mvrlmichele
An electrical aura of energy surrounds the music of singer/songwriter Michele Vreeland and flows into songs that crystallize dreams, emotions and intentions. With her CD Never Not Myself, Vreeland infuses this alchemy into a powerful litany of seven exquisitely crafted songs.
The third oldest of 11 children, Vreeland grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs of Whittier, Long Beach and Norwalk, California; a graffiti-dotted landscape of warehouses and strip malls. While life in her Mormon household was complex, she recalls that regular trips to her grandmother’s immaculate home revealed another reality. It was here she was taught where the notes were located on the piano.
“I learn things uniquely,” Michele remembers. “I’m the kind of person who takes the good from everything and I leave what doesn’t work for me.” As a creator, Michele has a wealth of compatible talents. Prior to her musical career, she worked in feature films and editorial fashion campaigns as a hair and makeup stylist; and she is both an accomplished seamstress and a painter. She avows that as a visual person, it is her gift to see colors. “I can visualize something before I do it. Music and color are very tied together – when I’m singing a note, I hear it exactly for what it is. Also, when I’m writing, I’m telling a story. And visually I have told stories through editorials and fashion. Songwriting is another medium to do that.”
These creative hues are diffused into the themes that comprise Never Not Myself. “The title of the album should be an umbrella under which the songs exist,” explains Michele, who also produced the CD. The opening track, “Wanted to Say,” expresses the poignant silences that can exist between two lovers. “I’m a Person” moves forward to reveal the inherent paradoxes with the lines “Sometimes I just feel like I’m begging to be/The one true thing that I know that lives in me.”
As a performer, Michele is equally at home with her full band or in a solo setting where she accompanies herself on electric and acoustic guitars. (She is also experimenting with adding her own kick drum.) She performs in a range of venues from Los Angeles listening rooms like Kulak’s Woodshed, and Molly Malones to such disparate venues as Six Flags Magic Mountain and the Antelope Valley Gay Pride Festival. “My audiences are incredibly diverse,” she notes, “and different listeners hear themes in my songs that reflect their own realities.”
It was far from Southern California, in Salt Lake City, that Michele wrote a poem about returning home. These words evolved into the lyrics to “L.A. Dream,” a song that could be the anthem for every hopeful young musician, songwriter, actor, artist or outcast who ever envisioned the glittering panorama of possibility that is Hollywood. It is Michele’s story too. “I’ve made things happen that should not have happened in my life,” she says, “because I fought for them and I focused.” She references a quote from her great aunt, the legendary fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and editor in chief of Vogue, Diana Vreeland. “Keep the rhythm of your life -- never look back, always look forward.”
Moving forward is what Michele Vreeland does best. Propelled by an imaginative and restless spirit, a curiosity about life and art and the willing ability to share it with a growing audience, she projects a vibrant mission of meaning, motivation and magic.
