JBL Emerging Interview: Gina Zo on life after The Voice and Velvet Rouge

Rising LGBT+ rock sensation and The Voice contestant Gina Zo is ready for a new beginning with her band Velvet Rouge, who released their self-titled debut EP this summer. Her reason for signing up for The Voice? Sticking it to the man.

“It actually is kind of a silly story,” laughs a high-spirited and animated Zo from her home in L.A. “I grew up when American Idol was at its peak and my mum always said that I should audition. But to this day, I still feel that I want my career to come about because of something I did. For some reason, I felt like if I go on a show and they get me famous, or they get me a career, I didn't do anything – which is not true. But when I was 17 when my mum was encouraging me, that's what it felt like.”

Zo recalls that her mindset changed in an instant when she was on a school trip: “When I was in high school, I was in the choir and I was going on a field trip. I forgot my permission slip and my choir teacher – she was terrifying – to say the least, she was pissed off at me. She let me go on the trip, but she was pissed! I remember being like, ‘I'm gonna show her that I can do it and that I can be big’. 

"So right there on the bus, I'm on my phone and I sign up for auditioning for The Voice. Honestly, that's really what it was,” she laughs, shaking her head at the memory. 

“Yes, my mother encouraged me over and over, so it was also that, but it was my choir teacher being a jerk that did it, and rightfully so, because I didn't sign a permission slip. She could have got sued if I died, right? But at 17, you don't really care about that! I just wanted to say F-you to the man, which was my choir teacher.”

Zo did just that, easily securing a spot on Team Blake Shelton aged 17, although her time on the show proved to be short lived, with no clips available online to prove she was there.

“They montaged me!” she says in mock outrage. “That was probably the only thing that really ruined me, because you're there for so long and you're working so hard, but they can only fit so much in the show that airs, so I totally get it, but I was 17. I thought, ‘Oh, great. So that was all worth absolutely nothing’. That was my perspective back then. Now it literally does not matter, but I wish I had the tapes...”

Beginning her music career as a teenager on a national stage, Zo’s journey to rock stardom has been anything but easy. After The Voice, the young singer-songwriter was pressured to conform and compromise her artistic integrity, and made the difficult decision to quit the industry and opted to pursue other passions such as photography and fashion. It would be a while before she found her way back to music with Velvet Rouge.

“I learned so much about myself on The Voice,” she reflects. “The first thing that I learned was that everyone there kind of had a career already. It didn't mean that they were famous, per se, but it meant that a lot of them knew they wanted to be singers. I was 17 and I had got into a program for musical theatre for college, but I still didn't know if I wanted to be a singer. I didn't really know what it took. I didn't grow up around people in the music industry. So that, off the bat, was weird to me."

“But what I will say is it completely changed my outlook of wanting to be a singer,” she furthers. “I realised I'm good enough to be a star, frankly. I really felt that way based on how the producers were talking to me, how Blake Shelton was talking to me and how my vocal coach on the show was talking to me. They were, like, ‘You've got it; you can absolutely do this’. 

"So my confidence in who I was going to become, or am still becoming, completely changed. It was like, ‘I'm good enough. There is something special here, and I should use the power that I'm only 17. I have so much to offer, and I have so much time to do it’. I finally felt like I knew what my calling was in life, and it was to be a performer.”

After some time away, Zo found herself being called back to making music with a new outlook and sense of self. She formed her band Velvet Rouge and set out to make a name for them in Philadelphia’s vibrant music scene.

“It is so different from what I was doing on The Voice,” she says of the band’s musical direction. “I always joke, because they kind of pick who you are on the show. In my first auditions, I was always wearing pants, so the rest of my season, I’ll be wearing pants. If you wore a hat on your blind audition, you're in a hat the rest of the show. I was doing music that I wouldn't have selected for myself and I think that was a little bit of my downfall.”

After her time on The Voice, Zo signed a small record deal in Philadelphia, but was still making music that she did not like.

“I was not happy with what I was doing, and for two years I was in that contract,” she shares. “At the time, I slightly enjoyed the music, but I knew it wasn't right. I knew there was something missing about it. The Voice was fantastic, but after it, men in the music industry made me feel like, as an 18 and 19 year old, that I had no power. 

"I had no choice in who I wanted to be – nothing,” she stresses. “I was just a person that signed a contract. I can't even relate to that music anymore. It was never really what I was trying to say, so I stopped doing music for a while.”

After taking some time to reflect, Zo knew that the only way that music could work for her was if she did it her own way. “When I came back to music, I was like, ‘I am doing this exactly how I always wanted it to be,” she nods. “I'm paving the landscape over. I'm doing it all over. If I'm going in, I'm going all in. I am balls to the wall going all in. This music is nothing like what I have been doing before. It's a lot more of what I've always wanted to say.”

