth) Trumpet?

Now this is pretty risky. If it didn’t come off so convincing and realistic sounding, it would have simply sounded like sophomoric mouth noises. But again, Victoria takes a risk and makes it work. “I was writing the song “My Darlin’ Beau” for (her previous CD) Jumping Flea, and being a jazzy form type song, I felt it needed some horn punctuation,” says Vox. “Now it finds it's way into any song needing a solo. I did start to play the trumpet when I was 14, and I think from my years in band, I can hear what a trumpet is supposed to sound like.”

Speaking of some of the tracks on her new CD, she explains, “Peeping Tomette" is from the view of a female voyeur. It’s purely fictional, but I was trying to understand a stalker I had when I was younger. It's a fun song, but has definitely creeped-out my current neighbors.”

Vox’s experience as a French exchange student surfaces in the lovely and melodic “C’est Noyé.” “This is the song that always sticks out in my mind as a magical recording process,” says Vox. “It was the one song that Mike was not sure what to do with, for fear of stepping all over the melody and rhythmic ukulele. I dug around in the closet and found a tape dispenser and some wood screws and started shaking them to the rhythm. Before long we were in the studio clapping and shaking things. I spotted Mike’s trumpet, and though I haven’t used a real trumpet in 10 years, I somehow remembered how to find the notes. When I sing my other trumpet solos, I actually mimic the motions of playing a trumpet, so it came easier than I thought.”

On “The Bird Song,” Vox relies on an instrument that has been used with varying degrees of success by groups in the past: the a toy piano. “It seems to have become the ‘long-distance dedication’ number. It’s such a simple song and the production just came together so naturally.”

Victoria’s Web site (bi-lingual, English/French) is a notable model of not only how to market one’s self and one’s music, but also how to attract new fans and involve the current ones. Every song from the new CD is available for listening. In addition, the site is easy to navigate with links to her presence on You Tube, iLike, MySpace, Facebook and iTunes. Along with her online promotion, Victoria is always looking for any opportunity to bring her music to the masses, as is shown by the photo accompanying this article and this video of an impromptu concert on an airliner.

Vox, who lives in Baltimore now, books between 150-200 dates annually and plans to continue to tour in support of Chameleon.