“It’s something I’ve always done,” writes author Hilton Als, “half living life so I can get down to really living it by writing about it.” Chicago-based solo artist Violet Bowdle, known by the stage moniker “Violet Clare,” lives in her stories. Considering herself a “lyricist first,” she constructs a cradle of nostalgia from silky poetry, cotton-soft strums, and satin synths. Her newest, indie lo-fi EP, “A Year’s Delay,” took inspiration from her affinity for How I Met Your Mother‘s Ted Mosby (TW for those Mosby antagonists, of which there are far too many). Last weekend, Clare and I sat down for a mildly existential-crisis-inducing chat about writing through memory, the production process of her EP, and what’s next in her musical career. Check out the interview below (edited for length and clarity).
Who is Violet Clare?
That’s half a stage name– it’s my first and middle name because I’m a little basic like that. I only ever write songs about my life and they are very, very raw. I don’t write fiction. I’m originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I love and hate Grand Rapids. I miss it all the time, but then I’m there and I’m just like, “God. I can never live here again.” But it’s my favorite place in the world at the same time. I’ve been in Chicago since August of 2022, and I’ve been writing music since I was probably 9 or 10. It started with just like, I would improvise songs for fun on my bike all day long. I’d go out for two to three hours and improvise lyrics and vocal melodies every day after school. I honestly didn’t think much of it. It was just what I did for fun. Eventually my dad got me a ukulele, and I wrote songs with that from the ages of 11 till 19. I was completely self-taught. I’m self-taught on guitar as well. Once I got an acoustic guitar, I fell in love with it. Now I play everything from dulcimer to banjo. I have a really expansive instrument collection now and I produce everything myself at home. I feel like music has always been what I’ve done. Writing songs is a very innate thing. I’ve never been one of those artists who’s a perfectionist, who hammers it out. It’s how I relax at the end of the night. I probably write at least two or three songs a week. Most of them will probably never see the light of day. It’s funny because I never actually thought about pursuing music until I was 18. It was just what I had always done and then I was like, “Well, what am I going to do with my life?” And I thought, “The thing I love the most to do is write songs, so why not give it a shot?”
You mention playing all these different instruments. In the EP, I noticed a harmonica on “Navy Blue.” What does that production process look like? How do you figure out what instruments to add?
It’s the least perfectionist thing in the world. I record everything in my bedroom; I live with my partner who’s an actor, and I have two other roommates. So it’s a tight space. I basically sit on the edge of my bed– there’s no soundproofing in my room– I have a microphone, and I always start with a drum track. I record guitar and then I do at least five layers of guitar and five layers of vocals. I start with lead vocals and immediately after I do vocal harmonies. Once I have that figured out, everything else is on a whim. I will stand in front of my microphone and be like, “maybe melodica,” and I’ll take my melodica out and it’s usually the first or second thing I record that I like. I hope people don’t hear that and think that I don’t care because I do care a lot, but I’ve never even written sheet music. I improvise everything, basically. Everything you’re hearing besides guitar and lead vocal is completely improvised on the spot.
What drew you to this genre of indie lo-fi, if that’s how you would describe it. Do you have any inspirations, or is this way of writing music what comes naturally to you?
Everything that I write is very natural. It’s what I am feeling in the moment. I make up a lot of the chords I play. I probably don’t play enough covers. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, though. Everything from Radiohead and the White Stripes to Andrew Bird and Joni Mitchell, to more modern stuff like Geese or Phoebe Bridgers. I had a big Motown kick last year. I listen to everything across the board and if I was to describe my music genre I usually say alternative folk music. Recently, with the style of production that I’ve been implementing, I’m heading in more of a lo-fi, indie folk direction. But there’s still some of those alternative elements. If I took the song “Office” off my EP and changed the production to be more of a rock style, it could easily be lumped in with a Radiohead inspiration. It’s not what I’m producing right now, but I’m having a lot of fun doing something lo-fi because it’s freeing.
