Interview: V Torres
For singer, songwriter, and musician Veronica Torres, who goes by V Torres, music was a part of her life from a young age. Born and raised in the coastal suburbs of Southern California, her parents, although not musicians themselves, loved music and exposed her to a wide of array of music and musicians growing up. Influenced by artists such as Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Steely Dan, and Hank Williams, JR, to name a few, she started playing guitar and writing songs at the age of 10. Throughout her career, she has constantly experimented with various sounds, from singer-songwriter, rock, alt-rock, grunge, and americana, continually evolving as an artist. Her life experiences, whether playing basketball in high school, working in the corporate world as an accountant, becoming a yoga instructer, or getting a divorce in 2017, have deeply influenced her perspective and outlook on her music and life in general.
Her new album Woman was released on September 1st, an album she co-produced with her longtime musician friend and collaborator Steve Aguilar. The album marks her first time producing, an experience that allowed her creative freedom over the sonic direction of the record. She also allowed herself the time to truly perfect the songs without succumbing to the pressures she might normally put on herself to always be releasing something. Woman contains 7 songs that span the last decade of Veronica's life and encompass themes of grief, loneliness, hope, and healing. Recording the album was a transformative process in which she learned a lot about herself. She released three singles ahead of the release- the title track "Woman", "Winter Solstice", and "That Night", songs which she feels showcase the dexterity and different sounds of the record. V Torres will be playing at The Mint in LA on September 9th, opening for Sue Foley, and giving fans a chance to experience the record live. You can follow and stay up-to-date on all upcoming news, music, and live shows via the following links. You can buy her new album HERE or pre-order the vinyl HERE. Photo credit: Lukas Palatinus.
You grew up in Southern California and were deeply influenced by the music your parents played growing up. What can you tell me about your childhood and, despite your parents not being musicians themselves, how their love of music inspired you to want to start playing?
Yeah, they weren't musicians, but my dad did have a very old guitar in the closet that he never really played. They were definitely lovers of music, so from a young age I think...I really think that the music you hear when you're a little kid sits in your soul and stays with you. It just has so many memories behind it. For me, when they would put a record on, like in the evening when we were cooking dinner, it was them kind of bickering about who gets to play the music they want to hear. There were a lot of singer-songwriters on my mom's side, like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Leon Russell, and my dad was more of the psychedelic guy, listening to a lot of Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix. So, it was just a cool, eclectic mix of music. I think music is healing. As a young kid, I would notice how music changes the mood and vibe of how everybody feels and just puts everyone in a better place. So, it kind-of stuck with me and I always was obsessed with it and wanted to play the guitar. That was my main thing. Guitar music really got me, so I asked my parents to get me a guitar when I was young and I got one when I was about 10 years old. I started taking lessons and really got into it and started writing songs. That was my escape and freedom and alone time and was really a beautiful thing to have as a younger person. I really do appreciate my parents for setting the tone.
What were those early days of playing like for you, playing open mic events in high school and then more popular LA venues in college? How do you think that helped to shape you as an artist and to "cut your teeth", so to speak?
I picked it up when I was young and then I kind-of put it away because I really fell into...I was an athlete and played basketball. Winning state champion in basketball was a really serious thing for me growing up. After high school I was going to continue playing in college, but I had just hit that level of burnout, even at that level, where I needed a shift. So, when I stopped playing, that's when I really started picking up the guitar again. You know, you have your life filled with this rigid day with sports and being involved with that. When that goes away, you're kind-of like "Wow. I have a lot of free time. What am I going to do with myself?" I really started getting back into the guitar and started playing a lot of open mics, and from that came offers for gigs. It kind-of put me in this rhythm of writing a lot of songs, and I think at that point it was more of exploring the idea that I'm writing songs but what is my sound and what is all this and what does my voice sound like. I think that's a journey I've been on my whole life, and it's been neat to see it finally come to a place now. But back then, it was like, I grew up in Harbor City, which is a little bit inland from the beach. Not too far-like 6 miles away. I was really heavily influenced by beach rock and some punk music, and so a lot of my songs are kind-of like this beachy rock music-me and an acoustic guitar. It soon started unraveling from there. I got bands and people playing in my band and it started becoming it's own thing. It was a neat journey to see how that grew from, like, a singer-songwriter sound to more of a rock band sound and then I started a different band that was more of, like, an alt-rock band. It's interesting to see how many different genres you can play and write for and just have that expand throughout your career.
