“I certainly didn’t intend for anyone to ever hear me,” Meredith Call told us as we sat down to talk about her path to the present. Well, that may be so, but with three tracks on Boom Jinx’s recent album No Answers In Luck and a star-studded history of producers (she’s worked with all of Gabriel and Dresden, Schiller, Tritonal, and Andy Moor), Meredith has entered into the scene with a bang.
Meredith’s journey through the industry has certainly been a unique one. In her own words, “I started strong”. Growing up, music was only a part of her life through school events. But chance would have it that in 2007, music just found her. Her internet-savvy brother had made connections with producer Christopher Norman, who was looking for some simple background vocals. A $100 USB mic purchase later and the seeds were sown.
In short time, Chris asked Meredith to fly down to San Leandro to Josh Gabriel’s (of Gabriel and Dresden) private studio where Chris was working an artist album for the Organized Nature label. The two worked together for several weeks until Josh happened to pop his head in and hear what they were working on, and immediately fell in love with Meredith’s voice. A sort of…uh…move happened because well, if Josh Gabriel says he wants your voice for his special project, it’s pretty hard to say no.
And so, Winter Kills was born, bringing the world fantastic pieces like Hot as Hades and Deep Down:
Meredith recalled the time working with Josh as some of the most developmental of her life. “Josh taught me everything I know about my own voice,” she describes. To this day, she will recall his words when working on a track or stepping up to perform: “OK, great Meredith, but louder and more serious.” Meredith pointed out that she’s really been spoiled starting her career with Josh because it set her up to only expect excellence and professionalism from the people she works with. And while this may not sound like such a bad thing, it means her standards are incredibly high and that makes it tougher to accept anything less than the best.
“My manager would prefer that I don’t be so picky,” Meredith admits. No doubt, with so much competition, it is hard to be heard at all but once you’ve jumped that hurdle you then have to wade through the sea of mediocrity and make a serious choice: quantity or quality. Maybe this article is the first time you’re hearing Meredith’s name, and that may very well be because she has a really hard time putting her voice on something that she doesn’t absolutely love, which means a lot less music gets made.
Diving a bit deeper into what it’s like working as a vocalist in dance music, Meredith revealed that one of her biggest pet peeves is when producers send over a track that’s 99% done and then ask, “can we slap a vocal on this?” The problem? It always ends up sound like an afterthought. As logic would have it, the best pieces are more like collaborations where she’ll get pieces of music that are only half done or, even better, just an idea. “That’s what Josh and I would do, get the headphone splitter on and go through like 20 or 30 tracks.” Or in the case with Øistein, know more popularly as Boom Jinx, Meredith was sent a 60 second clip of Bring Me Back Around that she fell in love with. She sent back an idea for the refrain and they worked together to complete the song.
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Josh fell in love with Trance at USC's Resolution 2012. It's all been downhill from there as the obsession has grown to a full time hobby in seeking out interesting music across the dance music spectrum and attending crazy parties across the globe.
