Jessica Vaughn Interview
Doug Burke:
Jessica Vaughn began her career as a teenager under her maiden name, Jessica Poland. She came to fame as the singer-songwriter under her stage name Charlotte Sometimes. Her debut album on Geffen Records, Waves and the Both of Us received huge critical acclaim, including a number three position on the Billboard Heatseekers charts. She later became a contestant during season two of The Voice and received a four-chair turn during the blind audition round. She retired the Charlotte Sometimes stage name and began recording under her new sobriquet Laces. Working at the music publisher Heavy Hitter Music, she has become a prolific collaborator with many artists, including the group's Skinny Beats, Chelsea Grams, Vanyze, Rvrside, Flavia, Bellesaint, Amanda Brown, Curtis Peoples, and Colin CreeV.
Welcome to Backstory Song. I am your host, Doug Burke. Today I am very, very excited to have an artist on here whose work and her voice especially I have adored and just treasured. Jessica Vaughn, Jessica, welcome to our show.
Jessica Vaughn:
Thank you so much for having me.
Doug Burke:
Your voice is just magical and you've been at it for a long time. One of the standard questions I ask is, when did you start writing songs and why did you start writing songs? I saw from your bio, you started at the age of 14 in Wall Township, New Jersey writing songs. What was the force within you that made you want to become a songwriter?
Jessica Vaughn:
Thank you first for all those compliments. I've always had a lot of feelings. I was a very emotional child and I loved entertaining and I just started writing poetry too, I don't know, I guess to get a handle on those feelings and not really quite understanding what they were. I had a lot of adult feelings for a child. I don't know if that had to do with me being adopted and just, I just looked at the world a little bit differently and I started writing poetry. I remember my dad saying, "No one really wants to hear you sing your poetry. You should probably learn an instrument." Anytime anyone kind of challenges me, the challenge is accepted. He's like, "You need to find a collaborator, learn an instrument." I rented a guitar from a guitar shop and a month later I had booked my first gig with like, I had written a bunch of songs already, even though I could barely play the guitar. It was in me at an early age, but I didn't necessarily know how to navigate that, but I was always writing poetry for as long as I can remember.
Doug Burke:
Our listeners may know you from different monikers, and I'm going to fill them in. Your first stage name was Charlotte Sometimes, and you were signed to Geffen Records and had a debut album Waves and the Both of Us. Your real name was Jessica Charlotte Poland, and you've actually released some material under, I don't know how you actually say this. The PLAND? POLAND
Jessica Vaughn:
J PLAND.
Doug Burke:
J PLAND, but you dropped the O, so I just didn't know how to pronounce that, and your new work is mostly done under the LACES and BRZY?
Jessica Vaughn:
Mostly LACES. I only have one song with BRZY, so it's mostly LACES and J PLAND. Then I also have a project ... Those are my two main artists’ projects and the rest of the projects are more for film and television and for my alter egos.
Doug Burke:
You also write for all kinds of kids’ cartoons, right? If you're a parent watching some of these kids' shows, you're listening to Jessica Vaughn's work. We're not going to talk about any of that on the show, because that's not what we cover, but maybe we will on another show, cover your cartoon songwriting work. You went on The Voice and had a four-chair turn, which is a pretty rare thing.
Jessica Vaughn:
It was pretty cool, yeah.
Doug Burke:
That was cool?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. Everybody likes a little validation. It's nice to be acknowledged and I've always thought of myself as a songwriter that can sing, not a vocalist that writes songs. When people say anything about my voice, I'm like, "Oh, thank you so much," because I don't really think about it as much as my songwriting.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about a LACES song, They Say that you wrote, because was this inspired by any of your experiences in that world of the Voice and being part of Geffen Record label?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. It wasn't a part of my experience on the Voice because my experience on The Voice was pretty great. Actually, it was fun. I knew what I was walking into, unlike some of the other contestants. It wasn't my first rodeo on TV, so I was ready to play the role that the producers wanted me to play. But They Say, I actually had gotten hired by a publisher originally to write this song about being a survivor. It was supposed to be a televised event in Las Vegas, and all of these other big stars were going to be singing this song. I was hesitant to take it on, because so often those songs about being a survivor just come across as a little cheesy, a little too on the nose, doesn't necessarily resonate with the survivor. I really didn't want it to be that. I wanted, of course, a call to action and to do my job properly and make the client happy. But it's a subject that obviously means a lot to me, so I wrote it from my perspective, but also with the idea that not everybody is on the journey to accept things that have happened to them, but they might carry those emotions with them. I wanted the song not to be triggering in any way so that you could listen to it and find comfort and empathy without feeling alienated and ultimately triggered by the song. For me, it's a song about the process of living through trauma in a country that asks you to smile through it and forget it, because being a survivor isn't really a choice, it's kind of the next step after you've been assaulted in some way, and that trauma changes you. To me being a survivor is just, it's not a choice. It's like, if you want to keep going, you have to survive your life. That's what the song's about. I've had a lot of trauma in my life from an early age. Not everyone knows this about me, but I'm a certified counselor advocate in the State of California for trauma survivors. I've learned a lot about sexual assault and trauma and domestic abuse. It's not very often that a survivor is only assaulted once in their life or harassed once in their life. There are conversations I've had with journalists. There was one in LADYGUNN about when I was on tour and I was raped on tour. Obviously, that was the focus when we were working on releasing this song, and trying to bring some light to violence against women in music. That being said, for me, I was molested when I was a kid and then I was raped on tour. Then before I moved to LA, I was kidnapped and assaulted by a cab driver and that's why I moved to LA. Carrying all of that in my body for many, many years, it was an opportunity to be able to write a song about being a survivor without fearing that I would be the one having to sing it. But obviously, the televised concert got canceled.
Doug Burke:
Oh my god, you can laugh about it.
Jessica Vaughn:
You have to. It's life, and I've made peace with what's happened to me and-
Doug Burke:
How did you do that?
Jessica Vaughn:
Therapy.
