Carmen Caserta writes her life down on paper, turning it into music, and sharing it with her appreciative audience. She just released her debut album ‘The Hive’ co-produced, with renowned singer-songwriter and producer Astra Kelly. Carmen’s vocal stylings, heartfelt lyrics, and powerful performances make her one of San Diego’s favorite artists.
Carmen, lets start with you giving us a little of your life’s journey?
I was born in Santa Monica, California on May 3, 1982. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. Childhood had its challenges, but I found ways to cope, my favorite of which was collecting rollie pollies in a jar I labeled “my friends.” Adolescence was total debauchery, chaos, anger and pain, but again, I found ways to cope, namely alcohol, drugs, anarchy and music. In 2001, when I was nineteen, I moved to San Diego. Since then I’ve been working to overcome my childhood and adolescence. In 2005, when I was 23, I met my sweetheart. I also went back to college. I graduated in 2008, when I was 26. A few months later, my sweetheart and I got married. Four days after that, we moved to New York City, where I completed my first year of law school. We moved back to San Diego in June 2009, I recorded my demo EP in August 2010, graduated law school in May 2011, and released my debut album The Hive in September 2011. And here we are!
I found it interesting in your bio that you have a legal degree. Seems to be two arts at odds with each other, how does the legal mindset mesh with the artist mindset in you?
A lawyer’s task is to analyze facts, frame them in a way that supports a logical conclusion, and convince others of the validity and truth of that conclusion. The way to do this is with words; the law is all about language. As a writer and lover of words, this is one of the reasons I gravitated to law. My purpose in the legal and songwriting realms is similar in that both require me to tap into a specific experience, capture and frame that experience with perfect word choice, and poignantly communicate that experience in a way so that others, be they judges, jurors, or audience members at a show, will relate and be convinced of its truth.
The other parallel is in the performance. Both lawyers and singer/songwriters must master the art not only of the written word but also the vocal and physical delivery of those words. In both realms it is imperative to connect with and believe what I am expressing and to convey it with my voice and body in a way that commands attention. Imagine a lawyer giving a closing argument with a meek voice and a limp body, or a singer performing a song with no emotion. If I do not believe in the validity of my legal argument and express it with passion, how I will convince others of its merit? If I do not connect with the songs I write and perform, why should the audience pay attention to me? In both worlds I must connect with the substance of whatever I am expressing, I must feel it, believe it, and express it with my whole self if I want others to pay attention and be convinced of its truth. I am just beginning to learn how to do this.
Your new CD ‘The Hive’ you co-produced with Astra Kelly. The result is amazing – really fine work. How was that experience?
Thank you!! I am extremely fortunate to have worked with Astra. She has tons of experience and really knows what she’s doing. Her main role was, shall we say, “professional tweaker.” I’d write the songs, record them in Garageband, and send them to her for review. She’d make notes about vocal melody, phrasing, piano parts, etc. Then we’d meet every 2-3 weeks and “tweak” the songs as necessary. Astra knows how to chip away the excess of a song to reveal its strongest and most appealing shape. She knows how to create hooks and special little musical moments in a song. I learned so much from her. We were also on the same page when it came to choosing instrumentation and creating the right “vibe” to capture the soul of each song. Astra and I went on quite a journey together with this project. We laughed together, cried together, shared painful experiences, got frustrated with each other, and experienced healing together. And ultimately, we made a record that I think we’re both really proud of.
The album uses piano and strings, a good choice for your style. How was that decision made?
It just seemed natural to have strings. It made sense. It was clear the sounds of strings instruments together with the piano would most accurately embody the emotional souls of the songs on this record. Plus, it was essential to preserve the intimacy and emotional vulnerability of the substance on the record, so a bare, “unplugged” production approach was important.
I am taken by your open song structures. You bend, or toss out, the distinct and typical verse/chorus/bridge structures, as a songwriter what is your process? How do you come to make the arrangement decisions?
For me arranging a song is about organizing a story and an emotional journey into a logical order. (There’s that “lawyer mindset” again!) The lyrics often guide the structural arrangement. For example, the structure of “Healing the Hive” is verse/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/outro. It would not have made sense to put the first chorus immediately after the first verse because at that point in the song she is still feeling “broken, barren, dry.” She is not emotionally ready yet to “burn this whole thing down.” That readiness does not develop until the end of the second verse, when she realizes she is “still alive enough to heal these cells.” So, the song’s emotional evolution/journey helps inform the structure of the song. It is also important to me to keep things fresh and interesting from one song to the next. I am always mindful of not repeating the same structural arrangement in every song. That gets boring and redundant. Sometimes I steal from other artists and totally copy the structure of a song I really love.
