"Witness" is her new solo CD -

The release party is at One Longfellow Square on Friday May 23!

By Bob McKillop

Vanessa Torres is on a path that has appeared gradually beneath her feet, materializing out of her passion for healing the world and her growing confidence and self-awareness as a songwriter and a performer.  She sees that path a lot more clearly of late; she is about to release her new CD, “Witness”.  This disc presents a stronger solo identity than Vanessa has displayed in her two prior releases, and is a much more professional product.

Talking with Vanessa is at once, energizing and exhausting.  Words come pouring out of her in a stream of consciousness, but the stream is cogent, intelligent, and thoughtful.  The combination of her rapid expression of ideas, and the depth of those ideas, suggest the solidity of her philosophy and the steadfastness of her moral compass.  During our conversation one recent afternoon at The North Star Music Café, I had trouble keeping up with her – thank goodness for my little Zoom recorder!

Vanessa’s music includes fun and upbeat Americana and old time folk music, but she is best known for her songs of social commentary.  This focus grows from a childhood influenced by an activist mom who let her see the world as it is from a young age, and taught her to care about making a difference.

“I was writing about Bosnian refugee children when I was in fourth grade” Vanessa recalls.  “My mom wasn’t one of those parents who spared my sister and I any information that she thought would be traumatic; she really just let us hear what the world was about. That was both terrifying and educational for me, to be privy to that information. My impetus to write has always come out of a desire to make sense of the world, and to try to understand who we are in that context and why things are the way that they are.”

While her social consciousness was developing as one part of her identity, her musical training began early, and helped to create another important part of who she is today.  She studied piano for ten years, beginning at the age of five, and played saxophone and clarinet in middle school.  She first picked up a guitar at age fifteen, and taught herself all the songs in the Indigo Girls songbook.  Vanessa and her sister, Tamara, began to perform in coffee house open mics around their hometown of Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Vanessa began seriously writing songs late in her college years, but did not see herself pursuing a career in music.  She was more interested in traveling and farming, and supporting sustainable communities, and other types of radical lifestyles.  She worked on organic farms in New Zealand, and spent time in Spain supporting various political organizations there. 

She felt that she was doing important work, but she didn’t feel as though she was using her unique talents, or that she was connecting those talents to something larger than herself.  Conversely, she found that if she wrote and performed a song, and it touched someone deeply, that felt much more powerful to her.  At first she didn’t feel confident that she was capable in her music.  But as she made more room for it in her life, and as she witnessed other artists doing that work, she said to herself, “why aren’t I doing that?  I can do that!”  Vanessa began to realize and imagine how amazing her life would be if she could pursue music as a way to help create positive change in the world.

She followed her closest friend and sister, Tamara, to Portland during the winter of 2003, eight months after graduating from college.  The two young women began to frequent the open mics around town, including Grannies Burritos and the Ale House, often finding that they were the only female performers.   Nate Spencer joined the sisters a little later, and the band “Touching Ground” was born.  The band went through several incarnations over the next few years. Lauren Snead played percussion for a while, and Ra Criscitiello (on banjo and accordion) replaced Spencer when he went south to North Carolina. 

At left, from left, Tamara Torres, Ra Criscitiello, Vanessa Torres

The band’s 2005 release “Vanessa Torres” was a well-received collection of Vanessa’s original tunes.  I had some personal favorites from that disc: “Breathe” is the desperate throwing off of a smothering, foundering relationship.  “Beauty” is about a plea from a beautiful young girl for the world to know her for more than her body.  “I Don’t Exist” documents the feelings of exclusion in the life of a person outside the mainstream popular culture.

Her transition from Touching Ground’s front woman to the more solo artist she presents to the world today was a slow one.  She attributes the change to an awakening to the potential for integrating the two most important aspects of what makes her special (social consciousness and music), and a growing confidence in her ability to be successful at her work in that context.

“I started seeing myself more as a performing musician once I developed a home base. It has just been very gradual since then.”  Vanessa explains.  “I think that the past year has been real decisive one for me musically; I’ve tried to really invest in this 200%, and a lot is coming about for me because of that. But when I look at where I was several years ago, it’s not like I had the dream of being a songwriter my whole life. What’s most important to me is that I feel like I’m able to use whatever gifts or talents I have to create positive change in the world, and that’s really at the center of what I want to do.   It really needs to feel meaningful for me, it needs to feel like I’m connecting with people.”