Doug Burke:
Explain to me and for my listeners, because this keeps coming up on my show with Asia Folkman and Bobby Rush talking to me about these things. I don't know how to deal with it myself, Jessica. How did you deal with it?
Jessica Vaughn:
For me, a big part of my healing process was becoming a counselor advocate. I'm not on active duty anymore where I don't do hospital accompaniments or work the hotline anymore. But when I moved to LA a few years into living here, I just felt like I was still carrying a lot of baggage, and I had started to date my now-husband and we had been best friends for many years. I finally felt like I was in a safe space to explore it further, and I felt like the only way I was going to feel better is if I worked really hard to make the industry a better place and a safer, more equitable space. Learning about my trauma really helped me understand how it has affected my brain and my decisions and physically as well. Understanding things really helps me move on and also being able to be a catalyst for change within my industry, makes me feel it's because I worked the hotline, and I would hear all these horrible stories and I would go to the hospital with a survivor, I just felt there's got to be something else I can do besides just be with these survivors in the shadows. I made a commitment to be very loud and bold about it and try to make an impact. For me, I was never going to release this song either, because it did feel so sensitive to me and I didn't want to sing it alone. My husband said to me, "Jess, don't poopoo this song. It's really moving and it's powerful and people deserve to hear it. Would you be comfortable if maybe some of your friends sang on it?" We did it that way. I talked to my friends and they were all down to sing it, Amanda Brown, Flavia, Bellesaint. When they stood in solidarity with me, I felt so powerful and just ready to face it. I'm so glad that we released it. That is a real tell about how it is to be a survivor in the world, that if we share our story and it's met with, I believe you, I'm here for you, let's try to make a change, let's stand together, I'm here to talk if you want to talk, the world could just do so much better with a little bit more empathy. This song was a way for me to also see that in my community.
Doug Burke:
That's very interesting because I'm sure in those moments, you feel very alone and what the song and what you just told me, it tells me is that you're not alone, and there are others who've been through this stuff. If you seek out help from others, maybe you can move forward.
Jessica Vaughn:
Exactly.
Doug Burke:
That's what surviving is about. This show is hard. This show has gotten a lot harder than I expected.
Jessica Vaughn:
Well, songwriters are so in touch with their feelings because writing songs is an extension of their humanity.
Doug Burke:
What I like about They Say and what I like about a lot of your music is, the emotive oohs and aahs.
Jessica Vaughn:
The vocalese.
Doug Burke:
I could listen to a whole album of Jessica Vaughn just making noises that aren't words. My brother and I joke about who did this best and he says, "Joe Cocker at Woodstock on try a little help from your friends." There are eight minutes where you can't understand a word that he says basically on stage where you're like, "That's awesome." I think Bruce Springsteen has a lot of words like that. We were arguing who did it better Bruce or Joe once, but from a female perspective, I think Janis Joplin did it great or Eddie Vedder on a song like Better Man, where at the end, you're like, "He's not really saying anything. He's just making sounds." Yet the sounds communicate an emotion. What's the emotion here that you're going for and how does it motivate you to come up with these sounds?
Jessica Vaughn:
I'm really down with using my voice as an instrument. Sometimes words aren't enough and sometimes they get in the way. What I mean by that is, it's important to give space in a song and let the listener create their own narrative. Sometimes those chords in the melody really resonate and are healing to the body in a way it feels good. It's not scientific, it just feels really good and that's why I do it. Sometimes I'll write these lyrics and I'm like, "What's next in the story?" I'm like, "Who cares? How do I feel? How does the listener feel? Are we on this journey together?" That's when I will release an ooh or an ah or a nonlyrical vocal part vocalese. I'm not going to lie to you; it also really works well in film and TV, because it doesn't get in the way of somebody else's narrative.
Doug Burke:
Oh, that's interesting. I don't think I've heard the word vocalese on this show before, but that is what it is, isn't it? It's vocalese.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. When I started writing songs, I must've sounded like Michelle Branch or something, because I was 13 and listening to a lot of Michelle Branch at the time. My guitar teacher was like, "You need to do something different with your voice because you need to do your own thing." I just started making all these like all these weird little stuff and I just never stopped.
Doug Burke:
Is there anything else you want to say about They Say?
Jessica Vaughn:
It stands alone and I hope that people who aren't necessarily survivors, I hope it still resonates with them if they've ever gone through a hard time in their lives. I never want a song to alienate anybody. A song should feel like a hug and please that was the cheesiest thing I've ever said.
Doug Burke:
That's going in our Instagram. That's going to be one of our Instagram quotes-
Jessica Vaughn:
Oh damn.
Doug Burke:
... because that one is a good one. We're going to use that on our social media. A song should feel like a hug. It should communicate an emotion and sometimes the emotion is a punch in the face and not a hug.
Jessica Vaughn:
Sometimes you need that though.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about; I think it might be your most played Spotify songs. The video has got 245,000 plays for the song, The End, which I believe you released as J PLAND.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yes, yeah. Oh, The End. Oh, The End. Who knew? Who knew that it would go viral the last few months? Not me.
Doug Burke:
Why did it do that?
Jessica Vaughn:
I don't know if you've heard of the show Bridgerton on Netflix. The reason why I have 25 monikers, yes, 25 monikers is because I do so many different genres of music. I love writing songs so much that I just feel like they all should live in their own universe, and the fans that might resonate with one project might not necessarily resonate with another. I wrote this song many, many moons ago at my friend's house in New Jersey. We were just having a good time. Many years later this year, it ended up on a show Bridgerton and it was in a very scandalous scene, a very sexual scene. It was the only song on the show that had vocals. It was a very big moment in the show, where the two main characters, it's basically soft porn. I'm not going to lie to you.
Doug Burke:
Okay. So you're the soundtrack to soft porn on Netflix. Okay.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, yeah. It's a big moment in the show and it really changes how the characters move forward. It just blew up from there. It got millions of streams. It's getting worldwide radio play now, but yeah, to me it was just an older song. I had forgotten that it was going to be on the show until about a few weeks before and my husband and I were like, "Oh crap, we should probably release this song on the day it comes out," which was on Christmas day. Then it took a life of its own, but it's just so interesting because when I wrote this song originally, I sent it around and no one was really interested in it and no one liked it.
