Kate Voegele

Kate: Everyone at One Tree Hill was so welcoming and helpful. It was definitely one of the best experiences of my life.

Kate: I definitely like smaller venues. The sound is much better, but I wouldn't mind playing stadiums.

Kate: (On if she still gets nervous on stage) I don't get nervous anymore. I definitely get excited, especially when the crowd is into it, but I have played a ton of shows and am over the nervous part.

Kate: More than anything, I just want to inspire people and give people something they like to listen to and feel like they can relate to. If I can make a living doing that, then I will be more than satisfied!

Kate: I want people to listen to what I'm singing and feel as though I'm speaking to them, as if this is what they needed to hear this week. The songs reflect all of these experiences where I've learned to become more confident and outgoing while realizing I can't run from the things that used to intimidate me. It's been great to realize that no matter what kind of setbacks I face, I know it's important to never give up on what I really want to do.

Kate: (On touring) I'm so happy to be having these spontaneous adventures in these different cities and playing shows every night. I can't think of a cooler combination.

Kate: It's insane. Honestly, when I found out I was on the Billboard charts two weeks after the One Tree Hill episode, I just freaked out, because you set goals. When I decided that I wanted to be an artist, to make music and sell records and tour, it's one of those things where you jump into it, but you wonder, do I have even really have a shot at this?

Kate: It's really exciting and it's cool because like any job you love, once you succeed in one area, it makes you want to climb the next hurdle and it keeps you going because you want new challenges and you want to accomplish more stuff, and you never plateau and it keeps you on your toes.

Kate: I think my favorite thing is just like songs you write because you're in a great mood and you feel good about yourself.

Kate: (About filming the scene where she performs No Good on One Tree Hill) I was lip syncing the song to playback and the extras were so great about getting into it and cheering and everything. It started to give me this energy, like I get really pumped on stage and I was actually singing, I was lip syncing but the best lip syncing is done when you're actually singing the words, so by when this was done my voice was really tired because I was like yelling up there on stage.

Kate: You feed off the audience and when people are into it, it's the most amazing experience.

Kate: (On the One Tree Hill scene where Jason insults Mia before her performance) Kevin Federline called me a hoe and I always get to tell people that for the rest of my life.

Kate: (About not being similar to her One Tree Hill character Mia) That's what was fun about it was you know maybe when I was fifteen I would have been terrified to go on stage, but now it's like my favorite thing in the world, I do it every night and I can't wait to get up there. So I just had to tap into back in the day when it was just the biggest thing in the world and terrifying.

Kate: It's a song called Wish You Were, and the whole idea behind the song is that I am still in love with who I wish you were. For me in my life it was exactly that situation, everybody knows that situation. You fall for somebody, and you're all excited about it and they turn out to be somebody who is very different than you thought they were in the first place. But you are still in love with who you wish they were. It's this really weird feeling of loving somebody who doesn't even really exist.

Kate: I really write to deal with things that are going on in my life. It's so therapeutic for me.

Kate: (About what she was majoring in in college) I am kind of majoring in bull shitting.

Kate: One Tree Hill is a truly amazing opportunity. TV has emerged as a leader in artist exposure, and I'm so lucky to be able to play new music on a hit show.

Kate: I really like just getting to be a regular kid and having friends and being a student.

Kate: It didn't seem plausible for a suburban girl from Cleveland to do this. When I was in high school and doing this, I felt like I was winning the lottery when I was playing a show with John Mayer or Dave Matthews.

Kate: I know I'll be on the road, and I couldn't be more excited. I love to travel, and we're in a van, and we're staying in the Econo Lodge, but it makes it fun. I'm a pretty easygoing and low maintenance person so it's fun. I'm someone who will do most anything for a funny story so what could be better? It's great; I'm having a great time.

Kate: In the music business, if you get your chance, you've got to take it.

Kate:This is my first headlining tour, and I'm selling places out. Granted, I'm not playing 4,000-, 5,000-seat venues, but it's so exciting to see 400, 500 people out there. And what's cool is they're there to hear the music

Kate: I don't want to half-ass school, and half-ass my music career, because what matters to me is you know, playing music. If I get back to school awesome, if I don't then hopefully that means I did really well as a singer songwriter.

