“Rocktronica” Goddess Alexx Calise & OverkillWFO: Our Conversation
(Contributor’s Note: The reason I call this a conversation and not an interview is because, without saying it in so many words, she preferred to think of it that way. Wow. What a great way for a first-time intervi…um, conversationalist (with someone other than a regular person) to start off. She contacted us regarding doing an interview, and I was the lucky bastard who got the opportunity. Our original “talk” was supposed to be on Tuesday afternoon. Our phones just did not get along that day, so she asked if we could do it on Wednesday at the same time. Well, yes of course. After the “conversation” was all said and done, and I shut off the tape recorder, she was truly interested in what I do for a living outside of the website. We talked about family, friends, grey hairs, age, relationships. It was like talking to someone I’ve known for years, and you will sense that here. She is a gem. A true artist. A genuine soul. She is coming people, whether you like it or not. For me personally, I like it. Rock on) ********** OverkillWFO-I wanna thank you for giving us this opportunity and taking the time to talk with me.Alexx-Ah, right back at you. ********** OKWFO-Nice. Who was your main influence that led you to go into the music business and when did you first start?
Alexx-Well actually, the person who inspired me to become a musician is my father. My father is a musician, too, a really phenomenally talented guitar player and also a singer. But, I come from a very musical family, the Calise side of my family. We’ve all been very well versed in the arts and in music. For example, my great-great-grandfather played about 13 different instruments, and then I had a great aunt that was a classically-trained violinist, so we’re all very musically inclined on that side of the family. My father was the one who really inspired me because I watched him as a kid. Me and my brother would sit on the floor and watch him play. Ya know, like Beatles tunes or the James Bond theme, and when I was a kid, I was just like, “Oh my God. That is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” I thought I just gotta do this. So, I picked up the guitar at 11, and I was really inspired by a lot of music like Silverchair, who has always been my favorite band…ever. A lot of my guitar playing style especially has been inspired by blues because I love Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny Lang, B.B. King. Stuff like that. So, I would sit in my room when I was growing up and just play along to the records, like blues records and Silverchair and Soundgarden. I just fell in love with the instrument. I’ve always been a writer first and foremost, but I thought music would be the ultimate way to kind of put my writings to, to bring them to life I guess. So, I just figured that music would be the ultimate way to express myself. It’s always been in my bones and my soul, and without music in my life, I would just die. I don’t know what else I would do. It’s the only thing that I know how to do.
********** OKWFO-That’s awesome. Hearing it is better than reading it, let me tell ya. That’s really cool.
Alexx-Awwww, thank you.
********** OKWFO-Now, you were born in Ft. Lauderdale?
Alexx-Nope. Actually, that’s a factual error someone made a long time ago. For some reason it’s been everywhere. I was born in Staten Island, NY, but I lived most of my life in Ft. Lauderdale.
********** OKWFO-What caused you to move to Los Angeles? Is that where you felt like your music would do best at?
Alexx-When I was younger, I was thinking, ”How about Nashville for a while because I’m into blues and stuff, and Nashville’s kind of the country and blues scene. The place to be I guess for that kind of music. And then I thought, ya know, as I developed over time, I became a rocker, and my love of rock overtook the fundamental side of things, if you will. Blues is a very, very tough market, and I thought rock music was a lot more…I could relate to it a little bit better. So I thought, “ Maybe I’ll move to New York.” And then I thought, “Nah, I’m a Floridian. I’d freeze my ass off if I lived in New York.” (laughs) So I thought the next major city to go to would be Los Angeles. And it just so happened, a former manager of mine hooked me up with his producer friend named, Luigie Gonzalez, who I’m still working with to this day. He actually just produced my new album “In Avanti”. We just clicked. The cool thing about him and I is that my background is mostly grunge, and blues, and rock. He’s a major, major remix and dance producer. He’s worked with Madonna, Shakira, The Killers, and stuff. We created this newer kind of sound, like the sound you heard on my new record. Kind of like an interesting blend of all of the genres without committing to just one thing. So, the moving to L.A. was the best frickin’ thing that ever happened to me because of the relationships I’ve built out here, and it’s the mecca for entertainment. I mean, there’s no where else in the World you can be, I think, if you want to be an entertainer, if you’re a serious entertainer, you gotta move to L.A. or one of the major cities because that’s where the industry is. You gotta go where the industry folk are.
