MUSIC INTERVIEW: DEV

Come On Everybody, Didn’t You Know ‘Star’ Is Her Middle Name?

By: Team Buzzine

August 19, 2011

The clue might be in the name, but make no mistake: Devin Star Tailes has spent a lot of years working hard to achieve world class status. A big part of her childhood in little Manteca, CA was spent as a member of the U.S. Olympic development program for swimming, but that life path was dramatically diverted when a couple of songs she wrote and recorded as a college freshman were posted onto MySpace (you remember MySpace…now Justin Timberlake’s MySpace) and caught the attention of two up-and-coming producers collectively named The Cataracs.

Three years later, after a string of multi-platinum-selling collaborations and a gold single of her very own, Dev has the musical world at her feet, salivating in anticption of the release of her debut album, The Night the Sun Came Up. Buzzine’s Stefan Goldby headed to downtown LA to meet up with Dev in the new studio that she and The Cataracs recently helped to build and establish as the home base for their Indie-Pop music collective.

Stefan Goldby: In your own words from the song “Me”, you used to live in a ‘little-ass town’ in the Central Valley of California. Can you begin by giving us a little more of the details of how you first hooked up with The Cataracs and moved here to the ‘big-ass city’?

Dev: [Laughs] I am from a little-ass town. I’m from Manteca, California and I lived there for 20 years. I met The Cataracs on MySpace in 2008, where I posted up a couple of songs I recorded into my MacBook, like on GarageBand that comes in the MacBooks: I literally sang into my computer. I put them up on MySpace, and they discovered it and liked it, and I drove out to Berkeley to meet them, and we haven’t stopped working together ever since.

SG: What is it that makes you all such good musical partners?

D: I don’t know what it is, but it’s never been something forced. It was always really natural. I think The Cataracs and I, since the very first day that I met them, nothing has changed. And I think that that sort of organic vibe, I guess, as corny as it sounds, is what makes it so special. I’m lucky. People don’t like working with their coworkers – ever. I’ve worked so many nine to five’s before this, and I’ve never liked anybody I really worked with, but I lived with them for two years. That’s how well we get each other and get along: They’re like my brothers.

SG: After “Booty Bounce” came out as a single you had started to establish a fan base, but your world shifted when The Cataracs were working with a different LA band, and your song suddenly became a major part in a different song. Which then became a monster hit. At what point did you realize that that Like A G6 had changed everything for you?

D: Probably the first time I heard it on the radio. See, we had made it a year before the radio played it, and I remember when it was just the beat that was made, and I would listen to that in the car on repeat – it was just the beat. So I always knew it was really special. I think we all knew that it was really special, but I think it was the first time that I heard it on the radio and it sounded so good, and I was like, “Oh man. Things are about to change.” And they did.

SG: Where were you?

D: I was here, in downtown LA, and I didn’t know it was going to be on the radio. Nobody had told us or anything, and I heard it and it was great.

SG: Since then, you’ve had a string of hit singles, both of your own, and where you were featured on somebody else’s track… When it comes to then taking that momentum and putting it into your debut album, what more do you think that people who have come to love you as an artist through those singles will get from the album?

D: It’s funny because I guess the majority of people really only know “G6” and “Bass Down Low,” then if they’ve YouTubed my stuff, they find other songs like “Me” and “Killer,” and maybe now they’ve heard “In the Dark.” But for this album, I got to sit down and make a whole piece of work that I’d never thought I would ever get a chance to do. These weren’t just singles. The other songs, we were just having fun; we were just putting out ideas.

But now The Cataracs and I had this time to make a debut album – to really present our work and our thoughts and what we’ve been doing for the past three years, so they get to see me being myself as a whole, not just featured in “G6” and not just bouncing booties and stuff. They really get to see that I can make “G6” songs, and we can, and we do it really damn well. But I also have a heart and a soul, and I’m a 22-year-old female that has had my life completely do a 180. So they get a lot of goodies for sure. There’s a lot of good stuff on there. I’m excited.

SG: All things considered, it’s been a pretty prolonged period spent putting together this record: Is there a single memory that sums up the recording process as an experience?

D: The past three years, I was really just figuring myself out, even personally, as a woman. I’d never really left Manteca,  my comfort zone up there… so moving here, we were just doing little singles here and there, and I was doing shows that I could get my hands on – whatever it was. I guess when we first went to Costa Rica to really sit down for the album, that whole three weeks was the moment, I guess. We were in our bathing suits, sitting down, and it was hot as hell, and it was like, “Okay, Dev. What do you want?” And it was that moment that I was like…all the times that I didn’t have money to buy a hamburger and I didn’t get to see my family for months, and it was stuff like that was that time, where I could finally just show what I wanted to do.

SG: On the cusp of being able to do that – to show the world what it is that you can do – what is it about the album that you’re most excited about?

D: I don’t know – I’m excited for a lot! I’m excited for everybody to hear everything. The album is really honest and sexy and youthful and mysterious. I guess I’m just excited for everybody to see all that and hear it all, and I’m excited to play a lot of the shows off of it. I’m ready to put together a set of all new songs and travel with those for a little bit, because I’ve been performing “Booty Bounce” for the past two years [laughs], and I want to knock myself out. So that will be fun. I’m excited for it all. It’s been great.

SG: You’re in a genre of music where traditionally, the live show has not been the strongest element. Not for you guys, but in general. We got to see you guys rip it up at SXSW – your show at The Phoenix was just awesome. What elements make up a perfect night on stage for you?

