Noe Venable

By Alex Teitz and Karen Weis

Noe Venable is far from typical, but close to extraordinary. She tours as a string trio, Todd Sickafoose on bass and keyboards, and Alan Lin on violin. She has been nominated for the California Music Awards Singer-Songwriter Category having her compete against Aimee Mann and other signed artists. She finished a tour opening for Ani DiFranco this spring and is now on the road again.

Her album Boots is unconventional and compelling. Her music draws the listener in and holds them in its embrace from the first track to the last. Venable gave FEMMUSIC her insights about the album, and about the recording process. For more information visit noevenable.com

FEMMUSIC: Could you describe your songwriting technique?

NV: Well, I don’t really have a songwriting technique. I think if I did I probably…to me, what’s exciting is that it changes all the time. Sometimes I overhear something on the bus, and that turns into a song, or see something on a street sign. Or sometimes it’s more of an emotional purging, but it really changes all the time. Sometimes they come in dreams, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I just hear something in my head and write it down. Yeah.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making Boots?

NV: Um, well, we made that record in my living room, so there were a lot of, a lot of challenges. (laughs) Most of them were very simple worldly things, like outside my window there’s this fountain, this horrible fountain that is SO loud that it’s just on all the time. And the fountain goes on at, like, 10 in the morning and it goes off at 10 at night. So we would a lot of times try to do our recording before 10 in the morning, and sometimes after 10 at night. So we were forced to keep these really odd hours, and go to other people’s living rooms, the living rooms of everyone we knew. It was kind of like being a field recorder in a lot of ways. But that was a really exciting thing too. Everything that we used was totally portable, so we really could just kind of pick up shop and just move somewhere else, and being different places always brings out different things. You know, when you’re doing recording. But for me the process of making this record was really natural. It was really organic. And I didn’t go into it with any conceptions about even what the record was about, and then as we started recording these songs, it just became so clear, it almost started to seem like a thematic record, just the way that things came together. So the biggest challenge was just actually doing the things that we had in our heads, because our circumstances were so challenging. (laughs) I mean, we made this record…my budget for the recording of this record was probably like $2,000 and you know, that was the cost of buying the Roland recorder that we used.

FEMMUSIC: What was the best experience making it?

NV: Let’s see, I think probably for me the most exciting this was the moment when it coalesced, the idea of the record coalesced and it became clear to me what it was about. The song “Boots” I actually wrote about halfway into the recording process. We worked on this record for a year. And writing that song, I remember I suddenly had this feeling like, “Oh my god, this is it! This is like the leading song of all the songs. This is the song that sets up everything else!” But it seemed so sort of shocking to add that so late in the process, to decide, “This is it! Here it is!” But ultimately we just went with it. That song became sort of the heart of the, at least the opening of the record. So that was really, really exciting. And also, it was very rewarding to..when we started this process, I didn’t know the difference between a condenser mic and a tube mic. And now a year later, I’m a total nerd in all of that. (laughs) People call me to ask me questions. I did so much research, and I’m absolutely in love with the magazine Tape Op. I just, I love it. Discovering recording, this was like a process of falling in love with recording. I’ve made records before, but this is the first time I’ve ever had so much time to really explore and that I’ve been so much in the…it was Todd who really produced this record, but I was really right there the whole time, making a lot of decisions. So it was really great to experience that process and realize that the technical aspects of it are also really exciting. So much of this record came from just making sounds, really. Sounds that we really don’t know how we made. Playing with analog synths, and twiddling knobs until some cool sound came, and then that was the thing that made the song just, POOF! light up.

FEMMUSIC: So do you think you’re going to be producing more of your own or other’s as well?

NV: I don’t think that I really have it, I don’t think I’m really a producer by nature. But I do think that this is really going to affect my songwriting in new way. It’s hard for me now to just sit down with a guitar and write a song. I feel like I want to write songs in a different way, like I want to write songs in a less linear way. I want to cut and paste things more. Like in terms of actually writing the song structurally, I want to be able to cut and paste and make sort of collages, you know? It’s really different then sort of sitting down and just writing something. When you are maybe writing on something like a Roland where you can stack tracks so you come up with some tape loop off a record and then repeat that over and over and then you’re singing over that, and then if it becomes clear what the chorus is supposed to be but that’s a bunch of flutes that you put together, you sort of paste things. So I think it might push me in that direction. But I don’t think that I would be a good producer. I’m sort of too detail-oriented you know, and too story-oriented, and too content-oriented. (laughs) Like I make terrible setlists. My setlists are always made to tell a story so it’s cool in one way, but I might have 5 songs that are all a tempo of 76 in a row, or they’re all in the key of D. So I have help making setlists. (laughs) However Todd is really…it’s another thing that was really exciting about this process. It’s exciting to collaborate with someone who is just every day discovering new gifts that they have. It’s just really neat. I think that he is definitely go on to produce a lot of things. I think so.