Did you teach yourself how to produce music? Where did you learn that skill set?
I took three to four months of solo production class with Bill Brickey at Old Town School of Folk Music here in Chicago. Shout him out. He’s one of my favorite people in the world. He taught me all of the basics on Logic Pro– EQ, how to add a track, do a drum track, things like that. After I learned the basics from him, I just went with that foundation. Everything else, I’ve done self-taught since then. My second EP, “The Pere Marquette,” I was writing and producing while I was in production classes with him. So that’s what I did with the foundational classes. There’s been a really big jump since then of me just having fun with it.
Did you have a favorite track on your most recent EP to write or produce?
My favorite one to produce was probably “Stories,” which is like a sleeper track. It’s the slowest, it maybe has the least production elements going on. But something crazy happened where my drum pack deleted itself on Logic Pro and I didn’t have enough storage to download it back. “Stories” was the last song I was producing and I was like, “Oh shit. What am I going to do? How am I going to keep time?” My boyfriend, Giovanni Wubbena is an actor here in Chicago, but he’s also a drummer. I recorded the guitar and I stayed with the metronome as well as I could, then I gave him the microphone and the headphones and I just said, “Do whatever you want.” So he was hand-drumming on the door to the balcony because we don’t have a drum set. He did three other hand-drumming tracks in different locations in our bedroom. That’s what the percussion was. I never really work with other people in the recording process because solo is just what’s most comfortable to me and I like making lo-fi music regardless. But working with him, having him do something totally different was really fun. The melodica lines are my favorite in that song, which were so much fun to make. I feel like [“Stories”] is the thesis statement of the EP in a lot of ways.
You say you tend to record most of your music by yourself. Have you had much experience playing with other people?
I do have a little jam group. We meet on Tuesdays most of the time. With this EP release, I kind of ducked out for a month. But it’s really fun. Honestly, I haven’t had that much experience playing music with other people unless it’s totally goofing around. I have been in studio settings before, for various reasons. Like my track “Drug Dealer” is professionally mixed and mastered through Narwhal Studios in Chicago. And I did sessions @33 through Columbia College radio in Chicago, in a live studio setting. Slavic Livins was the producer on that. It was a crazy experience but really cool. I’ve always been a very independent artist, whether it’s to my detriment or not, that’s just kind of how I work. I find that I make the work that I’m most proud of when I don’t feel pressure from other sources. Like, I know that there might be an audio glitch in this version of the track, but you know what, I like this version better. But then when I send it out, I’m like, “Oh my God, I hope they don’t kill me for having an imperfect track,” even though I love it. I think it’s cool hearing the little clicks and the little glitches.
On the songwriting side of things, I read that you were an English major? Is that true?
Yes.
Did you lean towards creative writing or literature? Do you feel that passion for words shaped your songwriting?
Oh my god, absolutely. There are a few reasons why I didn’t major in music and I chose English instead. Number one goes back to how I work as a musician: I’m self-taught. I only know sheet music when it comes to a clarinet because that’s what I played in high school. I was bad at it. I’m much better with string instruments. Also, I was thinking about my own preferences, and I can’t think of a single music major who I listen to. I listen to people who majored in philosophy or English or dropped out of college or never went to college. That’s my own thing. So I thought, “Why not fall in that tradition?” Majoring in English is because, going back to my songwriting, I’ve always said that I’m a lyricist first, a musician second, and a singer third. My biggest limitation is often my vocals, and my parents would bite me on that and be like, “No, Violet, you’re a fantastic singer” and I’m like, “Yes, but I’m not a belter.” I’m not Ariana Grande. I’m not going to go on stage and give the audience chills with a whistle note. My lyrics have always been the driving force behind my music. When I decided to go into English, I made my concentration creative writing, and I had a main focus on poetry. I wanted to focus on short form nonfiction or poetry. But I will say that after my second year at DePaul, I was falling in love with the literature side of things. I actually think that my classic literature classes informed my songwriting and my lyricism much more than my creative writing classes did. I felt like a sponge in there. I was eating it up and I would go home and write songs about what I read and how it affected my own life.
