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Exclusive Interview with Lauren Frost Part 2: Artist Growth and Creative Maturity
To view each part of the interview, click on the following links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Me: After Even Stevens, there seemed to be a transitional period where you drifted out of the public eye. You left as a child star and reemerged as a contemporary, adult songwriter. What did you focus on during this time, and how did you go from the singer of other people's songs to the songwriter of your own songs?
Lauren: I think that was all a part of me growing up to be honest. After Even Stevens, I continued to audition. But at that time of my life the acting gig wasn't completely fulfilling. My first love has always been music. I wanted to learn more about music. I then went to school and started taking classes on music and song-writing and things of that nature. I really just wanted to take a step back and focus my career and my passion onto music.
As much as I love acting and I continued to pursue it and want to work in TV and film again, music has sort of shifted the focus and that's my first love. So that's what I had been doing. Song-writing is extremely fulfilling and it's just a part of me now. I really don't see my life without it.
Me: Did you ever think you'd eventually end up writing the songs?
Lauren: Oh God, no. And I grew up listening to what I consider to be the greats like Joni Mitchell and Billie Holiday and Judy Garland. And writers like Jeff Buckley and Janis Joplin. Those people I idolized and I looked up to. And I thought, you know, Joni can write a song about heartbreak and say it so perfectly well, she can express, in my opinion, everything that I had felt. So I am like, "How can I ever touch that? Who cares what I have to say?"
But then, once I let that go and realized that I care what I have to say and it's more about my own experience and if people dig it, great, then I realized that everyone has the right to tell their own story. So I guess, that's how I became a songwriter. But I had to get over that initial reaction of "Oh my God, this is too big and huge I can't even come close to what these people have done."
NEW Me: Do you think the Disney connection has hurt your ability to be taken seriously as an artist?
Lauren: I'm extremely grateful for my experiences, especially Even Stevens and The Disney Channel and the Barbra Streisand opportunity. I would only hope that people would follow me from those things and want to know more, but I have to say that I have gotten older. Even Stevens has been done for about 3�4 years now and my audience has grown along with me. I'm just hoping they like the music and are interested.
Me: I read on your Web site that the project started when you and Matt Scutt just sat down and began to write. Other than being a co-writer of many of the songs, who is Matt Scutt?
Lauren: Matt is a very talented singer/songwriter/musician from Chicago. We're from the same hometown so we met up. He also does producing and he's got his own music career going on.
Matt and I just had this really strange connection, an easy ability to write together. It was my best experience of sitting down and writing with someone else. The songs started pouring out and it was a great working/writing relationship. And we continue to write today.
[Webmaster's note: More of Matt Scutt's phenomenal work can be found on his MySpace page: click here.
Me: What's your process of writing a song?
Lauren: I'd have to say that the longer I've been writing, the more I realize that I don't actually have a certain writing process. I've tried the traditional "This is how you write a song" by-the-book way. It doesn't really work for me; I'm much more of an emotional person.
Sometimes, especially writing with Matt, it comes out of a conversation. He and I will grab coffee and we'll talk for hours. We just start talking about what's going on in our life and we sit there with a pen and say, "Oh, that's a line" or "Oh, that could be a song." It's whatever comes out. Sometimes a melody strikes me and I'll be in the middle of computer work and a melody's in my head. I record it, then come up with the lyrics. For me it's not a particular process. It's not that the melody comes first or the lyrics come first. I guess it's just inspiration. It happens when it happens.
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