Doug Burke:
It feels to me like a song about a love song gone wrong, like a love that's gone wrong.
Jessica Vaughn:
Oh yeah, totally right.
Doug Burke:
Okay, so I got it right?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Because that happens in love sometimes and boy, when that happens, it's really bad, right? It's not like two friends breaking up, it's ...
Jessica Vaughn:
No, it's bad. It's so interesting, because I'm really good friends with the person who it's about still and this person, and we'll talk about him again on another song. I tend to have the same muses over time, even if I'm not with them, I just remember that feeling. He was an ex of mine and he was much older than me, 17 years older than me. I learned a lot from him probably because we weren't in the same age bracket. I was so heartbroken that he didn't want to be with me, and the song is about, we had a very magnetic connection. I was thinking to myself, "If I'm going down, you're going down. We're both going down." It's kind of about that. When the song blew up, I texted him and I was like, "Remember this song."
Doug Burke:
Did he know it was about him?
Jessica Vaughn:
Oh yeah. I used to send all of my songs as a cry for help to him, but it never worked out.
Doug Burke:
I like some of the techniques you use in this song where you say, keep, keep, keep. You do this in a lot of the songs we're going to talk about today. You repeat words and phrases, which is not traditional. Why do you do that and what are you trying to accomplish?
Jessica Vaughn:
Again, going back to the idea of using your voice as an instrument, it feels good. Sometimes you say more when you say less. I've always just had fun with the way a word sounds - makes you feel like, "Ooh, this is creepy." Then it goes into those long legato notes where you're like, "Oh, now we're getting sensual." That's how it feels. It's like this whispery plea. I try to make my words emulate the feeling of whatever you're going through and how your brain works, at least how my own brain works. I tend to have very cyclical thoughts. I struggle with anxiety and obsessive thinking and I'll keep saying the same thing over and over and over to myself. A lot of times I do that with the lyrics that I create.
Doug Burke:
The lyric that really grabbed me and shook me was, keep your hands in my grip. This is as far away from, I want to hold your hand by the Beatles, as you could get. This is one love to another; keep your hands in my grip. This is taunting and yet powerful.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. It goes into that idea that I just didn't want to let him go. It is a toxic way of looking at love, where I just was like, "No, I want to keep you in my control. I don't want to let you go. If that means using my body, if that means ..." Same thing with keep your lies on me and keep your words in my mouth, I felt like, "I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear you leaving." They're going to stay body to body. I'm not going to give space for those words or lies.
Doug Burke:
I will say my favorite part is the rap.
Jessica Vaughn:
That's such a silly part.
Doug Burke:
Why do you say it's silly? I think it's funny.
Jessica Vaughn:
That's so funny. Why do you like it?
Doug Burke:
Because it's two words said over and over again and in this round, like a traditional round of music writing and the way it evolves, my words, your heart, your end, my start, your taste, my mouth, your game, my crown, my words, your heart, your end, my start. It just makes you think about each pairing.
Jessica Vaughn:
I like that you like it that way. It's so interesting what people resonate within my songs, because when I listen to that song, I think about how I probably wouldn't have written it that way now, but it's an older song, so it's interesting how lazy I was.
Doug Burke:
I think that's great. That's not lazy. It's my and yours, and that's what this song is about. This my, your relationship that's gone bad.
Jessica Vaughn:
It's true. It's true. Well, I'll take it. I think of it as lazy songwriting when I listen to it, but I'm such a perfectionist. When I wrote this song with my friend, Jeff Plate who now owns a brewery, which it's so funny because we've had this successful song together many years later, and we like to laugh about it, because we just had a lot of fun writing and I'm pretty sure I had a whole bottle of Chardonnay and had written that song and recorded it that day in his bedroom. It's funny because I'm sure by the time we got to the bridge, I can't remember. It's a little fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure I was just like, "What if it was just like my words, your heart, your end, my start?" You know what I mean? That's what it feels like to me. I love that I've tricked everyone to think that I'm much smarter than I actually am.
Doug Burke:
I like the song. I'm glad it's blown up for you. You deserve the credit. You're such a hardworking professional show person. You've been at this so long and to get a breakout song that out of nowhere, you deserve it.
Jessica Vaughn:
Oh thank you so much.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about a new song that is being released. I had the pleasure of getting a pre-listen. I don't know if it has been released yet, but Breaking My Heart.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. It comes out on the 19th.
Doug Burke:
Oh, I'm so excited for this one, another love song.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yes, another dark love song. I'm just so fascinated by toxic love for some reason. Or there's something about the darkness that comes with loving something or someone, or that's bad for you that makes you feel more alive, because probably the feeling is so fleeting. It's just easier to write something when you're feeling that type of manic energy than it is when I'm just like happy and watching Netflix with my husband.
Doug Burke:
You repeat phrases a lot in this song. I do it, I do it. I blew it. I blew it, which I like. It seems organic the way you do it. It seems percussive and almost like an instrument. I don't think it's traditional songwriting.
Jessica Vaughn:
Well, maybe ... You know what, I've always, I hate tradition in general.
Doug Burke:
That's what we like about you, Jess.
Jessica Vaughn:
I've always done things my own way in life and I guess in songwriting and I guess in my vocals as well. There's an Avril Lavigne song that's always stuck with me, which was like, I want to be anything but ordinary. Yeah. I think I've definitely sculpted a life that has definitely made me a little left of center. But yeah, I do repeat those lines a lot, but again, going back to the idea that that's how my brain works, that pre-chorus I do it, I do it, I burn that shit down. I blew it. I blew it, a wave crashes down. I do it, I do it. It's all coming down. Isn't that how you feel when the anxiety comes in or you're thinking about a past mistake, and it is just, at least for me, it's just so overwhelming and overbearing and it's all I can think about.
Doug Burke:
You definitely can't get your mind on anything else, right?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yes.
