Rage Monthly Magazine

 

It was apparent even as a child that Billy Dortch had a love of the arts. In his formative years, he had a fascination with ballet and tap, as he will attest. “That was my deep dark secret that I’m glad is coming back to haunt me now. It made me fall in love with the stage. Yeah, my sister started dancing and low and behold…I wanted to join her. I actually outlasted her by a few years in the same dance studio.

 

Some of this basic training in dance is still with him today as Billy adds, “ The basics are but I think I’m really a freestyle dancer so I try not to tell people that I dance. I can just basically memorize moves very well but I don’t think I’m that great of a dancer (laughter). I like the performing aspect of it.”

 

Dortch grew up playing piano as well. Then in high school he tried his hand at acting in school plays. For such an upbeat kind of a guy, Dortch really went for the dark drama in high school. “We did The Diary of Anne Frank. That’s a nice cheerful one. We did a couple of really dark ones. I was really into the dark drama stuff. We did a scary one called Hide and Seek, which was like a live action horror film. That was fun.”

 

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From the very first minutes of listening to VV Brown, it is apparent that she is an artist to be on the look out for. Her style? You could say she is gathering the classic hooks of 1960s, creating original and new lyrics (she writes all her own songs) and creating a modern pop sound that is both a joy to hear and wildly fresh.

 

Her debut recording called Travelling Like the Light is set for a U.S. release date digitally on March 16 and in stores on March 30. Not only is she a very talented vocalist and songwriter/musician, VV Brown is also an innovative fashionista and runway-ready model.

 

Not enough? Brown is also a creative artist who is geared up to release a comic book coming soon.

 

It was also apparent from The Rage Monthly interview below that VV is grounded and intelligent about her success so far in the music industry and her plans for the future.

 

“I wish we could have a gay male country star,” says a typically irreverent Laura Bell Bundy when talking about her kinship with the gay men who helped shape her career as a singer and performer. “Until then, I’m the closest gay male country artist you’re going to find!” 

 

Turning serious, Bundy explains that the fearlessness that led her to buck Nashville trends with her new album Achin’ and Shakin’ came partly from witnessing the struggles of her gay friends to live without having to conforming to anyone else’s ideas of how to live.

 

“I understand that struggle,” she says. “I’ve never really found a place where I completely fit in, and I’m happy about that. I never needed to be the homecoming queen. I’ve always done things my own way.” 

 

Bundy is certainly blazing a path of individuality with Achin’ and Shakin’, her Mercury Records debut release. The singer-songwriter has bypassed the tried-and-true Music Row approach usually taken on country albums and instead created a bold concept album that is essentially two separate albums within one project. The album’s title aptly describes the project’s division: Achin’ is a collection of slow and sultry country songs, and Shakin’ is a group of sassy songs that are equal parts humor, confidence and attitude. It’s no surprise that the Lexington, Kentucky-born Bundy is shattering the usual industry formulas because nothing about her entertainment career has been normal.

 

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Already a music darling in the U.K., and winning rave reviews with her U.K. import in the U.S., Little Boots is releasing her record officially here in the states on March 2.

Before she embarked on a North America tour with stops both in Los Angeles at The El Rey Theatre on March 10 and in San Diego at The Casbah on March 13, she spoke with The Rage Monthly from her home in the U.K.

 

Here are just a few of her thoughts on her music career, her songwriting process and how musical expression has always been a constant in her life.

 

Little Boots: Music is something I’ve always done and always wanted to do. My mum’s got cassettes of me singing when I was 2.

 

I started playing piano when I was 5 years old. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and decided that’s what I wanted to do. I remember doing it since I remember walking or breathing (laughter).

 

 On discovering her own distinctive sound:

It really was a discovery, like you say. Before this I had been in a band and did quite a lot of different things, so I felt sort of like a blank page when I started doing the album. I felt really like an empty space and trying to write really good songs. Once you have the song or the bones of it, just seeing where I wanted to go with it.

 

The songs almost dictate what they should sound like to me—a dance sort of sound sometimes, keyboards as that’s what I play and that’s what I write on. It’s just quite organic really.