Veronica Swift: Breaking It Up, Making It New

Easily on track to become the "Streisand-in-the-mosh-pit" of her restless generation, singer and urban changeling Veronica Swift likes to shake things up and keep things moving. Especially her music. Especially on an album that bears her name. Veronica Swift, her latest.

"I want to inspire people to fight against the forces that curb our creativity" she says without fear of failure, as All About Jazz spent a few minutes talking to and catching up.

All About Jazz: Though it was written for very personal reasons, is it possible for you to draw a connective line from Vera Icon, the goth- opera you composed while at University of Miami to your transgenre approach featured so mightily on Veronica Swift?

Veronica Swift: Since age 5/6, there's always been a master plan. Every project I work on, jazz, goth-rock opera, a orchestral transgenre concept, or my other band for my rock n' soul originals, ties into this dream of mine: A dream to set up a career where I could sing anything, in any context, and it would make sense for my audience. 

For years, I've kept endless projects to myself, because they didn't make sense after having landed a deal with Mack Avenue Records in 2018.  With the new record, I saw an opportunity to use the album as a conduit to explore the numerous projects waiting in the wings of my mind.  Think of it like a tree: There are roots, which for me, figuratively and literally, is having been brought up on the road in a touring jazz family. Then there's the trunk, which is the all-encompassing transgenre portion with the branches and leaves extending outward, representing all my other rock/theater/alternative music projects.

AAJ Do you consider Confessions(Mack Avenue, 2019) and This Bitter Earth (Mack Avenue, 2021) lead-ins to Veronica Swift or is the new record a fresh start?

VS: I'm often driven first by my creative impulses and then imagination that barely lets me sleep. However, thanks to my mother's pragmatic business mentality, I also think from a marketing perspective. I always imagine ten steps ahead and prepare a plan of how to get there. Confessions was a way for the masses to get to know me, as I was: a young jazz singer who'd grown up singing in clubs with her parents, now (then) with a residency at Birdland in New York. 

Then, as the world came to a halt in 2020, I couldn't just sit and make another personal narrative album.  I had to respond and react to what I was happening to the world. So I recorded  This Bitter Earth outlining the systemic racism and sexism, school shootings and the health of our planet.  Of course, the final song on the album had to be "Sing" by the Dresden Dolls. 

The new album made its way to the ears of Brian Viglione, drummer of The Dresden Dolls and by the fall of 2021, we'd begun working together, building the next transgenre phase.  We spent the subsequent year and a half priming the audience for the wallop of rock'n'roll that was to make its way to this record.  I've come from 'chanteuse in heels' to 'Streisand in a mosh-pit' in less than a year. I'm very proud.

AAJ: You were nine when your first record, Veronica's House of Jazz (HodStef Music, 2004) hit. At eleven you performed as part of the Women in Jazz series at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola. Joined by saxophonist Harry Allen, your sophomore disc, It's Great to Be Alive (HodStef Music, 2007) hit when you were all of thirteen. Does it feel like you're in a second career or is it all one over-arching path?

VS: A record is really just that: a record of where you are in your life's journey at that time. I see it all as a continuum of the music that has been a part of my journey.  There is no second career, no third career, and so on.  My music is, and always has been, the very air I breathe, and it has taken a hell of a lot of patience to make it to this point. The concept for Veronica Swift I have been sitting on and waiting to release for over ten years. I've even had all the songs picked out to all my albums since I was signed to Mack Avenue in 2018.  And you can bet that I have the concept for the next one ready to go as well! 

It's all a continuous thread, where an element from the last project gets passed on through to the next. Just like we handle the connecting of genres on this new album.

AAJ: Is the core studio band the same band you've taken to the road with?

VS: Since the return of live performances in 2022, I've built a sort of supergroup of musicians, each bringing something unique from their respected corners of the spectrum. To make this concept work, I had to find musicians who could authentically play the styles we showcase in our set, ranging from baroque and classical, bossa nova, bebop, funk, soul, punk, and rock! It also helps to have members on both sides of the country when you're gigging coast to coast.

AAJ: You talk often about feeling limited by the term jazz singer. Would you care to elaborate given the vast array of styles featured both in performance and on the new album. VS: I feel limited by any genre classification, as did Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, and Duke Ellington, who referred to his musical style as "beyond category." This is why I searched for terms like transgenre. It sounded more inclusive, and conveyed the experience of creating, like a storyteller, performer, or composer/lyricist, as opposed to a word which labels a style.

Many artists in my generation feel the same way as I do as our influences are so expansive. One good aspect of having an endless library of music history at our fingertips is that it lends itself to a richer range of musical sounds just like the colors on an artists' palette.  Of course, I can only speak for myself. This is not to say I don't have a purist in me that keeps me rooted authentically to each style, so that from song to song I have a back and forth between these two approaches that keep the music fresh for me.

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