Doug Burke:
That's why repeating the lyric reinforces that. You're like, "I just can't stop thinking about this. I can't stop thinking it. I can't stop thinking about it."
Jessica Vaughn:
Exactly. It's like you're yelling at yourself. You're like, "Not again."
Doug Burke:
I love the vocalese. I'm going to use that now on my show is nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
Jessica Vaughn:
It's nah, nah, nah, nah, yeah.
Doug Burke:
What are you saying there?
Jessica Vaughn:
To me, I was listening and you can't tell really when you listen to the song, because when I am about to write a song or not always, but if I'm getting ready a session and I know I'm writing with someone, I have an idea of what I want to create. I was listening to a lot of Kate Bush and Ellie Goulding, and I was listening to funny enough, "I don't want to wait," that song and she sings a lot of nah, nah, nah's. Nah, nah, nah's which is on my mind and I was thinking about this song and it's about a love triangle. We all hope to avoid those in life, but unlike that push and pull of wanting more. I just felt it was kind of mocking, nah, nah, nah, nah, kind of is a mocking feeling, right? It's you only hear nah, nah, nah when someone's like nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
Doug Burke:
Right, on the kid's playground, right?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to combine them in a way where you're almost patronizing yourself and then also coming down on somebody else wagging your finger?" In the song, there's three characters. There's me and there's the person that's breaking my heart. Then there's the person that I'm breaking theirs. In the beginning it's like, nah, nah, nah, how could you do that to me? Then it's like, nah, nah, nah what's wrong with me? It goes that back and forth, and it also just feels good. It's always important in a song too, at least for me, I love pop music and I love creating some ear candy that won't get out of your head. It's definitely a part that follows you around where you're like, "Stop it. I don't want to sing nah, nah, nah anymore." I definitely created it in a way that anyone could sing it.
Doug Burke:
Okay. I need to talk about the sound on here, on this song. The layers of sound, the layers of synthesizers and computer drums and piano riffs that you put out and peel back and the percussion, tell me about how this came together because it's amazing?
Jessica Vaughn:
Thank you so much. Again, I was listening to a lot of Kate Bush. I was like, "how does Kate Bush do pop?" Or like, "How do we make a cinematic song, a pop song?" That really comes from my experience in film and TV, where I do a lot of licensing for television. I also write custom songs for television and film. But I was like, "I want LACES to have a cinematic song." I was like, "I want a cinematic song. I'm dramatic. I can do this." I was going through a lot personally. I don't know if you can tell from the song.
Doug Burke:
Seems like a lot of your songs have that element to it.
Jessica Vaughn:
A lot of things going on. I thought that the music should reflect that. My producer and I, we really sat down and really mapped out the different parts of the song while we wrote the song. We knew where things were going to get bigger and where there was going to be a vocalese, and where we wanted the song to go, and that we didn't want it to be a traditional cinematic, where you have those taiko drums and you have strings and things like that. We wanted it to feel more contemporary and synthy and just go with all of the older LACES songs and the newer LACES song. It was really important that we pulled some of those elements. We were listening to Ellie Goulding's in my, I think it's my blood is the song or blood. It's in my blood, blood, something like that. She really killed the game in that song. We try to emulate that in certain ways in our song. We shot a music video for it last week. I just got the ...
Doug Burke:
Oh, I can't wait to see that, and I'm going to break the news on this episode that we are launching an over-the-top television TV show, and Jessica, I want this video on our show.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yes, of course, of course.
Doug Burke:
Okay, fantastic, fantastic news.
Jessica Vaughn:
It was super fun to make a music video for it. I don't normally make music videos, because they cost money and you don't always see a lot of return on your investment. But when I wrote this song and we finished it, I could see a whole video in my head. It made me want to move my body. I wanted to dance and I danced for 16 years, and I've pretty much not danced for the same amount of time?
Doug Burke:
Like ballet or like interpretive dance?
Jessica Vaughn:
Ballet, jazz, tap, modern, yeah. I was a competitive dancer. I took 13 dance classes a week, had dance scholarships.
Doug Burke:
Holy mackerel.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. I was just really inspired by this song to dance again. I called up a choreographer and we made up an entire routine, and I put together this video and we just got the rough cut back yesterday. You're definitely going to see those cinematic moments, those moments that you were talking about within the song. It was really fun.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, because that break in this song where the piano riff is repeating and then the synthesizer takes over, and then the computerized percussion comes in and then the guitar, this fuzzy guitar, voice layers. It's element after element of sonic layering, almost like a Phil Spector thing in a different modernized take on it. It's just cool. It's all get out. People are going to love this song. I hope it blows up and has a Euro feel to it. I bet it goes crazy. I bet the Europeans love this.
Jessica Vaughn:
I hope so. They've always liked me better than Americans.
Doug Burke:
Oh really? Why do you think that is?
Jessica Vaughn:
Because I'm weird. I'm like the meathead’s artsy chick. You know what I mean? I'm not artsy enough for America and I'm not pop enough for America. I'm just weird enough to be pop in Europe.
Doug Burke:
And Germany, right?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Is that a German sense of humor or something?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yes, exactly.
Doug Burke:
I hope it goes international for you. Let's talk about Losing Sleep. This is a more traditional song structure, with your verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, which is not your standard shtick, right?
Jessica Vaughn:
No, I wrote that when I was 19, maybe it was 18, 18, or 19. No, it was definitely 18 because the record didn't come out until I was 19, 20 in my dorm room on my guitar. I just always loved this song for some reason, I guess, because I still can't sleep. At the time it wasn't that traditional, like the way that the song was recorded, but now it is now. Obviously, music has changed a lot over the last 12 years. I just always had such a soft spot in my heart. I love singing it. I still sing it if I play a show. Every once in a while you have that song that for me, this story has never changed for me, just the idea that I can't sleep and I'm a perfectionist. I constantly think about my mistakes or how I can be better. I think about my songs and how they're not good enough.
Doug Burke:
Well, they're good enough for me and my listeners, so I think you're being a little hard on yourself here.
