You could say Kate Voegele is an overachiever. At 22 years old, the Cleveland, Ohio native has spent the better part of the last two years juggling life as a full-time singer-songwriter, part-time actress and a college student, rarely pausing to take a breath.
It was by virtue of her talent, vivacious personality and sheer determination that Voegele scored the tie-in of a lifetime: playing the spunky Mia on popular teen drama One Tree Hill, but performing her own music. Thanks to that confluence of events, her MySpace Records debut, Don't Look Away, sold close to a quarter million copies, climbed to No. 4 on the iTunes chart and sent Voegele upstream to Interscope (which has a distribution partnership with MySpace). Now Voegele is seeing her musical wish list come true with A Fine Mess, her second serving of undeniable pop-rock charm, produced by Mike Elizondo (Maroon 5, Fiona Apple) and scheduled for release in May 2009.
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Kate Voegele is preparing to release her 3rd record, "Gravity Happens" in May, 2011.
Bio - May, 2011
Hey all,
First of all, thank you for being here. On my website, or wherever else you're finding yourself reading this. It means the world to me that you're giving a listen to my music and what I have to say. I decided with some of the changes in my life and career over the last year that I'd rather just tell you about me instead of posting a super fancy-crafted bio full of stats and superlatives. I'm so thrilled to be releasing my third record, "Gravity Happens," and I hope that these few paragraphs give you a better idea of what I'm about, where these songs came from and what they mean.
I want my music to be your favorite pair of blue jeans. I want it to be comfy. Perhaps that's an artsy way of saying I want my record to be the one that you put on regardless of where you are and how you're feeling because you know you're going to take something away from it no matter what's going on in your life. What kind of music is it? That's usually the number one question on everyone's list for a singer/songwriter.
I'm a girl who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. And after my dad taught me how to play a guitar, I started playing shows around my hometown and the Midwest. My senior year, I played SXSW in Austin alongside my favorite artists and idols at Farm Aid. And then one day, in my college dorm room, I got a message from first friend Tom on MySpace who was starting a record label and had found me on his website among millions of people and wanted to sign me as his first artist. I left college in Ohio to make a record, started touring with acts like Natasha Bedingfield and playing my music acting on multiple seasons of the CW show "One Tree Hill." On the show, I performed my songs as a character named Mia each week whose storyline was essentially dictated by the music. I released a second record and partnered with sponsors like University of Phoenix, Ford, and Oakley. This summer, I'm releasing a signature series of sunglasses that I designed with Oakley. It's one of the most exciting things I've ever done.
But the main point of a bio is to give the reader a better understanding of the artist's vision and voice with regards to their current material. So I will say that this record is inspired by and for the people who have taught me how to be brave when gravity happens. Those people are everywhere in my life. This bio would be a novel if I were to cite every source of that inspiration. But this year my life was met with changes that I would not have known how to handle were it not for some standout experiences. I spent a week in a trash dump community in Managua, Nicaragua and met a little girl named Hojayi who, at 9 years old, knows more about what it means to love and to believe than I probably ever will. I watched my aunt battle cancer and meet the menace of a merciless disease with the vitality and fearlessness of a warrior. I was blessed with the friendship of a man whose courage and passion for life in the face of an accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down and with a wife who subsequently left him is unlike any I've ever seen. This record is about what happens when you get to a point in your life when you realize that the world can be more cruel and scary than you ever imagined. Whether we're watching an earthquake devastating an entire country on television or going through our own daily challenges which are petty in comparison, we feel the weight of life more than ever as we grow up. I just hope that these songs can take a tiny bit of that weight off...for anyone or everyone who hears them. So maybe I do have an angle after all. And that's always what it's going to be.
Simply put, my fans and the people who are touched by this music mean everything to me. My biggest thanks goes out to them for inspiring me every day I wake up to "fasten wings to my shoes."
x0x0 kv
Kate Voegele
You could say Kate Voegele is an overachiever. At 23 years old, the Cleveland, Ohio native has spent the better part of the last two years juggling life as a full-time singer-songwriter, part-time actress and a college student, rarely pausing to take a breath. "Multi-tasking has always been my thing," she says. "For my first album, I somehow scheduled my classes around recording sessions, and still got a 4.0 grade point average. Then I took a break from school and went on the road, but halfway through, I got offered One Tree Hill completely unexpectedly. That was when life got ridiculous."
Ridiculous in the sense that Voegele went from being a complete unknown to a TV star, and from a girl writing songs in her dorm room to a bonafide recording artist with legions of loyal fans, all in less than a year. Voegele is still pinching herself just to make sure it's really happening. "Sometimes I look around and wonder what I've done to deserve all this," she says with a laugh.
It was by virtue of her talent, vivacious personality and sheer determination that Voegele scored the tie-in of a lifetime: playing the spunky Mia on popular teen drama One Tree Hill, but performing her own music. Thanks to that confluence of events, her MySpace Records debut, Don't Look Away, sold close to a quarter million copies, climbed to No. 4 on the iTunes chart and sent Voegele upstream to Interscope (which has a distribution partnership with MySpace). Now Voegele is seeing her musical wish list come true with A Fine Mess, her second serving of undeniable pop-rock charm, produced by Mike Elizondo (Maroon 5, Fiona Apple) and scheduled for release in May 2009.