By Harriet Kaplan

ALMA

Alma, an L.A.-based emerging singer/songwriter, says her latest EP, “The Travel Size” is a departure from her previous musical catalog she has written in that “the songs aren’t so much about starting conversations and getting people thinking but they are a little more just for fun and thrown together because they don’t fit anywhere else. The songs are about travel and all written on the road or a city or an experience I had while traveling.” That doesn’t mean the neosoul-inspired artist hadn’t abandoned that idea of creating a place for the artistic community to exchanges ideas and build friendships along the way which she does with her unique “salon” called Over French Toast once a month where she makes breakfast. Up until “The Travel Size” EP, Alma’s music has been informed and inspired by “that curiosity about the human nature and human condition.” In a fairly comprehensive and wide-ranging interview with Alma, BOC spoke with the spirited, open and intelligent artist right before her performance at Republic of Pie in North Hollywood, CA where she currently has a residency every Monday night. Cook talked at length about background and journey in becoming an artist, her parent’s musical influence including her upbringing with a church background, attending a college with an emphasis on the arts and observing how people in the industry seem more focused, in her opinion, on a career in music and hustling their “product” in what she calls chasing the “the fame sickeness” rather than letting things more naturally and organically evolve.

INTERVIEW

How did you get into music?

Alma: I always tell people I got into music by accident. Like a lot of middle school students, I was bullied. I tuned to music as a way of coping with that. I wasn’t very good or skilled as a singer.

Why were you bullied?

Alma: People thought I looked funny. I was a little young for my grade. I started Kindergarten younger. So I feel like I was a little bit behind in my social skills. I didn’t understand why people weren’t being friends with me.

So music was an outlet?

Alma: Yeah. I started writing poetry. Then on the way home, I would walk to the bus stop and ride the bus home, and on the way home, I would set the poems to music.

What were the poems about?

Alma: They were usually about loneliness. It was very much a diary for me at that point. A way to vent. I don’t write so much in that style now. I guess it don’t have so much to vent about. I turn to write about different things.

When did the music come in and singing?

Alma: The songwriting and singing came in about seventh grade.

What inspired that?

Alma: I had piano skills. I had taken some piano lessons as kid. I had just begun to experiment with reading chords rather than notes on a page. So I realized: I can combine chords this way or that way. Then sing this melody on top of it.

Are you self taught?

Alma: In some respects, yes. Like I said, I have elementary piano experience.

So in seventh grade, you were writing and composing. Were you listening to a lot of music already?

Alma: I didn’t have a lot of exposure to pop music for whatever reason.

Did you parents influence you?

Alma: My dad listened to a lot of jazz. He had great taste in jazz.

What kind of jazz?

Alma: Post 1980s stuff. Herbie Hancock. A little bit of everything honestly like Miles Davis and Duke Ellington.

Are your parents musical?

Alma: Actually they are. My mom is a great singer. She’s done worship leading for my church back home. My dad has played guitar. He is a very good guitarist and pianist. Mostly in the church though. My brother is also a drummer.

Your mom was listening to what for example?

Alma: She was listening to contemporary Christian music but sort of that soft rock style. I caught between this seemingly prestigious genre of jazz and this single, message-minded Christian music which was nice but there was no middle ground.

But you where looking to find your own identity?

Alma: I felt like it would be uncomfortable to diverge from the Christian music my mom was doing. The jazz players my dad listened to were so skilled that I felt like any my attempts to write especially to write pop music would be looked at as childish and silly. So I didn’t really want to tell them I was a writer and crafting this songs. And at first, I didn’t. For multiple years, they didn’t know. I would do it when I was home alone.

So you were listening to that music and hearing those influences and what did you hit upon? What were you listening to?

