ABOUT ME...

Hi my name is Vasi. I’m 11 years old. I was born in San Diego, CA. Now my whole story started when my dad became a musician. I remember when he used to play controversial music. When I was three he wrote an album called Heart of an Angel. I was the angel on the cover. Well, look at me now.

I started Piano at the age of 7 years old. I never wanted to start piano in the first place but my parents forced me. I remember I used to throw such big fits. Now I think for what??? Playing Piano has just made my life much easier for, well, basically everything. At that time I was singing too. But it wasn’t like real singing classes. No artist development, no vocal warm ups, and I was basically messing up my voice.

When I was 8 my mother told me she had a big surprise for me. She had got me a violin, and a violin teacher. His name was Micha. He was from Ukraine and I think my mom liked him as a teacher because he could speak Russian and he was from such a nearby foreign country to Russia. My mother related to him. He was a great teacher and he was the one who taught me to count beats so well and listen.

BTW that’s a very important piece of information to know. After about two years of training in violin my teacher told me I was ready to try out for the Youth Symphony. Luckily, the try outs were coming up.

I guess the pressure just got to me and I told my parents I was quitting all Classical music. My dad’s reaction was to not push me and to let me play what ever style of music I wanted. I told him I wanted to play Rock. My mom’s reaction wasn’t that great. She just kind of dropped everything she was doing and was incredibly silent. I knew that wasn’t very good.

I started changing after that announcement. I told my parents I wanted to start wearing more black. My mom thought I meant with pink and other girly colors. Just like what she wears black with. My dad knew exactly what I wanted to do. Become REBELIOUS. I always believed that a person should dress like, whatever they have inspiration from. That’s exactly what I did. I got the inspiration from my music, and my music is tripy, so I decided to dress tripy too.

My dad started introducing me to classic 70’s bands like Pink Floyd, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Genesis, Kansas, etc. He knew that I was ready.

The person that inspired me the most to write was my 3rd grade teacher Ms. Plett. She taught me so much poetry that I still have memorized some of the pieces I wrote.

I wrote my first song “FADE TO GRAY” about my grandfather who died in Russia. I was very close to him. I wrote the song the same month he died. This was February. I couldn’t figure out how I got the lyrics, but it was just the first thing that came into my mind. I showed my father and from that time on I was writing songs. At that time about a song a month.

The second song I wrote was “Make a Wish”. It’s about my perspective of what it would be like if I had Cancer. At first I had my melody on the piano the same as what I was singing, it followed along. Then I figured out that I could play one melody line and sing another. It wasn’t until I wrote my 4th song that I actually changed the piano part and that opened up a whole new world for me because my focus was mainly on writing songs where the Piano parts were secondary to the lyrics. Now I’m beginning to see how it all fits together.

My 3rd song is called “In My Head”. My dad wrote the guitar part to it. One day he picks up the guitar and he tells me “Vasi can you write lyrics to this melody?” I started coming up with lyrics out of the blue. I realized that the song was about everything that ever rushes through, my thoughts, the voice in my head .

The 4th song I wrote was “No Month of May”. I was really starting to concentrate at that time on our environment and the causes and effects of Global Warming. I thought that, that would be an amazing idea for a song, would make everyone burst out in tears when they heard it. I needed some emotional songs to add to my album.

The 5th song I wrote is “Read It and Weep”. I wrote the lyrics in 5 minutes at home while my dad was in Cabo San Lucas. At first I could not figure out the meaning of this song. Then I started to think about it. “It is about the emotions I get when I write songs”, I told my dad. By this time I had a new Vocal/Piano/Artist Development teacher. Her name is Peggy Lebo.

Finally the first day in the studio came. All my friends thought it would be a lot of fun. Well it is… but, it’s also so much hard work. We recorded some piano parts and some scratch vocals.

The 6th song I wrote is called Lonely Boy. I got the idea from a story about a boy named Adam. I read the whole story and I took ideas from it and put it into my songs. Adam was a teen just about the age of my brother (15). He committed suicide because nobody liked him and no one was his friend. Except for one girl. He had made a couple attempts before but his friend had stopped him.

The 7th song I wrote called “I’m Way Away” is all about rebellion and running away from your parents and everything they say.

Finally my 8th and most current song. I played a party for the son of one of my dad’s friends. It was the sweet 16 party of Eric and I found out Steve Poltz was playing too. I was so excited to meet someone so talented. Towards the end of the party my dad told me to write a song. I started playing a piano part and Steve started coming up with lyrics. That’s how we came up with Stroll Around. That explains my life as a musician.

As my song’s are finished being mixed I will have my Dad put them up on my site. I hope you all enjoy my song’s and I like feedback. Please, go easy on me!!!

Vasi