Jessica Vaughn:
Well, that's what the whole song's about. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
I think so. You can sleep well tonight after this episode, I hope.
Jessica Vaughn:
I'll try. I'll try.
Doug Burke:
My favorite line from the song is you can own that balance beam two steps forward towards make-believe because life is a balance beam and we're all trying to own it. We're all falling off and having to get back up.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. It's like a song that your inner voice is trying to fight the other inner voice and saying, "You can do this." The more that we fight who we really are, the more we lose. It touches on the idea that when you're trying to be something other than yourself, it's not going to work in the long run. Maybe it was just touching on my story of self-discovery and of acceptance and trying to be okay with who I am and where I'm going. Now when I think about emotions, I don't think there's something wrong with me. For many, many years I had a lot of people tell me that I'm crazy, because I had feelings and because I had trauma. The more accepting of my boundaries that I became, I realized, "Okay, I'm not good at doing this, this and that. I need to take a step back. I need some self-care." I can't do 30 shows in a row and be traveling. That makes me feel crazy because most people would feel crazy if they were doing that. We react to our environment and that's okay. That doesn't mean we ourselves are nuts. It's just like maybe we pivot away from the things that are doing us harm and find better coping mechanisms at that point in my life at 18, I obviously haven't found those healthy coping mechanisms yet, and I was using unhealthy coping mechanisms and just a lot of tears and not understanding why I was feeling a certain way. Then my family may be pushing me to be overly medicated, and my managers telling me that I should be just easier and learn how to bro out with the boys, and be less emotional and things like that. This song really touched on what I was going through at the time.
Doug Burke:
It has a big rave-up the jangly guitar in it. What inspired you to write that?
Jessica Vaughn:
I think I was listening to a lot of this emo band at the time called, I can't even remember what they were called and they had a lot of jangly guitars. I was just 18 and obsessed with what was cool at the time. Also, I had this thing that I was doing back then, where I would try to learn different chords and things like that, and try to make it a point to put them in a song and try to make them work. There's a lot of like ... there's like a diminished chord in there and all these things I was learning at the time and trying to figure out how to make a song around it. I would create homework assignments for my songwriting when I was younger.
Doug Burke:
To put a diminished chord in a song, you learned it?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, exactly.
Doug Burke:
I love the intro with this computer drum and this guitar riff with the abrupt stop, but it has one of my favorite things, the triangle.
Jessica Vaughn:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Doug Burke:
I just love the triangle, the carefully placed triangle ding. You do that in concert or does your percussionist do that?
Jessica Vaughn:
No, if we do, if we have backing tracks and stuff, we'll do it, but we never do it live, but ...
Doug Burke:
It's too hard to recreate.
Jessica Vaughn:
Doug, here's the thing, when I do another show, I will just have you come out and you can just ding the triangle. How about that?
Doug Burke:
I could play the track. I am capable of doing that. I'd be honored to come on stage and do that in your show. I would be so anxiously nervous that I would miss the beat and screw up the triangle part, and then throw the whole song off, but I would be honored to try.
Jessica Vaughn:
I think you could do it. I would make you practice. I would make you breakfast.
Doug Burke:
That would be fun. Oh, great song Losing Sleep from earlier career. Let's talk about Worship.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yes, yes, Worship, Worship, Worship.
Doug Burke:
Another song where you repeat yourself on the edge, the edge.
Jessica Vaughn:
The edge.
Doug Burke:
Where would, where would, maybe in another, maybe in another, maybe in another life.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, that to me just felt like the song should be simple. The older I get the less I say. It's because I think that's just something that happens as we all get older in general. We don't feel the need necessarily to say more, because we have the experience to say less. In Worship, I really just wanted it to feel like this sonic experience in a song, where you're just entranced with it; because that was the feeling I was feeling. That's how you feel when you worship something, right? Either a god or a person or a lifestyle, I don't know, a drug, and so I really wanted the listener to feel that kind of trance.
Doug Burke:
I had a friend who would tell me in life and sometimes in professions, you have to specialize over and over again. He said, "I found that I know more and more about less and less, until finally I know everything about nothing at all.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, that's the truth.
Doug Burke:
Then when you get to that point, you don't have to say anything because you know everything about nothing.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, totally.
Doug Burke:
And you can say less.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. It's interesting because in a way, we have they say after Worship, but really it should be Worship and then breaking my heart because they exist in the same chapter. They have a similar character that goes into the next song. I feel like, it was also an experiment for me to see if I can still write alone. I tend not to write alone that much anymore, because so much of my work is collaborative and I'm being hired to do this, and then I'm in a session with this person, that you forget that you have all the tools to do it yourself. It almost sometimes felt boring to sit alone and write a song by myself, especially because I've been doing it so long. The last thing I want to do is self-reflect for two hours alone in my room.
Doug Burke:
In some of your interviews, you talk about narcissism and songs being about narcissists that you've known or gone out with. But this industry is rooted in narcissism. At some level, it's called entertainment and performance. It's putting yourself out there to be seen and worshiped as a performer at some level. I think you have to be a bit of a narcissist.
Jessica Vaughn:
Of course. No one's more self-obsessed than me. No. I just feel like ...
Doug Burke:
Really? I could probably name some people, but ...
Jessica Vaughn:
You have to be interested in yourself enough to want to explore, right?
Doug Burke:
Yeah. I think our former president might be more than you.
Jessica Vaughn:
Oh, he's passed a narcissist. He's a sociopath. But it's interesting because I don't know, I don't consider myself a narcissist. I do consider myself a tad self-involved, and I think every entertainer is self-involved because you can't not be.
Doug Burke:
I wasn't calling you a narcissist. I just want to clarify, because I read in one of your interviews that you wrote a song about a person that was a narcissist.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yes, this song, yeah.
Doug Burke:
I thought it was this song, so I just was checking on that.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. This song is about a narcissist. Like I said before, I've always been drawn to the darker side of love. In the past, I've fallen in love with people where I can barely see where I end and they begin and it becomes this really gross, passionate obsession, lust. It makes you feel like, "Oh, this story has already been written. I've known you in another life. Maybe I'll know you in the next," and just stupid crap like that.
