Interviews

Veda

Interview with Brian Little on Jul 24, 2005 by Archive Bot

Veda basically came out of nowhere (Missouri), and is currently catching music fans completely off guard with their powerful female fronted rock sounds and all-star tour plans.  Their album, “The Weight of An Empty Room” drops in stores on Tuesday, July 26th and they’ll head out on the road with progressive rock aficionados, Dredg shortly thereafter.  Guitar player Brian Little chatted it up with punkbands.com’s Katie Ellsweig while driving.  Just for the record, Missouri welcomes people to drive around on their cell phones and crash into things while other states like New York happen to frown on that behaviour. Regardless, Brian had some interesting things to say about the record, touring, and “My Girl.”
 
Katie: The album drops on Tuesday, and already it’s almost like your name is plastered everywhere. What’s the reaction been like so far and now that you can finally sit back and listen to the record, how do you feel about it?
 
Brian: Well, to answer the first question, the response has been great from the people that have written reviews and stuff.  We haven’t had a ton of response other than from people at shows of course e-mailing us and telling us what they think. Our record is out Tuesday and I’m anxious to hear what they think after that. I love listening to our record now, I think it’s really a step forward because if you listen to what we had on our EP compared to the new songs, I feel like we’ve really grown as a band and I can hear that. When we’re together I can feel that and I think it’s really amazing. I don’t think we could have done a better job; it’s perfect for where we are right now.
 
Katie: Veda means “Knowledge.” What kind of knowledge do you want to convey in your music?
 
Brian: Knowledge of being open minded. Knowledge that there are other things and other people around you. I don’t know, it’s just kind of a broad perspective of just accepting everything for what it is. 
 
Katie: Is that what you had in mind when the band got its name, or was there another reason for Veda?
 
Brian:  When we named the band, we were in another band and while we were driving back from someplace we were looking through this book and saw the word “Veda,” which meant wisdom and love and things like that. Also, Kristen really liked the character of Veda from “My Girl,” because she’s very mysterious but also very good hearted at the same time and I think that just encompasses who we are and who we would like to portray.
 
Katie: So you’re pretty big “My Girl” fans?
 
Brian: I love the movie! It’s just something we all agreed upon. We all like that movie, we’ve never actually watched it together. I think I like the actual character of Veda more than I like the movie itself.
 
Katie: How did the tour with Dredg fall together?
 
Brian: Nick, our manager, pulled some strings I think. We just signed onto a booking agency but this was kind of through mutual friends. We went on tour with Mewithoutyou and they’re a main support for Dredg right now, so I’m not sure but that may have had something to do with it. They’re great guys and we can’t wait to get out there with them and see what they’re like. They sound like some of the most talented guys around. The tour is about six weeks long.
 
Katie: Any places you’re more excited to see than others on this tour?
 
Brian: Well besides going up to New Jersey for Bamboozle, we haven’t been in the Northeast at all, so I’m really excited to go there and see what it’s like.  We’ve been west a few times and the response has been really good but people say that the east coast is very different from the west coast, so I’m excited to see what it’s like. I’ve actually never been to New York City.  A lot of cities to me these days are represented by the venue, and if we like the venue we say that’s a good city.  There’s something cool about every city we’ve gone to though.
 
Katie: Do you think it’s been easier or more difficult to gain notoriety with a female vocalist in a genre that’s dominated by male singers at the moment?
 
Brian: I think it probably goes both ways. As far as getting people’s attention I think it’s easier because if a girl gets up to sing I think it calls attention to us, whereas maybe if it was just another guy singer, people wouldn’t pay attention at first. As far as notoriety, we’re under more scrutiny because she is a girl singer. People want to listen because they want to make their own judgments on it. I’m so confident in Kristen’s performance every single night and I hope it draws more attention for people to ask about it and wonder what it’s like.
 
Katie: Why do you think it’s such a struggle?
 
Brian: I think it’s like anything that women have done. I think it’s something that they have had to overcome. It just how it’s been in history, and I think it’s amazing in the business world for example how women have really gained so much in the past twenty years or so and I think that in music too, it’s just following history. A lot of women are coming into it now and playing in rock bands and fronting groups, things they hadn’t really done before.
 
Katie: There’s been a lot of comparison to Denali.  Whether you really sound like them or not, how do you feel about comparing one band to another?
 
