By Cindy Doyle
Eve Rice is no stranger to Winnipeg’s music scene. Whether you know her as the electro-charged, sex kitten Vav Jungle or as DJ Beekeeni, if you’ve been to dance parties, various openings or even fundraisers around the city this past year, it is likely that Rice has made you dance at least once. Rice was part of the lineup for Stylus’ 20th birthday bash this past October; this January, Stylus sat down and talked to one of Winnipeg’s most renowned music veterans about her plans for the future and her ideas about making and loving music as we embark on a new decade.
Stylus: From headlining this year’s annual winter solstice party, Element Sircus, and playing Stylus’s birthday party to regularly DJing at various events around the city, from private parties at The Orphanage to the fundraiser Chutney Mayhem, 2009 was a busy year for you. What can we look forward to in 2010?
Eve Rice: The new album, or albums, I suppose, is coming. There are twenty-two tracks in total, all danceable stuff that will be on iTunes and a few other digital companies that I can trust. It’s a mix of both electo-exotica and electro-wigout-dance. I’ll be touring back to Quebec and hopefully across the world if I have time. There will also be two videos, maybe three, directed by Damien Ferland.
Stylus: Damien also directed the video for “Let’s Make Love” from your 2007 release Pap Rock, which got some attention on YouTube. But you’ve never been a stranger to using the internet for promotion. As a performer playing in Winnipeg and Canada’s music scene for over a decade and also having a fan base which stretches to Quebec, New York and beyond, how has the internet influenced your career?
ER: The internet has helped immensely. I’ve been on it for a long time—since ’93. People have found me and become fans that way, on YouTube people find me, buy songs, ask me to play etc. Simple advertising helps, too, but the more we’re on the computer the more we tend to delete things in our heads. So you still have to have other, more gentle reminders about what you’re up to as well. Make it interesting, even if you’re quiet for a bit in the business, throw up a nude picture of yourself or a friend. Remind them you’re still having fun and haven’t “crossed over” to the other side. “Where are they now?” articles are really scary to me.
Stylus: At the end of 2009, you started your own podcast under your DJ moniker, DJ Beekeeni. It’s awesome, but podcasts are curious, because like Facebook or MySpace, anyone can set one up. Considering Facebook with it’s fan pages and event postings, MySpace where anyone can start and promote a band sans cost, and podcast sites where every DJ hopeful can send out playlists, do you think that the internet is playing a positive role in getting the music of independent artists such as yourself out to the public or is its accessibility to anybody with programs like Garageband just creating a larger wall between you and potential fans?
ER: I think all these things are good—I have Garageband on my computer and I’ve used it, it’s neato, but it becomes too easy and starts to sound like something I’ve heard already too quickly. I suppose that’s the thing—MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Hula etc. are just money-makers for the people who made the software. It’s always a sell, folks. You can promote until you’re blue in the face and there will be shitloads more of new sites popping up regardless. But what are we going to do? Be on the computer all f’ing day long?! Nope, can’t do. I believe that there are ways to control your promoting without looking like a hoser as well.
Stylus: Getting back to your upcoming album(s), this will be your sixth release. How do you feel your music has evolved over the years and how does it compare to your last release, Pap Rock, as well as your earlier work?
ER: Pap Rock was f’ing great to me. I mastered my mixing with the help of genius mix/mastering man Al Hunnie. He is a honey! And let me tell you, the knowledge of recording, to me, is of the utmost importance. I try to keep things simple and precise, I don’t want to be a tech-head if I can avoid it because otherwise it becomes way too much talk and less music making.
I’ve found many people researching and comparing how to make hit songs over the years and I just didn’t dig it. That’s tech-y to me and I just can’t listen to it anymore. What I have learned from what I do with keyboards and sampling is [the importance of] warmth. The psychology of people listening or not listening, regardless of [a song’s] popularity, is the thing I find most interesting about making dance-type music. If it’s recorded nicely, people listen. But people can get lazy, too, so a good recording helps make people get it.
Some of my earlier stuff was hard to get down in a few studio settings—nobody got what I was doing, and neither did I. The knowledge I have now would have been an amazing thing to have had then. I made quirky dance songs then with sometimes cheap keyboards, but I usually would get interpreted in the studio as a lounge act, which I was, but I wanted people to dance to it, too, not just watch it. So some of the earlier albums seem like two-dimensional paintings. That’s okay, but I needed perhaps a little more direction. I never met anyone here that got that direction then, just myself, that’s why I had to figure things out, no matter how long it took.
