Tess - Inspiration and Collaboration

Three months after the release of her second album, "Soul Whisperer", we publish our email chat with Tess Amodeo-Vickery. The American artist, now based in Rome, tells us the reasons behind her choices, both musical and personal.

Did you leave New York for Rome because Rome was the best place to find inspiration for your music, or because you had the opportunity to work with people you admired, or for other personal or professional reasons?

I left New York because I felt there's more to life than competition, I wanted to live inspiration and a spirit of collaboration! I hate being a number, so I came to a place where I could stand out from the crowd, and I also wanted to learn Italian, I think it's the most beautiful language in the world.

This is your second album, and I imagine there will be people who, like me, will listen to this one before the debut. What should we expect from "The Rough Soul", now that we know "Soul Whisperer?"

The title "The Rough Soul" says it all: it's a raw, rough, homemade record. We recorded it in my father's studio and mixed it in a lab out in the countryside in New Hampshire, the state where I was born. The title comes from a button I found on the train tracks outside Termini station, and I thought it was perfect for the album, because all the songs deal with the theme of healing. When a wound heals, it forms rough tissue to protect the new skin growing underneath: my heart was going through that kind of process on my first album. "The Rough Soul" was about the process of getting well, but not yet fully finished. I love it and I hope to release it for my fans at some point, because I've kept it as a sort of secret.

The sound of this album might seem quite simple on first listen, but there's actually a good number of instruments involved. How does the process of building the sound work? Did you work differently compared to the past?

That's exactly what we wanted to achieve! My producer, Agostino Maria Ticino ([de]composer studio), usually works with electronic music, so he tends to look for a single note that can create a whole world of sound. For my album, we applied that same theory to recording with acoustic instruments. In post-production, he did a lot to clean things up and minimize the layers we had built, so as to create that fresh, folk sound I wanted, but with the atmosphere of very deep, spacious tracks.

I get the impression that the main goal of your songs is to make sure the listener is struck first and foremost by the emotional impact. Have you ever had to rework a song from scratch, or scrap it because it was overproduced and that impact ended up somehow hidden?

Ha! Yes, many times, much to my producer's dismay. A famous example of my "cutting" was on the song "I Try", which was removed from the final version of the album because we wanted the record to have 12 songs — I'll release it later on. Agostino had made this really romantic, film-noir arrangement, with a muted trumpet in a Chet Baker style, but I just couldn't make myself like it. It was beautiful, but the real meaning of the song — trying to fit in with someone and losing your own light — was completely disguised by all that excess. On my last night in the Marche region recording vocal tracks, I told him to stop working on the other song we were wrestling with, at two in the morning, and to record me playing "I Try" live on a plastic guitar I'd bought at Tiger that happened to be in the house where we were working. The result was magical, and everyone who was there loved the melancholy of the empty room and the odd little guitar. Agostino still insists he's going to release that version as a remix.

I particularly like one line from the press release: "This record is modern and retro at the same time." I completely agree, and it's not so easy to find an album with these particular strengths. I'll simply ask you to say whatever you'd like about this aspect.

Wow, thank you! What a lovely compliment, and I'm really glad you picked up on what we were going for. First of all, it's modern because we made a fully electronic, computer-based recording, working with an electronic music producer and also some electronic instruments, like keyboards, electric bass and synth. But the core of the record is retro, starting with the main instrumentation – 1800s string instruments – and with the sense of naturalness I wanted to capture by recording in country houses around Italy, rather than in a cold, pristine studio. The lyrics carry the feeling of the peace-loving music of the '60s and '70s, but applied to contemporary situations from my own life, while the melodies are a combination of passages inspired by musical theatre and arrangements in the vein of My Brightest Diamond. As someone who studied history, I think it's important to use the past to shape a more informed present. If you look at fashion, for instance, new styles always draw on models from the past, and I think that winning formula applies just as well to music.

I've been writing about music since 2005, and usually I can find plenty of words to describe what I'm listening to, but in some cases it's hard, especially when the music feels honest and speaks for itself. I really think that in some cases the best way to describe music is simply to say “go listen to it,” and your record is one of those cases for me. Do you also get that feeling of “it's all in the songs, and it's so clear, what else should I say?”?

Thank you, that means a lot to me. I like to think that “Soul Whisperer” really delivers on what the title promises: an intimate conversation with the listener's soul. Music is the thing that helps me fight my darkest, most fearful moments, and it fills my life with hope, and I think music in general helps a lot of people in that way. I had friends in New York telling me “this is too honest, it's too vulnerable, I don't get it,” but I really wanted to touch people, so I had to be sincere and realistic. I accept that kind of criticism (one critic once said it was like homemade sweets), because I think the people who need to hear this record will take it in the way I ultimately intend it to be heard.

What are your shows like? Do you play solo, with other musicians, or both, depending on the occasion?

On May 12th, at the Chiesa Metodista in Rome, we put on an incredible, interactive show with 7 musicians (violin, viola, cello, electric bass/guitar, 3 guitars and drums) and live painting by my friend, street artist Ryan Spring Dooley, to give the audience a full, all-round artistic and musical experience (like in the Renaissance). I also play solo or with Trio Improvviso (violin, viola and cello), and just yesterday I played at Città della Altra Economia in Rome with Francesco De Palma on electric bass and Ambra Chiara Michelangeli on viola (1/3 of Trio Improvviso), a show that went really well. Sometimes I duet with Andrea Filippucci, my wonderful second guitarist. Playing live is fun because it's always different depending on the situation, and all the musicians literally breathe my music, since they all wrote and played their own parts on the album.

Have you already started gathering ideas for the future, or do you usually stay focused on what you've just released and on playing it live, and work on new material afterwards?

I'm always caught up in creating and imagining the next project, in a very free and relaxed way. My iPhone is full of melodies and fragments of future songs. I have two songs (“I Try” and “Anais Nin”) that were cut from the album and that I'd still like to release. I really enjoyed working on my voice and doing an a cappella recording on “What Is The Journey,” so that's something I'll want to work on more in the future, and I think it will help me work faster, since I tend to direct my band with my voice, given my lack of formal musical training. Whatever I do in the future, I can tell you it will always be an honest part of my journey, just like “Soul Whisperer” and “The Rough Soul.” And I'll probably have to fit the word “soul” into the title somewhere!

Photo by Matteo Casilli

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