Vanessa’s new CD, “Witness”, was recorded by Mark Thayer, and was produced by David Goodrich (Chris Smither, Jeffrey Foucault, Peter Mulvey, Moses Atwood).   She found herself immersed completely in her first studio experience.  Vanessa and Tamara spent several days at Mark’s Signature Sound studio in Connecticut.  Tamara did all the cooking, and they worked on the album at odd times of the day and night.  Vanessa laughs about how she wasn’t able to record anything she liked before 5 PM! 

She has high praise for Mark and David.  Vanessa did not want to have to explain folk music to her producer and sound engineer; she wanted to focus on getting the music right.  Both Mark and David are known for working with singer/songwriters, and they immediately understood Vanessa’s music, and had a lot of appreciation for it.  She came to trust David to suggest sounds and instrumentation that she would not have otherwise considered.  Vanessa feels that both Mark and David had the independence to allow her to sound exactly as she should, rather than to try and create a sound that conformed to current musical expectations.

“I think the idea nowadays, so often with music and with records, is making something that sound like everything else on the radio: this voice, this compression, this band, instead of making songs that sound like different people with different messages and different feelings and that has that subtlety and texture that you can get into.”

David Goodrich has produced an album for Vanessa that has wonderful dynamics and subtle but intelligent instrumentation that enhances Vanessa’s performance without burying it.  Understated piano highlights, a variety of finely played guitar embellishments, and distinctive and unique treats (such as Shakuhachi flute) imbue the record with flavor like a well-seasoned meal.  The importance of Vanessa’s and Tamara’s harmonies is acknowledged, and the passion in Vanessa’s songwriting and lead vocals comes through brilliantly.  Goodrich has captured Vanessa in her true colors.

The opening track is “Bluest of Valleys”.  Tamara’s true, high vocals and Goodrich’s light touch on the keyboard give this track a poignant, sweetly painful feel, and Goodrich’s introspective lead work on the resonator guitar evoke memories and recollections of home lost to the passage of time.  The melody stirs the emotions with well-placed lifts and harmonies.  The song is about traditions and legacies, some retained, some lost forever.

“Looking back on my home

Those doorways of freedom were

Doorways of stone

Where the old kings of Memphis have

All lost their crowns

It’s the bluest of valleys but

Such a long way down”

 

“Love Some More” offers a response to intolerance and fear that is generous, forgiving, but also dismissive of the hate that underlies those negative energies.  The song is triumphant in its tone and celebrates love as a pure, unassailable force.  Ra Criscitiello’s banjo plunks out a nice counterpoint to Vanessa’s rollicking guitar strum, and Tamara’s harmonies are just plain joyful.

“I’m not trying to prove you wrong

‘Cause I won’t

This isn’t political – It’s personal!

And you can call this your crusade

Go ahead and wage your little war

Tell you what I’m gonna do

I’m going to love…

Gonna love some more!”

The final track on the album is a killer.  “Live Again” integrates all of Vanessa’s hopes for the world, and for herself, into a series of promises for doing better the next time around.  Lush, finger-picked guitar under her soft, solo vocal, and a gentle piano break from Goodrich, that lifts the heart right up into the throat, make this my favorite track, by far.

“If I could wear forgiveness all year round

Then I’d let go ‘o your mean words, your hateful sounds

And I’d see you newborn, when your smile

Could turn the whole world upside-down

If I could wear forgiveness all year round”

This album is a beautiful work of art by a young woman who has come of age and found her place in the world, and discovered the work she must do to be happy in it.  It is full of passion, generosity, and above all, love.  Vanessa Torres has discovered her path.  She doesn’t always see it in total clarity, and she’s not fully certain where it leads, but she’s sure she belongs upon it.

“People are really hungry for kindness and meaning; I feel that there’s something there that I need to follow, and I don’t know what it’s going to look like exactly, but I’m trying to stay open, and not force anything, follow the energy, and trust that I’m on this path for a reason.”

I urge you to own Vanessa’s new CD, “Witness”, and walk the path with her.

“Witness” will be available at Vanessa’s CD release party at One Longfellow Square, on Friday, May 23rd, at 7:30 PM.  Emilia Dahlin and Northern Spy open the show.

You will also find Vanessa’s CD at Bull Moose Music Stores, and online at www.vanessatorresmusic.com and www.cdbaby.com.