Brian: That’s funny that you mention them, our manager Nick was their manager before they broke up. I think he’s somehow still affiliated with them. It’s weird for us with Denali because we didn’t even listen to them until someone had said we sounded like them. There’s something that I didn’t totally like about them. We get associated with a lot of bands just because we have a female singer. People look at us and don’t really look at the whole entire band, they just look at the face value: a female singer.  Musically, I don’t think we’re anything like Denali. I think some of the guys in that band are in Inches Down also, which is an amazing band.
 
Katie: What’s the music scene like in Kansas City, where you’re from?
 
Brian: We all went to the same high school, Blue Springs High, about twenty minutes east of Kansas City Missouri.  Right now, the scene is awesome. The local music  scene has been getting so much help from the local radio station, 96.5 The Buzz.  They actually have a local show every week for an hour where they play only music from local bands and they sponsor all these events that local bands get to play.  They had a festival last month and we opened for Weezer, Cake and Story of The Year. There were about fourteen thouand people there and it was such an amazing opportunity for local bands.  It helps out so much because a lot of local bands are really amazing and just never get to be in front of an audience.  That station has been so great to us, they even put us in full rotation…like in drive time.  We couldn’t believe that would even happen to us because I know that if you want to launch a radio campaign for a band it’s a lot of money.  All the DJ’s have been really supportive of our band and just of music in general. I can’t thank them enough.
 
Katie: You mentioned that you went to school for business. Did everyone else also do their own thing and how did you end up playing in a band with a business degree?
 
Brian: We’ve all done different stuff.  Kristen went to Belmont University in Nashville for music business and after a year she decided to come back to Kansas City and did some fashion related stuff.  Jason went to a community college and my little brother is 17 and he’s still in high school.  I don’t know exactly what he’s going to do after school.  We’ve always been playing in bands. I graduated college simply because I didn’t have a band at the moment that was actually doing something. We probably could have toured earlier but I wanted to finish my last semester and get it all done with. We’ve been doing this since then.
 
Katie: Can you see yourself doing something with it?
 
Brian: In some way shape or form, yeah.  We’re going to ride this band thing until someone tells us we can’t do it anymore. I’m sure that’s going to happen some day, it’s inevitable and at some point it’ll happen.  I’ve always liked numbers for some reason and finance is something that just made sense to me. It was easy enough for me so I just did it. I would like to do something music related but I haven’t really thought too much into it because we’ve been so focused on getting this band focused. I want my job to be playing music. We all have jobs when we come back home, so touring isn’t our full time job yet.  We want to get to the point where we won’t have to have jobs when we come back home.
 
Katie: What kinds of other jobs do you have?
 
Brian: Kristen works at a women’s boutique down here. She does some fashion design stuff there. Drew works at a skate shop back home, Jason works for Sprint PCS althought I think they may have had to let him go because he’s on tour so much.  I work at a daycare center back home and they’ve been nice enough just to let me come back and work when I get home, so I get to see the kids when I come back, it’s awesome.
 
Katie: So what are the plans for after the Dredg Tour? Is there any new material in the works?
 
Brian: After the Dredg tour, we have three weeks off and then we start a six week tour with Thrice and Underoath. I don’t know what we have planned after that but we’ll probably get back on the road. As far as writing goes, Kristen and I have already written a couple of songs by ourselves but we haven’t had enough time to sit down and all work everything out right now.  I think it’s important that we keep riding this wave while we’re here, we just put out our record and I want people to always have new music.  It’s frustrating for me when I really like a band, like the Foo Fighters, and they come out with a record every two and a half years, but at the same time when they do some out with a record it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.
 
Katie: What’s the deal with touring drummers, why isn’t Andrew out on tour?
 
Brian: He’s still in high school.  If we’d have thought that we’d be touring this much in our bands’ career, he probably would have tried to get out of his last semester at school. He just didn’t plan that in because we didn’t think we’d be doing this or trying to be full time yet.  It’s moved pretty quickly and so he’s got to go back and get school done with, I think that’s important for him. It’s one thing to put off college but you have to graduate high school.  If you don’t, it makes it just so much harder for you and you’ve got to be really determined to get it done. You never know what might happen and you’ve got to have a backup for everything. Our touring drummer is a friend that we’ve known for a long time. Our first touring drummer, Sam is now drumming for a band called Open Hand. Jason, our current drummer is from Kansas City and he’s one of the most solid guys around. He’s an amazing dude and a solid drummer. It’s like having drew there without him actually being there.