In truth Weiss’s success is not due to a calculated attempt at fighting the man, but rather an earnest endeavor to make music and connect with listeners. Her greatest strength has been mastering social media as a way to engage with her fans on a personal level, offering unique prizes and experiences to those who contribute to her campaigns. On the latest kickstarter project to fund Allison Weiss Does it Again, the aforementioned second full-length record, Weiss offered fans the opportunity to pick the tracks they want to appear on a bonus EP. Not surprisingly, the campaign ended in early December and reached the ultimate goal of $30,000 (grand total $30,795). You can easily find hours of personal and entertaining content on her Tumblr and YouTube pages. As for the music, the new album is the loud product of a switch from acoustic to electric guitar. Armed with a full band, her live performances fill you with teenage nostalgia—remember all those shows in the front row, the X’s on your hands, and the thrill of seeing your favorite pop-rock bands? At the same time, Weiss’s introspective look at the finer details of human relationships offers a poignant lyrical experience, one more sophisticated than the “cut my wrist and black my eyes” lines of your Emo days. Currently based in Brooklyn, Allison Weiss starts a tour with fellow Brooklyn band Mitten this week, but Profound Co. was lucky enough to sit down and speak with her before she hit the road. We picked her brain for the secret to a successful DIY strategy (which she’s not certain of), the great benefits of working with friends, Dr. Phil, and of course fashion.
Allison Weiss: I was born in Michigan but I grew up in Georgia.
PC: When did you get to New York?
AW: About a little over a year ago. It’s awesome, it’s the best! Before I moved here I spent a year just visiting [so] I came back and forth a lot. The first time I came to New York I fell in love with it so any chance I got I would come here. So I already had a lot of friends. When I moved here it was like “Now I’m here forever!” instead of a visit.
PC: You tend to be in the company of a lot of great independent musicians. Are you guys in it together? Are they apart of your team?
AW: One of them, Chris Kuffner, plays bass with me and Bess [Rogers], Ingrid Michaelson, Jenny Owen Youngs and everybody. But he’s actually producing my album, so I go over to his house [and] that’s where I do recording and everything.
Bess Rogers sings on my records. It’s kind of like a lot of people that I work with are also people that are in my band, or I’m friends with. There’s a band called Mitten and one of their members is a sound editor so she mixed the sound on my Kickstarter video. It’s cool how everybody does everything, but also helps out each other at the same time.
PC: That’s also a big part of Do it Yourselfness: having that support base.
AW: Definitely. I feel like DIY is often more like "Do it with all your friends".
PC: In your promo video for your Kickstarter campaign there is a moment where you hold a book about dinosaurs next to a book on the music industry. Is that a statement?
PC: Would you ever consider going into the actual business and finding a major label?
AW: I might…Yeah, I totally would. I feel like I’m at a point in my career where there’s only so much I can do on my own. If the right sort of deal presented itself to me I would totally be into it.
PC: But you have done a lot on your own!
AW: Yeah, well my criteria for such a thing would be that I would have to have complete creative control still. It’ll definitely be like, if and when it happens, less of me having a boss and more of me having a partner. I don’t know necessarily what a record label even does these days, but I’m definitely trying to put together a team of management and booking and press. After a while there is so much of it [to do] that I’m not spending enough time on making music.
PC: Considering that you’ve done one record and your own and you are about to do another one, could you walk us through that process?
AW: One of the plus sides is that I can pretty much do whatever I want, so I make my own schedule. I’m on my own timeline. For this record in particular we started recording it actually in January and it was originally going to be an EP ‘cus that’s how many songs I had. But then the more that I was working with Chris Kuffner the more fun I was having, so then it was like “Well what about this song? What about this song?” Eventually we were up to 8 songs in May. So then I was like “Fuck it, let’s just make a full length record, I’ll just write two more songs.” But it took forever because in between all of them I was also doing things like touring and managing my whole career; booking shows and just trying to balance it all. So I guess maybe with a record label it’d be easier to just get things done quickly because then I could just focus on making the music. But it’s cool. I really enjoy it because I feel I’ve grown over the course of the year, and so has Chris my producer. We’ve made a lot of things happen over the course of time.
So then the record was done. I had planned to do the Kickstarter all along but I was waiting for the right moment—I didn’t want to release it before it was ready. Then there were tours; I didn’t want to do a Kickstarter at the same time of the tour because it’s hard to balance what I’m going to promote and what’s going to be the main thing. So it finally came time; all the pieces fell together at once and then I just launched it.
AW: You know, I think it was a lot of all of them. Because this is the first record that I’ve ever written songs specifically for. In the past it was like “Okay, I’ve been playing these ten songs for a year it’s time to record them now.” But with this record we had six songs and then I just started writing more with this record in mind. It sort of also was a concept that I was going for as opposed to waiting until I was emotionally inspired or whatever. I was like, “Okay, I want to write a song about this thing,” or “This is a thing happening I should write about it.” Also I had just moved to New York and right when I moved to New York I went through this big horrible breakup, so I was dealing with that as a human being. Just from November from last year to now it was just this cycle of hating life and being like “Nothing ever works! What’s the point? Screw it!” To now where it’s like “Alright, everything is actually fine. Also music is great. I gotta get back to where I was when I was 17 years old and put this in a song and make a record out of it and actually make a physical thing.”
PC: Does the recording and creative process work as therapy to help you get that out of your system and get back on the horse?
AW: Definitely! I feel like this record is a lot of me… I was thinking of all of these things that I want to write songs about. I was in a period of my life that I was trying to figure out…let me start over. I’ve been really interested in how relationships work and how people interact with each other, and I’ve really liked to hear about other people’s breakups, as weird as that sounds, and if I get to hear both sides it’s even better. It’s just a little bit more of understanding what’s up with human beings and how they’re really cool. So I feel like I wrote a lot about those sort of things on this record and it definitely helped me figure out my own shit and hopefully it’ll help other people too.