Doug Burke:
That's very romantic.
Jessica Vaughn:
Is it? But it's kind of not. The more I explore that idea, the more not romantic it sounds.
Doug Burke:
It sounds cliché and trite and artificial.
Jessica Vaughn:
It's artificial. It's not really rooted in real love. It's surface. Basically, this character was exploring the idea of falling in love with a narcissist, when really you're only falling in love with yourself, because a narcissist only reflects a mirror image of you, because they think that's what you want. They are not really there. They're just showing you all the things that you really desire, or that you feel like you bring to the table when you fall in love. It's like this beautiful thing, because you finally got everything you've ever wanted in another person, until obviously that bubble is burst and then you find out that they are just a narcissistic sociopath with no feelings of their own and they're just a void. That can feel so heartbreaking, because you really worshiped that love because it made you feel so alive. I hadn't written a song in a long time. It was exploring these feelings that I had had, and just sat at my piano, which I can barely play. I look a baby giraffe trying to walk for the first time every time I write on piano, but I love writing on piano because it forces me to make different melody choices. It just poured out of me. When I'm writing a song, I'm not always sure what it's about until I reflect on it. It was that idea of like, let me worship you. I want you. I love you. I want you. But I can't, it's maybe in another life. It makes you feel just completely alive and then ultimately completely broken.
Doug Burke:
The coolest thing for me about this song is the percussion and this echoey popping. Is it bongos that someone's playing there?
Jessica Vaughn:
I don't ... No, no bongos, but ...
Doug Burke:
It almost sounded like bongos. I was like, "bongos?" It's a cool percussion sound of ... Whoever did that, did a good job. I admire what they did.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, Tone Def and I when we've worked together, we worked on Worship, Breaking My Heart and They Say together, and we just finished our next LACES single. We just have a really amazing collaborative relationship. I am so particular in what I want and he's just really good at interpreting what it is I want. That's definitely a partnership for life.
Doug Burke:
I also like your whisper voice vocal on Maybe in Another Life. When you do that, it makes you pay attention as a listener.
Jessica Vaughn:
That goes into what we were saying before about getting older is that, I used to think I have to be loud for people to pay attention. Now I get quieter and calmer when I want people to pay attention.
Doug Burke:
It's more effective, huh?
Jessica Vaughn:
It is. I find it ... I'm also a music executive. I'm vice-president of a music publisher here in LA.
Doug Burke:
Yes, and what is the brand? I love the brand.
Jessica Vaughn:
I have my own company and I'm the president. That's Head Bitch Music and that's custom music. Then I'm also vice president at a music publisher here in LA called Heavy Hitters Music.
Doug Burke:
But you're the CEO of Head Bitch Music?
Jessica Vaughn:
That's correct, yeah.
Doug Burke:
Okay. Okay. Just in case you didn't know who it was named after, right?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, if people are going to call me a bitch, they can write their checks to that. I do feel like in business too, I get quieter now, if a man is yelling at me in a business meeting, because it happens and I just go, "Oh, I'm sorry you feel that way."
Doug Burke:
Maybe in another life.
Jessica Vaughn:
In another life.
Doug Burke:
Maybe in another life, you could yell at me that way.
Jessica Vaughn:
Exactly, exactly.
Doug Burke:
I love that. Let's talk about Moved.
Jessica Vaughn:
Awesome. That's one of my favorite songs.
Doug Burke:
Why?
Jessica Vaughn:
I wrote it with one of my favorite people, G and he's also a Jersey boy. I just love writing with him because he writes in a very similar way. All of a sudden, 15 minutes later, we have a whole song and we don't remember how it happened, because usually, we're being really serious, and then we're making noises in between, I'm like, "What?" Okay. Love, exploring love, blah, blah, and it's just very psycho and we just enjoy each other's company so much. I remember going to his studio, AKA his house studio and I said … I was listening to Freya Ridings I think it's Without You. I can't remember the name of the song, but it was licensed a ton. Because I do so much film and TV, I had called my friend G and I said, "Hey, want to do a piano ballad?" I was thinking about my ex-fiance and how at that point I've never met anybody who moved me like that. What I mean by that is, listen, I'm very happily married. My husband is my best friend. He's my family. But going back to that toxic love, I've obviously been attracted to a lot of toxic narcissists. This was my first exploration in that when it comes to like this LACES chapter, right? I thought, "No one is ever going to move me like that, because no one can possibly hurt me in the way that this man is hurt me." My emotions are so tied to that, that hurt and that high and that low, it's like a drug. When you get high, nothing's ever going to make you that high. But when you are off that high, you feel terrible. Then if you're lucky enough, you become sober and then you still remember that feeling and you have to fight that feeling every day. That's how it felt to be in love with this man, who ultimately built me up and then broke me down. I wanted to write a song about exploring the idea that no one can move you the way that somebody that hurts you moves you.
Doug Burke:
This is like a cathartic rehab?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yes, totally, totally.
Doug Burke:
It's like a 12 step program.
Jessica Vaughn:
That's basically why I write songs for sure.
Doug Burke:
You just picked all of the sad love songs. Have you written a love song about your current husband?
Jessica Vaughn:
Have I? I'm trying to think. Yes, I have.
Doug Burke:
I was going to give you a project to do-
Jessica Vaughn:
To write a song about him?
Doug Burke:
... to inspire you. Yeah, because he deserves one I think.
Jessica Vaughn:
You know what? He does, but I just not ... I don't like to write happy songs unless someone's paying me to write them, because if I'm going to write a happy song ... To me, I'm not going to sit down and write a happy song because I'm happy like I'm living my life. I'm only going to write a song if I'm feeling a certain thing that I need to explore, I need to get out of my system or is a passing thought that needs to live outside of my body. When I'm writing happy songs, it's because I'm getting hired to do so, so I write a lot of like commercials, but I make money off of those so I can get ... I'm like, "That's how I let go of those happy thoughts."
