Fresh off of the release of her new single, "Breakdown," & the announcement of her 2022 U.S. headlining run, we caught up with Tessa Violet at BottleRock Napa.
On her busy week Tessa notes, "Oh my god, I can only focus on one thing at a time. My focus has mostly been on talking about tour & oh my god, that's right ["Breakdown"] is out." On what we can expect next from her musically, she adds "I have a very unique relationship with my label and I actually get to pick all of the singles. For the next one I thought 'maybe I want more fan feedback?' I've been playing these songs live on stream and would love their opinion."
The first date to sell out on her upcoming Rise of The Phoenix Tour is a date in Portland, Oregon. How's she celebrating? "I think it's easy to let exciting things slip by and not celebrate them because you're maybe worried if you stop to celebrate it won't happen again. I'd love to do something with my fans. I'd also love to go camping, in my personal life, I think that would be fun."
On her favorite venue of the upcoming tour, Violet touts Santa Fe, New Mexico's Meow Wolf: "It's the best venue in the whole world. On all of Planet Earth. It's an art exhibit about the story of a family that gets thrown into the multiverse. You enter through this Victorian house. The most famous one is if you open a fridge it's a pathway into another space. If you crawl through the fireplace you're in a whale's skeleton where you can play the bones like instruments. I love it. At the very end of the exhibit there's a backyard for live music. They're all different, but they're all very psychedelic and cool.
Ahead of her BottleRock set, Tessa was streaming live on Twitch, which lead us to ask about her heavy online presence that she's had for well over a decade now. On her relationship with the internet, she spoke specifically on TikTok: "I think I can only speak to the more indie side of it as opposed to the major label side. To have a good experience with it I think is all about your attitude. If you go into it with the attitude that you have to do it to promote your music, you're going to have a bad time. If you go into it with the attitude like, 'oh my god what a blessing that I can directly reach people who might be interested in my songs.' In the days of old you needed a label that was going to pump a bunch of money into your music to make it a hit, but now you can have a hit through the free platform of TikTok. It's also a space to be funny, show your personality & meet people. I totally understand the feeling of 'I just want to make art and not do the promotion,' wouldn't we all? People won't listen to your song if they don't that it exists. This is just an opportunity to get it out there.
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