Devan Tracy – An Xperience Interview

Devan Tracy – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

Saratoga native Devan Tracy is an acoustic folk singer/songwriter, percussionist and road traveler. On November 25th, that road will take her to the release of her album, Human Doing, at Caffe Lena.

RRX: Tell us a little bit about yourself. You are coming to Caffe Lena. Are you doing that as a part of a tour or is this you just showing up as an individual engagement?

DT: So this is a very short tour. So I grew up in Saratoga Springs, and I currently live in New Hampshire as a musician. My day job is as an engineer, but I’m a musician to keep me sane, I tell everybody. So I’ll be doing a CD release there on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, get my college band, get back together. I am going to be bringing some of my music teachers from Saratoga from growing up as a little bit of a reunion. But there’s a mini tour. I did a CD release in February in New Hampshire, and this will be the 2nd stop.

RRX: OK, so tell us a little bit about the CD. Is it new material?

DT: It’s mostly new material. The title track, it’s called “Human Doing” and it’s probably the last five years’ worth of songs compiled. I went through several different milestones through that period. Of course COVID happened. I also got married, bought a house and moved to New Hampshire. So I think all of those themes are part of the songs in some way, but Human Doing, the title track, that phrase came to me through my yoga practice. where I had a yoga teacher say, ‘we’re not human doings, we’re human beings.’ Why are we always doing? That’s the inspiration for the title track, which I happened to write on a yoga retreat in New York, I think it was on the Battenkill River. We were tubing down.

RRX: I’m so not aware of yoga at all. I probably could stand to be aware of yoga actually. People don’t think of yoga as very kinetic, You think about the poses and stuff like that, very sedate. You don’t think about it in the kinetic way. When I think of music for yoga, I’m thinking very, light jazz or very calm music. Do you think there’s more to it than that? Do you think that more of the kinetic aspect of music that can be applied to yoga?

DT: I think so. The one thing that I think where I see the correlation between yoga and music is a mantra, that repeating; it’s almost like a riff. So I’ve translated that. I’m trying to think of the, the exact phrasing here off the top of my head, but its ‘pause and do nothing.’ And you keep repeating that phrase. A lot of what you do in yoga is you pick a phrase, and it’s the mental aspect of yoga, not necessarily the kinetic, or the movement, but that repetition of a phrase to kind of embed it in your mind. I’ve tried to put that in some of my songs, and also the breathing aspects. I think in a couple of songs, you’ll actually hear me breathing, where normally you would want to take that out, cut that out of the mic, but that was very much intentional in some of these songs.

RRX: So you have that breathing in there to have that authentic sound, right?

DT: Exactly.

RRX: You do acoustic folk and also pop. I’ve always wondered when I hear pop music, I’m like, ‘well, isn’t pop just basically any other genre that happens to become popular?’ I don’t know if there is a standard convention of pop, maybe there is. So when you’re doing, when you’re writing songs with that element of pop, what would you consider that element to be as it pertains to like acoustic folk.?

DT: I struggle with genres, to be honest. I agree with you. If it’s pop, then it’s become popular, right? So what are the aspects of pop music that make those songs popular? I think I’m still trying to figure that out and infuse that a little bit. I don’t think I’ve figured it out. People ask me ‘what type of music do you do?’ And I think I just put a blanket statement acoustic folk pop without much deeper thinking than that.

RRX: So you recently performed with All The Best Kids in DC, how was that?

DT: I loved that time. I was living in DC uh prior to moving up to New Hampshire, and this was an eleven-piece funk band. We had a whole horn section, a rapper, a female vocal lead, and then I was on the keyboard and backup vocals. Then I would fill in for the drummer when she was out. So it was a great experience. It’s something very different from what I had ever done. And most of us also had full-time gigs. I was just always shocked. How do we even find a common time every week to rehearse, let alone gig? But it was a great opportunity. The rapper happened to work in the music industry in DC. He would help, he would book all the gigs, and I would just show up. It was the best of all worlds. You just show up and play music, like how much better can you get than that?

RRX: Now earlier you had mentioned getting your classmates together, you had gotten people close to you into your music. And I thought that was cool because not everybody brings people that are from their personal lives into their music.

DT: For this gig at Caffe Lena, some folks still live in Saratoga that I played with in college. I’m looping them in. My mom is also going to join me and my brother, who lives in Maine. He’s gonna join me and the two of them also perform live on the album. And actually, the producer of the album, Jason Bardeau, he happens to play bass, so I’ve invited him to join me up on stage. I just made a pact in the last couple of years that I’m not saying yes to any gig if it’s solo. It’s just to me, there’s so much less joy in performing by myself. So I’d rather share that moment on stage with others. I just get a lot more joy out of that.

RRX: That’s cool. When you were growing up, was there a lot of music in the family or was that something you kind of branched out into?

DT: My mom had always played music. My dad’s been a wannabe, but he actually took drum lessons when I left home and left my drum set there. He said, ‘you know, it’s sitting here, so I might as well learn to play.’ But yeah, there was always music in the house, and my brother picked up music later in life. I didn’t get into songwriting until college, but I did a lot of piano growing up and percussion and drums, and then it kind of evolved from there.

RRX: When you were in college, when you started songwriting, was there anything that made you start songwriting or was it just ‘well, why not?’

DT: I don’t know if there was one thing in particular, I would say the thing that comes to mind is I was starting to journal. That was again inspired by one of my yoga teachers. It was actually a requirement. We had to journal for class. And at one point, I said, ‘you know what, I’m pretty sure other people are feeling these feelings that I’m feeling. So why don’t I just share them with the world through song?’ And that was kind of the inspiration of how I transitioned into songwriting.

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