My mom is an amazing singer and I grew up with her always singing around the house . And as far as figuring out that singing was going to be what I did for the rest of my life , that just kind of happened . I have never really pictured myself in a life without music . So , I just keep on singing and seeing where the journey takes me .
Where are you from and how did the local music scene influence your career ? I ’ m from the woods , baby ! I grew up in Western Coventry , out in the sticks . I spent my childhood frolicking around the forest with my dogs , which is still exactly what I do now . Luckily , when I started playing shows before I could drive , I had friends that would drive the extra twenty minutes out of the way to pick me up and parents that would come to my gigs . The local music scene was what started getting me on stage more and more and meeting some amazing artists .
What does going solo mean to you ? Going solo was pretty huge for me after being in bands for basically all of my career . I was pretty scared to venture off on my own , but looking back I ’ m really glad that I did . While being a solo artist absolutely means feeling more pressure to keep everything together on my own , there ’ s also something freeing about knowing that I am the only thing standing in the way of creating and growing as an artist .
Q + A >>
Viana Valentine
The Rhode Island pop artist released her latest song “ I ’ m Not Okay ( I Promise )” across all streaming platforms . By Jamie Coelho
What made you decide to do a cover of “ I ’ m Not Okay ( I Promise )?” I love taking rock bands I listened to growing up and making pretty piano versions of their songs . I had an instant flashback of myself and my friends . We were skidding around the back roads of Coventry in my Nissan Sentra , extra extra iced coffees in hand , blasting this song and subsequently blowing out our voices in the process . I knew I had to cover this throwback jam and then my producer , Greg , and I recorded our version of it at my house in late 2020 .
Viana is a Rhode Island-based singer / songwriter making noise along the airwaves for her vocal talent and retro-style music videos . Her most recent cover track was originally performed by My Chemical Romance , and it brings her back to her high school days of cruising around in her car and blasting the ballad while singing her heart out . She shares more details about growing up in the Ocean State .
When did you first get into music and decide to pursue it as a career ? I come from a musical family , stemming back to my great grandfather who played trombone professionally for artists like Sinatra .
What made you decide to put in the extra effort to produce music videos ? Something that I ’ ve been a huge fan of while releasing singles has been the ability to make each song its own vibe and create visuals to go along with it . For some songs , you daydream the video as soon as you hear the first mix pass , and that was what happened with my most recent video for “ About the Money .” I knew that doing a video set in a certain time period wouldn ’ t be easy , and I wanted to make it as accurate as possible . I was lucky that I had an incredible team of humans who I ’ m lucky to call my friends to pull that video off . instagram . com / vianavalentine
18 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l MARCH 2022