Velvet Rouge’s debut EP was released this summer. Recorded with Brian McTear and Amy Morrissey (War On Drugs, Sharon Van Etten, Kurt Vile, Dr. Dog), the band’s raw and unrestrained five-song EP is a throwback to early 2000s pop and ‘90s rock music, and its self-titled nature is a statement all of its own.

“I wanted it to just stand alone,” she clarifies. “I wanted it to be the intro to the band, so that everything that follows this release, people can come back to this record and they can say, ‘This is who they are, foundationally’. Everything else is a development of that foundation.”

Growing up in the 2000s, Zo was a fan of Destiny’s Child and Fleetwood Mac, while she admires songwriters like Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Alanis Morissette and Norah Jones.

“Those ‘90s and early 2000s songwriters allowed you to paint your own picture of what their songs were about,” she notes. “Gwen Stefani and all of these people that made that era of music what it was…,” she trails off, changing tact: “There were so many powerhouse females in the early 2000s, and they were all saying stuff in a certain way. They all were not overdoing the actual sound of the music. It wasn't overdone in terms of synths and things, so that's what I wanted to do. 

"I wanted to make music like that for this record. I feel like it allows you to say things, and it makes it so that the actual sound of the music doesn't overtake the words. That was really important to me for this EP, being our debut, and a moment where I was able to share a lot of details that I wanted to tell people.”

Each track takes on one of the essential life elements: Lonely Since The Day We Met (Earth); Trial (Space); I Don’t Know Why (Air/Wind); Shattered (Fire); and When Did I Become (Water).

“When I'm making concepts while writing, for all the songs I think about, ‘How am I going to tell everyone about this record? How am I going to show it visually in all of the music videos?’. I was trying to figure out what really stands with all of this,” she considers. 

“I'm such a visual person in terms of colours and photos, so the elements felt so true to what it is. Every song felt like either a fiery moment or very liquidy or very wind blown and what you would listen to when you're driving in a car just free and flying. They all stood in their own element and it made sense to me.”

In terms of her favourite track on the EP, Zo doesn’t hesitate: “It's called I Don't Know Why,” she asserts. “I wrote it about a meeting I had with a major label; they cancelled the meeting on me and then they ghosted me. I was destroyed, but I wrote this song out of it, and it's easily the best song I've ever written. It's one of those earworm songs. You're gonna hear it and then you'll know,” she grins. 

“It's that powerful. My mum never cries about my music and the moment she heard the first line, she broke down in tears – it really is that good! I don't usually act that way about my own music, in terms of being that positive at how great something is, but this song is so good.”

Inside her home, Zo shares that she gets ideas down in her studio space, where she’s been using an AKG P220 microphone, K240 MKII headphones and a pair of JBL 305P MKII powered studio monitors, the latter which she remarks are a substantial upgrade to her usual method of working on tracks.

“In general, I'm recording into my phone and hearing it back through the phone, so it's never that great, as you can guess,” she admits. “Being able to actually engulf yourself in the sound is really important to me, because I blast music in my car, so if I can sit in my home studio space and feel like the producer for the second and feel like I'm in the song and I'm in that moment, that's really important. 

"When I'm doing demos and when I'm trying to create something, these studio monitors completely change it. I'm actually able to hear what a mix sounds like. You feel like you're in a studio at your home. It's a game changer for feeling comfortable writing the song, and that ultimately is what ends up making a good song: that you wrote it in a space that you felt good in.”

On the AKG P220, Zo has finally found a microphone that suits the dynamics of her voice: “Growing up, I didn't really understand what made a good microphone,” she says. “I would just think that every microphone is good enough – I had no idea! It is special being able to use a mic that actually can pick up the loudness of my voice, which is a key problem. I have a very loud voice, which I can control, but you want to belt a song out, and I don't want the mic clipping. 

"If I can be at home, I want to have the best, and if I can have the best while I'm writing a demo, the song is going to turn out pretty damn good. If I can hear how I'm really going to sound in all the levels of who I am as a singer, it's going to be a game changer. This absolutely has changed the way I record demos at home.”

The AKG professional over-ear, semi-open headphones deliver a wide dynamic range, increased sensitivity and high sound levels, which have also made an impression on Zo: “I'm a serial in-ear person when I'm in the studio, so what I mean by that is that I don't have custom ear moulds, but I have ones that go over my ears and stick in because often I find the big headphones to be so annoying, and these AKGs have been so much better!

“I don't need to use my little in-ear monitors for the rest of my life. It's about that feeling of being engulfed in the sound, and that's really what they do – they set me into my space and into the mindset and the vision where I'm able to create. I need to have a perfect sonic space, so to wear these headphones and be able to close my eyes and create is really important. I replay the song over and over and I develop these little moments throughout the songs, so it is important that I can do that with quality headphones.”