Singer/songwriter Anni Rossi plays at The Waiting Room

 

 

 

Do what you love.

It’s an oft-heard piece of advice that usually goes disregarded, consciously or not. But for some, like viola-slinging singer/songwriter Anni Rossi, it’s only common sense that there’s no better way to take advantage of one’s inherent gifts than to do what you love.

Tonight, at 9 p.m. in Omaha’s The Waiting Room, 6212 Maple St., Rossi will be taking to the stage songs off her latest release titled “Rockwell” and will be followed by the bands Pomegranates and Headlights.

The Daily Nebraskan spoke with Rossi over the phone about what drove her decision to drop out of college and focus her attention on songwriting and how the idea of the labor of love has crept into her songs.

Daily Nebraskan: To start off, I’ve read that your song “Machine” off “Rockwell” was written just after you had stopped attending college. What were you studying before you stopped going?

Anni Rossi: I was studying music at CalArts – basically, just composition and performance for about a year.

DN: What made you decide to do your own music only?

AR: I was in a pretty self-focused kind of a program, and I found myself skipping on class a lot to write songs. It was a great community, but I felt like what I wanted to do deserved more personal time rather than to trying to do both things.

DN: Thinking back, then, what did you gain from the year in school?

AR: I think the other musicians who I still work with to this day was a big part of it. One gentleman who I went to CalArts with is the drummer I work with whose name is Devin Maxwell. And it also exposed me to lots of world music. There’s a huge world music program there.

And it’s just a really open-minded music school rather than your classic music conservatory – open-minded about what you can do. Anything is possible in terms of the sounds you can make; you don’t have to limit yourself to classical tones and sounds.

DN: How did your decision to stop going to school inform the writing of “Machine”?

AR: I think I was just feeling a little overwhelmed at that point and decided that I had to just go out and do what I like to do. Even if it was going to be hard, I wasn’t going to die, and I was still going to have food. Even though it felt like a pretty big decision, I was still going to be OK, and I was going to be able to do what I like to do.

DN: All right. Now, the one adjective describing your music I’ve seen most is probably “quirky.” How do you feel about being labeled as “quirky”?

AR: The thing about releasing album-to-album is that you’re releasing on the very end of a phase you’ve just gone through. So I agree that the material that’s been released to this point is somewhat quirky. Part of it is the instrumentation; some people just get thrown off by viola a little bit.

The only thing that I disagree with is people who, upon hearing the viola at first, think that means “quirky.” That’s the only thing that’s come up a few times. And I guess it’s really difficult to describe how I see my music. But I’ve definitely been changing and growing as a writer, and stuff isn’t out there that maybe would be labeled differently.

DN: Do you play any unreleased material on the road?

AR: I play a few. There’s a couple I’ve been putting into rotation in sets that will be on my next record. But there’s still some material I don’t play live that’s coming out next year.

DN: Going back to the viola, why did you opt for it over violin or any other instrument for that matter?

AR: I started writing songs when I was about 15 on piano and guitar. There came a point when I acquired a viola because I was encouraged to play chamber music, but it never really went there. I just found myself writing songs on the viola.

It wasn’t really a choice. I think my voice just naturally felt comfortable with the viola at the time I started to try it out. But there wasn’t ever a point where I was like, “I should write songs on the viola.” It was a very slowly unfolded process that happened over the course of a couple years.

DN: Do you write songs on piano or guitar anymore?

AR: I do, yeah. My most recent material has been viola, but I’m definitely getting more into arranging on piano, guitar and viola.

DN: OK. Now, on to another song of yours. In “Wheelpusher” you begin the narrative talking about a beekeeper in the Himalayas. Do you remember how that part of the lyrics came about?

AR: At the time, I was nannying in Los Angeles, and I had this weekly gig where I would go straight from teaching strings to baby-sitting, and we were watching Animal Planet. There was this whole special on beekeeping, and I guess I was feeling inspired by Animal Planet (laughs), as lame as that is. But that’s when I started working on it and then slowly over time put more of my own thing into it.

DN: Since the basis of that song wasn’t from personal experience then, how did you put more of your own thing in it, or where were you hoping to take the beekeeping aspect?

AR: That song is really, what I drew from watching that is that beekeepers get stung a lot, and it’s a labor of love. That’s the analogy I was trying to make: If you’re trying to commit to a person or a thing that you like to do, it’s always going to be a labor of love.

DN: Moving on to a different topic, on your Web site, you wrote a post about a week ago about the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ready to Die.” What drew you to that album, and have you had any others recently that captured your attention?

AR: I’ve started getting more into the production of songs and understanding it, and somebody told me I should listen to that record. I wasn’t expecting to get so into it, but I’ve been trying to revisit and listen to a lot of music from that era.

But I recently heard not a whole album but some stuff from the Wu-Tang Clan that I thought was pretty cool. And I’ve been taking an interest in how those records were made because they kind of built them out of nothing. So I’ve been listening lots of 90s pop, revisiting TLC’s “CrazySexyCool,” which has some similar hook-based songwriting.

DN: Has listening to music like that played a part in the production of your next album?

AR: Yeah, I’ve been demoing for this record for a while, and it’s less about the vocals and viola being ingratiated together to the point that they have to be recorded together. I mean, I think I’m just beginning to understand basic principles of the viola being a form of accompaniment like a guitar would. And those records serve as examples of what you can compose with minimal parts and still make it feel complete.

MICHAELTODD@DAILYNEBRASKAN.COM