BTS: Introduce yourselves to those who may not know you?
VOILÀ: I’m Gus and I’m Luke, together we are VOILÀ here in Los Angeles. We are a pop-rock duo. Gus is from London. Luke is from a small town in Wisconsin, with family in Michigan. We have been on this project for about a year and a bit. We just got out our new song “Don’t.” It was on New Music Friday today which is very exciting and um yeah we are very excited to be doing this interview.
BTS: How would you describe your music to people who have never heard it before?
Gus: I would say it overall a mixture between Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes and Twenty One Pilots.
Luke: In terms of content I think we, well you know the phrase “always wear your heart on your sleeve?” We are just wearing a broken heart on our sleeves. So we are kind of just in that realm of romance and heartbreak and kind of the lines between the two.
BTS: What are you looking forward to most in 2019?
Gus: Well, we aren’t sure exactly what the future holds.
Luke: I know one thing I am looking forward to. We are coming to the Midwest in January to play some shows and do some radio tours. So I think we might end up in Detroit. I am looking forward to doing that, a good way to kick off the new year!
Gus: and the charity show in your [Luke’s] hometown.
Luke: Yeah we are doing that in Milwaukee.
Gus: We are also putting out a full-length album.
BTS: Who are your musical influences?
Gus: Mine would have to be old school Fall Out Boy, old school Ed Sheeran. I am also inspired by a lot of jazz music. I enjoy a lot of the music from the prohibition era. I get inspired by the emotion behind songs.
Luke: I am inspired by other musicians but also literature, so I like to read a lot. The good romance novels have inspired me, I am a big Nicholas Spark fan. In terms of music, Elliott Smith was the guy who got me into music. I am really into country music even though we are far from country. My favorite thing about country music is the lyricism, cause that’s what I love about music and Sam Hunt is one of the best lyricists out there right now.
BTS: Some nonmusical influences?
Gus: Absolutely, for me, everything’s just doing right by my family. My parents gave me a lot of freedom being able to pursue my passion and you know like every day being able to do that. It is one of my driving forces. I am also very very invested and emotionally connected to the environment. Every day I try to do my piece, I want to use my platform and the stage to do everyone to do the same.
Luke: I am always inspired by people who have tattoos of like words or lyrics and things like that. Cause I think my ultimate goal is that I want to write lyrics that can be tattooed on people. So that is one of my biggest inspirations. Whether I’m on like a train or whenever I see people with tattoos that’s when I’m like that’s where I want to end up. Like that’s where my thoughts end up. I think humans are the ultimate canvas for sure.
Gus: Essentially he wants to write a lyric good enough to be tattooable.
Luke: Yeah like every song, that is like the standard of the things we put out. I am also, like in terms of causes I am inspired by my father is the director of a shelter in Milwaukee, so growing up I was around that and um there was a lot of cases of domestic violence and I think being someone who is obsessed with literature and romantic music it was really frustrating to see these women who believe they are in a loving relationship yet they are getting beaten. So I really want to help educate people on what love is and what love isn’t. That is what is important to me.
Gus: Essentially…, this whole project was formed out of a very real situation for both of us, I mean I had my heart broken in a big way and so did Luke so we kind of got together and were like listen, there is no point in wallowing in our sorrows, why not tell everyone about it, why not join together and sort of create more of a collaborate instead of just being down. Much rather create something positive out of it.
Luke: You don’t have to be lonely alone. If you know what I mean?
BTS: What do you hope your fans get from your music, is there a certain message you are trying to send?
Luke: We hope they feel it is relatable and that they can connect to us. We hope that we are accessible. Like if someone wants to reach out to us and share something, we want to be there for them.and we want to be able to help them with whatever they’re going through. Cause I think growing up I was always inspired by musicians who waited after concerts and who listened to stories of their fans. That is what I want people to take away that we are there for them, we want to listen and we are just as inspired by them as they could be inspired by us. Like I would love to get a tattoo of something a fan said to me just as much as I would love for them to get a tattoo of something I said to them. It is such a mutual relationship. It’s really just accessibility, I really hope people feel like they can wait around after the shows and we will be there till two in the morning if we have to, chatting about real things.
