H-Town Rock Interviews: Vanessa Peters

Born and bred in Texas, Vanessa Peters is a singer-songwriter in the vein of Lucinda Williams and Sarah Harmer who has toured America and Europe quite extensively in the past six years. Her new record, entitled Sweetheart, Keep Your Chin Up, effectively showcases her long-form, storytelling lyrical style and pretty soprano, while her backing band, a trio of Italian gentlemen called Ice Cream On Mondays, weave a skillful blend of classic country, alt-country, and folk.

How did you first get into making music? How did you make the decision to become a singer-songwriter?

It was kind of by happy accident. I have always loved to write, as I majored in creative writing in college, and I have always loved to sing, but I never really seriously considered putting the two things together. But one year, in 2001, when I was living and working in Italy, I started to play the guitar. I was alone during the month of August, when all of my Italian friends had gone on vacation, and the town was dead, with no one around. So every evening, I would just sit outside and fiddle around on my guitar, trying out chord progressions set against poems I had written.

Even then I didn't consider myself a singer/songwriter, or imagine I'd become one. I had TERRIBLE stage fright, but after I overcame that, I started entertaining the possibility more seriously, and years later, here I am.

Where did you meet the gentlemen who make up your backing band? How did they decide upon the moniker Ice Cream On Mondays? What do you like most about working, writing, playing, and touring with them?

We met in Italy in 2004. A mutual friend introduced us because he knew we had similar musical tastes. They had always played together, since they first picked up instruments at 12 or 13 years old, so it was really easy to play with them. They kind of work as a unit, reading each other's minds. That's one of the best things about playing with them - they have played forever, they have studied their craft, and they are just good at it, which makes it fun for me, and easy as well. Plus, they are freaking hilarious.

The band name has a long back story, but in short: I am addicted to gelato, Italian ice cream. Italian ice cream shops, called gelaterias, are closed on Mondays usually, which always made Monday a rough day for me. We'd often practice late into the night on a Sunday and then run over to the gelato shop, getting there at close, which was usually around midnight or 1 am, as shops close when they run out of ice cream. It was the only way to eat ice cream on "Monday." It was a joke between us that stuck.

Your new record, Sweetheart, Keep Your Chin Up, is filled with a healthy portion of familiar country and folk touchstones, but you manage them deftly without sounding derivative. Who do you personally count as your primary musical influences? Who do others say you sound like?

I love singer-songwriters - Sarah Harmer and Aimee Mann and Jonatha Brooke were my primary influences when I first started writing about 10 years ago. I love the Jayhawks, Wilco, especially Being There-era Wilco, and Josh Ritter - all of those people are amazing lyricists. Reviewers often compare me to Suzanne Vega, especially in Europe, where she is still huge, but I don't hear it, but maybe because I have never really listened to her albums. I get compared to Aimee Mann sometimes too, mainly for our lyrical similarities more than our musical ones.

In our ears, your lyrics come across as long, old-school, hand-written letters that are crafted with heart-rending detail, with each song directed at a different antagonist. Moreover, your words are filled with a variety of mythological, religious, and spiritual imagery. How do you set about composing these lines? To whom or what do you look, listen, and/or read for inspiration?

Like many of my songs, most of these were born while I was driving, or flying, or in a train. Motion seems to, well, set my thoughts in motion I guess. And I'm a big reader. I sort of absorb everything like a sponge. Since I'm a writer - I used to write short stories and poems before I started writing songs - I tend to take a short-story approach to my songs. I learned a really important lesson in one of my creative writing classes: if you aim for the universal, you will fall short. But if you aim to write really well about something you know and understand, it will become universal, because everyone will recognize something of themselves within it. So I guess I look at small things for inspiration, because the small things are usually the big things. What's that saying? God is in the details? I've heard the devil is too, but we'll go with the more positive side. Either way, the songs are in the details too.

What are you looking forward to most as you tour this new record? Where all will this tour take you and the band? What do you hope people "get" out of your music?

Well, we started in Europe and went to Italy, Germany, Holland, and Belgium. Now we'll do Texas, then go to the north Midwest - Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, that area - and then back to Texas. Then we'll take a bit of a break this summer to re-charge the batteries, and then this fall, I think it'll be west coast, Canada, and the UK. Lots of miles!!

Mainly, I just hope people connect with the songs. I know they are filled with metaphors and layers and can be quite wordy, but I hope people stick with them and see what they can find inside each song. I purposely crafted them in a way that you kind of have to dig around to see what jumps out at you. I want people to hear a line and just get that, "Oh, man, she really captured it!" feeling. When people tell me that after a show or after listening the album, then I feel like I did a good job.

Vanessa Peters & Ice Cream On Mondays will be performing tonight, Friday, April 3rd, at Rudyard's British Pub.
The image of Vanessa comes from her website and was taken by Juri DeLuca.