Kate Voegele Goes For the Gold

Singer-songwriter Kate Voegele leads a bit of a double life. She is one of just four artists signed to MySpace Records, which released her debut album “Don’t Look Away” in early 2008. And she’s also a successful actress, who will soon reprise her role as rising star Mia, a former band mate to the skanky Jason (played by Kevin Federline), on the new season of “One Tree Hill.”

We called Voegele for a chat and found a well-spoken and noticeably exuberant personality who is making the most out of her MySpace and CW connections. No overnight success, this 21-year-old—who plays acoustic guitar and piano—has been focused on her goal to succeed in music for more than six years. Now that she’s breaking through, she’s already taken it as far as the Olympics, writing a song called “Lift Me Up” for the “Team USA” soundtrack.

Let’s just get it out of the way: how was it to work with K-Fed?
It was great! It was just such a funny thing; just being from the Midwest in a suburb of Cleveland, I am a person that never expected to be in the music business, let alone acting alongside K-Fed. He was really friendly and he did a great job with the role. It definitely goes to show you that you can’t believe everything you hear, because going into it of course you think, “Oh, it’s K-Fed, it’s gonna be insane or crazy or weird.” But he was so cool.

Your character on the show, Mia, is a solo artist now, right?
Yep, she was previously in the band with K-Fed, but then K-Fed got fired because his character Jason was a big jerk and Mia got signed as a solo artist. I think it’s awesome that I’m playing a character, but the songs are exactly the same from my record. I thought at first that people were gonna get confused between Mia and Kate, but it was perfect and has worked out so well.

Do people call you Mia?
Rarely do fans come up and ask me to sign stuff as Mia, which I thought might happen constantly. They did the same thing with Tyler Hilton. Tyler played a character, but obviously he was playing Tyler Hilton’s music and the fans kind of understand that that’s the way it works. People still do come up to me and say, “It’s Mia!” But at the end of the day, the majority are there and excited about Kate Voegele’s CD.

You’re an example of the changing music industry. You have to be creative like this in order to sell records, because radio doesn’t have the effect on sales that it once did.
It’s very, very hard having to find new and creative ways, so I’m glad to be working with people like “One Tree Hill” and MySpace Records. You can throw something at radio and a lot of times it won’t do anything.

The sponsor of your tour is the University of Phoenix. Are you enrolled there?
Yeah, that’s another really cool and creative way to get the music out there. I’ve been taking classes at the University of Phoenix for a couple of months now and I think that, for me, it was the perfect partnership to do. I went to college for two years even though I knew ultimately that this is what I wanted to do, but I wanted to start at least working towards my higher education. I was a dork in high school.

Why don’t I believe that?
I loved school, and it sounds stupid, but I really do enjoy learning and delving deeper into things that I’m excited about. I’m majoring in psychology at University of Phoenix and it’s really cool because they are so flexible. It’s an online university so it’s real easy for me to log on to class whenever I don’t have a show. It’s great for someone who kind of has a life but also wants an education.
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