Interview with Van Plating
Photo By Bethany Blanton
You’ve got quite a colorful sonic history, with a background spanning classical music, bluegrass, and indie rock. Could you name one thing you’ve learned from each of those genres that you’ve put to use in your current career as a solo artist?
From classical music I learned discipline. Intense, mind over matter, ninja level discipline. You can’t learn to be a good violin player without hours and hours of focused practice in the studio. It takes years of study before you even sound decent, and a mastery of the instrument takes an honest lifetime of study. I used to practice 3 hours per day plus rehearsals and lessons, as a minimum maintenance routine. In college, I’d be so exhausted from a full course load plus studio hours that I’d fall asleep in the practice rooms and the security guards would wake me and kick me out.
I’ve worked through sickness and physical pain. That toughness was bred into me by the violin. The discipline it took from me for 20+ years, all the way through college, gave me the focused determination it takes to be ok with writing songs by myself for hours and working on my own as a solo artist. Once I'm in the zone I don’t break focus.
Bluegrass music was the heart of my granddad Given’s family. He was my mothers’ father and my favorite person in the world. He had a bunch of brothers (8 I think?) and they would play barn dances all over Alabama when he was in his youth. They were a poor sharecropper family that moved around a lot. They relocated to Florida to pick fruit after the Great depression and brought music with them. These men were wizened and gray by the time I came along, but the family kept a weekend tradition of playing bluegrass music in the round out in my grandparents front yard in Eustis on many a weekend day. From the time I was small they’d shove me to the middle with my tiny violin and eventually I got the hang of following chord progressions by ear and I’d play along. By the time I was grown I could hang pretty well, although I don’t think I’ll ever be as fast a guitar picker as any of those guys were. So improvisation is a skill I learned from them that I use all the time.
Indie rock was a world I found in college that became a haven from the intense structure of classical music. It’s where I got to experiment with sounds and try to make something new that I hadn’t heard before, which (as a student of mostly dead composers) was life-giving for me. My professors did not approve of my moonlighting as a wild electric violin indie gal, so I mostly hid my recording sessions and live shows from them. In my own band after college, I really leaned into experimenting with chord progressions and melodies that maybe didn’t make sense from a logical perspective but I was reveling in the rebellion of trying things. The aesthetic aspect of indie was appealing to me as well, since I’d spent my entire professional life in concert black. Took me a LOOOOONG time to wear all black by choice after I left classical music. Hahaha I was so bored with it.
Let’s discuss your newest single, “The Way Down.” The word on the street is you wrote this song half asleep. Is that true?
Kind of? I was delirious, for sure. I’d flown up to my friends' studio in Virginia very early on the morning of the day our session started and I think I’d been awake about 23 hrs straight when we decided to call it quits with tracking. We sat outside with a bottle of wine and I scatted along to chords Bryan Elijah Smith was picking. He’s a total night owl, possibly a vampire, so he was quite lucid. We bantered over the chords, got it set and I scat sang the whole song in a pretty short amount of time and then told him I was DONE for the day. No lyrics from me that night.
Then he said something to the effect of, Hhhhmmmm, let's listen back. It sounds like you’re saying words already to me.”
Then he patiently transcribed the lyrics from our voice memo and boom. It was all there. I just had no idea what I was saying because I was so tired. I think that’s one reason the words are so raw and dreamy. I had zero intention with the lyrics. It was a pure expression, in the moment, of what I was feeling.
Following a successful multi-year stint with your indie rock band, Pemberley, in the early-mid 00s you took a nearly decade long break from touring to raise your family. As you’ve re-entered the industry over the past three years, surely you’ve noticed changes in the landscape of the music industry. What are some of the contrasts of being a working artist now versus then?
People used to go to shows on the weekend, without really planning too much ahead. It was like, “Hey, let's go see what’s happening at New World tonight” or “I think there’s a show at Will’s Pub, let’s drive up and see who’s playing." Obviously, the pandemic is one thing that’s changed ALL of it but before that, I’d say the crowd usually comes now to see a specific artist, rather than just going out to experience live music and see where the night may take them.
It’s not a positive/negative thing, just different. When you’re an artist that is brand new to the scene, or in my case back in 2019, an artist with a new project that people don’t really know yet, crowds are just smaller. The flip side of that conundrum however is a positive. The people that come to see you, are there for you. And that's really cool. Listening rooms are also a relatively new concept that’s taking hold of the singer-songwriter scene. They tend to be smaller rooms but with a very intentional atmosphere that’s focused on the music. When it’s just you and a guitar, having a quiet attentive room makes a huge difference in the performance experience. Plus they're small enough that you can hang out and talk to just about everyone throughout the course of the evening, and so it’s more relational that way than playing in a really noisy bar type setup. Listening rooms were not a thing back in 2008, that I know of.
Describe yourself as an artist in three quotes:
“You're not a rock 'n' roll person four hours a day or even when you're on stage. It's become the rhythm of your whole life.” Patti Smith
“All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate…I choose love.”
- Johnny Cash
“The line of words is a hammer. You hammer against the walls of your house. You tap the walls, lightly, everywhere. After giving many years’ attention to these things, you know what to listen for. Some of the walls are bearing walls; they have to stay, or everything will fall down. Other walls can go with impunity; you can hear the difference. Unfortunately, it is often a bearing wall that has to go. It cannot be helped. There is only one solution, which appalls you, but there it is. Knock it out. Duck.” -Annie Dillard
So, officially you’ve said you’re releasing singles this year, but…..on more than one occasion in interviews you’ve mentioned two different projects you’re working on. Can you tell us more about that? Are we to expect an album coming down the pipe this year?
I can affirm that yes, I am working on two different projects for Van Plating. These singles I’ve released thus far were originally going to be stand alone singles produced by Bryan Elijah Smith, but I couldn’t stop writing (I’ve probably written 50-60 songs in the last year) and the alchemy is so good in the studio that we went ahead and kept working. We’re a little over halfway through a full length album.
“The Way Down,” will end up being the title track from that record. TBD on a release date for it, because I don’t know and I’m my own boss, so I get to decide, haha. I’m feeling things out as I go this year.
The other project, also a full length, is a totally different concept. A batch of 10 songs produced in a very intimate setting here in Lakeland. It will have full instrumentation but not necessarily the alt-country style full band with drums set-up that you’re hearing in “Bird On A Wire” and “The Way Down.” I’m co-producing with friend and artist Michael Mcarthur, and we are recording everything live, no click track, no editing, unaltered and raw takes for every instrument and every song. Really intimate vocals and interpretations. The instrumentation varies but it will have a mixture of strings, piano, guitars, percussion, it's kind of my Fetch The Bolt Cutters moment, though I tremble to say so because Fiona Apple is a demigod. Some moments could remind the listener of Ethan Johns’ work for Ray Lamontagne’s Til The Sun Turns Black, but significantly messier, because it’s me. I’m really excited about it. That record will be called Dirty Frame, unless I change my mind.
We’re lucky enough to also be able to share the newest video from Van Plating. Watch below and then follow this talented artists on all social media platforms.