Did you find it difficult to work with other musicians on the CD project? As a musician myself I could imagine the charts would be interesting, but loving the songs, it must have been a real kick.
I’ve been told there are some funky time signatures and “complex” chords on the record, but those were not informed implementations of musical concepts on my part. I just play and write what sounds good to me. The string players Marta Z and Erdis Maxhelaku are both classically trained and have tons of experience. They had no problem with the charts. Anthony Swanson came in and killed it on the bass in less than two hours, and Dale Peters was amazing on drums. When we gave the musicians specific direction, they took it and applied very well. When we said, “Let’s see what you come up with,” magic happened. Then during mixing we arranged and layered the string tracks to create dynamics and build. It was awesome.
Your lyrics seem very personal. Do you write from life experience or can it be abstract?
Yes, I write from personal experience, but it’s important to me to make the songs accessible, to write them in a way that allows listeners to project their own life experience onto the songs and read into them whatever they need to in order to have an emotional connection with them. I’m not saying I’ve never written or will never again write a totally obscure song – in fact I’ve had to work hard at making my songs less obscure and more relatable – but generally I want to give people a musical experience with which they can connect. That’s the point of sharing the music.
What makes you sit down and write?
Many forces motivate me to sit down and write. Sometimes it’s the force of a new vocal melody or a rhythm for a piano riff developing in my head. When music starts coming to me, I need to get it out. This is very much an OCD function for me: an idea develops in my head, it consumes my attention to the point where I can’t concentrate on anything else, and I cannot rest or feel comfortable until I manifest the idea. Sometimes I’ll go to the piano when I have a free chunk of time, not necessarily because I’m inspired or want to write, but simply because I want to capitalize on the free chunk of time and see if anything cool happens. The pressure of time also makes me sit down and write, like when there were only three weeks left until we went into the studio, and I wasn’t finished writing!
Your lyrics are powerful and stand alone poetry. That terrible question every songwriter is asked I will have to ask, do you write the words first?
I don’t really have a standard way of writing songs. They develop in different ways. Words come to me much more frequently, abundantly and easily than any other aspect of the music, so yes, often times when I sit down to write, I already have lyrics in hand, and I’m writing music to the words. But the music ends up informing the words; words rarely remain in the same form once the music starts to develop. Other times a piano riff or vocal melody will come, and I’ll write words to the music later. Sometimes I’ll sit down with an assortment of music and lyric ideas I’ve been collecting over time, and I’ll see if anything fits together. This happened on “Healing the Hive.”
‘Beautiful View’ I would guess was a poem that you put the Wurlitzer organ accompaniment as an afterthought. Did I get that right?
You sure did! I had the idea to put an interlude in the middle of the album. It needed to be a complete musical departure from the rest of the record. I wanted to use a particular poem I wrote several years ago. The poem is really quite sad. Astra loved the interlude idea, but she felt strongly that the lyrical content needed to carry a message of hope in the midst of a relatively dark record. I struggled with this because I really loved that poem, and it was still so relevant in my life, but I ultimately agreed with Astra that this moment on the record needed to shine light and hope. I’m really glad Astra pushed for this and that I was open enough to try. In order to find the right words and create something real, I was forced to go within and really search for genuine hope inside myself. I found some, however fleeting. So, I stole a few lines and rhythms from my original poem, and I wrote a new poem called “Beautiful View.” Astra wrote the chord progression in the studio, and I pretty much sang the melody on the fly.
Tell us what goes on in you when you perform live? Do you find it easy to connect to the audience?
I’m still such a newbie. I started writing music ten years ago, when I was nineteen, but it wasn’t until just last year that I started performing. So, it took about nine years of singing in secret before I found the courage to start walking through my stage fright. I played a couple open mics in 2005, but for some reason I couldn’t keep at it. A lot goes on inside me when I perform. I live mostly in my head, which can be debilitating in certain contexts, including performing. There are a lot of mean voices in there, and they definitely taunt me when I’m on stage. I’m working on getting out of my head and trying to connect with my body and voice. This is essential if I want to be fully alive in all areas of my life and give the fullest expression to my audience, but it can be intense and therefore scary. As I perform more and more, I am gaining more trust in the experience, and I’m having more and more moments when I’m connected to what’s happening, and I turn into the music. That’s an incredible feeling. Being able to look into the crowd and sing into the eyes and hearts of people who are giving me their energy and attention is really what fuels my performance. I love it. When this happens, yes, it is easy to connect.