********** OKWFO-What are some of venues you have performed at, and where can we expect to see you in the future?
Alexx-Let’s see, well, we are going to be doing some serious touring in the summer, especially around the West Coast area. We’re headlining some of the fairs and festivals out here. We’re doing San Diego Fair. We’re headlining one night, June 11th. Then we’re playing the San Mateo County Fair on the 16th, and we’re going to be doing a lot of these different film and music festivals and stuff. Next Tuesday May 10th, I’ll be in Ft. Lauderdale, my hometown, and playing a hometown show with a friend of mine’s band, and their name’s Sugar in the Gas Tank. That’s what’s going on now. As far as some of the past venues that I’ve played at, I’ve played at some major venues. The Viper Room in Hollywood. Let me see, Cat Club Hollywood. I’ve played some major seaters, like Hard Rock, the Roxy Theater out in Miami, so I’ve played a lot of really big places. I’ve played a lot of really shitty places, too, so. It all depends on the night, ya know?
********** OKWFO-Yeah, and that’s a part of getting started I’m sure.
Alexx-Yeah, ya know what, it’s that, and it’s also, I mean, everybody experiences that. Until you are the one person that just makes it huge and is playing at arenas. All of these bands are playin’, for the most part, shitty venues certain nights and everything. But, I’ve found in my experience that some of the shittier venues are more fun, and more intimate. I’m into dive bars and hanging out with skuzzy people, they’re my brethren (laughs)
********** OKWFO-(laughs) Fans, like me, that have nothing to do with the music industry in itself, hear that the smaller, shittier places to play have the best crowds and you get the best reaction.
Alexx-Yeah, even the place I’m playing this next Tuesday is actually kind of a cool place. It’s kind of a diamond in the rough, if you will. It’s kind of divey, but at the same time, it has a cool rockabilly kind of flair. The people that are there are just awesome. The crowds that come out, and the ones that come out to my shows and everything, they’re just…I have the best fans in the World, and usually it’s like in those little pockets and different areas around the United States. They’re just awesome. I just really appreciate them so much, and I can really relate to them a lot. They are great people.
********** OKWFO-Ya know, if you ever come to New Mexico, please let me know.
Alexx- Well, we’re planning on getting out as much as possible…so…
********** OKWFO-I want you to do me a favor and brag a little bit. Tell me and the readers where you and some of your songs have been featured.
Alexx-Okay (laughs) Um, all over. I mean, you might have heard stuff that you might not have known was mine, but it was playing on t.v. A little while ago, for about a week long, my song ‘Morning Pill’ was featured on One Tree Hill for one of the major promo campaigns that they were doing. Just recently, it’s actually a funny story about this one, my song ‘Pull It (Bullet)’ was featured on a major Cross Fit Games competition video. It was really funny because usually when my music gets licensed, I notice my web traffic goes up a lot, and I get some really unusual friend requests. For example, when my music was playing for the Cross Fit Games promo, I kept getting all these bodybuilders adding me and stuff on Facebook, and I’m like, that’s all cool ya know, but all these people are really buff. I’m wondering what the hell went on that, ya know (laughs), all these bodybuilders are contacting me. One of them contacted me, and they’re like, “Yeah, man, I heard your shit for this Cross Fit Games thing, and I just downloaded it on my iPod, and I’m fuckin’ benching right now to the song.” I’m like, alright awesome (laughs). It was just hilarious. Yeah, so that’s another avenue that my music was played. I do a lot of vocals for commercials. I’ve sang on a ton of different commercials. And, I’ve had some major publicity in Guitar Player Magazine, Guitar World, Blender. Some of these huge blogs like Gizmodo, I was on recently because I sang in a Coachella video. So yeah, it’s a little bit of everywhere. It’s just kinda like I’m in this weird, weird kind of spot. Sometimes I get some of these mainstream opportunities, but nothing has come to a head just yet. It’s like I’m right on the cusp of hitting something big. But, it’s not entirely there yet. I’m gonna be 26 next month, so it’s been like a steady crawl for several years since I’ve started out, but I think it makes you much more appreciative.
