THE STAR SCOOP: You’ve been on tour and that’s wrapping up and you have some dates for 2011. How
has the tour gone?
VIENNA TENG: I’m actually in school right now. I actually went back to school. The tour in August was really great. I thought it would be bittersweet, but it was actually just really, really awesome! It was going to my last being out full time playing shows for a while. THE STAR SCOOP: Did you feel that your fans were aware of that coming into the show? Is that something you shared with them? VIENNA TENG: It was kind of a nice mix because in some cities, there would be a lot of people that supported me for a really long time, so that they had sort of followed the story, and it was a pretty emotional moment for them, as well as for me. It was also mixed in with all these people who were hearing me and Alex, my music partner, for the first time. It was one of those things where it was kind of nice that some people had no idea, so they were just enjoying the show or checking out the music on their own terms. I kind of like that some people were totally unaware of the fact that I wouldn’t be back on the road for awhile. They were just there to have a good night with their friends. THE STAR SCOOP: Going back to school…you’re already in the middle of your career…that’s a unique situation. VIENNA TENG: There were two different reactions, both of which I’m really grateful for. One of which was this disbelief – oh no! Don’t do that! We’re really going to miss you, this music has been really important to us. That was the, are you crazy, please don’t do that but in a nice way. It was more like, we totally think it’s great that you’re going back to school but please don’t stop making music. Which, I totally don’t intend to do. I definitely intend to keep recording and writing songs and playing shows whenever I can. The other reaction was, that doesn’t surprise me at all and that’s great. I actually took some time trying to figure out why it was no surprise to so many people. On some level, it’s because the audience I happen to have found is similar to me in that we’re all a little nerdy [laughs]. We all really like reading about environmental issues and the science behind it, the psychology and the behavioral aspects of it…how do you get large groups of people to have civil discussions…so that’s the stuff I’ve gotten really interested in lately. It happens that a lot of my audience is interested in that stuff, too. THE STAR SCOOP: It’s a Sustainable Enterprise Master’s. Is that correct? VIENNA TENG: Right. It’s at the University of Michigan, and it’s through this place called The Erb Institute. I’m going to get an MBA from the business school here, as well as Master’s in Environmental Science. THE STAR SCOOP: It seems like that’s a little bit of a disconnect from what you do professionally. People get continued degrees with the intent of moving toward a career. You have this great established career [in music]. People wonder, how does [the master’s] fit and how will that be used? VIENNA TENG: That’s the big question that I get, which I have yet to really form a good answer for. I kind of came back to school to figure that out, too…my answer is usually: good question. I’m basically trying to create this career/job for myself where I get to express myself creatively and work on a lot of these problems that I really care about. I don’t know really know yet whether those two can happen at the same time – whether I’m going to just have to do one and then switch back to the other…whether it’s just going to be that I record albums and I go on tour and that’s one thing, and then I have this other career as an environmental mediator or consulting with companies about how to reduce their energy use. I think it comes from seeing other musicians take up really great causes and sometimes feeling frustrated that people don’t give them enough credit for what they are passionate about…part of the reason why I wanted to come back to school is partly because I hope that if I ever go back out there as a musician and say something about the issues that we face, that it might get taken a little more seriously because I actually studied and hopefully worked in it a little bit. I think that could be pretty powerful. I wouldn’t want to get super political as a performer. I think I’m better at quietly saying, I’ve looked at this for a long time and people I really respect have looked at this for a long time, and I think this is what needs to happen, and hopefully get a lot of other people looking into it too. THE STAR SCOOP: Is being in school going to change your process for making music or impact the music that you’re hopefully going to make in the future? VIENNA TENG: [Laughs] I think it’s going to have a really, really great effect on me as a musician. It does have its drawbacks, one is that I’m really busy with all this other stuff now. Time to learn drums or guitar or to write songs and work on songs is limited now. I don’t think that’s so much different from when I was a full time musician. When you’re a full time musician, you spend a lot of your time booking flights and doing conference calls…trying to figure out where that other box of CDs is living, which city it’s in and which city it needs to be shipped too. In a way, I don’t know that I have any less time. I think I’ve always been happiest when music was a kind of running away and a kind of procrastination. THE STAR SCOOP: You do have a live album that is out right now [The Moment Always Vanishing]. VIENNA TENG: This one is particular special because it’s kind of a duo album with Alex Wong, who I’ve been working with for the past several years. I’ve enjoyed playing live before but playing with Alex is a whole other thing, because he’s so much fun and so creative. We’ve been friends for almost nine years now. Musically, it’s really really interesting, too. I just play piano. I’m trying to expand that. I’m primarily a piano player and singer. Alex just plays this whole array of instruments…guitar and percussion and he wires his percussion up to electronic effects and creates this really cool hybrid sound. It all sounds acoustic and yet there’s a lot of echo-ey cool things going on. It really recaps a lot of the songs in a new light that I think people have really responded to. I actually like the live version better than the album version for most of these songs now. We are starting plans to do some recording, this coming May. I don’t know yet exactly whether it will be covers or random songs I’ve written and co-written with other people the past few years or whether it will actually be a holiday album. That’s one thing we were thinking about. I’m not really sure what shape that recording project will take. Hopefully it will come out a year after that. There will be stuff coming out while I’m in school! There won’t be as many shows, but there still will be shows. Note: Vienna is going to play a benefit for a local non profit (The Farmer’s Fund) in Ann Arbor Michigan on November 14th. Vienna and Alex Wong will also play in the Ann Arbor Folk Festival in January.