You taught yourself piano, your approach is intriguing to me. Most of your songs have a piano riff as the underpinning, instead of chord progressions. The effect for me is that I am focused on the lyric and your voice. Is that intentional?
No, definitely not intentional but a totally cool result. I don’t know why piano music tends to show up for me in riff form. I’m sure it has something to do with prolonged exposure to certain musical styles that are now ingrained in me. When I sit down at the piano, my fingers just naturally play riffs and arpeggios more than block chords. This begs the proverbial “chicken or egg” question: Was I born an arpeggio, and that’s why I connect with and compose arpeggios? Or did I become an arpeggio because I’ve spent much of my life hanging out with arpeggios? In any case, I challenge myself to mix it up. The chorus in “If I” is grounded in block chords, and the verses in “Witness” are built completely on block chords, (although, there is that repeating riff…) In fact, when I started writing Witness, Astra encouraged me to try something completely different – pick two or three chords, and keep the whole thing really simple. So that song was sort of an experiment for me. I’ve never taken piano lessons, so I’ve never learned to play other people’s compositions. I think that has something to do with why I’ve developed a comfort zone or default mode so to speak. I need to take some lessons. I know once I’m exposed to different composition styles and actually learn to play them, my own composition styles will expand. I do favor variety.
In the 70s there were a lot of artists who wrote songs across a single chord drone with memorable melody riffs in the instrumentation. It was and is a technique used by folk singers a great deal. You use that well in many of your songs ‘If I’ as an example – what is the attraction as a songwriter?
I grew up listening to classic rock. Maybe the occurrence of this particular “technique” in my music is evidence of the “prolonged exposure to certain musical styles” I mentioned. But not much of what I compose is done so with some musical technique in mind. In fact this is rarely the case. I’m certainly not fluent in the language of “musical techniques.” I just know what feels right and sounds right when I play it or sing it.
A terrible question but one I must to ask. How would you describe your music?
The songs on The Hive are piano-driven, vocally melodic, dynamic and emotionally revealing. In genre terms I might describe it as heart-on-sleeve singer/songwriter indie rock. Not totally sure what that means, but there it is!
“I am lost here
Grace is gone
Sold in this sacrifice’
I had to listen to ‘Sacrifice’ a number of times. Honestly I wasn’t sure about it. . It’s written in a ‘stream of consciousness’ manner- a very free structure. But when your voice lifts there is something compelling and heart wrenching there. This one shows off your vocal strength. Well done. Tell us a bit about writing this one and turning it into a song.
Thank you! Like many of the songs on the record, this one started developing many years ago. The chorus has stayed the same since inception, but the verses evolved and changed. This song is a synthesis of several experiences for me. She struggles, but she is determined to stand steadfast.
In ‘Big Lie’ you make fascinating musical choices and wrote a ‘Big’ hook. (Sorry I had to!) Tell us how this song came to be.
This song came to me title-first. “Big Lie” popped into my head as a song concept. It wasn’t until months later that I sat down and started writing the song. It was clear from the start the chorus needed to be a big, driving chant to get the point across. This was the very first song I played for Astra. She thought the piano could be stronger and simpler. She gave me some suggestions, and I continued working on it. One day I was recording the vocal line on GarageBand to send to Astra. I was still working on the piano accompaniment, so I just needed a musical placeholder to put under the vocal line. I played what you hear on the record. When she came over to work on the song with me, she said she loved the piano. I said, “What?! I just played that so there would be some piano under the vocals!” She called it a “beautiful mistake,” and now it’s the song!
‘What’s Haunting Me’ is my emotional favorite. The arrangement and production is terrific. You make great vocal choices. I love the lyrics. What had you write this one?
I’m so glad you can relate. Trauma is a dark, cunning, insidious force. It has the power to permeate and contaminate every aspect of life. I’ve spent more time with this song than any other. It has taken many turns, shifted shapes and shed heavy skin as the years have gone by. We’ve been singing to each other; crying with each other; changing with each other; dying, awakening, crawling and rising, and trying to heal together for nearly a decade. And we’re still working on it. There is triumph and redemption in finally giving this song to others and knowing they can relate.