********** OKWFO-Yeah, this is a reason why I wanted this interview, to be able to talk to you just before you cross that cusp. That’s kind of a big deal to me.
Alexx-Awww, thank you. I appreciate that.
********** OKWFO-Where are the best places people can find your music?
Alexx-I’d say, just because I want the web traffic (laughs), I’d say alexxcalise.net is the coolest place.
********** OKWFO-Okay, can you also talk about some of the various charities you are involved with?
Alexx-Sure. I’ve been involved with quite a bit over the past few years. I just really like doing it. I think it’s so much fun to work with some of the kids that I’ve worked with. It’s just so rewarding, so I think everybody, regardless of whether you’re a musician or not, should just totally get involved in any charity that you can. Right now I’m involved with an organization, they’re fantastic, they’re called Wear Your Music. How it works is I send in my used guitar strings, and they wind them up, and make bracelets. Really cool. I actually wear them all the time myself. They have them in all different colors. But, what happens is, when you buy a bracelet, say you buy one of my bracelets that’s from my used guitar strings. It’s a hundred dollars, and all of the money goes directly to the charity of my choice, mine being the Traumatic Brain Injury Foundation. All the proceeds go there. It’s a really great organization. They’re super cool, too. They have a lot of really cool jewelry; in addition to that, all the proceeds go to charity. Also, I’m involved with P.A.C.E., Promoting Academics through Creative Expression. What they do, they have a slide show that illustrates the importance of being educated. They’ve got all these different middle schools and high schools in L.A. County, and following the slide show, there’s all these different artists that perform, myself included. It’s a really, really fun time. Up until a little while ago, I was with an organization called Coach Art. I was giving voice lessons to a child that had some pretty serious things happen to him, some traumatic stuff, a lot of health issues. It was a really, really fun, rewarding experience, and he was a great kid. It’s just fun. Any way that you can support your community, it’s just so awesome to be a part of stuff like that. Makes me feel very appreciative of the things I do have, having air in my lungs, and having my health.
********** OKWFO-Lots of respect to you for doing those things.
Alexx-Thank you. Thank you. Don’t have very much free time, but it’s cool to do stuff like that, and it’s fun. I enjoy it.
********** OKWFO-Let’s get into the albums. Morning Pill came out in 2007. What was your primary inspiration for that album?
Alexx-Let’s see. I wrote most of that album from 2003 up until 2007, so a lot of that album, when you listen to it, you kind of get the impression that it’s a coming of age kinda album, and it was. When you’re younger, especially for me, and being a young artist, you’re going through all these really weird changes in your life. You’re going through kind of a metamorphosis. I didn’t really know who I was, but at the same time knew who I was, artistically speaking. It was kind of a reflection of that. It was like a musical diary I guess you could say. There was a relationship I had that was kinda toxic that inspired a few of the songs. More than anything, it was kind of like an introspective, emotional album for me. I was going through a lot of changes in my life then. Ya know, just as a young person growing up. I think you can really get the vibe of that in certain songs like “This is Me”, “Falling”, or “The God-Like Song”, but it’s definitely one of those albums you could hear on One Tree Hill, which of course, Morning Pill was on (laughs)
********** OKWFO-The only ballad is ‘Cry’. Why and how did that one become a ballad?
Alexx-Cry, I actually wrote that song in 15 or 20 minutes. It came flowing through me. It was just, sometimes I get in these moods, and I think anybody who is an artist will understand this. Nothing in the World could be going wrong, but inside you feel like everything is going wrong, and it just doesn’t make sense. And, that is what I was feeling at the time. I actually relish those moments, as horrible as they are when I’m experiencing them, because songs like that come out of them.