Looking back, do you feel like the time you spent playing sports and away from music a bit helped shift your perspective on music and life in general?
Yes, I do. I think playing sports, even at that level of being in high school but still getting to that state champion level, it's so political and turns into more of a business. It teaches you a lot about life at a younger age and shows you how some things aren't fair, no matter how hard you work, and that maybe you aren't the one who's going to be playing that game because the coach's daughter is in that seat, or whatever. I think it gave me a lot of perspective of the way the world works and that is a very similar lesson in the music industry and anything you are doing like that. On the flip-side of that too, is playing on a team and being involved with a band and how much those go hand-in-hand, as well. And working with other players, in this common goal of creating something, it's more related than you think. I do think that really helped me understand a lot more about life at a younger age.
You've mentioned a bit already about how you started songwriting when you began to play guitar. In recent years you've started collaborating with other artists in songwriting and attended a songwriting retreat, so how would you say your approach to songwriting has changed as a result and how has writing with/for others influenced how you write for yourself?
That's been such a cool journey. I did go on a songwriter's retreat. It's been a while now...it was, like, 2017. Going on that retreat really expanded my...I did some songwriting in my old band with my guitar player, but I hadn't written with a lot of different people. Once I started to open that door and rip the band aid off of being scared and intimidated to do it, I feel like it really strengthens so much of your creativity. The stakes get lower, in a way, because it's not like it's your baby or like "this has to be the best song I've ever written." It's more of like "let's see what comes out of this." And being open to other people's ideas and then running with it and knowing that a song is both the melody and the lyrics and the structure, there are so many different pieces to it. In working with other people, you see how everybody's brain works so differently and take a little bit of that from everybody along the way. When you start writing the other stuff, you're like "Oh yeah. Maybe I can do this and maybe I can do that." It opens that tool box of where I think you would get stuck by yourself and just opens that up so you're like "oh I can maybe take from what we did here in this song." I think it is scary to do, but once you start doing it you're like "this is really fun and cool, to be creative." And also, to not worry about what happens to it. It's like, we're making something and if we want to use it we can and if we want to pitch it we can. It's a fun process.
You have spoken about the importance of being authentic as an artist, despite industry pressure to mold to their vision of how they want the artist to be. How do you stay true to yourself as an artist amidst all of that noise and pressure and were there times early on in your career where you didn't stay true to yourself?
I think, especially as a younger person in my early 20's, it was hard. You're not fully developed as a person or fully understanding who you are. I think it's hard sometimes to be able to take yourself and be like "this is who I am", because you are still learning so much. I was definitely influenced by the people I played with or people who were saying "you should dress like this or talk like that or maybe you shouldn't play the guitar as much and should just sing." There was a lot of that in my earlier days and I think I definitely got influenced by that. I didn't have my own boundaries at the time. As time went on, I just realized that I can't be anything other than myself. I can't pretend that I'm this Katy Perry type person on stage when I'm not, you know? It was something inside of me that that was like "I can't do it. I can't fake that stuff." I think staying authentic is so important now because people can see through all of it and you're not even liking yourself and what you're doing in those moments. Going through iterations of that and coming back to releasing music under my own name was really important because it was like "no, this is who I am and the music I'm making and what I want to portray because I believe in it and this is real." I think it can be hard, especially with the changes in the music industry. At the same time, I can't sit there and sell something that's not me. That's just who I am and I feel grateful that I feel that way. I definitely see things out there. I have friends who have done that. But you're never going to be happy on the flip side of that. Maybe you'll get some attention and fame, but the reality is that's not you.
