By kSea flux

Robin: It was really, really incredible. We met this booking agent through The Yard Dogs Road Show who are friends of ours, and we didn’t really know what we were getting into - but we just went over there and we were met with these two really cool guys who set up this whole tour. We went from places like this, smaller places like we’re used to playing in America, to these big concert halls and opera houses and performing art centers. Suddenly, when we arrive there are twelve lighting guys asking, ‘What do you want?’

Mango: It was very surreal.

Robin: It was another whole thing for us. Our first show had 900 people. It was in a 1800s three-story opera house with five balconies in red and gold, gilded--

Mango: Chandeliers.

Robin: Chandeliers and marble statues. Every show was big and amazing and it was met with such an amazing response from people. It showed us, at least for me, Europe seems to be really supporting the arts. The agents who brought us over are really interested in this kind of cabaret scene happening in the United States, & a lot of venues are subsidized there, so people can come and pay only 5 or 10 Euros for a show.

kSea: But Portugal’s kind of off the beaten track, isn’t it?

Robin: A little.

kSea: Apparently, it was incredibly well received!

Robin: Yeah, yeah.

kSea: Did that surprise you?

Robin: A little bit. Me, I was like – After our first show, we had all these fans come. A hundred people wanted signatures. We didn’t have to do anything. We just showed up.
Here, we’re doing all the work, and there we just show up and get to sing and play.

Mango: Yeah, just show up for 300 to 700 people in a giant concert hall and then they’ll deliver you to your next meal and then they deliver you to your three to four star hotel. I was thinking, ‘WHAT is going on?!’

Robin: It was really cool.

kSea: and now, you just began a 4-month tour of the United States, right?

Robin: Well, we’re not doing a big tour of the United States.

Mango: It’s back and forth. We go home a lot.

Mango: All four of the guys in the band are daddies, and some of them have very young children.

kSea: So it’s good to be home.

Robin: We usually do no more than two weeks at a time. Then we go back, and then come out again.

Robin & Mango: It’s nice.

Robin: It doesn’t wear us out. Some bands get so worn out. It’s a hard thing. It’s a lot of work.

kSea: You have a new CD coming out soon, your third one. How long ago did Vagabond Opera form?

Robin: We started about five years ago, but the band’s changed a lot. Mango joined two and a half, three years ago. Mango joined when we were finishing our last CD in 2005 or 2006, and we threw her on a couple tracks at the end.

Mango: Right. So now we go to do one that’s really representative of what people are seeing—

Robin: Of Mango.

Mango: Of me!

[Robin laughs]

Mango: Enough about me, let’s talk about what *you* think of me!

kSea: You are the sole woman in the band, right?

Mango: Yes, but I hold my ground.

Robin: She does. She does a good job. She has to put up with a lot of maleness.

Mango: I have a lot of male in me actually.

Robin: Which is why it works, maybe.

Mango: Yeah, yeah.

kSea: When I was watching the clip from the video on the site – gods, your voice is phenomenal!

Mango: Thank you. I don’t even know the clip, but I’m glad it’s good.

kSea: It’s the first one.

Robin: On our web site. You should look at it.

kSea: So when is your new CD coming out?

Robin: Probably in the fall, around September or October. We just finished recording most of it, now we have to mix it.

Mango: Master it. And then make the CD cover. Blah blah blah. It’s a long process.

Robin: We’re going to release it in the fall, officially. It’s going to be really good, the first one that really represents us as we are, as a gelled ensemble.

Mango: We’ve grown a lot.

kSea: So would you say that Vagabond Opera is pretty comfortable with the way it sits right now, as far as sound & style?

Mango: Well, nothing works perfectly. That’s the nature of life. There are so many elements to it, always, but for now we’re all on this journey together and my personal experience is that it feels like a really great family.

Robin: Yeah. It’s like a family.

Mango: We get along and we communicate well.

Robin: I was staying with another band last night in Oakland, and they were talking about all their dysfunction and fighting. I thought, ‘Wow, even though my band has its bumps, relatively, we are so good compared to so many other bands I see and hear about.’ It makes me feel grateful for it and have more patience for when we’re not getting along.

kSea: One last question, which might not be too simple: How did the whole concept of incorporating opera come into [inaudible] cabaret and all that? It’s a phenomenal idea, and from what I’ve listened to and from what I’ve seen on video, you have made it work beautifully.

Mango: This was all really Eric Stern’s vision. He’s the accordionist. He did opera for 7 years. He wanted to be an opera singer, but it wasn’t sitting right with him. There were certain elements of the lifestyle that didn’t feel right to him – not just the lifestyle, but the act of being an opera singer. He wanted to be more in charge. I guess other elements of his personality wanted to come through.

kSea: Maybe to have a little bit more fun.

Robin: Yeah, he wanted to have more fun, and not have people tell him what to do so specifically.

Mango: He wanted to bring opera more outside of this concert hall environment and into a club.

Robin: And with other kinds of music.

kSea: And let people know about it, introduce it to more people as something that can be a lot more than black ties, the whole ball.

Robin: The idea of the opera is a theatrical presentation, so we put on a show. We have our little mini-operetta and we’re evolving that. We have more ideas for the future, too. It’s like stepping into a story, stepping into a world. It’s not just music. It’s an experience.

Mango: And we’re just beginning that.

Robin: We’re just beginning the meat. Where we are now is really cool, and we have some really cool ideas for developing it into a full production with a… journey.

Mango: Like anything, whatever you’ve devoured in your life comes out when you’re expressing. Eric devoured a certain amount of Eastern European music, Jewish Klezmer music, opera, cabaret, and then of course that’s what he creates in his songs. Then, all the different people that joined the band brought in all of their influences and so that mixed and mashed into what is Vagabond Opera. We’re the most impossible band to genre-fy ever.

Robin: You can’t. It’s cool.

 kSea: What do you feel is one of the more important things you’ve learned by being a part of the creation of Vagabond Opera?

Robin: One of them for me, is pushing myself to really get into other genres of music – we definitely work with a lot of different genres to music – opening myself up to ones that maybe I didn’t like so much at first, too, and blending theater and music – that’s been a huge part of it, too – like theater improv. I love improv and the fact that we have this open palette to do whatever we want, is constantly challenging and scary and really exciting and fun. Every time we start getting stagnant, one of us is pushing us to move forward. A lot of times it’s Eric & I appreciate that.

Mango: I was thinking that ‘sticking with it’ is really worth it sometimes. You never know, but certainly in this band I’ve been amazed by how much we’ve grown. From the first incredibly awkward gig standing onstage with Vagabond Opera thinking, ‘What the hell do I do with myself up here? I am totally clueless and useless up here. I feel like the token female,’ to a place where I understand a lot of my role and we continue to have a better and better time together, and continue to get to experience more and more incredible things, so sticking with it even if it’s super-challenging at the beginning, and gets super-challenging along the way. I’ve had plenty of times when I’ve thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m out of here.’ Then you sit with that feeling, and you decide whether it’s a real feeling that you need to act upon or not. Inevitably, if you stick around – if I stick around – it keeps working out great.

Find out more about Vagabond Opera at

www.vagabondopera.com