Kate: A magician never reveals his tricks, a songwriter never tells who they write stuff about, unless they want to get really awkward.

Kate: I've accepted you know, that you're not going to make a ton of money in this business for about six years when you start, but I don't care.

Kate: (About meeting people in college) When I was meeting people they'd be like 'oh what did you do in high school'. I mean playing music took up most of my time in high school so you know you don't want to come out and say like 'oh you know I was a singer song writer' because that gives people the image of like that angry chick who is like playing on the street like really strumming getting like pissed off about everything you know. I didn't wanna do that because then people would be like 'Oh awesome I don't want to hang out with you so peace out', but at the same time you don't want to be like 'Yeah well in high school I played all of these really important shows you know like I met all these people and whatever' because then people are gonna be like 'well awesome you're like really full of yourself'. So it was really awkward. Like 'Well I play guitar and write music you know and that's my C.D.' but it's really funny, like I used to get really awkward talking about it.

Kate: (On Farm Aid) I think a show like that's really unique because there's like no ego, like people are just like 'oh yeah hey how you doing' and your like 'holy shit you're famous'.

Kate: (On how she handled taking classes and music.) If you take the classes where there is like two hundred people in it the professor doesn't even know if you're there or not. So you don't even really have to e-mail them and be like I won't be there regrettably to hear your lecture on leucoplasts in Botany 191.

Kate: It was cool because like in high school most of my teachers were like especially if they were young would be like 'oh yeah I love Dave Matthews like cool tell him I said hi, you know go ahead I don't care.' So that was sweet, but then you get to college and your professors are like, 'I don't care, I don't even know who Dave Matthews is you know whatever.' So that was rough.

Kate: (About naming Wish You Were) The title kind of leaves you hanging you know, Wish You Were, oh my God what does she wish he was. So you have to listen to the song and find out you know, like that's the thing I didn't want to call it wish you were here because, a) everyone and their mom has a song called wish you were here, and b) that's not really the point of the song. It's the main line and the is idea is I'm still in love who I wish you were.

Kate: Well basically it's a line from one of the songs called It's Only Life and that's the first line of the chorus, and so basically I chose Don't Look Away just because I think that you know first of all It's Only Life is one of the bigger songs on the record, that I am really excited about, and also it like you know grabs your attention don't look away like pay attention to this like this is something new, this is something different, like whatever this record and at the same time in all of this over the couple of years I've just learn you have to pretty much just go out there and face up to everything like that you're doing, like you know you can't like let other people do it for you, you have to do it all yourself and you know really just you know you have to want it and everything, that's kind of you know the tri-fold reason for choosing Don't Look Away.

Kate: (On singing to her first audiences) I grew up really shy. I felt weird even talking to people. Even the ones I knew. So they said they never really heard me talk, never mind sing.

Kate: (On if she has had writer's block) Oh definitely, there are so many songs that I want to write or I am in the process of writing that I haven't like finished or like the whole idea isn't there yet. I personally sometimes it can take me a year to write a song, and that doesn't mean, I mean I write songs everyday, I definitely if it's not all there that day, I leave it alone, and I don't re-visit it until I know like this is exactly what I want it to sound like, because otherwise I'd feel like I am finishing it just to finish it, and I can't do that. I have so many songs like that.

Kate: Growing up, the way that I would deal with things, when I was just in any kind of situation was just listening to music, and I think everybody can relate to that. Everybody can no matter what the situation you know can put on a good song that helps them relate to it, and I think that knowing that I can do that with my own music is so important to me, and it's what makes me you know feel like this is really supposed to be what I am doing.

Kate: (About Don't Look Away) I'm really excited about the album as a whole. It has so much energy and going into it I was you know, a little apprehensive just because it's kind of nerve-wracking, you're making your record and I didn't want to screw it up and I want this to be everything that I wanted it to be. I'm just really excited about the overall sound of it.