Towards the end of college you started working as an accountant before focusing full-time on your music. Do you feel that working in the corporate world helped prepare you or shift your perspective on the corporate side and pressures of the music industry?
Yeah. absolutely. I think, when you are working in the corporate world, that it's a lot like the sports world in high school. You learn so much about life and politics and the way business works and the way relationships work in the office. I think a lot of that is a big reality check. When you're younger, you don't know all of those things and when you start to learn about them, and see the big corporations and how they work and how they rule the world, it's actually really real and fascinating. I think taking that knowledge into music and art and knowing that, for me, it's shifting my definition of success into sharing my art and creating art that I love rather than making it a monetarily huge thing, was a big pivot for me at a certain point. There was a point where I was like "I can't keep doing this if I'm not making money" and then it's like "then why are you even doing it? That's not what it's all about." I think that coming from the other side of the day-to-day corporate world, you see that people just make money. And that's just what most of the world revolves around. But, they're missing this vital piece in their life. Everybody loves art and supports art. It's inside of everybody. It kind-of shifted my perspective on how I wanted to live my life and make music and participate in this, because it's such an important part of art and everyday life. I think seeing the way that the world works and knowing the realities of things, it definitely put my mind into a different perspective on making it in music and what that means and redefining that successful part of music.
You'll be releasing your new album Woman on September 1st. What can you tell me about your decision to co-produce the album and what that experience was like, being your first time producing?
I feel like everything I have done in the past, like, everything is different. It's a matter of your time, budget, and so many different things. A lot of music that I have made I've loved and sometimes it's just come and we recorded it quickly and put it out quick. Or I've worked with producers where we worked on the songs, but I never felt like I was able to put something out that was exactly what I had in my head and hear it come to fruition before. So, I felt like this was the first time I was able to actually take that time and do it. Part of it was on me for taking the time, because normally I'm trying to put some pressure on myself to release something and get some stuff out there. But I was like "No! Just take a pause and a moment. Make this thing what you want it to be." Working with Steve Aguilar, who I've been friends with for 20 years, he really understood what I wanted and we spent a lot of time together trying to get that out of the songs. We did a lot of pre-production, which I have done in the past but not to this extent, to figure out what are these songs and where do they want to be. It was really gratifying to be able to work with a partner on it that had my back and wasn't trying to take over. I was able to be in at a place where I could be like "I don't want to move forward because this isn't it yet" and could go back and figure the song out. I think it's hard because sometimes you get that imposter syndrome and this was a real lesson of learning to trust my ears and that I don't need that other person all the time to do this. I can do this too. That was really awesome, to learn that process and fulfill that part of me and continue to use that going forward. I think it's strengthened my vision of music, because I know that I have good ears but it's hard as a woman and a younger person coming in. You always think "I need someone else to help me do it" and it was nice to put that away and kind-of put that away for good. I obviously want to still work with people, but knowing that I can do it is pretty cool.
How did you meet Steve Aguilar and come to collaborate with him? What do you feel that he brought to the album?
I met Steve, because he's a phenomenal keyboard player and organ player and started playing in my old band, like, many, many moons ago. He was our synth player and we just became buds and had a very similar taste in music, which I think is really important when you are working with a producer. We've always wanted to work on something together, but life happens. He's busy producing other artists and going on tour and working in the studio. It came down to, actually, in 2020 one of our mutual friends who is a musician, Kevin Sousa, he started making a record with Steve. They were working on this album and unbeknownst to me, Kevin actually had cancer and he was young. He was, like, 50. And I was going in and checking in on this process and the tones were sounding great and it was really inspirational. I was like "I need to go back and would love to go back to the studio and use real instruments and just churn out something of the new work I've been doing." I talked to Steve and said "let's start working on something", so we started working on my project as he was wrapping up Kevin's. And it's really sad, because Kevin ended up passing away. It was super awful. That actually happened on the first day we started recording drums for this record. It was just this weird, full circle moment of being inspired by their work and then starting our work. That's kind-of how it happened. Covid was going on, so Steve had more time. He wasn't gigging. So, they started working on something and I saw it and was just like "I want to do this too." We finally got back around to making this together. We had never really worked on songs together since we'd met. We were just in bands together, really.