You mentioned ‘Healing The Hive’ let’s go back. I think the song is wonderful. To me the best crafted piece on the CD. Of all your songs this one has the most standard song structure. In that it has a defined verse and a strong hooked chorus. Then your creativity kicks in with ‘Sting Sting Sting and the cool vocal out. The lyrics are fantastic. Very nice indeed! Would you give us a little workshop on writing the song to its final cut on the CD?
This was the second-to-last song I wrote for the record. It came to me over the course of a weekend. It was an all-consuming force; I could not focus on anything else. It all started when I took out one of the very first songs I ever wrote. I thought I might wake it up and see if it wanted to be on the record, but it wasn’t happening. Instead, a few phrases in the song triggered a particular experience in my life, and that experience started channeling itself into a new song. The concept was clear, but I needed a metaphor. I tried a few things, but nothing was working. Then it hit me – honey, hive, bees. I started reading about bees and the way they function, beehives and what they’re made up of, and the process by which honey is taken from the hive. The lyrics finally became clear. I wrote the vocal melody for the verses and adjusted the lyrical phrasing to fit an old piano piece I’d written a year earlier. I composed something new for the chorus in addition to a few fillers for in between the verses. Something felt different about this song. It made me feel strong. Even through the anger and pain, what I felt most was strength and fierce determination. When I played the song for Astra, she called the end outro part “anthemic.” That was exactly what I felt. This was an anthem; it needed to be epic. We heard violin, viola, cello, bass and drums. We wanted to make the outro really special and grand. We tracked the song on the second day of recording. It was magical. The musicians were brilliant. I can still feel that almost paranormal musical synergy swirling around and bouncing between everyone in the studio that night. And I love the final cut. Every time I listen to it I feel that fierce determination. That song just gets into my skin! It moves my soul! Is it weird to be so in love with my own song? By the way, the title of the record and the concept for the photo shoot came directly out of this song.
One of the things I often discuss with singer/songwriter folks is what they think their audience sees in them and their music. There is a clear authenticity in your performance. How do you think your audience sees you as a person and as an artist? How would you like them to see you? What should they know about you?
Objection! Calls for speculation! (Haha! Just kidding.) I truly don’t know how my audience sees me as a person. My guess is they can tell I’ve been through some serious shit, and my way of working it out is through the music. I would guess as an artist my audience sees me as unique because I don’t think I look or sound much like any other artist (am I delusional?); authentic because I’m singing about real stuff; and courageous because some of the stuff I’m singing about is pretty uncomfortable and makes me incredibly exposed and vulnerable on stage. I would like my audience to see me in whatever way they need to in order to have a meaningful experience with my music. I want them to know they are an essential part of my life, I am indescribably grateful, and I cherish every moment we share.
Where will Carmen Caserta go from here?
Ha! If only I knew…
I don’t know what will materialize from one day to the next. I don’t know where this musical journey will take me. I don’t even know if I will sell the 1000 copies of The Hive sitting in boxes on my closet shelves. I don’t know if I will ever earn a living as a musician. These uncertainties are uncomfortable for me, and I am learning day by day how to live with them. If someone could tell me exactly what to do to make all my dreams come true, I’d do it! But it doesn’t seem to work that way in this industry. I need to learn to embrace and enjoy my experience in the moment, instead of living in a state of restless anticipation.
What I do know is music is my lifeblood. I am powerless over this. If I want to be fully alive and live an authentic life, I must continue honoring the music inside me. That means writing, playing, singing, recording and performing. There have been times when I put music on the back burner, and my spirit suffered a painful slow burn. I was dying. I will not do that again. So, where will I go from here? I will go to my piano. I will go within to listen for the songs. I will go to the studio to record them. I will go to the stage to perform them for anyone who will listen.
Thank you Carmen. It was a privilege. Dave and I will be keeping track of your career.
You’re very welcome. Thank You!
Carmen
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1. Big Lie Big Lie 2. Years 3. Sacrifice 4. Healing the Hive Healing The Hive 5. Beautiful View 6. If I 7. Sweet Stinging 8. Witness 9. What’s Haunting Me What’s Haunting Me 10. The Garden |
Carmen Caserta Links:
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