1969 Van Trevor Country Musician Interview - 3-Page Vintage Article

Description

1969 Van Trevor Country Musician Interview - 3-Page Vintage Article
Original, vintage magazine article
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 27 cm) each page
Condition: Good
VAN TREVOR
I Country Boy
From Connecticut i
CSR: How did somebody from Connecticut get
involved in country music?
V.T. Well, actually I was born in the state of
Maine and all I ever was exposed to was country
music. My folks played it all the time and we
used to listen to WWVA radio every night faith-
fully. It started putting seeds in my mind to
one day sing country music when I grew up,
one of many things. We moved to Connecti-
cut and I still wanted to be in the music busi-
ness. The only thing that was up there was
rock and roll music. I couldn’t seem to sell
country in New York City. There was no mar-
ket for it. So I very quickly learned how to
write some rock and roll. We had a little bit
of success with that. But, as soon as I had
earned some money from writing these things,
I went into a studio and produced my own
country recording. My first song was “Born
To Be In Love With You." And that was more
or less my beginning.
CSR: You produced that yourself?
V.T. In collaboration with Dick Heard whom
I've been writing with for years. He now man-
ages me.
CSR: You were just saying that you moved out
here six months ago. Do you find any differ-
ence living here?
V.T. It's a lot easier being in the business liv-
ing here because before we used to have to
.travel all the way down here to record and now
that werre rignt here in town, we’re able to do
radio interviews, your magazine interview, re-
cording sessions on the spot. If we find a
song that we get excited about, we just run
in and do it. There’s a lot more work here in
town. What I mean is the agencies are here
and it’s better to be right here with every-
body so you get very involved with country
music and marketing of it and selling your
songs once you write a song.
CSR: What to you is the basic difference be-
tween country music and rock and roll?
V.T. In rock and roll, the beat and rhythm is
heavier and the lyricsare less important. Some-
times in the rock and roll songs the lyrics
might just be “you’re beautiful, you’re beau-
tiful, you're beautiful" all the way through and
not really saying much more than that. Where-
as in a country song, it would say Jyrically
“you’re beautiful, and you are intelligent and
you are good to me and you have brains and
you're very nice" rather than just one repeti-
tious thing. Such as in country music, we
don't have any songs that have to do with danc-
ing where you just say dance, dance, dance to
a rhythm pattern. I guess everybody uses this
same term. Country music is moretrueto life,
more real and it tells a story, no matter how
fantastic some of the country stories are
(Ha! Ha!) It tells a story and is closer to real-
ity than rock and roll.
CSR: Do you think coming from an area like
Connecticut which is not the greatest country
area in the world, do you think this has hurt...
13980-AL-6910-71