Kate: When I wrote It's Only Life it was because I kind of came to a realization at that point of my life that you know, it's okay to get hurt, it's okay to let go of things and put yourself out there, and that's something that everybody deals with. Kind of the fear of looking vulnerable or getting hurt. It's Only Life is kind of saying it's okay, it's only life. Those are the types of experiences that really shape you as a person and definitely the type of experiences that have given me the incentive to write a lot of the songs I've written.

Kate: (About how she acquired over 183,000 MySpace friends) When Tom approached me it wasn't like I had all of those friends or like I had some bedazzled page with all this cool stuff on it, so he was like I gotta check this girl out.

Kate: I set goals but I also don't wanna like just try and plan everything out, because this is such an unpredictable business but in the best way.

Kate: (After breaking a guitar string while playing at a concert) I always feel like a bad ass when I break a guitar string.

Kate: It was really just my dad who taught me. I thought about taking lessons and stuff but my dad plays very much by ear and I think I definitely sing and play a lot by ear also, and so I just kind of you know, let him teach me, and we kind of just jammed and stuff, and it was to the point where I knew a lot of the chords and I felt like you know, classical training would maybe hinder my ability to sort of hear certain things in songs. So I started playing by ear, and I think that's a lot of what influenced my song writing abilities and stuff.

Kate: Sometimes success has nothing to do with talent. There's no equation to make success work - sometimes it's just luck.

Kate: (About using her music on One Tree Hill) I had to sing a lot. Sometimes they would play the song over in the background and other times it was live, but it was a lot of takes.

Kate: Performing at Farm Aid was so amazing... there had to be about 20,000 people there when I went on, and you just get such a rush being onstage in front of that many people. I had an awesome time, and performing with people like Willie Nelson and Dave Matthews made it even more unreal. I mean, these are really famous people devoting their time and talent to this cause and I think that is so cool.

Kate: (On why she didn't join a major label) I would walk into these labels and it's like the whole conference room vibe is like six fifty something dudes in suites and ties looking at you like impress me in the next five minutes because I wanna go to lunch. And I was like this is BS, like this sucks. It's so intimidating and cold and the atmosphere just sucked. I was like, if this is how it's going to be at your label, I just don't want to be here, this sucks. So I got really discouraged about the whole thing. Do I even want to be in this business? Is this how people are? And then I walked into MySpace. Tom Anderson opens the door in his trucker hat and he's like "What's up dude? I'm Tom." I'm like, this guy is awesome.

Kate: I think that the most successful people and the most successful businesses are usually ones that are kind of like pushing the frontier and trying something brand new. Everybody else is so comfortable with their little mold. Like this is what worked for Avril Lavigne and it's like no. So I was really excited to be kind of a risk taker and a guinea pig and I think that taking a risk and trying something new can really benefit you, in business and even in just life. It's so important to just if you have a good gut feeling about it, like go with it, just see what happens. So I'm really glad I did because I love my label. They have been so great.

Kate: The best advice people have given me is, don't be discouraged when eighteen people don't get what you are doing because one person is going to and you just have to find people that get it and that are so excited about it and are passionate about helping you out and passionate about the music and now that I have that team of people it's so exciting and I really realized that it will happen for you at the right time if you keep working on it and stay true to what you want to do. If you change to try to mold people who don't quite get it to something that they do want you to be your never going to be happy. That would be my best advice to people that I have gotten, just don't be discouraged. Not everybody is going to love what you do and that's OK, because other people will.

Kate: (About being in Wilmington filming One Tree Hill) When I was in North Carolina, there was this record store down the street, I didn't have a car so I would just have to live in this one mile stretch of shops and stuff so I would just constantly be in the record store buying more stuff more stuff more stuff and it was so much fun.

Kate: (On what she would do if she wasn't a musician) I love kids. I would love to be the art teacher who wears the colorful glasses and the ridiculous outfits. That would be really fun. But yeah, something with art, it would have to be artistic. I can't do anything like accounting or any of that, I'd be hopeless.

Kate: I think really I just hope to be making a career writing and recording music, touring and that's really all I wanna do and you know, being successful with that doesn't necessarily have to mean going platinum or more like being on the cover of Us Weekly and all that stuff. It's really just, I want to make a living doing what I love, and inspiring people.

