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!bring back love to the music!
AUDIO AVAILABLE NOW!
Von's been in the studio working on the "Hustler" album!
Check out some of the hot tracks from the upcoming project. These songs are not complete, mixed, or mastered--but here's a sneak preview of "Hustler" which drops this Spring!
Listen now, click the link below:
www.myspace.com/vonthesweatlodge
Von, like most soul vocalists, grew up singing in church. Since the tender age of 3, she has been fond of the voice and the effects that singing from the soul have on an audience. "It was the exchange between the speaker and the audience that I loved most," she remembers.
When poetry was simply something she occasionally scribbled in a tacky notebook tablet, singing at church was her pride and joy. She eventually joined the adult choir at 13 to lead the solo for the soul-stirring gospel rendition of "Going Up Yonder," which she travelled across the country with the choir to sing.
"My mother was in the choir, so I had to sit through every rehearsal. I knew all the words and all the harmonies to every song, but I just sang along from the sidelines and with the audience. I wanted so badly to be a member, but I was just a child still, and there was nobody in the choir my age. Then, the sister who sang that solo moved out of town, and I approached the choir director and told him I wanted to sing her part...and I did, until I left home for college. I think the church still plays a recording of that solo on their Sunday morning radio broadcast.
"I was raised in a church that uses no instrumental music. All the singing was completely a capella. I was inundated with 4 part harmony at least five days a week. Absolutely, that had an everlasting effect on me, and I am indebted to the gospel for that."
When Von rediscovered poetry during her college years, the only songs she sang were on the radio. And when she chose art over law, she never considered pursuing a singing career. "At the time I felt like, any and everybody can sing, but poetry was new and different. So I focused on poetry instead."
That was until she went to Chicago and became close friends with some vocal artists there. "I met this couple, Whamae Boayue and Olatunji White, who had formed the group 7 Deep Breaths. Never before in my life had I encountered such musical genius. I was overwhelmed by the gifts they shared and instantly inspired to sing again. Through their kinship, I learned the importance of songwriting and the crucial difference between singing a Whitney Houston song versus singing a song I'd written myself. Once I started writing songs, the music for the words would just pop in my head. And I eventually bought a keyboard to help me transcribe the music in my mind, to playback what I'd composed."
After spending six years in Chicago honing her craft and perfecting her own vocal style, Von has long reclaimed her right to sing and now performs locally in Dallas with her own band, TheSweatLodge. She is preparing for tour and recording her first all-vocal CD.
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the slave tree hymnal
The Hymnal is 12 tracks of passion poetry, spicy vocals and soul music. This eagerly awaited LP was released in Chicago in 2001. Poetry lovers had been anticipating The Hymnal since the debut of its book partner, The Slave Tree. The book and cd are a set, though often sold separately. Because the book covers critical social issues, the CD is serious--more than half of the tracks on the CD correspond with chapters in the book, and the others are thrown in purely for pleasure's sake.
ARTIST NOTE
"The Slave Tree Project is my baby. I had been featured on a few compilations before, but this was my first solo CD. I was extremely excited about its completion because the book was selling like hotcakes, and I was anxious to have the completed set.
"I started out in the studio with Kurt Cowsen on drums and Brian Bush on bass. As the studio funds started fading away, I refused to be silenced by the lack of money...so I finished the project at home in my homemade studio on the back porch--I even did the instrumentation myself. I am especially proud of the arrangements and the production. It still gives me great pride for others to listen to what was once merely in my head. Creation and manifestation are quite real and very rewarding."
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