D: I like all of my imperfections. I really do. I grew up going to see my favorite bands that would fall on stage on accident, or their voices sound crazy because you could tell they’d been touring for a long time, or they would pick up a kid out of the crowd… It’s all those very human moments… [laughs]

Me and The Cataracs are really good at doing that. We’re really quirky. I think David [“Camper” Benjamin Singer-Vine] – one of The Cataracs – took his shoes off at one of the Usher shows that we were touring at… on stage, in front of like 15,000 people. But it’s those human moments that I think are important for me. People hear that I make these pop records, but when they come to my show, they see that I’m just like them.

I set up my live shows for kids to come and escape their reality, whether it’s school or they’re fighting with their parents, or things like that. I want them to come and feel like we’re hanging out and they can just sing along and I can sing with them, and that type of thing. Because that’s why I would go to shows, and that’s why I would pay a lot of money and drive really far to go see the artists that I liked – because for the hour-and-a-half or whatever, it’s like nothing else really mattered. So I like that. I like talking to them one-on-one, throwing water on them… they like that!

SG: Here in the studio, you have pretty much complete control over your music. You go out on stage, you have almost complete control – aside from technical glitches, and goofs like like falling over, but when it comes to making a music video, you have to take a step outside of that comfort circle. When you have a track that’s going to have a video, do you start with an idea? Do you start with a partner? Or do you start with an open mind?

D: It depends. Being that I’m a solo artist, I’m very lucky that I get to create my music with The Cataracs. They’re like my best friends, so we usually, after we make a song, we’ll think of something – some sort of concepts or ideas or thoughts or feelings that carry on into videos somehow. I’ve worked with one director for the past four videos, and he’s been great, so we are to a point where we’ve gotten comfortable to go back and forth a lot. It really just depends, though, on the song.

SG: Then let’s talk about the new video for “In the Dark,” just to be specific: How did that one come together?

D: I’d given it to Ethan Adler, who does the videos for us a lot, and I let him sit with it a little bit, and he came to me with a few different ideas. He emailed me, actually, and then I emailed him back with what I thought. [Laughs] You know how that goes.

So we did that back and forth, which he always does with me until I get my point across. But I don’t make videos, even though I’ve been lucky enough to shoot a lot of them. Now I have a voice a little bit more, but in the beginning especially I didn’t know anything about videos, so I let the director take a little bit of control. So me and Ethan went back and forth, and then we met up and we got both of our ideas and feelings across. I wanted to be sexy and dark like the song is, in a really interesting way, and we pulled it off, I think.

SG: While we are talking about visuals… every tattoo seems to come with a story. And from here, I can see a lot of stories - Take a moment and think – then can you pick one and tell us a good story?

D: Oh God, you’re asking a person with the corniest tattoos….

SG: Who could resist going from dark and sexy straight to corny?

D: Exactly. That’s my swag. My grandma always used to sing me this song in Portuguese, and that’s where I got this. It means “Beautiful Girl,” and she used to sing that to me all the time so I got it tattooed. I have Cataracs lyrics tattooed on my arm, actually, which is kind of funny. I thought it would be cool. I get to carry them with me for the rest of my life. I guess I could be 60 and be like, “I used to be in this band. We used to make music. It was really cool.” And I have a pink diamond on my shoulder that I got when I was way too young to get a tattoo, and I live with it every day. Thanks for asking. [Laughs]

SG: You’re welcome; we love to be known as the network that loves the artists we interview and goes that extra step in looking for interesting questions, so as we got ready for today, a very obscure, but very specific question became rather clear: What is it you love so much about Drew Barrymore?

D: How do you know I like Drew Barrymore?

SG: Because as you go back in time via the original version of your devishot.com blog, the single random yet consistently recurring theme is how cool you believe Drew Barrymore is...

D: Oh, my blog… that’s so crazy! I don’t know, ever since I was little, I always thought it was so cool how down-to-earth she seemed. I don’t know her personally, but I just always thought she was really beautiful. That’s so cool. Nobody has ever brought her up to me in an interview… I don’t know, I just think she’s rad. She’s cool. I don’t want to speak too much, but I think growing up and watching her on E.T., the character she played there, and Wedding Singer, and all these little quirky, down-to-earth videos, she manages to still be really cute and sexy, and I like that.  I think it’s cool.

SG: Now we’ve got you really thinking, tell us about the best moment in the past couple of crazy years: the one where you look around and think, “Yeah: This is what I signed up for!”

D: Gosh, there are so many. I just appreciate so many moments. Definitely getting to spoil my family. I won’t speak too much on that, but that was really cool, when I got to do that. I think when “G6” hit #1 on the Billboard, me and The Cataracs were all living together, and I was asleep and they were banging on my door. They were like, “Wake up!” I’m like, “Why? It’s like 8:00 in the morning. What are you guys doing? Leave me alone!” And that was a cool feeling. I think the last night on the Usher tour was a cool feeling. There have been, thankfully, a lot. Thanks for bringing that up, actually. That’s kind of cool.

SG: We try to let everybody have a hand in how their Buzzine interview is going to end, so with what words would you like to sign off for today?

D: I’m so cheesy. Watch this. I’d like to tell everybody that “Bass Down Low” just hit gold. Woot woot to me and The Cataracs! [Laughs] And the album that we’ve been working really really hard on is called The Night the Sun Came Up, and it’s our gift to all of you guys, so I hope you enjoy. Listen to it somehow. You’ll like it…

Dev’s debut album, ‘The Night The Sun Came Up,’ is out March 27, 2012 on Indie-Pop/Universal Republic Records.