Underground Velvet: Los Angeles-based rocker Miss Velvet spent years honing her craft in her native New York before making the move west.

“I did my first real show in a living room down on the Lower East Side,” she says. “And that really began my full musical career. I did Interlochen Arts Academy, I did Manhattan School of Music for a year. And I was studying all the classical repertoire. So I kind of started in classical music, and I did a little bit of opera. But every teacher I worked with was like, ‘This voice has a lot of depth, has a lot of nuance, and we hear a rasp in there. So I think you’re rock ‘n’ roll’.”

And so it was eight years ago that Miss Velvet fully settled into her rock ‘n’ roll journey — a journey that would take her from one creative hub (in New York City) to another (in Los Angeles).

“My husband and I spoke about it when the pandemic was going down, like in the first three months, and I think I had always had this dream of the style of music and the musicianship that I loved,” Miss Velvet says. “I know so much of it was discovered in and based out of California. The Eagles and Joni Mitchell. And my husband was like, ‘Let’s fuckin’ do it. Like what’s stopping us?’”

Despite her strong sense of loyalty toward New York, she moved west with a supportive spouse by her side and, very soon after her arrival, she met songwriting partner Esjay Jones.

“She was one of the first people my management introduced me to out here and it was like, here we go,” she says. “And so I felt like it was all bubbling up for a reason and I think whenever you are about ready to make a huge, seismic shift or pivot in your life, you always feel like it’s really heavy and powerful. Sometimes not in the best way. But I think once you kind of like push through that uncomfortableness, things can unravel in such a mystical and beautiful way. And that’s kind of what happened here.”

Jones is a celebrated and respected Los Angeles-based musician, originally from South Africa and, as it turns out, she doesn’t do anything in half measures.

“I said, ‘I want to do this like the old school bands,’” Miss Velvet says. “Like, ‘I want you to live with me and write this record with me where you’re seeing a lot of the topics we talk about. In this record are the transition of post-pandemic and motherhood to rock star, back to mother and how we navigate that, and the sexual expression of a woman, in a mature state.’ All these aspects that I wanted to come through on the record, she was like, ‘Then I need to live with you – I need to see this happen in real time.’ So I feel like that initial stage of her living with me for two and a half months and, we have a little studio downstairs, us being able to run up and down the steps and take a breather outside in nature or walk to the beach with my girls and then come back and finish writing a song, it just had this very free feeling. It translated so well on the record.”

Her whole experience has been detailed on the new album Traveler. An autobiographical body of work set to unmistakably classic rock tunes, Traveler sounds both deeply personal and wonderfully relatable. Here in L.A., she says, the rock that she loves is still alive and well.

“I feel like in L.A., rock ‘n’ roll is so alive and thriving here,” she says. “I feel like it’s pretty woven into the DNA. At the shows that I’ve begun to play here, the audience is so accepting of that style of music, and they want it. It was almost just like this warm, welcoming hug for that genre specifically, for classic rock.”

Traveler might not be a concept album in the traditional sense, but there is an overarching theme  — one of the physical journey traveled to L.A., but also the mental, spiritual element of being a traveler and the changes that can deliver in your own life.

“That’s why the title track and the name of the album is Traveler, and we explore all these themes,” Miss Velvet says. “We can all be dreamers and we can change our life, change our place, change our luck. And that’s exactly what I needed at that moment.”

The first single from the album is also called “Traveler.”

“That song really is about making the move from my previous life,” she says. “And I think not just from New York, but my single life, and moving into that next phase of being a wife and being a mother to two kids, and how I’m going to straddle that between, you know, home and on the road and being that kind of an artist. I’ve gotten a lot of young moms and older moms and parents and stuff, reaching out to me being like, ‘You know, I needed this.’ I think there’s this big stereotype of like, hey, we have kids and our life stops. And, and I think that’s what’s been so kind of inspiring, to get these messages from mothers and women that are maybe about to enter into that.”

That’s important, and it’s proof that artists don’t have to reach Taylor Swift levels of success to have a positive impact and maybe aid in the smashing of a glass ceiling or two.

“The feedback and the comments have just been really overwhelmingly beautiful and poignant,” Miss Velvet says. “I think it’s just so special when you put something out there into the wild. And I consider this another baby. I’m just putting that baby out there and people are getting it.”

There’s much more to come from Miss Velvet in 2024, including tours and more recording. Now that she’s here in L.A., this Velvet is part of the furniture.

Underground Velvet: Miss Velvet’s Traveler is out now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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