The new album is a mix of dance with some mid-’90s band influences like Combustible Edison and Pizzicato 5. It seems like a cliché to be saying it’s gone full circle, but it has for me. I suppose I’m just feeling happy about strange and dirty ditties to shake your titties to.
Stylus: Your sound has the capability to change and morph from the dance-inducing discotheque that newer fans are familiar with to a more lounge-friendly vibe that you describe as “electronic exotic jazz.” Which can we expect on the upcoming album and why do you think you are heading in this direction?
ER: This stuff is a cross-over but I have developed a way to keep me shaking from rhythms. I’m doing the DJ Beekeeni thing too—watching what people listen to now gives me ideas as well—and what people react to when they’re dancing may not be what you expect. Usually I see people really liking something like Tiga’s “Shoes,” a song that is actually based more around the production—thick bass, weird lyrics. I know some people that hate the song, but in a dance environment it rocks so much. I don’t know how you could hate that song.
Stylus: When did you begin DJing?
ER: I starting DJing, or selecting songs, at Leala Hewak’s Cream Gallery in Winnipeg. She needed a DJ for an opening and since I helped her out at her gallery part time, she said, “You bring good music in, why don’t you DJ?” I decided on “DJ Beekeeni” because the word “bikini” evokes the past—you think of polka-dots and ladies. I don’t always wear a bikini, but it’s cute when I do. I get so hot sometimes. I then started to DJ for many of her artist openings, then at Urban Waves. It just started happening. Now I just keep collecting [music] and have my special sources and hope to keep continuing both. The Orphanage is my mainstay gig, once or twice a month at an undisclosed location. Of course, there are other places as well.
Stylus: How does DJing and performing differ, if at all? Which do you prefer?
ER: I really like doing both, crossing over both or whatever. They’re similar shows, but I can just be on my own looking at the audience and decide what I’m going to play by their reactions. It’s really obvious for me, and I’m lucky enough to have that sense.
Stylus: I noticed during your November show at the Albert last year you combined your Vav Jungle act with DJ Beekeeni by alternating between spinning and singing, resulting in a very excellent dance party. What made you decide to try this new format and is it something new that you are going to do again in the future?
ER: It’s great! I can take a break and shake about, but it really depends if there’s a mic in the place I’m playing and a sound person.
Stylus: What music do you believe has influenced the upcoming album?
ER: I’ve been listening to David Bowie a bit lately, Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall and Stereo Total. But really just feeling any song that makes me feel like moving. That includes jazz music—I play lots of jazz dance music. I get tired of the same old jazz, it’s really great and by really good musicians, but I like hook-ish jazz with a beat. I really like new artists like Keren Ann, Nicole Atkins and listen to them a lot, but I don’t know if they’ve influenced this album much. I am considering a very mellow soft sound for a surprise release sometime. Life has a way of making you appreciate excellent performers like this.
Stylus: Not only are you pretty much a one-woman show (with the exception of your ever-lovely go-go dancers) you write, record and produce all on your own. What advice can you offer to other do-it-yourself Canadian musicians that are out there?
ER: Make music and play. Learn how to record properly. Promote. Tour when you can and if it’s going well, you bug as many assholes as possible. It’s all hard to do, especially being a solo performer, but don’t get down about people coming to shows or not, and think about what you sound like as if you were watching yourself. Critique yourself but be real. Don’t get caught up in what’s happening. The only way to get attention is to play and sell a product.
Stylus: Can we expect a CD release party for your upcoming album? If so when and where?
ER: No date yet, but it will be early spring.
Stylus: If you could have anyone open for you and or open for anybody who would it be and why?
ER: Well, I guess someone who has a similar quality but doesn’t sound the same: Stereo Total, Os Mutantes (for the ’60s feel of them), Gal Costa, Combustible Edison, the Pinker Tones, Elvis, Katerine, Senor Coconut, MC Honky, Captain and Tennille… I wouldn’t care if they opened for me or played after—we’d just have a great gig together and everyone would go home after feeling sexually liberated.
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Find Eve Rice online at one of her various haunts: on Facebook (DJBeekeeni Vavjungle), Skype (vavjungledjbeekeeni) and MySpace (www.myspace.com/vavjungle). Find Cindy Doyle onstage as one of Eve’s occassional go-go dancers!