DEVORA Interview: ‘Music Can Be Life-Saving’

PHOENIX, AZ — Growing up in Cave Creek, Arizona, DEVORA was surrounded by two prominent — and divergent — genres of music: Country and Goth Rock. As she got older, she wanted the music that she made to blend those two genres and ended up creating a new one.

“I’ve been singing and writing since I could talk,” DEVORA said. “Growing up in a small town in Arizona called Cave Creek, there were sort of two different areas of music that I grew up listening to. Country music was very prevalent during my upbringing — Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton — but Arizona has quite a dark, really strong Goth Industrial music scene. Cut to now, the two of them have both influenced me so much and I’ve always wanted to blend the genres because I’ve never really heard anything like that; this is something that I want to make and that I would want to listen to.”

Her inspiration comes from her hometown; the experiences she has had and the people she has met growing up around the sometimes-sinister side of desert life in Arizona. At heart, DEVORA is a storyteller. Though her current medium is music, much of her debut EP originated in the poems and short stories she wrote as a child.

“The poetry that I wrote when I was a kid growing up in the desert definitely inspired a lot of the lyrics you hear now in some of the songs,” she said. “My upbringing, the experiences that I went through, all of those are part of the journey and they’re in the songs.”

For DEVORA, this process of finding the right story and transforming it into a piece of music revolves around memory.

“It starts with a concept of a memory,” DEVORA said. “Sometimes, it’ll start with a word; sometimes it’ll start with me figuring out a melody that I really like and that assigns itself to a memory and a concept and it grows arms and legs from there.”

With that heavy draw on memory and a strong story-centric approach, DEVORA works to bring every element of a track together to set a vivid scene and truly build a sonic environment.

“I love storytelling through songwriting. It’s my favorite to set a scene where, as a listener, you are able to experience everything through the five senses just through hearing a song. It’s like you’re there,” DEVORA said. “You can see, touch, taste, everything. It’s very much a visceral, immersive experience, and I love to put people in that world. The instrumentation and the production is definitely key. And I work with a couple of amazing producers/songwriters out of New York, two guys that have helped me shape and craft these songs and bring this vision to life. Together we craft the production and really set the tone and set the scene.”

Though she has been writing poems and short stories her entire life, this specific project has been in the works for several years now, and every aspect of the project — including the colors that make up the dramatic visuals — was carefully chosen.

“I created the vision boards and the idea of the colors; I had it all plotted out, the entire vision,” DEVORA said. “I met with a close friend of mine who ended up becoming my manager, and we took those stories and ideas and he put me with a couple of amazing producers that brought them to life.”

And as important as the music of this project is, that carefully curated visual aspect is just as vital to the project as a whole.

“We spent a year filming videos and creating artwork,” she said. “The visual aspect of this project is equally as important as the musical aspect. I’m a huge lover of films and western-themed movies, especially directors like Tarantino. I definitely wanted to infuse some of that in a lot of the imagery and vision and scenery behind this project.”

Something about the project struck a chord With L.A.-based Tiger Tone Records — the recently launched label of music-industry veteran Tony Hoffer — and secured DEVORA a record deal.

“We got surrounded by a team who believed in the vision and the ideas as much as we did and really let me have full creative control of everything, which is pretty rare as an artist these days,” DEVORA said.

Fittingly, DEVORA views this debut EP “Outlaw” as her origin story.

“This is sort of the beginning of DEVORA,” she said. “This is how DEVORA came to be, essentially. These are the stories that shaped her growth, in terms of love and loss.”

Throughout the five-song EP, the western singer displays a wide range of vocal adaptability, showcasing moments that are a little lighter and fall more in line with her Country influences, alongside moments with a little more rasp, texture and growl.

“You know what’s crazy, when I start to sing, it’s on complete auto-pilot. What comes out is completely parallel and completely tied to what the music and the emotion is that I’m feeling underneath,” DEVORA said. “There’s no conscious thought process. That tone and the vocals that you hear, that’s always been my natural state. Sometimes the dynamics and the shades of the vocals will change depending on the moods of the songs; it’s all pretty subconscious.”

The fourth track on the EP — and DEVORA’s most popular song with more than half a million streams on Spotify — is ‘Not Dead Yet,’ an anthem that marks an important point in the singer’s journey.

“‘Not Dead Yet’ was my cathartic anthem after coming out of a pretty dark place for a couple years. I’d been surrounded by a group of people that didn’t really have my back,” DEVORA said. “There was some sort of dark stuff that went down. After about a year and a half I emerged from this cocoon of being creative and keeping to myself; I felt really triumphant. This was a celebratory anthem describing that. I’m not dead yet; I’m still here. It’s all about going your own way and really never taking no for an answer.”

More than any other song on the EP, the last track, ‘Elvis’ strongly ties into DEVORA’s desire to connect her songwriting and storytelling into memory.

“Growing up, I was very inspired by Elvis. My great grandmother — she lived to 102 — she was friends with him, which is so wild to even say out loud. When I was younger, she’d tell us stories of what that was like,” DEVORA said. “When she passed away, she handed down some of the gifts she had received from him over the years. There’s that aspect of it; always seeing Elvis in my eyes as this iconic, elusive, untouchable figure.”

But beyond this connection she has with The King, DEVORA wanted this song to be representative of the powerful, time-transcendent, deeply emotional feeling music can impart into a listener.

“I really wanted to capture, how, at least for me, hearing one song can bring you back to a time, a place, a moment, whether good or bad, and the song can essentially act as a savior of sorts,” she said, “where you the hear the song on the radio and you know everything’s gonna be okay. It’s a song that puts you at ease; it brings you back in time. Music can be life-saving, so I really wanted to capture that in a story.”

This debut EP is only the beginning for DEVORA — the record acts as the first of a two-EP installment. Its follow-up will serve as a continuation of the story.

DEVORA is also going on tour in October, where she will be opening for Bush and the Stone Temple Pilots.

“I am looking forward to taking everyone on this crazy wild west journey with me.”