********** OKWFO-It’s a gorgeous song, and with all your songs, your vocal range is showcased very well, but that song in particular to me, is just beautiful.
Alexx-Awww, thank you. Thank you. That’s the one where I felt like I could do that a little bit more with. As opposed to a lot of these songs are like, “Fuck you! In your face!” (laughs) This one was kind of a breather. It was just one of those moments that I had. Sometimes you need a good cry. You just need to sit down and let it all out. That’s what that song was about, and that’s what inspired me, one of those dark moments that I love and hate so much.
********** OKWFO-Talk to me about “In Avanti”. Inspiration for that album?
Alexx-The inspiration for that? I’m not going to go into great detaiI because I’m not the kind of person to bad mouth others, but there was a certain person in my life that took total advantage of me and the situation. They were not a very good person. I think you can hear that in the tone of certain songs like ‘Get Used to It’ or ‘Good Enough’. That person knows exactly who he is. I swear to God, the pen is mightier than the sword. Like I say in one of the lyrics in one of my songs says, “I know you’ll get yours in the end.” It certainly happened that way for that person. I’m not a vindictive person by any stretch, but I find that writing about some of these experiences is very cathartic and therapeutic, and it needs to happen because if I let that kind of energy fester inside of me, I’ll just become a very negative person. I actually like the fact I am mellow and cool, and that’s because I get a chance to get it out in my writing. I’m not bitter despite what people might think when they hear some of my albums, like in ‘In Avanti’. The whole album was basically inspired by that situation, and me finally finding who I was. It was kind of like the shedding of my skin from my first album. I finally found a producer that I was meant to work with. Everything just kind of came together when I moved to L.A. That whole album was kind of like the awakening.
********** OKWFO-Your redemption. I listened to both albums twice. There is one song in particular, I don’t want to say it’s my favorite, but I’m usually the very hard rock, very heavy metal guy, but Pull It (Bullet) was badass. I mean that guitar riff just kills. To me, that’s the hardest song off both albums. There’s something about that song that made me listen to it a dozen times in a row. Was there anything behind you going a little “harder” on that song in particular?
Alexx-Well actually, that song was completely done by accident. I was working on it with 2 different people, one of which I never had the pleasure of meeting. That’s the beauty of the internet. I wrote it with another producer named Cristian Delano, and now he’s working with some huge people, so I’m very proud of him. He was actually just up for a Grammy nomination for Lady Gaga’s recent album. He showed me the riff, and I was like, “This is fucking awesome.” Normally, I’m not really into the hip hop thing all that much, but there was something about that song and the mixture of the guitars and everything that I was just like, “I gotta jump on this.” I wrote the lyrics and the melody over the next day or two after I heard it, and then we dropped the vocals on it. This is so cool. It really doesn’t have a genre. It’s kind of defiant of genres. It just hits you in the fucking face. It’s been used in a ton of these different extreme sports kind of things just because it has that hard-hitting, anthemic chorus.