PC: So you became the Dr. Phil of your friends?
AW: Maybe, except a way cooler and hopefully more attractive Dr. Phil.
PC: You need a better name.
AW: I know right. I mean he does tell people how it is.
PC: Does he really? Didn’t he just get caught with a scandalous divorce?
Aw: Probably, but it just goes to show that nobody knows. Nobody knows what works and what doesn’t. Just because Dr. Phil got divorced doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
PC: Good point. Let’s talk about Kickstarter. In 2009 you met your goal in 10 hours. You’re currently at $20,000 of a $12,000 goal. How do you do that?
AW: I don’t know, I’ve actually been getting a lot of people emailing me lately with “I’ve actually got a Kickstarter how do I make mine so successful?” I don’t really know the right answer to those questions. As far as internet promotion goes, I really just go for it in my own way. There’s not really a strategy to it. I’m not reading any blogs like “How to Use Twitter” or “How to Facebook better.” I think Kickstarter in particularly is probably successful for me because I already had an online fan base going into it, which definitely helped. I think a lot of artists just put up a Kickstarter and think that the Kickstarter people are going to just find their project and donate to it, but you kind of have to know what your audience is and know that they’re there. Then Kickstarter is a tool to monetize your fan base or just ask for help.
PC: What is your relationship like with your fans?
AW: I just love the Internet because I blog a lot. And I’m pretty open and honest and pretty much everything is out there. I like to think of it like—I grew up as a pretty crazy music fan. Like [at] 16 and 17 I would be the kid who would go to a show like seven hours early and just stand there all day long just so I could run to the front, you know what I mean? You’d make friends in line like, “Oh I know that person from that show!” So I try to think of it as “What would I want form me if I was my fans?” What would I want as that kid who loves music from that big artist? So it’s all about having fun. I try to do as many things as possible that will be fun fan experiences. I want to give people the opportunity to get cool stuff and have fun hang outs and--
PC: See you as a person…
AW: Yeah exactly! And not just like, “You’re the fan and I’m the artist and I’m going to be over here and you’re going to be over there and I’m going to sing those songs and you’re going to listen.” That’s so boring!
PC: But you’re also not mother monster.
AW: Yeah, I’m also not mother monster. Mother monster is creepy about it. She’s like “Put up your paws little monsters,” yeah Lady Gaga…that’s a whole different tangent that I could go on. But yeah, she just takes that to a whole new level.
PC: Speaking of tangents, I saw your twitter tangent about Adele’s “Someone like You”.
AW: Dude that song is so crazy. It’s definitely a really sad song.
PC: What’s your favorite city you’ve toured?
Aw: I would go with Vancouver because it’s beautiful and I really liked playing there. I also love the shit out of Chicago. I had a lot of fun and I can’t wait to go back there.
PC: What’s a place that you haven’t been yet that you want to go to?
AW: I really want to go to Europe. I’ve never been over there. I’m hoping in the next year I’ll make it over to the UK and Germany, but it’s also really expensive.
PC: Well, Kickstarter…
AW:I know right! Allison Weiss World Tour!
PC: Who did you listen to growing up and who are your influences?
AW: Growing up as a teenager there was a lot of pop-punk, Like Blink 182, Dashboard Confessionals too. I’m into that Emo stuff. But I’m also a huge Rilo Kiley fan, I love Tegan and Sara, and I only recently gotten into a lot of music that I should have heard as a teenager like Weezer and Bikini Kill. I don’t why it took me so long to listen to Weezer before, but last year I just finally understood Pinkerton and I was like, “this is the greatest album I’ve heard in my life”. So that had a lot of influence on the record, Weezer’s first two records. Also a lot of Fountain of Wayne.
PC: Besides “Stacy’s Mom”?
AW: Yeah, they have a record that came out a few years before “Stacy’s Mom” that’s really good. Just like super solid pop-rock songs.
PC: It seems like you do a lot with the acoustic guitar, you’re not just a girl with a guitar. You have a lot of fun with it. It’s not the “whiney girl-with-guitar” bit.
AW: Thanks. I’ve also graduated to an electric guitar. The whole new record is pretty loud. It’s definitely like a rock record.
PC: Since we’re a fashion company, what’s your ideal style?
AW: I like when people have a whole thing, like really well put together right to the detail.
PC: Like down to the socks?
AW: Exactly! I was going to say the socks. I got some fucking socks on right now that I love the shit out of. You never see them but just knowing that they’re there… Yeah I guess that’s my idea of good fashion. But also people who can rock anything with the right type of confidence. I’m really envious of those people. Anything from a super crazy outfit to a sweatshirt. There are just some people that look really amazing in whatever they’re wearing.
PC: Favorite accessory?
AW: I feel like right now I’m obsessed with my glasses.
PC: If your music had an aesthetic what would it be?
AW: I feel like my musical aesthetic is kind of my own aesthetic, which is a mixture of a teenage boy and then sometimes stepping up my game a little bit and looking a little nicer, like an adult.
PC: Sometimes tucking in your shirt.
AW: Sometimes tucking in my shirt, sometimes wearing a collar.
PC: Ultimately what’s your goal with your music? Where do you want to take it?
AW: Honestly, I just want to keep getting better. I just want to tour whenever I can or want to without worrying about money. I want to tour and make records and not have anything stopping me from doing that. I’m pretty much just going to do whatever it takes to get there an authentic way.
PC: Last words?
AW: 100% forever.
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