BTS: What can you tell us about the songs you have released so far?
Gus: So what is quite funny is we spent a lot of time trying to find our sound, Luke and I have actually been working together for four years, actually more than four years, like four and a half years, but VOILÀ has only been just about a year. Before that we had been producing, writing, tons of different stuff, lots of different side projects. And then we sat down and said let’s just find our sound and that I find was just always one of the hardest things to do. We found our sound, we actually had written a bold, 17 track unreleased album that will probably see the light of day and that whole process when we said let’s write and finish an album is how we found our sound, so then we got to the point where we were like hey some of these songs we feel might be good enough now so that’s when we started releasing and that’s when the first two came out. So “Hundredth Second Chance” and “Lately” were the first feeling of our sound, it’s sort of a pop-rock edge that is consumable but also has very signature stuff and every song we write starts with a guitar lick and the production is quite minimalist in general and I would say that was sort of those first songs came to life.
Luke: We had one single called “Stand Tall” which was really an honor to write. My father was diagnosed with stage four cancer and it was kind of at this time where we were finding out sound and that obviously impacted me so we wanted to do something special so we wrote the song stand tall. It’s kind of about how I had the most beautiful conversations with my dad knowing that things are going to end and it’s like there’s something really gorgeous about things ending, and so we did that. The coolest part is we shot the music video which is hopefully gonna come out around Christmas time, but we actually flew my dad out to LA and shot the video with my dad and told that real story, it’s such an honor to be able to tell such an authentic tale. And I think that’s what every good artist hopes they can do out of something horrible. I make something beautiful in the art, so I think that song was really fun to see come to life.
BTS: What is your writing and recording process like?
Gus: That is an interesting one, every song is different. It’s funny when people sometimes are like how did it start, blah blah blah, what did you start with, cause there is no real answer to that. But recently most of the songs have started with Luke coming up with a guitar lick and then I would write the melody off that so it kind of doesn’t start with a lyric, the story is kind of created to fit what we have in terms of the melodic structure.
Luke: You know I just keep a list of lyrics in the phone and we start writing the music to it, we kinda just plug and see what is gonna fit and once we have the hook then we can kind of build the story off from there an finding what is true and relatable to us. It’s kind of like when you’re telling a story its like you can tell the same story many different ways so it’s hard to know exactly where to start. You can start from one perspective or from the middle or the end so there’s no real formula to how we do it. We just do it together.
BTS: What is something you’ve accomplished so far in your career that you are most proud of?
Gus: Well actually over summer we actually, actually like a month ago we opened up for The Fray and that was insane, cause The Fray was my childhood so to have them come out and sort of like say “thanks” and everything so like opening up for them was incredible.
Luke: We were opening up for Kesha and there was a show in Milwaukee, where I am from, and we got to play on the main stage of Summerfest and I grew up going there since I was like seven years old, every single day of that festival and dreaming of being on that stage, so there’s something very surreal about being able to play on it.
BTS: What is a song you wish you wrote and why?
Luke: Oh my god, you’re gonna know it, it’s “Marry Me” – Thomas Rhett. That’s the best song, but that song, the reason is like I am one of those cry babys, I cry during all sorts of movies, I cried during the SpongeBob SquarePants movie (….) I am kind of sappy but I didn’t expect that song to get me but I was driving and I remember exactly where I was, I was driving, taking a turn onto the freeway and you know how that song starts where you don’t know that he’s not marrying the girl you don’t know that he’s sad and there’s that one line that turns it all around and I’m driving and I’m like this is so cute and that one line hits me and I’m pulling onto the freeway and I start sobbing and I got off at the next exit and just go get gas to listen to the song like six times, I wish I wrote that so bad it’s so genius, oh my god.
Gus: I could really answer that question in terms of lyrically and melodically, but melodically, that’s how my mind works. I love melody, so for me, I am pretty much obsessed with all of Ed Sheeran’s music. So I can almost sing his whole album.
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