FEMMUSIC: Where did you meet Todd?

NV: I met him in L.A. He was a bass player of a friend’s band, and I stole him. (laughs)

FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to change about the music industry?

NV: ONE thing? That’s a very hard question, and it’s a very interesting question, because there are so many things I could say in response to that question that would reveal how jaded I am in certain ways, how many experiences I’ve had of people sort of coming along and promising me things which then happen. But the thing is, I’m not jaded anymore. So it’s a funny question to answer. Like I don’t really… in some ways, I don’t really care about the record. (laughs) I mean, I know it’s a route that people can take. Most of the people that I know who have taken that route have been chewed up and spit out again. But the reason that that’s happened to them is the same reason…to me, it’s just preposterous to go and try to…Your art is the most sacred, precious thing, and to go and bring that and put it at the feet of people who you would not trust to walk your DOG, weird, slimy people…why would you do that? What do you EXPECT when you do that?
For me, it just comes down to the fact that I listen to the radio and it’s so boring. Like I’m never bored, you know? I’m not a bored person. I’m a pretty over stimulated person almost all the time. But it only takes turning on the radio for 5 minutes to just make me be bored out of my skull. So I kind of have just departed from that realm, you know? I can imagine meeting some kindred spirit…if I met some kindred spirit in the record industry, I probably would have worked with them. That could be a cool thing, to meet someone you relate to. But the chances are so slim, you know? And once you meet that world, and step into the realm of Tape Op, the realm of people doing things in their living room…
I ‘m a part of this scene in San Francisco, and there’s a whole lot people who are really passionate about music, and all of us are pretty over the concept of making it in any traditional sense at this point. We just make our records. Everyone is releasing these records. Some of these records are the best things I’ve heard. And no one hears them! And it’s kind of like, at this point I’ve accepted that this is a really chaotic world, and a chaotic time. And in some sense the art that we’re making, me and these other people who do this stuff in local scenes and sort of do our own touring and just go around, in some sense it seems this art was made in chaos and it’s probably going to stay in chaos. And that’s not like the greatest tragedy in the world. Much worse things have happened. I guess I just, yeah, I don’t have any ideas about what I’d change about the record industry because the whole thing is so warped, and so bizarre. And as soon as you start looking at it that way, it seems preposterous. The whole thing seems like a joke. You look at Rolling Stone. You look at the people who are really, really famous, and you don’t even feel like…it doesn’t even MEAN anything. Of course obviously this doesn’t mean I don’t want people to be able to hear my music, because I really do. I passionately do. I make songs with everything that’s in me, with the best that’s in me. Of COURSE I want people to hear them. It makes me happy if something means something to someone. But I don’t really think about the record industry. (laughs) That was a long answer. That was a hard question.

FEMMUSIC: Who do you listen to?

NV: I listen to, god, so many people. In terms of songwriters, primarily to the greats: Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Jacques Brel I’m really into. And I love Jeff Buckley. I love so many songs. And recently I’ve just discovered Sparklehorse. And that guy Mark Linkous is just absolutely one of my favorites. I think he writes some of the most wonderful lyrics ever. And I’m also way into Radiohead, but I’m always a little embarrassed to say that because they’re so huge now. (laughs) Segar Rose, I love Segar Rose. I’m getting into this guy Square Pusher. He’s sort of an electronica guy. A studio nerd, makes really cool weird stuff. Ben Christophers is a great songwriter nobody’s heard of. He’s British, writes these kind of Faustian epic records. “My Beautiful Demon” is his last one, just beautiful melodies. Also I’m opening for Ani DiFranco on this tour, you know? Being asked to go on this tour is like coming full circle. Because she was one of the first people I really listened to, and I have so many of her records. But I hadn’t heard her really newest stuff. And discovering it, and rediscovering her has been so exciting. Because I feel like she’s an artist who…she’s this rare example of an artist for whom the political and the personal come together in this way where it feels, it just feels so good, it makes so much sense. It’s so organic. Not to mention the stuff that she’s been able to do, just in terms of the fact that she’s created her own empire from the ground up.
And I’m really excited about meeting these people, her and her people, and finding out what kind of a crazy ride it’s been for them. I’ve just spent this last year in my living room just recording all the time. And now I feel like I’m going to come out and see the world, and what a beautiful world it can be! (laughs) There’s a movement, you know? And I ‘m so excited to see these people. To see that maybe there is another way to do stuff. It seems to me like she’s the only person who’s been able to get to the level of meeting people that she’s gotten to without having to compromise here ideals. I don’t know, I may be wrong about that. But I don’t know anyone else.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry, have you been discriminated against?

NV: Have I been discriminated…what do you mean by “discriminated against”? Do you mean, “not had certain opportunities that a man would have had”?

FEMMUSIC: Or treated differently because you are a woman, whether it’s in clubs, whether it’s with other bands, anything.

