Val Starr, Northern California Blues Artist is gaining Charts and Radio play with her new Single “Spending Christmas with the Blues”.
Top 10 APD Global Airplay Charts for blues/jazz at #9
Val was featured in our latest issue The 2015 Women in Music Feature. Check out the Interview by Lori Graboyes on page 12. http://blues-e-news.com/2015-women-in-music-feature/
Val Starr and the Blues Rocket are relatively new to the blues scene but make no mistake about Val Starr, this is one seasoned business savvy woman as you’ll come to know. The Blues Rocket emerged in 2011 in Sacramento and were well received with their varying styles of the blues. The band are now well established on the California blues scene. They do about 20-25 gigs a year which accommodates their need to continue with their daytime jobs.
Val is a singer/songwriter at heart who also plays a solid rhythm guitar. The group was a finalist in the 2013 Sacramento IBC competition. Their first CD called “Cool Ride” received rave reviews. Their sophomore effort entitled Blues Away was released to radio in June 2014 and was also well received. Both CD’s feature all original songs written by Val. A new CD, perhaps the triple threat, for Val and the band is due out this fall tentatively titled “Woman On A Mission.” Val currently has about 60 songs in her songwriting arsenal, and is constantly writing new music. As in her previous two releases, Woman On A Mission will feature all original material. The band has opened for many great groups like Rick Estrin & The Night Cats and Tommy Castro & The Painkillers, just to mention a few.
Val was born and raised in southern California. She has a very large extended family, including two brothers, two step brothers, a half brother and a sister, to which she is the second eldest. Other than her father strumming his guitar around the campfire when she was a kid, her parents were not musically inclined nor did they push her in that direction. As a child the music being played in her household was primarily show tunes from Rodgers & Hammerstein and folk music. This led to her love of such greats as Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark and Carole King’s Tapestry albums, both she will tell you taught her how to harmonize. She started singing and playing guitar at age 12. She was a good student, loved school and was always a part of the school choir frequently earning solo parts.
Back in the day, when Val was a young woman, there weren’t many career choices for women. It was either be a waitress or be a secretary. Val was a self professed “klutz” therefore being a waitress wasn’t an option, so secretary it was! She began working for record labels hoping that it would provide her with the inside track to being signed as an artist. This is where Val learned the many aspects of the music industry. She first broke out on the music scene fronting an 80’s hair band, spandex and all, in L.A. based bands Local Authority and Threshold. She remained a rocker up until the blues got a hold of her. Not so surprising at all, her blues influences are mostly all guitar driven such as Led Zeppelin, Steve Miller and Robin Trower. Her biggest blues influence is the very guitar driven bluesman Eric Clapton.
Val continued her music business career as an independent radio promoter for over 15 years and then became a pioneer in streaming audio starting in 1999 with allradio.com before streaming was a household word. Her current online radio network is Gotradio, which features 50 stations, as well as a 24/7 blues channel called Bit O’ Blues. Once she began digging in as a blues radio programmer her personal blues favorites expanded to the likes of Debbie Davises, EC Scott, EG Kight, Deborah Coleman, Albert Collins, Albert Cummings, Walter Trout, Coco Montoya and Joe Bonamassa, many of which are noteworthy guitar driven blues artists.
Val, her husband and bass player John, along with their partner Jim Holmes, began a 6 concert series during the summer called Blues On The Patio. The idea came to her and her husband as a way to get beyond the local club scene to accommodate a more seasoned demographic. Their goal was to provide a classy environment for fans to come see them (and of course it doesn’t hurt that it helps get their name out there in the process.) They fully fund this project, taking on all risk and responsibility, but it has proven to be an enriching experience for them. They manage to get themselves some heavy hitters for this project, most recently EC Scott and upcoming EG Kight! They open the show for each artist and therein lies the exposure. Pretty smart business model if you ask me!
Val’s bandmates are her husband John E Sandwich on bass (a stage name), local blues musician Frankie Soul on lead guitar, Russ Skarsten on keys, he was formerly with the famous Mick Martin band and several local blues drummers including Paul Farman (who played drums on Blues Away), as well as Guyle Taber and Rick Meyer. All three drummers will appear on the new CD along with other special guest blues musicians.
Speaking to Val about her songwriting process, she says she writes her songs all at once. She’ll think of a story or a hook line and then begins to wrap the music around it. She draws from her experiences with friends, family and life experiences. She enjoys writing clever, often amusing lyrics and catchy tunes. You will recognize that immediately in her tune called Chardonnay which is widely famous to her audience in small part because she will choose audience members to come up on stage and sing the chorus with her.
Speaking about her upcoming release she said her fans and audiences can expect more contemporary blues than rock blues. She likes to refer to the band’s sound as California Blues! When I asked her how she felt about the way blues artists and bands are being pigeonholed now into the many sub-genres she said in some ways it is unfortunate, however notes that kids today are really getting back to roots music such as Americana, so as blues artists they have a real opportunity to cross over into genres like Americana and AAA radio, which is one of her favorites in this ever evolving genre called the blues.
Since this is the Women In Music edition of Blues-E-News I asked her if she could tell me if being a woman, especially a woman in blues, worked for or against her to which she responded, “All I ever wanted to be was a musician in a band.” She went on to say that she still thinks women have to work harder to prove themselves which can be evidenced by the lack of numbers of women in blues being booked at festivals. More often than not she will find herself the only woman at a festival and to her that’s unfortunate as there are so many talented female blues artists. She has a large female following because many of the songs she writes tell stories that women can relate to.
By now my readers have come to expect my feature which is to ask the artist to please share with me something that they have never told their readers or that has never been printed about them before. She wanted you folks to know how she met her husband John. She was calling another musician friend, but John answered the phone and ended up inviting her to come to sit in with his garage band and the rest, as they say, is history. They have been together ever since.
You can download either of Val Starr and The Blues Rocket CD’s atwww.valstarrandthebluesrocket.com for a most reasonable $10.00 per CD!
Peace & Blues
Lori aka “The Blueswoman” Graboyes
