Costco sells everything from diapers to coffins, a kind of lifecycle in retail. Laetitia Tamko’s most vital purchase at the super-store came somewhere in between childhood (baby formula) and adulthood (vinyl siding): the dinky starter Fender she picked up at age 17.
“I love Costco,” Tamko — who writes and records contemplative songs as Vagabon — says as she strolls through the entryway of a chain store somewhere in Brooklyn on a recent Friday night. Her pace is much more leisurely than those of the people surrounding her, with their carts full of $4.99 rotisserie chickens, bulk apples, and jumbo bottles of olive oil. The air is tinged with the aroma of Kirkland apple pie and pierced with the wails of toddlers.
Tamko, 26, walks bright and unruffled among the sea of products, her close-cropped hair matching her bright-orange NASA jacket. She’s about to release her self-titled second album, a record that expands her toolkit from bedroom indie rock to pop to African music to trap and back again. Talking to NPR, who premiered the album back in October, Tamko called Vagabon a “flex,” an exercise in eclectic music-making. She played every part and sang every note on the new album — going from six strings to anything she could conjure from the depths of Logic.
Tonight, though, she’s on the hunt for the same model of guitar her parents purchased for her at the local Costco in her one-time hometown of Yonkers, New York. That instrument helped turn a curious aspiring musician into an entirely self-reliant one, an artist who works with what she has with a remarkable precision, no notes left behind.
Tamko was born and raised in Cameroon until age 13, after which her family of academics moved to the U.S. so her mother could get a law degree. She wanted to go to music school, but her practical parents guided her toward computers and electrical engineering. They spent some time in the Bronx before moving just outside New York City to Yonkers, where their mathematically-inclined daughter first started trying to make music. Late nights after finishing her homework, Tamko would go to her room and practice songs she heard on the radio — Taylor Swift, or anything else with a guitar.
She went on to study engineering in college, graduating at the same time to nicer instruments — first a Danelectro guitar (a brand favored by the likes of Beck and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck) and eventually a Fender Strat. “That’s definitely the guitar for me,” she says as she navigates her way into a haunted holiday forest of Halloween skeletons and plastic Christmas trees.
Tamko keeps going past a nearby karaoke machine as she talks about becoming Vagabon. The first song she wrote under that name was “Cold Apartment,” a spare track that showcases her rich, deep voice and a crash-down chaos of guitar and drums; it ended up as one of the highlights of her 2017 debut, Infinite Worlds.
“[Making music] is just following something that is speaking to me and bringing it to fruition,” she says. “I’m making whatever my gut is screaming for me to make.”
Tamko mostly works in her bedroom studio in Brooklyn. She wakes early to create, and when the sun goes down, she stops. Sometimes she does calculus to unwind, looking up project sets online to clear her brain of the day’s work.
Everything she makes in those sessions, she keeps. “There are no outtakes,” she says. “I work on every song until it gets to the point where it’s done. It allows you to really explore what the song means. Usually I can get a song to the point where I feel it sounds like it should. I see it through.”
That attention to detail is evident in Tamko’s music. Each song feels intentional and self-contained, from ruminations on being a small fish (“Sharks,” off of her 2014 EP Persian Garden) to songs about race and identity (“Wits About You,” from her most recent album). They’re all beautiful and sharp.
Tamko honed her sound through the early 2010s on the Brooklyn DIY scene, playing venues like the Silent Barn (rest in peace) and figuring out how to bring her one-woman project to the stage. “It felt like the exact space I needed to be in,” she says. “I felt like I was seeing the potential of how I could feel. It was the beginning. A humble beginning.”
Soon, she left her day job as a computer engineer and went on the road with Infinite Worlds, feeling more confident about her music and her ability to perform. With the new album, Tamko says she’s starting to find her place more clearly. “It was coming from a place of confidence,” she says. “The first one was coming from a place of processing and feeling. This one is about having more space for myself and writing music about that experience.”
Finally, Tamko reaches the end of the aisle. There’s not a guitar in sight, but there is a kid, fingers dancing erratically across an electric keyboard. Maybe he’ll take it home and play it every night while his parents are asleep. Maybe he’ll just leave behind fingerprints.