Kate: I think the best thing about performing live is just like, engaging people and you know, the fact that when you're performing live you really get to have kind of a relationship with the audience. Which is really cool.

Kater: (On singing) People think I set out to do this, but I actually stumbled on it by accident. But it's really a lot of fun. I'm taking it a day at a time. It's a serious industry - but you can't take it too seriously.

Kate: I think pop music with heart is a difficult thing to write, but it's something I really strived for on this record. I wanted something that was radio-friendly, but at the same time speaks to people.

Kate: (On working with One Tree Hill co-star Kevin Federline) He was cool. He was very professional. He was there to work and he did a great job.

Kate: Personally, I think you just have to believe one hundred percent in what you're doing and find other people on your team who do as well, and just go out there and kill it.

Kate: I think all of my experiences with this record will help me figure out what I want to do next. I think the next album will be different from this one, but I still want to keep elements of what I am as an artist. No matter what direction I decide to go in, it'll definitely have elements of what you hear on this debut.

Kate: I'm constantly writing. I have a lot of different stuff. One day, I'll write a mellow, folk song. The next day, I'll do something that's rocking or mainstream Top-40.

Kate: When I was a kid, if I could've gone to *NSYNC's web page in fourth grade, I would've been freaking out.

Kate: I wanted to go for something different. It's mainstream music, but I didn't want to put something out that sounds like every other young girl that plays guitar. I'm glad that it sounds the way it does, because I wanted to have different flavors on the record.

Kate: I was like out in New York making demos and in L.A. at showcasings and stuff, and it was a lot of fun but it was also you know crazy, like I learned so much about the music industry through all of that, and I think that's why I got to be just sort of like hey this is me and if it works for you cool and if it doesn't like it will work for someone else.

Kate: My senior year in high school, I pretty much started to get really serious about playing music. I finally started to realized, oh my God I may actually get the opportunity to do this, like for real as a living, you know.

Kate: (About her music on One Tree Hill) I knew like you know that my music would be involved somehow, but they've just been so awesome about really utilizing it as much as possible. The thing that was so great about this was that I was able to have my first acting experience while also promoting my record. Which is like totally my first priority, right now.

Kate: (About filming One Tree Hill) I'm really excited for some of the later episode when Mia starts to really become confident and excited about playing on stage because I'm really like I love playing on stage and I love being up there and I'm really outgoing. So I'm excited for Mia to become that person. So it's kind of a fun transition.

Kate: (On her One Tree Hill character's wardrobe) Mia is kind of a little bit punky glam.

Kate: Being on the road has been so much fun. It's definitely different then I expected. I kind of expected it to be tedious, and like everyday in a new city, and waking up early. I figured it would get old after a while but that's just what you have to do, but it's been so much fun. It's awesome.

Kate: The most encouraging thing is when there's a group of people just loud and having fun, really excited to hear you even if they don't know your music yet, and I have definitely experienced that so many times on the road already.

Kate: I was just home for a week. It was awesome to be home, but it was also so weird because I don't know what to do with myself kinda of. I mean you know I'm like I wake up in my room and I'm like oh my God.

Kate: (On touring) I have really been all over the place. It's something new everyday. I love it, I haven't gotten sick of it at all actually.

Kate: (Describing her song It's Only Life) It's a motivational, uplifting song about dealing with situations rather than trying to hide from them.

Kate: One of the things that I think is so exciting about being a songwriter and being a musician is knowing that people can hear my music and take something from it. I can write a song about a particular situation that's very specific but you know three other people can listen to it and it can apply directly to something in their life and all those things are totally different situations for what I originally wrote about and I think that makes me love what I do so much.

Kate: (On writing songs) Sometimes it's a very personal thing and other times it's more of a story telling type of process, where it's not necessarily something that happened to me, but something that I've seen happen around me or that's going on in my environment or something that I just think would make a really cool idea for a song.

Kate: As a writer I think it's really important to me that each of my songs really have it's own identity, and be different from the next one.

Kate: When I first started writing everything was like that, I just had to get it down on paper. I had to be playing it. Some of that raw emotion is what keeps it really fresh for me.