What would you say was the message and inspiration behind the songs on your new album? What do you feel you learned about yourself in the making of the album?
Some of the songs were written earlier in this time period. Basically, I would say it's like the last 7 years of songs that were kind-of hand-picked for this. A lot of them came together in a way that was really reflective of this journey that I had been going on. I went through a divorce in 2017 and it was a hard time for me. I started a really big healing journey on myself at that time and actually became a yoga teacher and just went really deep into a lot of me. I think the songs really reflect a lot of that experience. That's why I called it Woman. I wrote "Woman" later and that song was just kind-of reflective of the roles women play and the grief that women hold onto a lot of times for different reasons, especially because there's more of a caretaker role naturally in a woman. It felt like this record was a little bit of the journey of the woman I have become today. I didn't know it was going to be a record. It just kind-of happened. And so, it's been interesting to see it all unfold that way. There are songs about grief, there are songs about loneliness. A lot of them, though, are about healing yourself and coming back to that hopefulness and openness to love again.
You released 3 singles ahead of the album- "Winter Solstice", "Woman", and "That Night". How did you decide which songs you wanted to release ahead of the album and do you feel that they are the songs that best represent the message/theme of the album?
I definitely wanted "Woman" to be a single, just because it's the title track and it feels like it's sitting at the apex of this journey, so I knew that was going to be one. I did a music video for it, as well, just because it kind-of sums up everything, I feel like. And then "Winter Solstice" I chose because it's more of a juxtaposition to "Woman". It sounds different. There are a lot of harmonies and a little bit of slide guitar and different feelings. I wanted people to see the dexterity of the record. And with "That Night", as well. That song is a little lighter and more fun. It's about being excited about the anticipation of maybe starting a new relationship with someone. I just thought those were good ones to show different pieces of this record.
Can you talk a bit about the music video for "Woman" and the idea behind it? How did you come to work with Dylan Pelle on the video and what was that experience like for you?
Dylan actually approached me. He said he wanted to make a music video in the desert and was like "I think your music might be great for it", so we started reflecting on the songs. Originally, I was thinking about doing the song "Slow" with him, but I knew I wanted "Woman" to be a single and have a music video. That song naturally, when it starts, it feels cinematic to me. It feels like you're watching an old western. Him and I wanted to express very cool elements of spaghetti westerns-the desert and kind-of old Hollywood visually. But also create images that make you feel like you don't know exactly what's happening with this woman, but there's definitely some reflection and loss and growing. We wanted to use fire as an element too to reflect the symbolism of burning your past and letting things go. He was really great to work with because he, too, really shared the vision with me and was very open to my ideas and was a pleasure to work with. It was honestly such a highlight of my year, shooting that video, because we were able to shoot in so many great locations and really get that feel that we wanted to get out of it. I just love the video so much. I'm driving that car in the video and that was probably the scariest part. The truck was, like, super old and really hard to drive. So that was a little sketchy (laughs)!
You've talked about different sounds and genres you have played in the past. Are there any sounds or genres you are hoping to explore going forward?
Yeah. I'm writing new things, and what's coming out now feels a lot grungier and heavier, but also has these moments of americana. I'm really excited to explore where this record goes. It feels like it's sitting in this newer space for me that feels, like...I don't know exactly what my genre is. I just put it under the indie rock umbrella. This is feeling a little heavier and the lyrics have a bit of a sarcastic feel and it just feels a little different. It's going to be fun to explore the next phase.
You were a theater and arts minor in college. Do you think you will explore acting and/or theater sometime in the future or maybe scoring music for film?
Yeah, absolutely. I love it so much and have been in a couple of short films. I love acting and it's always been something since I was a kid that I did and I made a lot of movies at home too. I do work in publishing a lot right now and write songs for tv shows and film, but would love to get more into the deeper space, like maybe scoring something in the future for an actual film. I think it's such a cool journey to go on. Even without words, just something instrumental, I'd love that and pairing the visual with the music. That would be something I'd definitely like to pursue more.
