Emerging artist Gordon Voidwell on growing up in the Ivy League Circus, being the “Prince fronted Passion Pit,” having dance parties with his mom and more:
“I come from this double world,” singer-songwriter Gordon Voidwell (real name: Will Johnson) explains.
Voidwell, who’s been making major waves since the May release of his first EP, Ivy League Circus, is referring to the record’s self-titled track. He may as well be highlighting the numerous dichotomies of his young life: from growing up in the Bronx as the divorced child of jazz musicians to attending a tony NYC prep school alongside the offspring of some of America’s wealthiest.
| His music itself is a study in the aforementioned dichotomies — or rather, ‘deconstruction’ (a major motif in Voidwell’s personal narrative; he majored in post-modern philosophy and hip-hop culture at NYU‘s Gallatin School of Individualized Studies). It’s indefinable: it’s electro and it’s pop. It’s funk and it’s measured. It’s academic and silly. It’s lighthearted and heavy. |
LISTEN WHILE YOU READ! Please do not hot link these MP3s. |
“Ivy League Circus” flows with a groove built on 80’s dance beats reminiscent Tom Tom Club. On the surface, it’s fun and free. Beneath the shiny veneer, it’s Voidwell’s own mediation on being a South Bronx kid attending Fieldston — one of Manhattan’s most elite private schools.
I must admit my pick of bones/the skulls and skeletons we’ve kept for worse or better / We’re in the same society / Our secrets need not fly or leak / Differences aside/ Let’s lose ourselves and try as one
“The way post-modern philosophy works is it’s not just one thing — it’s deconstructing things so you have various definitions,” he says. “A lot of people who went to Fieldston were super-rich. I definitely grew up with some sense of self-consciousness like, ‘wow — why doesn’t my family have as much as these kids?’ But then I was also realizing later on that in high school, things appear a different way. Most of those kids’ families didn’t have money or were going through money-laundering things. Everyone has their own struggle.”
“Just to come from that post-modern point,” he says with a laugh, “there isn’t just one definition of what rich is.”
Voidwell’s parents — his mother is white, his father is African-American — instilled in him and his sister a varied musical upbringing. He grew up listening to “old-school, electro-rap” like Afrika Bambaata, disco and avant-garde jazz.
“There was this one skating rink in the Bronx called Skate Key,” he remembers, “I would go there when I was really young and listen to stuff like Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, all this sort of funky, R&B-electro stuff that was not ironic or hip. It was just really cool music to listen to then.”
When he was in the fourth grade, his mother enlisted him to join the Harlem Boys Choir. He spent three years undergoing the intense vocal training required of members and traveling with the group, being trained in music ranging from classical and pop. Voidwell was a first soprano, something that he says still influences him to this day. It’s also undeniably shaped the glossy falsetto that’s launched several comparisons to Prince (more on that later).
“I can sing higher than most girls because that’s the normal register for me,” he says. “I think my brain remembers that — my intuition is to always sing high pitched. I’ve had to really learn my new voice as an adult.”
Voidwell quit the choir and stopped the vocal training when he was in 7th grade. His sister was attending private school and he would soon follow, opting to focus on academic life. But eventually, as a student at NYU, the musical calling would return.
He met a professor named Guillermo Brown. Brown was a talented drummer who played with several high-profile jazz groups and encouraged his pupil to begin making music again. During his junior year, Voidwell began playing with Brown, “triggering electronic samples” and singing back-up. Eventually, Brown was playing a show at the famed Apollo Theatre in Harlem and invited Voidwell to open for him, performing his own creations.
“I came up with this whole persona, this whole idea with video-art and how I would be presenting myself onstage,” he says. “What I’d be wearing, what the colors and background and lighting would look like. I adapted another personality and another way to express myself without being self-conscious.”
Three of the songs on Ivy League Circus were performed that night — but have since evolved into something much different. “They were super out-there,” Voidwell says. “The way they sound now is like the result of a year of stripping away shit. I over-write songs; I’ll write way too many parts. Then I’ll spend a really long time spring things away, listening to it and being like ‘oh the main point of this is THIS,’ and reducing it to the barest element.”
Voidwell is currently gearing up for a big CMJ showcase sponsored by SPIN Magazine in addition to working on a 20-track mixtape he’s going to release by himself, for free. Ivy League Circus has garnered lots of label attention, but he hasn’t fallen in love with any of the offers. If anything, he says, he’d like to raise some capital, hire a publicist and marketing person, and continue to do it all himself.
It’s sweet to hear Voidwell talk about the support of his parents. “My mother is really cool, she really digs it,” he says. “She exposed me to a lot of great pop music. She totally listened to Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince. That was her shit. She would dance and lose herself — we’d have dance parties in my living room, just me and my mom and my sister.”
When Prince comes up, I ask him how he feels about the comparisons. RCRD LBL, after all, called his music ‘Prince-fronted Passion Pit.’
“I’m all about it,” Voidwell says. “Prince and David Bowie to me, in terms of image and deconstruction, they’re just so aware of what they’re doing and still manage to be super-pop. That’s really for me, as a musician but also as a human being who hopes to inspire intellectual activity.”