********** OKWFO-Gonna put you on the spot. Do you have a favorite song of yours?
Alexx-There’s 2 in particular that resonate with me. I love ‘Morning Pill’. That song I actually wrote when I was 16, and that’s the song that kind of gives me the chance to showcase my vocal range. Whenever I perform it live, that song in particular is the one, regardless of whether or not they were listening, everybody in the room just goes silent. It’s so bizarre. Everyone just shuts up, and you can hear a pin drop anytime I play that one. I just think it’s because of the passion in that song. I don’t even think it’s captured correctly on “Morning Pill”. If you ever get a chance to see it live, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It really just comes through. It’s one of my most passionate songs. Then, ‘Out of Sight’ definitely. I wrote that song with Luigie Gonzalez, my producer. When he showed me the chords for that one, I was just like, “Oh my God”, and that melody just came to me. The whole song actually is about the existence of God or whatever incarnation of God you want to call it. It’s kind of a song that’s saying, “ I’m down here on my knees, I’m completely vulnerable, and I don’t have anybody else to turn to…except for you”, whatever that higher power is. I wrote that one, again in one of those really dark moments that I had. I had just moved to L.A., didn’t have any friends, and living on a couch for 6 months. I was just like, “I don’t know if I can do this.” I swear to God that song saved my life. It sounds really cheesy, but sometimes as I’m listening to it by myself, I get all choked up because it takes me back to that moment that I was feeling, when I felt like I didn’t have anything. Then, all of a sudden, this whole presence wrapped itself around me, and I felt okay. That was the first time I felt some kind of outer-worldly or otherworldly presence. And, it made me feel everything was going to be just fine.
********** OKWFO-The band that plays live with you, are they the same that helped you in the studio with those 2 albums? Or, did you do those on your own?
Alexx-One of the guys that is playing with me now, Dennis Morehouse, my drummer, he played on some of ‘In Avanti’. At the time though, I didn’t have a steady band, so a lot of it I had done myself. My producer had done a lot of the guitars as well, and I had some help from some other guys I had worked with in the past. The current lineup I am playing with now did not, for the most part, play on this record.
********** OKWFO-What genre would your file your music under?
Alexx-I’ve been calling it “Rocktronica”.
********** OKWFO-Can you tell us about SOC, and what can we expect from it?
Alexx-Well, SOC actually stands for Sound of Cancer and is a project I have with my drummer for my solo project, Dennis Morehouse. This particular project is just going to just hit you in the fucking face, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. It’s totally different than my solo project. It’s almost unrecognizable. It sounds like a cross between Portishead, Love and Rockets, The Cure, Marilyn Manson (early Marilyn Manson), and Massive Attack.
********** OKWFO-Holy shit.
Alexx-Yeah, it’s really fuckin’ trippy.
*********** OKWFO-Is there a release date for Sound of Cancer yet? Are there any teasers?
Alexx-There is no definite release date of it yet, but we are almost finished with it. We have some post-production stuff to do, then we’re gonna get it mastered, but other than that, we’re almost entirely finished with it. You can actually go to soundofcancer.com, we have one of the mixes posted up there.
********** OKWFO-Awesome. If there is anything else you wanna say or talk about, it’s all yours.
Alexx-I think I’ve talked enough for a small country honestly (laughs). Don’t know what else I could possibly say. I’m kind of long-winded when it comes to this stuff just so the person I’m interviewing with has plenty of stuff to work with (laughs)
********** OKWFO-Okay. I’ll leave ya be, so you can go about your daily business today. Thank you again for the time. Looking forward to seeing and hearing more of you in the future. If I tell you that you have a bright future, it might not mean shit, but if I say it now, and you explode on the scene, then I have bragging rights (laughs) (Alexx laughs). Seriously though, you just keep doing what you’re doing, Alexx, more and more people are going to take notice. That’s my opinion. Again, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.
Alexx-Thank you, and back at you. Pull It (Bullet)
Alexx is a great entertainer and one of the most fantastic people on the planet….She rules rock!
Thanks for the comment on here, Virginia. I gathered all that just from speaking to her on the phone the couple times I did. I’m looking forward to seeing her on stage someday. Take care.
Her favorite band is Silverchair?!?! That’s awesome!
Yeah, she’s badass like that.
These are the kind of interviews I read right through the end, rather than skipping around. Helps that Alexx seems cool as hell! Rock on with your bad self, OverkillWFO! Interview cherry officially popped in a big way – Woohoo!
I couldn’t have asked for a better first-time
Overkill killed it! Thank you so much Alexx!