Singer/songwriter Sam Ventura reckons he’s written more than 1,000 tunes.
And while many remain in larval form in his noggin, others will take up
permanent residence in your head. You might want to make room.
“I’ve got so many songs people will probably never hear,” says Ventura.
“I mean, if you write three songs a day – or a few ideas a day – a lot of
them never surface.” Those that do will knock you out in all their simple splendor.
Sam Ventura is going to be the next big thing. That’s right; everyone’s
going to know his name. Everyone’s going to sing along. Bank on it. Just give
the song “Strawberry Soda” off his brand-new CD, “Beautiful
Tragedy,” a try. It’s a beautifully simplistic, future-classic pop/rock
gem that will hook you before the first chorus. That should put an end to any
doubt.
Your skepticism is understandable. The music business is full of hustlers
and pushers with their snake oil, and Monday-morning quarterbacks who buy into
the lie too late. And the model for the contemporary male pop star today seems
to be either that of angst-ridden asshole or shoe-gazing pussy. Semantics and
analysis aside, you’ve just got to hear this 19-year-old Geneva
native’s music. It’s infectious, undeniable, and almost immediately
unforgettable. And he’s got the boyish good looks and shaggy hair that seem to
drive the young girls bananas.
Ventura is an incredible
songwriter with a tremendous grasp of melody, which is as much talent as it is
luck; it’s one thing to stumble upon a gorgeous melody, it’s another to stumble
upon a gorgeous melody that hasn’t already been stumbled
upon by someone else. We’re running out of notes, folks.
What adds to the catch is Ventura’s
use of that pop staple, the nonsense chorus. The average fan only has to hear a
“na-na,” a “shoo-bop,” or a
“rama-lama-ding-dong” once before they’re
ready to join in.
“I do that a lot,” Ventura
says. “A ‘la-di-da’ chorus or
‘na-na.’ A lot of great songs do that. There’s
something special about taking a really catchy melody and using something like
just syllables, something with no meaning. It really brings the melody
out.” He oughta know; he’s been at it a while.
“When I was like 8 years old,” he says, “I recorded this
album – that’s what I called it, anyway. I took this cassette tape and sang 12
songs. I wrote the words down on a piece of paper, the melody, the verse, the chorus, whatever. It was a cappella, but I think I did a
little drumming while I sang.”
But it was when Ventura picked
up the guitar at 12 that the floodgates opened. Unlike most kids with a guitar,
he didn’t ease into it by learning off others. He was under no influence.
“I totally just started writing my own songs,” he says.
“That’s just my type of personality and it may not always be a positive
thing. I learn by ear, so I can listen to any song and know how to play it. But
at the same time, I don’t want to sit and learn anyone’s songs. I don’t know
how to play any of these classics that people are always teasing me about. I
learned to play a few first position chords. As soon as I knew, like, G, C, and
D I wrote, like, six songs using different combinations of them. And that’s how
it kind of took off.”
Today Ventura’s velvety pop
sparkle belies the notion that punk rock – “nothing too hardcore,” he
says – swayed him in any way. Yet he dug classic punk like The Sex Pistols, The
Ramones, The Clash, and next-generation punks,
especially Green Day. On the surface it doesn’t come across.
“I totally agree,” Ventura
says. “I will say that Green Day… their songs are very simple, short, to
the point, always very well structured. I listened to a lot of Green Day; they
were my favorite band back then, and that kind of gave me a good sense of
simple melody, simple song structure. I learned that from Green Day. Now,
whether that shows or not…”
Maybe it’s this unfettered, uncluttered long view that makes Ventura
less of a catch-and-release composer and more of a pioneer in already trampled
territory. He’s a vessel. The songs come to him.
“Ninety percent of the time I would say I pick up the guitar and I just
start playing chords,” he says. “Maybe three or
four chords in a progression and start singing a little, messing around with it
a little. Then I’ll change it around and if I hear something I like,
I’ll develop it. Sometimes you get lucky and you end up writing a totally cool
song. Sometimes I’ll write something really cool but it’s only 20 seconds and
never surfaces. There’s always something in development.
Ventura’s new self-released
album is getting him noticed. Alternative Press magazine featured him last
month, his MySpace page has experienced a veritable
stampede of listeners and new fans, and Warner Bros. has been sniffing around.
Because Ventura played all the
instruments except for the drums on the disc, his performances have been
limited to the young man and his guitar playing to backing tracks from his
iPod. He’s currently pounding the pavement between Buffalo
and Syracuse and has a college tour
in the works this fall. This doesn’t leave a lot of time for songwriting. The
day we talked he bemoaned the fact he hadn’t written in a while.
“I haven’t written anything today,” he said. “Last night at 11 o’clock is when I wrote my last song.”
Sam Ventura
Opening for Uncle Plum
Friday, August 28
A-Pub Live, 6 Lawrence St.
10 p.m. | $3 | myspace.com/sammyvmusic
This article appears in Aug 19-19, 2009.