What can you tell me about your project Girl Crush, your vision to create an all-female music and art showcase for those who love music and creating art? What has been the response since it launched recently and what are your goals for it going forward?
Yeah, wow. Thanks for bringing that up. It's been a minute. That was actually a while ago...around 2017. I was doing some shows back then and had an all-girl band at the time that was actually an all-queer band too. It was super fun and we were putting on showcases. I'd recently kind-of taken that and...we have a studio in this town. I'm in Hermosa Beach. But we've been putting on songwriter showcases, and a lot of them have been women-focused and queer-focused and it's been kind-of a resurgence of what that was. It's been really, really well-received. Also, it's been really amazing to see a room of people just sit there and listen and take in music in a space that's geared for a listening room. I feel like most of the time, we're playing at venues or bars that are super loud, so it's just been a cool moment to curate something like that. I didn't end up doing a ton of them, but I feel like it's coming back now in this new songwriter showcase I've been putting together.
You have a show coming up on September 9th, giving people the chance to experience the new album live. What are you most looking forward to with the show and what else do you have coming up?
I'm excited for the show on the 9th, which is at The Mint. I'm opening up for Sue Foley, who's a blues guitar player from Canada. She's amazing and has actually written a book about women guitarists and women in music, which is cool. I'm excited to showcase the songs a little bit stripped down at that show, because it's more of an acoustic-driven showcase. Without having the whole band, it's kind-of fun to rework and re-imagine how I'll do this on my own or maybe with a little bit of an accompaniment. I'm working on more shows, especially for the rest of the year, just to get this out there more. So that's something I'm actively putting together now. Hopefully we'll have some more things on the calendar and just continue to get the band tight and show people this record.
Do we have time for a few fun questions?
Sure. Of course!
What do you enjoy doing outside of music?
I love going outdoors in nature. I love hiking and just spending time just doing something active outside. That's not that fun though (laughs). I like playing card games too and having game nights with friends. It's one of my favorite things.
What's the best concert you've ever been to?
Tough question! I've been to so many concerts. I would say Matt and Kim surprised me, because I didn't know their music that well. When I went to that show, it was probably one of the most fun shows that I've ever been to. They just brought the crowd into every little element of the show and I'm, like, jumping up and dancing without expectations that would happen.
What's your favorite place you have traveled to and where would you like to travel?
I've been to Europe a few times, but I would really love to go to Portugal. I've never been and have some friends who live there and have heard wonderful things about it. I'd also love to go to Spain, because I have some Spanish in me and have never been. I'd love to go explore.
What are you currently listening to?
I noticed your area code. You're in Kentucky? I just discovered S.G. Goodman, who I believe is from Kentucky, as well. I don't know if you know her music, but I've been listening to her record and I think it's amazing. I've also been listening to a lot of Hurray For The Riff Raff. They're one of my favorite songwriters and bands. S.G. Goodman has a cover of a Butthole Surfer's song ("Pepper"). I didn't know about her then and heard that cover and was like "who is this person?" and dug a little deeper and am really loving her stuff right now.
Who would you say is your favorite new artist or someone you feel is an artist to watch?
Gosh, so many people. I really love...I just played a show with them. It's an artist named TOMI. She's really amazing and is kind-of up-and-coming right now. Her stuff is very interesting. She has a country record but also has a new electronic thing going on. But everything ties together in a really cool way and I love the songwriting.
What's your favorite thing to do in LA?
I love getting up early and hopefully ditching traffic and going somewhere fun. I live in a suburb of LA. It's not far, but is, like, an hour away. I love doing a hike or going and getting some food downtown and just getting out of my little bubble and having a day trip in LA.
Do you have a favorite childhood memory?
That's a good question. I haven't thought about that for a while. I think one of my favorite memories is...my mom was a stay-at-home mom and was with us when we were really little, before school. So, before we were in the school system, we would go down to the beach and spend a day at the beach. That was always the best day.