HER START IN SOUND ENGINEERING: I was in DC, and DC only had two great clubs. I was at the bottom of the ladder, I was young and impatient, and I thought, "Well, New York has a lot of clubs," and I really wanted to get my skills working. So I moved to New York and eventually started working at Tonic—which is no longer open, unfortunately—and I basically got lucky. One of my first big tours was with Peaches, who I met at Tonic. From there I went out with Black Dice... You just start meeting people, and I would tell people I would do sound for them for free, because I was a fan. Then I guess my biggest break came at Tonic when Cat Power was doing a solo show, and we just ended up spending most of sound check having a really nice conversation, and at the end of the show she asked me to go on tour with her across the United States.

ON BEING A FEMALE SOUND ENGINEER IN A PREDOMINANTLY MALE FIELD: I would say a majority of sound engineers are men, but funnily enough, in New York I've worked at a venue where every engineer is a woman. You do see it occasionally, but people tend to remember you more because you're a woman. It's just a fact, some people are cool and some people aren't. Sometimes you have to remind people that it's 2011. [laughs] My breasts don't get in the way of my hearing.

WORKING WITH A SPACE: It gives me a much purer start. If you're battling with acoustics all the time instead of mixing, it kind of creates a looseness. The whole idea of being a sound engineer is that you pretty much want to be invisible. You battle it, but also you go in knowing that an empty room sounds different than a room filled with 1500 drunk people, and you just kind of work with it. As you go along, you just go with it and do the best you can.

TOURING EXPERIENCES: There are missed flights, getting stuck in Dusseldorf, seeing whales breach in the Indian Ocean. Recently, I was at a festival in Japan called Taico Club with Múm from Iceland, and there was a maze, a labyrinth, in the festival. We actually got stuck in there for several hours at about six a.m., trying to make it to a DJ set that started at 8:30 a.m.—having not slept.

FUTURE PLANS: I'm going out on tour as a sound engineer with Neon Indian in September and October, and I'm hoping after this Cat Power show maybe word will get around and I can start talking about jumping on a tour.

HER MUSICAL DIRECTION: It's funny, because I'm starting to put some beats into it now. It goes from ambient to kind of dark to almost poppy. I'm just trying to make that a cohesive performance—encapsulating so many different influences. I like everything, and I don't see why I can't play everything I like!


VORHEES WILL PLAY WITH CAT POWER TONIGHT AT WEBSTER HALL; THE RELEASE PARTY FOR HER SINGLE IS AT VERONICA PEOPLE'S CLUB IN GREENPOINT. FOR MORE ON THE ARTIST, VISIT HER MYSPACE.