Kate: I wrote Only Fooling Myself when I was just barely 16 years old. It was purely just emotion. It's a completely personal experience.

Kate: (Talking about whom she has been compared to) She was like 'You're totally the female Ryan Cabrera!'. And I was like 'Okay!'. And I mean nothing wrong with that at all but I just don't see myself as a female Ryan Cabrera.

Kate: Your most recent songs are the ones you're always like 'That one's the best!'.

Kate: Like if you had asked me six months ago 'What do you think you'll be doing?'. I would never have been like 'Probably filming you know, a part on One Tree Hill and you know, and sitting here with Young Hollywood.

Kate: The greatest part is, I've got a lot of artistic and creative freedom which is huge. And they are also really open to new ideas because they are new and they don't have a cookie cutter way of doing things. So like if I call them and I'm like 'Hey, what if we try doing this' or like 'I think this is something we should do'. They will like, actually consider it as opposed to being like 'Well that's not how we did it with this formula. You know, you have to stick this into the equation'. It's very open.

Kate: (On her song Chicago) Chicago is a metaphorical representation of any kind of escape, about just needing to get away. The line at the end of the chorus is, 'I'll be on the seven o'clock to Chicago,' so it refers to a specific city, but it's universally applicable.

Kate: (On her One Tree Hill character, Mia) I'm a really loud, outgoing person, so that was really totally the opposite of my personal characteristics, but it was really cool because I was that girl once. I was 15 and I had just stared playing guitar. I was like, 'I don't want anyone to know that I write songs.' When I was in high school, it was a big deal. I was like, 'Oh my God -- people are going to think I'm the weird girl with the guitar.'.

Kate: Music to me is so much just a part of my life. Like it's just essential. I just write because it's how I deal with things and it's just what I make of environment and stuff that's going on around me.

Kate: (About performing with people like John Mayer) I love discovering new towns even if they're weird, quirky and cool. The people I've been on the road with have been incredible. They're all people that I'd been a fan of beforehand. So it's really cool to be on the other side now. I'm not classified as a fan anymore, but I'm on the same level as these people, because I'm another artist playing on the bill.

Kate: (About why her new album is so personal) My creative process was different for every song. It just depended on the song; sometimes the songs were about a personal experience or something that was going on around me. A lot of times, the ideas come at really inconvenient times. Like in high school, I would write in class a lot. For some reason now, I tend to get a lot of ideas when I'm flying on airplanes. So my creative process is very spontaneous. It's just whenever inspiration strikes.

Kate: I started writing when I was 15 or 16, and I didn't really take everything seriously, until after the label deal when I was 19. I had all of these songs that I had accumulated.

Kate: The audition process was really fun. I didn't know what to expect but I went in and basically read some lines. And then I also played a couple of songs and a couple days later I found out I got the part! It's pretty easy.

Kate: (about her character on One Tree Hill) It's cool because Mia is my character and she's really different from how I am as a person at the outset. She's really quiet and nervous and you know, doesn't talk that much and I'm really loud and outgoing. So this was really fun to get into character and just be someone really different as this character. But as she evolves she kind of finds herself and becomes more confident, I think.

Kate: (On signing with MySpace) When I walked into MySpace, I really didn't know what to expect because the label was just starting out but the atmosphere was really cool and so different from the other labels I'd been to. A lot of which were cold and intimidating. MySpace wasn't like that at all. Tom and Jon were really easy to talk to, and right away I felt comfortable there. The icing on the cake was that everything about the label was something I felt was right for me. I'd been looking for a label where I'd have artistic freedom and where they'd appreciate the music in its original form and not try to make it anything it wasn't. That's what I found at MySpace, along with an innovative approach to marketing, which is something I didn't see at any other label. The people at MySpace are taking an approach that's really different, and I'm excited to be part of it.

Kate: It's my personal goal to continue the standard set by those before me. No matter how a song develops, my main goal is to reach people, because there were so many musicians who spoke to me, and still do, to help me to deal with situations. It's so easy nowadays with all the technology for people to fake it. For me, it's just so important that the true musical talent and passion for the songs be there.