NV: I wouldn’t say that I’ve been…I don’t know. The only times when I’ve encountered any kind of scumminess is with the industry people, has been with people who are involved with the majors. And we’re caught up in that whole Lilith Fair thing. I’ve had sort of…well here’s the thing. I for a long time…well, you heard my list of people that I admire. You know, I’m just realizing that that list was basically all men, you know? There’s a few people I love who are…I love Beth Orton, and Kristin Hersh. There’s a few female songwriters that I’m really, really into. But my whole time of writing songs, I really came at songwriting from a place that was probably more like Tom Waits than like, let’s see…well, let’s just say it was like Tom Waits or like Thom Yorke from Radiohead, in that they seem to be writing from the perspective of characters who are not necessarily them. Like Tom Waits, in his early stuff especially, he would really take on the role of various characters, like he would sing from the perspective of a prostitute, even, you know? (sings) “I’m your late night evening prostitute.” And it’s pretty funny, hearing him with his scrabbly voice singing this song from the perspective of a woman. But I always came from that realm. I’ve always felt like I’ve wanted to transcend my category. I didn’t want to write songs just as me, because “you” gets kind of boring after a little while. So I’d write about other people. I’d write about people that I saw on the bus.
And sometimes I feel that the best way to tell the truth is by taking on a different perspective. It’s funny how that is, but sometimes you can get at something very meaningful by speaking through a voice that is not exactly your own. And of course ultimately it IS your own. But so for me, I think I would have rather just not been a woman or a man or anything. I think I really just wanted to be just a purely musical spirit, you know? Sort of floating between categories. On one hand, I know that…what I’m saying is, people often try to put me in a category. I’ve often had to deal with that thing of “Oh, you’re a female singer-songwriter!” And I just never took it that seriously, you know? I’ve had people at labels before say, “You, now I just don’t know where to put you, because you’re doing this sort of woman singer-songwriter thing, and woman singer-songwriters are sort of starting to go out. We already have a woman.” But I just never took it that seriously, because I always felt like those people didn’t get what I was doing anyway. So I guess I could say I have been. I’ve certainly been put in boxes, but I don’t feel like I’ve stayed in them long. (laughs)
When someone put me in a box, I would just jump right out. And that’s one of the reasons why Boots, this record I’ve made, is so meaningful to me because it’s the first time when I’ve written a record that I really feel like is about being a woman. And it was really exciting to do that. Coming from where I come from, feeling like I would rather just not be any category, to feel like, “OK, yes I AM a woman” and all of a sudden I have a lot of songs about what that means. And to put them together into a record… guess also part of it is that if I felt discriminated against-I kind of don’t like that word, because honestly I’ve felt like being a woman has made a lot of things a lot easier for me too, you know? People like listening to women sing more than they like listening to men. (laughs) Seriously! People would rather listen to a woman. They want to look at you, and they want to listen to you. That’s kind of not what you’re supposed to say. But the truth is, I don’t feel that being a woman has kept me away from any kind of audience. I haven’t felt discriminated against by people when I go into a bar and I play. I feel like some biker at the bar is just as likely to get into what I’m doing as some person who looks like me, who’s a girl who’s in her early 20’s, you know? So I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been lucky. Maybe you just attract people who…maybe what I present…most of the people I’ve worked with…I’ve worked with Lee Townsend, he’s a producer, and these questions, they didn’t come up. It doesn’t come up when you’re working with people that you relate to. And I’ve always tried to work with people I relate to, whether they are people who nobody knows about, or people who people know about. I don’t really want anyone involved who’s going to be trying to make me do stupid things. (laughs)

FEMMUSIC: What advice would you give to someone just starting out?

NV: My advice is just write, write, write. Write songs until you’re blue in the face. Write songs until you’ve written all of your guts out on the floor into a big heap . And then go and play for anyone you can find. I mean, I don’t think that it’s an easy time right now. It’s very exciting to me that I could buy this gear on Ebay for 2 grand and then make a record in my living room. But a long time ago, I had to…it became difficult enough to keep it going, you know? Like working a day job, playing music at the same time, it’s HARD. It’s hard to make my rent every month.
A long time ago I had to ask myself the question of “what am I doing this for?” I had to come to the point where I realized that I was doing this absolutely for love and that if I was doing it for any other reasons, for attention, or for affirmation, or any of those things, a long time ago that stuff got burned away. I had to shed all that stuff. And I guess I just feel like a person starting out has to just do it. If you’re going to do it, just do it. Put your whole heart into it, and your whole soul into it. You just have to get really good. And if you get really good and really clear, then people will listen. And there’s no book you can get that can tell where to send your demo tape and make things happen for you, because some of the most talented people I know are people who you will NEVER hear of. But there’s some beautiful things in the world as a result of those people. And what else is there, really, then that? Other than making something beautiful, and sharing?