The singer-songwriter is eager to build a fan base, an effort that will find her in her hometown on Saturday, June 9, as part of the Jones Fest Free Concert lineup during the Old Santa Ynez Day Celebration.
In a recent telephone interview, Inés was preparing for a gig at the Amnesia nightclub in San Francisco, where she would serve up songs from The Northern Lights Are On, which was released May 23 and produced by Grammy-nominated producer Joby Baker of Baker Studios Ltd in his studio in Victoria, British Columbia.
Two years ago, the 24-year-old moved to the Bay Area, owing to its reputation as a music mecca of the Golden State. She says she hasn’t planned a formal promotional tour; instead, she’s set on traveling through the state and setting up gigs as she goes along.
“I’m trying to get a good grip of a fan base in San Francisco, and soon in Santa Ynez and Santa Barbara and beyond,” explains Inés, who has been performing in tiny venues and nightclubs for more than three years.
Most of the album’s songs were written in the past year. Inés describes the song-writing experience as spontaneous yet predictable. “I find that I’m bottled up, whether sad or elated, and I take that cue to go to an instrument and play until something possesses me,” she says. The recording of the album came much more quickly, with all tracks finished in six days. Inés attributes the swift recording sessions to her seemingly “telepathic” relationship with Baker, who plays bass, drums, Hammond organ and the electric guitar, and Adrian Dolan, who plays the string instruments and the accordion.
“We kind of had this unspoken understanding of where we wanted to go,” Inés explained. “I remember on our last track, I sang a line and Joby started playing a falling string part that translated what I was trying to say in that moment. Another time, I wanted a harmony to sound like wind hitting a window, and he said, ‘Oh, gotcha!’”
The sound is described as “theatrical folk rock,” a style that runs the gamut from indie folk to classical music to progressive rock, which is none too surprising for someone who was influenced by musicians as varied as Joni Mitchell, Patrick Watson and Soundgarden.
The 11 tracks on The Northern Lights Are On, which highlight Inés’s silken voice and tuneful cadence, were inspired by the various hardships that, she maintains, were necessary for the passionate vocals that sang them. Inés says some songs chronicle hardships, but the rest amount to an assemblage of “these experiences that revived the same feeling of love and pain.”
“As far as death and loss go, I suppose I have had more experience than I would like, both with friends and peers who ought to have outlived me, and with family members who succumbed to disease after courageous fights,” Inés explains. “It’s an inevitable reality, but being probably the epitome of the unknown; it’s so impossible to place, so it sends us careening into anxiety and fear. It starts with this horribly desperate desire to just turn back time one hour, so I can change it. And then that gives way to all the things you should have done, said, didn’t have the chance to feel completely and will never have the chance to feel or see again.
“Then something brilliant happens – something totally brilliant and unexpected,” she continues. “Someone makes a joke, and you laugh. I mean, you really laugh, and that’s when the healing starts. You suddenly look around you and you feel so alive, and you’re so appreciative of everything in sight.”
An accomplished painter, Inés explains that in the visual arts, the darker the shadows, the lighter the untouched page. “There are difficult situations where you feel helpless, and I think sometimes you have to get to this place where you feel dejected, hopeless and cynical, and from somewhere, if you hold on and hold a little faith – it sounds cheesy! – this light will shine and you’ll realize you are the owner of your existence.”
Although the album is bundled with pain sometimes, Inés hopes people come away from it with a sense of hope. “I think what I’m trying to say is life is pain and it’s worth it, whether in regard to family, in regard to love, in regard to the pursuit of happiness,” she states. “More often than not, what has value is going to be heavy and hard, and that’s why it’s worth it.”
Inés is loath to elaborate on the painful events that partly inspired the album, but she credits her former art instructors Connie Rohde and Jeff McKinnon at Santa Ynez Union Valley High School for helping show her a way out of a bog she was mired in as a teenager. “They saw that I had a talent to do art and took a personal interest in me when I didn’t have the happiness and motivation to push myself,” she says. Her mentors credit her indomitable spirit and raw talent.
“She knocked me out when I first heard her perform at our Winter Vaudeville when she was a sophomore, eight or so years ago,” McKinnon said. “Even then, you could see that she was the complete package, a mature and sensitive interpreter of songs. After roping her into our theatre crowd, she was a regular contributor to our variety shows, Vaudeville and Raw Talent. I’ve watched her progress over the years with the satisfaction of knowing I was a small participant in her growth.”
“Inés runs deep and sensitive,” added Rohde. “She carves out her own path and stays true to her vision. As a result, her work is always authentic. When I listen to her sing, I am transported.” One of Inés’s biggest musical influences is Tori Amos, with whom she shares much stylistically, including intense, confessional story-telling and impassioned vocals that meditate on the human condition. That’s not to say Inés is Amos redux. Musically, she incorporates a more theatrical sound, and she uses her stagecraft to evoke aural images.
Each album track is accompanied by Inés’s handcrafted artwork in the booklet, including brightly colored Fauvist-expressionistic paintings, pastels and photos of sculptures. She’ll be releasing an illustrated novel, which retells the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales and Greek myths and legends, but according to Inés, in a fashion similar to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, only darker.
“I like to take on projects that are too challenging for me, so I can figure out how to do it and grow,” says Inés, who recently took up sculpting.
Because her entry into the music industry has been a slow transition, Inés doesn’t have a five-year plan. But she says the debut record – she’s already at work on the second – is part of a larger goal of fusing visual art with music. It’s a move she hopes will turn a few heads. She’s currently working on a music video using rotoscoping, an animation style that uses drawings over live footage.
“I am striving for artistic longevity,” says Inés, who started singing and writing stories at age 3. “Those things never left me. I very much enjoy losing myself in make-believe worlds, and I think that’s the appeal of art, that you can continue playing make-believe for the rest of your life.”
For more information about Inés, visit ideatheartist.com.