“It’s worth it for the autonomy over your music,” she says of her solitary process. “It’s worth it to make exactly what you want to make. It’s worth it to stay true to your vision. It’s long and it’s painstaking, and maybe it’s not forever, but this is my second record. I’m still finding my artistic voice, and I think it’s important to not silence it too early.”
ON THE RISE
Ollie Byrd, a musician blending 1980’s new wave sounds with Hard Rock, shows how his musical output mirrors the different stages of his life through genres that mix, match, and mold with one another. His latest single, “the sun will bring the day again,” serves as a time capsule as one of his first written works, finally making its way to release.
From Ollie’s earliest memories of hearing music on the radio or the spin of his mom’s records, he recalls the dopamine rush that music gave him, a feeling he still experiences to this day. He shares that watching his heroes perform was profoundly inspiring, and with such resonance, he eventually felt compelled to do it for himself.
He recalls first riffing alongside recorded works, jamming with a friend who had a drumset in the 9th grade, to forming high school and college bands inspired by the 90’s grunge era. His first recordings were through cassette tape decks from stereos with a dinky microphone, that captured that raw and unpolished experimental stage. After reading an iconic Guitar Magazine article in which Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page shared insights into his creative techniques, innovative recording methods, and unique riffs, Ollie became further inspired to produce, write, and hone all the skills needed to make music on his own.
With the introduction of the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to mainstream users, Ollie recalls this laid the framework to make his first record. Influenced by Missing Persons, Blondie, and U2 (especially The Joshua Tree era), as well as Pink Floyd and The Police, Ollie’s music fuses the boldness of macho hard rock, bands like Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard, and the new wave, hypnotic sounds of The Cure and Joy Division for a unique and unusual sonic combination.
As his music has morphed over the years, Ollie gained an underground following with his album “Barrel of Fun.” He shared how much he enjoyed building out each track with hard rock guitars and simplistic new wave baselines that allowed him to be precise and intentional in shaping the overall tone, which has often been referred to as lo-fi emo.
When asked about the tone of his upcoming single, “the sun will bring the day again,” Ollie mentions that not only was it the first song he ever wrote, but he wanted to preserve its simplicity and bring that timeless style full circle. The track, a bittersweet reflection on love lost, tells the story of a girl he was once in love with and the devastation when the years they spent together ended. In the lyrics, “I know that you won’t be back this way again,” the song served as a pathway to coming to terms with the loss and being able to move on. To put it simply, Ollie jokes, “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy cries.” He shared that it took a while for him to actually record the track, as he didn’t have much of a vision beyond wanting to stay true to its rawness. He detuned the electric guitar for an extra-low sound to preserve the authentic feel of where and how it was originally created. (In his bedroom, alone).
As he’s evolved through his music styles, creative outputs, and mental states over the years, he wanted to revisit the mellow, minimalistic feeling. Ollie also sees this music as a potential bridge beyond an angsty, grungy musical past and corresponding fan base, into a new lighter time of life, music, and listeners. Ollie reflects on a unique element from the original version of the song: a high-up fingerpicking technique, inspired by Van Halen’s “Little Guitars.” This staccato right-hand plucking style was unusual for his artistry at the time but gave the song a distinct character.
When asked if there were any recent revisions, he explained that one of his favorite parts of resurfacing the track was recording new guitars inspired by Brian Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets. He describes overdriving the board, burning up the gain, and creating a distortion-heavy hum that added extra texture to the acoustic song, much like Eno’s experimental and ambient elements over traditional rock instrumentation. Lastly, Ollie added powerful drums to the track, noting, "You don’t usually hear that—acoustic, hard electric, and drums all together."
Parallel to how Ollie bridges contrasting musical elements from different genres and ends of the spectrum, he shares a parting sentiment with fans and readers: "Seek to overcome division. Despite the polarizing narratives that are all around us, seek to find connections over division. Keep looking for the patience to meet your fellow humans, and love your neighbors.”
Listen to “the sun will bring the day again” here.
Follow Ollie Byrd on social media for updates on new music coming out this year!
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