Doug Burke:
I noticed that in your background that you've written a lot of commercials. I have a really good friend, Peter Smaha and he has abandoned Park City. He wrote the Nabisco theme, Nabisco, like three notes that are legendary against one word. Every time I see him, I'm like, "Peter, you wrote Nabisco." What have you written in the commercial world that's as memorable, eternally memorable as the Nabisco?
Jessica Vaughn:
I don't think I've done anything memorable. I've done a Samsung commercial, a Microsoft commercial, a Verizon commercial.
Doug Burke:
You didn't write the Samsung theme? It's really sad that these brands have given up on writing jingles like that, because ...
Jessica Vaughn:
I know. I wish, I wish.
Doug Burke:
We need to put the songwriters to work number one.
Jessica Vaughn:
100%.
Doug Burke:
I just said Nabisco and everybody knew the song. You know those notes. They're just indelibly burned into your brain.
Jessica Vaughn:
That's my sound design is I know a lot of times now, they don't do jingles, but they'll do a sound design. It's just like a few notes, so yeah. But I don't any of that.
Doug Burke:
Like Farmers, right?
Jessica Vaughn:
Exactly.
Doug Burke:
That's such a bad jingle. You could do so much better for them, Jessica.
Jessica Vaughn:
Hey, I'm available.
Doug Burke:
Okay, Farmers, here we go. We're going to go to work on your jingle anyway. Nationwide is on your side.
Jessica Vaughn:
On your side.
Doug Burke:
You know that jingle. To the point where Peyton Manning can sing it with Brad Paisley, it's like, we can do better. We can do better.
Jessica Vaughn:
I will say, I tend to write music about my husband then I don't release it. I wrote a song for him before we dated after I kissed him and ignored him for weeks, because I didn't know what I was doing because Brian is an amazing man and I was like, "I don't know what I'm going to do if he doesn't want to be with me." I wrote him a song called Wicked Love and sent it to him. Then he flew to LA and we planned our entire lives together and then we got engaged. We got married a year after he flew down after he heard that song and I've written him other songs. But I try to keep the mystery of my actual relationship with my husband out of lyrics, it's almost too private.
Doug Burke:
I understand that and respect that. I would like to hear you release some real love songs and some happy songs, honestly, because I think your voice will do an amazing job with them. That's why I want to hear it.
Jessica Vaughn:
Well, if you want happy songs, you can hear Skinny Beats in my other monikers. They're pretty happy.
Doug Burke:
No, no, no, like pop ...
Jessica Vaughn:
Pop happy?
Doug Burke:
Alt Indie rock stuff that you're capable of doing.
Jessica Vaughn:
The next single is called Almost Happy if you can believe it.
Doug Burke:
I want Beyond Happy. I don't want Almost Happy. I want the next level. I don't want like almost there.
Jessica Vaughn:
That's all you're getting. That's all you get.
Doug Burke:
I want it over there. Like over the top happy. That's what I want.
Jessica Vaughn:
That's as far as I'll go. That's as far as I'll go for now. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about Paint the Sky.
Jessica Vaughn:
Another sad song, I love it. Love it.
Doug Burke:
What does it mean to Paint the Sky?
Jessica Vaughn:
To me, it's your own fantasy, your own imagination, just what do you want your universe to look like and how can a lover or somebody also help you do that? To me, I've always been the maker of my own rules, and so I've always painted my own universe.
Doug Burke:
I have to say, I thought this is such a beautifully arranged song, whoever did the arrangement. This has if I'm correct strings like cello and French horn in it?
Jessica Vaughn:
It does, yeah. It's actually, yeah, it's real cello and French horn. It's my cousins actually.
Doug Burke:
It's so beautiful in its composition. Is that you that put that together?
Jessica Vaughn:
I wrote it with a songwriter named Jay Levine on our guitar, and then we put together the parts and then we sent it over to my aunts and my cousin. They did an amazing job.
Doug Burke:
It's really elegant. What's it about?
Jessica Vaughn:
Going back to the song, The End, well Paint the Sky, I was so in love with this man and he just didn't get me. I was so just overwhelmed with my love for him, just looked at him and just saw the moon and the stars. I wrote the song in hopes that he would understand me, which if any women are listening, they know that that is not, it won't work. I felt like you're not understanding this universe I'm creating. I feel like you keep trying to fix me and making me something that I'm not, so I'm more presentable to the people around you. He came from just like fancy New York people, and I obviously did not and obviously, it was about my friend, David. He and I are still close. But at the time, I embarrassed him and maybe because I was 17 years younger than he was, but he thought I was a little gaudy, thought I was a little just a little too bold, said things not necessarily in the most intelligent ways. I think that embarrassed him. He came from a theater family, real estate family. He wanted to fix me. I wrote this song about, are you going to just drop me and just leave me? If I'm not perfect or I fight you, are you just going to … It's never easy to love somebody. Why can't we just be together? His reaction to that was, "You might want to change a line and maybe change the melody here," and he's not a songwriter, so it didn't work.
Doug Burke:
He wanted to change the song. That's when you should have broken up with him.
Jessica Vaughn:
It didn't last much longer, yeah. But I was so heartbroken that he didn't listen to the song in a way that was this heart song to him. It was my love letter to him. Instead, he did exactly what I was saying in the song was try to fix me and fix the song.
Doug Burke:
Wow.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah. It's one of those songs that I don't know, it just poured out of me. It's my favorite song I've ever written. I don't think I've beaten it yet.
Doug Burke:
Really?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
This is your favorite?
Jessica Vaughn:
This is my favorite song. I think it's the best song I've ever written in my opinion.
Doug Burke:
That's awesome.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
I can't pick favorites. They're just like children. There are so many of your songs, I just love that, this is a great one. It's so beautifully arranged. I like the way you go from the third person to the first person in the bridge.
Jessica Vaughn:
I tend to do that a lot. You've brought it up and I'm not even ... I don't even realize I do it.
Doug Burke:
Did you know you did that in the song?
