YMC: So first of, just tell us a little bit about the tour – where have you been going, what are you doing, what are you excited to see?<\/strong><\/p>\nAlexz: Oh my gosh, well I was on tour, I think 7 months ago; I toured across the states – and at first I thought it was a little soon to get back on tour again but I also felt like it was good timing too because I had launched this \u201cpledge campaign\u201d for my next record and so we were hitting some of the same places, but about half of the tour is new – it\u2019s been great so far – this is our 5th stop;<\/p>\n
We were in Charlotte last night, and that was my first time playing there, and the night before that we were in Virginia and the night before that was Philadelphia, and we started in New York.<\/p>\n
We just drove 6 hours this morning.<\/p>\n
the band is awesome, I\u2019m co-headlining with Charlene Kaye who I met in the Rockwood scene in New York – she\u2019s a super talented, fierce musician and I respect her a lot. We just kind of hit it off and we thought, \u2018why not just go on tour?\u2019<\/p>\n
We had Misty Boyce, who is in my band, and Jay (Stolar) and we just kind of came to be – we found the right musicians and we\u2019re sharing each other, in a sense, and it worked out really well.<\/p>\n
YMC: Well we\u2019re from Nashville so we really respect songwriters and artists and we know that your write most of your stuff, so just tell us a little about your process – some of your favorite co-writers, etc.<\/strong><\/p>\nAlexz : I write a lot alone and feel like that\u2019s the evolution of myself. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m very close with my brother who is a songwriter and I find that when I write stuff on my own it\u2019s very folky, and I don\u2019t use my voice as much because I\u2019m not great at guitar – so I\u2019ll try to put something together – I\u2019m quite fearless with writing, I feel, so I love when I just can get in the studio with a producer who just let\u2019s me do what I want to do. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m very into production and logic and I\u2019m very passionate about rhythm and beat and, for example, with \u2018Running With the Devil,\u2019 we play it on stage acoustic but it was written with a beat track and I free styled the song, which is weird because it\u2019s kind of a mix of rap – but I love guitar so much, and it\u2019s a folky song.<\/p>\n
\u201cSkipping Stone\u2019 I actually wrote with Jimmy Robbins, who lives here in Nashville, and he kept playing this (beat) on guitar – and I was like \u201cJust keep on doing that\u201d and in one take, it just came out – and I listened to it back, and I was writing what I was saying, and it just became \u2018this song\u2019 – it was cool<\/p>\n
But you know, it\u2019s different every time; I\u2019ve also been in a room with like 18 gangster rappers throwing down some Mary J Blidge and I\u2019m like\u2026 \u2018this isn\u2019t quite my sound\u2026 but\u2026 <\/p>\n
so it changes <\/p>\n
YMC: So you mentioned your Pledge Music Campaign earlier – what\u2019s it like be an indie artist now and getting involved with your fans<\/strong><\/p>\nAlexz: Well I came from a major label world at a very young age. It didn\u2019t happen easy, but it kind of did – I got a record deal and I was like \u201cCool!\u201d and I was writing all this music in my basement with my brother, and he\u2019s a lot older than me but he\u2019s like \u2018okay, we\u2019ll do music together.\u2019 He\u2019s like the coolest guy in the world, even to this day, I can\u2019t believe he wanted to work with me. So, we started doing music and I ended up getting a record deal and I included him in on that process and I split the advance and I got to pick my producer.
\n
\nYMC: If you could colab with any artist, who would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\nAlexz: That\u2019s a tough one, Sting would be amazing, Peter Gabrielle, Gotye would be rad.<\/p>\n
YMC: If you could take anyone to \u2018the back of the room\u2019 who would it be? <\/strong><\/p>\nI\u2019d say likeee, Javier Bardem, or Daniel Day Lewis.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This interview covers stuff like how the current tour came together, songwriting, and her PledgeMusic campaign. Source We got to sit down with famed actress turned artist, Alexz Johnson as she headlined her second Canadian\/American tour; a series of independent shows stretching from Toronto to California. Fueled and funded by the demands of her fans, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[302,570,744],"class_list":["post-4897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-interview","tag-spring-tour","tag-young-music-city"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Pf1c-1gZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alexz.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}