I do like that whole idea of you have to read a lot to know how to write. I feel like that’s very true.
Exactly, exactly.
In addition to books, what sources or places are you engaging with in the songwriting process?
I’m very obsessed with the idea of the past in terms of things that you can’t get back, like a relationship that has changed or the neighborhood you grew up in and it’s still there, but all the houses or people living there have changed. You can’t go knock on your old friend’s door and see their living room anymore. The way it was, it’s gone, even if their house is still there. I love that and I hate it. It’s haunted me my whole life. I remember when I graduated high school, we got to go back to our elementary schools and I was like, “This is awesome.” I really wanted to do the same thing in our middle school, but I couldn’t. So I spent two hours– this is so creepy– I spent two hours walking the perimeter of my middle school. It was summer. No one was there. I was sobbing, looking into the windows of my old middle school the day after I graduated high school. Nostalgia is such a strong emotion for me, but I also think it’s so strong for every human being. People love to say, “Love and hate. Those are the strongest emotions,” but there’s a reason why when you smell something it takes you back. Nostalgia, in my opinion, is the strongest emotion. It just shows up in a more mellow way than hate or love. That’s why I love it too. Anything that is like that– going back to my hometown or my old school or a best friend I don’t talk to anymore or just how things have changed around me– that’s what inspires me the most.
I’m curious about this main line of the EP, “always 30 seconds late and living on a year’s delay,” from the track “Stories.” What is the story (pun mildly intended) behind that?
This is so funny. I feel like I’m telling you some cringy, but true, stories. “Stories” is the thesis statement because of the line, “My hell is my glory when I’m living in my stories.” That came from rewatching for probably the 20th time one of my favorite shows, How I Met Your Mother. Everyone hates Ted Mosby, and I know that, but I feel like Ted Mosby all the time in season 9 when, spoiler alert, Tracy’s dying and she goes, “I don’t want you to live in your stories,” but the entire show is him narrating his life and living in his stories despite that advice. I was rewatching the whole show with my boyfriend and I cried to that scene like I always do. I looked at him and I was like, “I’m Ted Mosby.” He laughed at me and I was like, “No, it’s fucking true.” That’s the throughline of the entire EP: me coming to terms with the fact that I’ve written about the same stories over and over and over again, even though I’m only 22. How is that possible? I should be living life and being present, but I’m not. I’m still living at least a year in the past.
With all the processing of these memories, does it feel different to write them down versus sing about them?
Definitely. I had a private EP release show where I performed the EP front to back, plus a few songs that I had written after the EP came out, for my close friends. I had written this one track, it’s not on the EP, called “Blue Star Highway,” which I’m hoping to release at some point soon because everyone loved it and I love it so much. It’s an emotionally volatile song. The thing about writing these songs is I tend to finish them and feel like, “Okay, so it’s done.” While I was singing this song, I looked out and saw a couple of my friends crying, and then I started to cry on stage because seeing their reactions reminded me of what made me write the song in the first place. I was like, “It’s not just a song. This is about something that happened.” This isn’t just a piece of art I’ve made. It’s also a very personal story that I haven’t unpacked since I wrote it because that’s part of songwriting– putting it away once you’re done.
Is there anything exciting coming up for you?
Definitely. I have a show on November 28th in my hometown, Grand Rapids, and then I have a show on December 10th at Reed’s Local in Chicago. I’m planning to do a midwest tour, I’m calling it the “Northwoods Tour,” in the spring. I’m going to be playing Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois as well because I’m based there. What I’m focusing mainly on right now is getting my live shows lined up because I didn’t perform all that much while I was recording the EP. It’ll be really nice to go back out with a lot of new songs and also a live show that I’m really proud of. It’s my first time putting together a show that’s got visuals and a stage design which will be really cool.
More information on Clare’s upcoming shows can be found on her website. A huge thank you to Clare for taking the time to chat!