Jessica Vaughn:
No. I know I do. It just comes naturally. I don't really think about it, but it's interesting you bring it up makes me realize like, "Oh, I do that a lot." I have a lot of habits in my songs. A lot of things come up a lot, which is just an observation. I'm not going to form an opinion about it, but ...
Doug Burke:
Strings are not acceptable in certain rock radio, and I love it when a song breaks that rule and does it well. The original Beatles Penny Lane with the French horn was like, "Oh my god, they put a classical instrument in a rock song. Who would ever think that would work?" When it works, it works great when it's done well, like it is here.
Jessica Vaughn:
Oh, thank you so much.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about Some Days, Not Tonight.
Jessica Vaughn:
Not a love song. Hey, oh.
Doug Burke:
I think we've got a theme going here on this episode. Another not a love song.
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I really like this song. I was writing with my friend Kyle McCammon and it was probably my first song like Losing Sleep, but a more mature version that I've written in a long time. How I avoid my shit. Again, and I think I've said this a lot, I struggle with anxiety where I have functional extreme anxiety. I don't take medication for it or anything anymore. I do smoke a lot of weed; I'm not going to lie to you.
Doug Burke:
It's legal in your state though, right?
Jessica Vaughn:
It is. It's my medicine. It's my medicine. It's about that idea that I'm doing everything against my best interest sometimes, where I was like, "I'm getting hetty, I'm getting high. I'm turning left when I should really go." Or I'm turning left until I feel okay or I bury something deep so down that it doesn't even become part of my story anymore." There's a line in the song that, and I don't know if it resonates with you, but it says I burn, but do I shine? That is the line for me that I really resonate with, which is, I have so much passion and fire in me, but is that getting in the way of me really shining and growing.
Doug Burke:
Powerful.
Jessica Vaughn:
Thank you. It feels heavy. Sometimes life just feels really heavy, and the older that you get, the more experiences that you have, and the more experiences that you have, just the heavier the load becomes. While we get better at living and better at surviving and maybe better at accepting, it doesn't change how heavy those experiences are. They catch up with you. This song is an acknowledgment of the heaviness that my life has been, what it was and how much I don't like to burden others with my burdens. I tell everyone I'm fine.
Doug Burke:
But that just sounds like it's not true.
Jessica Vaughn:
Right, because it's not fine. It's just that acknowledgment that some days, not tonight like I'm not going to figure this out right now. Maybe I just need to let it be because I am caught in the middle of my own story. Then it's like it goes on in the song that you've called off the worst, and you're going to be fine. You just have to be okay. Where you are is enough. It's just that entire idea. It's just an observation, a conversation of what it feels like to be a human and that's it. You're here. Wherever you are, you're here, so you have to accept it. But there's another line in the song that always sticks with me too, it's like off my chest and on my mind. I don't know if you get what that means, but to me, it's like, you carry all that anxiety and all that stuff. It's living in your chest. For me, it just goes right back to my brain and then it goes back to my chest and then back to my brain. It's just this ping pong experience, and it's me telling myself in the song throughout the song is, "Just take a second, breathe. You're okay. Just got to live."
Jessica Vaughn:
We never get a resolution on where I'm going to go on the song, but it's just a conversation with myself that your anxiety isn't who you are.
Doug Burke:
Some of the melody things or composition of the song I really like is the finger snaps, are those sticks?
Jessica Vaughn:
They're snaps.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. I like the way you do that. You use finger snaps in several of your songs, and I think that's super cool.
Jessica Vaughn:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
Then the background vocal, what is that saying? It's like kick, kick, like the overlay on the vocalese that you use here, which is like ... You have a background vocal going over the vocalese, and is that you laying all those tracks down yourself?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, yeah, the ooh, ooh and then caught in the middle, right?
Doug Burke:
There's something behind it that's going -
Jessica Vaughn:
I can't even remember. I do a lot of layers on vocals in every song, and you'll hear this in most of my songs, especially in the last five years where we'll have a vocalese part like - Then I usually do a pass or a few passes of ad-libs and I just let whatever comes out of me. Then we strategically put it in places of this song, in the song, and then, or we'll sample my vocal and maybe change it up a little bit. It still emulates the original melodies that were in the song, the feeling that that captures, but it's mostly almost a free form of dancing in a way. In dance class, a lot of times the teacher will teach you a routine and they'll give you eight bars to do whatever you want, and so I kind of have translated that into how I also sing on my songs.
Doug Burke:
That's when you would really shine in the dance class?
Jessica Vaughn:
Yeah, when I can really like be myself.
Doug Burke:
That's when you take over the room. Oh, I love it. Jessica Vaughn, I was really nervous about this episode, because there were so many sad songs, but you are a riot and you are so much fun. What I really want to encourage you to do is write an entire album of happy songs using nothing but vocalese.
Jessica Vaughn:
I'm on it.
Doug Burke:
That would be so cool and that would blow up, is just if you wrote some happy songs, just with nothing but your voice ad-libbing and then overdubs with tone on the percussion. Gosh, what a great pleasure and thrill it is for us to have you here on Backstory Song. I can't wait to see you play in person with LACES. Jessica, is there anything you want to plug?
Jessica Vaughn:
No, just my next single is out on the 19th, Breaking My Heart. Put a lot of love into it, so don't break my heart. Everyone should listen to it.
Doug Burke:
As well as the video coming for that?
Jessica Vaughn:
As well as the video. The video's coming. I learned a dance routine after 16 years, so if you want to giggle a little bit, maybe you should watch it. But thank you so much, so much for having me. Everyone can find me on the interwebs under just Head Btch Music without the I so I can run ads. I'm easily Googleable, so feel free to internet stalk me if you must.
Doug Burke:
Okay. I got to thank my sound engineer, DJ Wyatt Schmidt. You can listen to him out there on the internet and lots of places. His stuff is starting to blow up and my social media director, MC Owens we wouldn't be here without you, and please follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at @BackstorySong. Thank you very much, Jessica Vaughn from the band LACES.
