Tiny Vipers
By Bob Ham
Photo by David Belisle

It's the kind of story that usually gets told about glossy pop stars: a musician by night and restaurant worker by day who plays shows around her hometown and puts out her own self-recorded CDs is snatched up by a well-respected, well-known label and thrust into the spotlight. It may be overstating the tale a bit, but that is essentially the way things went for Jesy Fortino, the Seattle-based singer/songwriter who performs under the name Tiny Vipers.

"It came out of the blue a little bit," she says. "I wasn't planning on sending stuff out to any labels, but then my friend Dean, who works [for Sub Pop], called me up and asked if I wanted to put a record out."

The story may sound like a typical struggling-musician-makes-good kind of tale, but the music on Fortino's Sub Pop debut, Hands Across The Void, is anything but typical. The seven songs on the album are akin to the more experimental work of artists like Cat Power and Jandek, marked by quiet, ringing acoustic guitar lines. Fortino's distinctive lyrics can be straightforward and poignant ("They laughed / When I tried to dance with you / 'Cause they tied my left to my right shoe") or revel in metaphoric imagery, as on "Shipwreck," the stunning remembrance of a break up ("With memories of last night that passed / The ship that sank / The storm that tossed you overboard / Into the ocean's cold").

It is this type of personal exploration that is at the heart of Fortino's decision to not release her music under her own name. "I want to keep myself distanced from [the songs]," she says. "Putting my name on it means that people think they know me and know who I am. The songs are meant for people to relate to, but I don't want people to think that they're my buddy or that we're close." Fortino also points out that working on music alone is the only way she can get things done. "A couple of times, I tried to be in bands, but I just don't work well writing songs with other people."

Despite the multi-tracked guitars and vocal harmonies on Hands Across the Void and her previous, self-released CDs, Fortino tends to go it alone on stage, hunched over her guitar as she tries to fight through her self-proclaimed "weird stage fright." Lately, since signing with Sub Pop, she has also been forced to fight through some rather unappreciative audiences when opening up for better-known bands. "It's just the reality of playing quiet music, I guess," she says. "Until you get shows at places like The Triple Door (Seattle's premiere sit-down venue) or at gallery shows, you're kind of married to rock venues. At first I used to get hurt about it, but I try not to let it get to me now."

Considering the nature of her music, it's not hard to see why it would get lost on some audiences. Fortino has self-released a CD that featured one 30-minute song, and has as the centerpiece to her new album an almost 11-minute track that starts as a brooding plea and ends as a more gentle hymn with folksy guitar picking. She also says that her new material is "more spacious and minimal" and that "the next record is going to be more complicated as far as song structures are concerned."

Until she moves forward with her new album, Fortino will be taking time off from her job at a burrito restaurant and hitting the road in support of her Sub Pop debut. "I'm still learning how to do this stuff," she says. "If they tell me, 'It's time for you to find a booking agent,' I would go and find one. It's not like I think to myself 'I'm going to sit down and write a bio today.'" Although these may be her first tentative steps into the music industry maze, Fortino certainly has what it takes not to get lost along the way.

www.subpop.com

www.myspace.com/tinyvipersss