Von Strantz House Show!

A couple weeks ago my friend Andrew asked me if I would be willing to host a house show! Two of his friends, Jess Strantz & Kelsey Horton form the acoustic duo Von Strantz, and were rolling through Memphis, so I thought, why not?? They set up and played in my living room for strangers and friends who showed up to listen and much on assorted junk food. It was a blast. My friend Lance Alton opened the night with some of his delightful folk songs (more on him at a later date,) before Von Strantz took the floor.

Their music features the lead vocals and guitar strumming of Jess Strantz, and the vocal harmony and classical string instrument varieties of Kelsey Horton.

I caught up with Jess and Kelsey and asked them a little bit about their music.

How did Von Strantz start?

2012 was a crazy year for me (Jess), I was figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, had a pretty stable job of 7 years, but just felt completely dissatisfied in my work, things got pretty dark fairly quick, my grandfather whom I was very close to, died battling cancer, my family life was incredibly rough, and shortly after I got in a car accident that caused my hands to be useless for a few months.

During that time I did some soup searching, still wrote music, but more theoretically, and finally got well enough to start playing music again.

Being burnt out on performing in multiple bands in the previous years, I decided to start Von Strantz, a musical project that would represent me, but also anyone else who chose to work with me, Kels Horton accepted my invitation to create with me, and here we are almost 3 years later.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

Honestly we just create, regardless of how we are feeling.

If you wait for Inspiration to come, often times you'll miss out on the process of watching what seems like nothing become into something.

Writing songs and music often reminds me of taking a rock and chiseling a sculpture.

But when we are feeling most inspired is when we are around people listening to their life stories, or immersing ourselves in the beauty of nature, especially colorado.

How do you usually write songs, lyrics first, melody first, etc?

We write music first,

Taking time to figure out what the song is actually saying is very important to us and often times we will take a concept and create what sounds like that in our heads and then mess with it till we've found the nature and character of that song.

What has the journey been like?

It's been incredibly tough,

There's plenty of ways to go about creating art, for us it's not just an outlet, it's our career.

When you are making a career for yourself it's not just honing in your craft or mastering your skills,

It's building a solid network, a good foundation, and from their figuring out who you need to work with to accomplish your vision and goals,

We've learned a lot, and continue to,

The journey has been worth it though, many people we have worked with have come and gone,

But we are still here, creating and moving forward, and only taking the opportunities that fit our vision and goal as a band.

What do you want to tell people through your music?

I'm not sure I really want to tell them anything, I really just hope that Kels and I can share our stories in way that people can find themselves in the stories we are creating, and more so give them a mirror.

The beauty of creating art is letting people figure out what it really means to them.

How is life on the road? How often do you tour?

Touring is a lot of work, more work then you'd think,

We are our own manager, booking agent, marketing director, press contact, finance committee, etc.

We are always touring, and always finding ways to connect with new people, artists, collect stories, contacts and build our business as artists. What we love most about touring is meeting people and learning more about the human race.

We stay in host homes, and make our own meals on the road,

We try to be as wise as possible with our finances, and plan routes that make it possible to build a following for ourselves every where we go.

It's tough being away from our husbands, our goal is to make enough money to include them on this journey. It's truly a blessing they are so supportive of us, but we look forward to the day we all get to be together.

Do you have any CDs, current or upcoming?

Currently we have 4 EPS,

our Von Strantz self titled EP

And the our Narratives EPs

chapter 1, chapter 2, and Chapter 3.

Which is a collection of 12 songs.

We are currently working on our very first full length. Which will be set to release sometime next year.

All of our music is available online through iTunes, google play, bandcamp, Spotify, pandora & sound cloud.

What's next? What are you plans or goals/dreams for your music?

Our goal for this year is write our first full length and by 2016.

We are looking forward to being able to not only expand our national audience but international audience as well and are making plans to tour internationally.