Alma: I started toward the end of middle school listening to indie pop like Regina Specktor and Ingrid Michaelson. People that had this cutesy style to them. I really admired them. But I don’t listen them so much anymore. But there was never a “click” moment. Everything happened very gradually. I never really got really good at singing or songwriting. I just kept at it very slowly. So at the end of high school, I developed a pretty solid repertoire of songs. That steadily improved over time. I developed a voice that was much better than when I started.

When did you actually start singing?

Alma: As a church kid, you’re always singing.

You’re writing songs and listening to indie artists, then do you say you want to try to take it a coffeehouse before an audience and perform?

Alma: I never performed before an audience until after high school. No one thought of me as a music kid. I was never very public about it. But obviously if you’re writing songs and singing, you’re obviously in your room doing it.

Did you feel comfortable? Was it something you wanted to do?

Alma: I didn’t think of it that way and that might have lessened the pressure. It wasn’t like I was trying to be this great artist. I was just having fun and experimenting. It was very comfortable not just because I was thinking I was was so gifted.

After high school, what happened?

Alma: I attended a summer program at Columbia College in Chicago immediately after high school. It was a six week thing and I took three classes. There was a vocal performance class, a music production class and a composition course. I thought of those three, production would be my thing. Because I really enjoyed music and I knew it would something I would consider being part of a career. But I thought surely not me a singer. But what happened was my vocal teacher at Columbia really encouraged me and told me I had something unique that made this career really worth pursuing. So then I went home back to community college for two years and did that. And when you’re at a community college, people will ask you, where are you going to transfer when you’re done? I kept saying maybe I’ll go back to Columbia when I’m done. Over time, that solidified into a yes. Then it came time to finish up my Associates Degree, and move onto to a Bachelor’s program, Columbia was a natural fit.

Did you go on a scholarship?

Alma: You know I did. I was part of a community college honor society that for some strange reason had a link to Columbia. I got a significant tuition boost.

The program at Columbia was it a great music program?

Alma: It’s a unique school. I think it’s the biggest private art school in the country. Part of why it’s so big is that they don’t have an audition process and it’s a pop school in all the forms of art so it’s a different kind of music education than you will find at most places. There were aspects of it that were really good and I kind of crafted my own degree. I made certain choices within my own degree program. I was aware some students were pretty unhappy with the courses they were taking. That wasn’t my experience and I felt I had great teachers. I made sure I was enrolled in classes that were relevant to what I was doing.

What is your degree in?

Alma: It’s a Bachelors of Arts degree in vocal performance.

Did you start performing at all while you were in the program or afterward?

Alma: Yeah I did perform quite a bit in college.

Was it around the college area?

Alma: There some college events I would play at. It was primarily at different coffeehouse a and bars around the city. I got a few different groups together at different times to get a fuller band sound for what I was doing. I think most notably I connected with a friend who actually went to church with us as a kid who was at Columbia for music business and he helped me produce my very first demo. He was encouraging and helped me get my foot in the door and make the initial steps to kick myself into gear.

The foot in the door for? Were you pursuing a record deal?

Alma: I wasn’t pursuing a record deal. The demo helped me get my feet wet. Not everyone has someone to hold their hand to make their first demo. Or book their first show. I had this person there, this fellow student and family friend, doing that for me. I was super privileged and grateful for that.

Then after you graduated from Columbia, what happened next?

Alma: I continued to play little shows around the city in Chicago. Then I took an East Coast tour with a folk musician. It was fun and I was just dabbling in a few things musically. Then I started to put my first full length album together. I stopped doing a lot of performing. I really focused on the album. A bassist I met in college and a good friend of mine he served as producer on the album. I worked with the local studio and put together a project we were really proud of. That was what my three year in Chicago looked like before I moved to California.

When did you move here? Why L.A.?

Alma: It was a God thing that I moved here. There was a moment about a year prior to when I moved out here in October 2014 that I felt something click. I had this feeling I was going to move here and it was very strange. I hadn’t any ambitions for L.A.-styled success. I never had a desire to participate in L.A. culture. But I just knew I was going to move here. I work an online job as a copy editor for a website. So that facilitated the move. It was very important to take that job and move here. Ultimately what made me move, I thought why not I have a day job. It’s steady and I don’t have to look for work.

