2008 Woodie Awards
Vote Absentee
Student debuts album nationally
By: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Issue date: 4/30/07 Section: Campus
OXFORD, Ohio - Kate Voegele frets about keeping up her grade point average, spends hours on social networking online sites and passes a lot of time just hanging out with friends on campus.
But semblances of normal college life are coming to a halt for the Miami University sophomore. The young singer-songwriter's music career is heating up, with national release set in three weeks for her first full-length album and a summer of concert dates from Los Angeles to New York.
At age 20, Voegele already has been performing for four years - including two Farm Aid concerts, the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, and in myriad clubs. Now, after two years in college that have included the study of music and plenty of practice performing in Oxford's Uptown bars, she's ready to see just how far she can go.
"I was just so young when I started. ... I was coming up with things that people were really enjoying, but I hadn't had time to develop as an artist," she said recently, lounging on her twin-size bed in the cramped dormitory room she shares with a roommate. "Now I feel like I'm at this point where I really have an artistic vision for myself.
"This is the perfect time, the perfect place, to release my debut album. This is what I'm choosing to do with my life, so I'm getting excited about it."
MySpace Records will release "Don't Look Away," a 12-track album Voegele recorded in Los Angeles while working around her studies. Her songs include acoustic rock and pop reflections on the joy, angst and frustration of relationships, delivered in a powerful voice from the slender youth.
"It shows a lot of depth," said producer Marshall Altman, who first worked with Voegele three years ago. "She has grown as an artist. Kate is really about defining emotional content."
Voegele ventured into music after dad Will Voegele, whose career is in real estate but has been playing in bands much of his life, bought a small guitar while the family was on a Florida vacation. Back home in the Cleveland area, she drew on high school creative-writing lessons to begin writing lyrics while playing in her room.
But semblances of normal college life are coming to a halt for the Miami University sophomore. The young singer-songwriter's music career is heating up, with national release set in three weeks for her first full-length album and a summer of concert dates from Los Angeles to New York.
At age 20, Voegele already has been performing for four years - including two Farm Aid concerts, the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, and in myriad clubs. Now, after two years in college that have included the study of music and plenty of practice performing in Oxford's Uptown bars, she's ready to see just how far she can go.
"I was just so young when I started. ... I was coming up with things that people were really enjoying, but I hadn't had time to develop as an artist," she said recently, lounging on her twin-size bed in the cramped dormitory room she shares with a roommate. "Now I feel like I'm at this point where I really have an artistic vision for myself.
"This is the perfect time, the perfect place, to release my debut album. This is what I'm choosing to do with my life, so I'm getting excited about it."
MySpace Records will release "Don't Look Away," a 12-track album Voegele recorded in Los Angeles while working around her studies. Her songs include acoustic rock and pop reflections on the joy, angst and frustration of relationships, delivered in a powerful voice from the slender youth.
"It shows a lot of depth," said producer Marshall Altman, who first worked with Voegele three years ago. "She has grown as an artist. Kate is really about defining emotional content."
Voegele ventured into music after dad Will Voegele, whose career is in real estate but has been playing in bands much of his life, bought a small guitar while the family was on a Florida vacation. Back home in the Cleveland area, she drew on high school creative-writing lessons to begin writing lyrics while playing in her room.
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