What’s happened since you moved? You put out a full length album and now this EP and playing out.

Alma: I feel like I’ve been talking about the art itself. The art itself isn’t even what I’ve come to love about music. What I’ve come to love about music what it can do and the conversations it can start and relationships it can build. So for the most part whey I’ve been doing here in L.A. is just build friendships and trying to facilitate more unity in the artistic community here. I see a lot of people in it for themselves. Trying to put themselves onstage and make people to listen to their record. Push their business card on someone else. It’s very frustrating and very sad to me. I’ve taken it upon myself to lead by example and shift the culture in a different direction. I host an artist discussion group.

I was going to ask was this the group Over French Toast?

Alma: Yes Over French Toast is my passion project. The concept is you pick a topic and you get a group of people, usually creative artists types, but it could really be anyone in a room to talk about bringing examples from culture say a quote they like or a song that spoke to them or movie or music video. Something pertaining to that topic to share. It’s not online but takes place in person. You go to someone’s house.

How have you been promoting it online or where do you find the people?

Alma: Word of mouth usually. People I meet somewhere in person.

How often do you meet up?

Alma: Once a month.

What have been the most interfering conversations you’ve had so far?

Alma: My favorite topic was truth. Everyone brought something that represented truth to them or had an idea about truth.

What blew you away?

Alma: The diversity of my friends. You had people with so many different perspectives and angles they they were taking on the topic and that’s not to say everyone had vastly different beliefs but different kind of insights that different kinds of personalities can pull for topic like truth or love or joy. It’s amazing and really beautiful.

Would you say this group has helped you with your writing as a byproduct?

Alma: I don’t view it a a vehicle for my music career. My music and Over French Toast come from the same place, so the inspiration is the root of the both of them. That inspiration is that curiosity about human nature and the human condition and a passion for starting a conversations. I’m trying to do that with the music as well.

Can you tell me about the new EP?

Alma: The Travel Size EP is pretty unique in my catalog and it stands alone.

When did you release it?

Alma: On January 19.

Is it the first EP?

Alma: I had a demo in 2012. I had a full length album in 2014. Then this little EP this year. The EP is unique in my catalog because the songs aren’t so much about starting conversations and getting people thinking but they are a little more just for fun and thrown together because they don’t fit anywhere else. The songs are about travel and all written on the road or a city or an experience I had while traveling.

Coming to L.A. or based on touring?

Alma: There’s an East Coast tour and some people I met in 2013 that inspired a couple of the songs. A trip to New York last Summer. The last track, “Westside Winter,” is about L.A. and kind of the culture here I’ve been talking about in this interview which is what I call “fame sickness.”

Tell me about neosoul as a new musical direction for you? You mentioned Regina Specktor and Ingrid Michaelson?

Alma: It is new as of 2014. They are not neosoul. It has roots in so many genres. In soul obviously and hip hop, gospel and R&B. They genres driven by the baseline and backbeat and horn sections. They have really thoughtful vocal arranging. It’s funny looking back to songs I liked as a kid, the ones that really stand out have neosoul leanings before I knew the genre existed. There’s a song “Free,” by Jenny Owens, it’s not what I would call neosoul but it still has that rim shot and swinging guitar line that is present in a lot of neosoul today that resembles my song, “New Nation” from my album, “Tactics” released in 2014.

What’s next for Alma?

Alma: I’m going to be laying low for the next two years and taking this idea that no one is cracking a whip and no one is setting a deadline and saying I have to have a project out at a certain time and have to be touring right now. I’m super focused on quality and intentionality in the music. I have some collaborative stuff in the works with friends of mine in the Midwest.

Photo by Jessica Mardi Photography

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