Renée Yoxon: Transcript
Renée Yoxon:
I think it kind of diminishes what vocalists are doing and it also sets them apart for no reason. Like vocalists are improvising in the same way that trumpet players are or anybody else. And so it's just like, "Oh, you're doing this cute thing, you're scatting." It's like, "No, I'm actually doing the very same thing that everyone else is doing." So that's what my beef is with scat, not the like unfortunate other meaning actually. (Singing).
Leah Roseman:
Welcome to Season 3 of Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman. New for this series is the music of composer and sound designer Nick Kold. I’m honoured to welcome Renée Yoxon as my first guest of Season 3. They are a trans non-binary singer, songwriter, jazz musician, and trans voice teacher. In this episode, Renee shares some beautiful and inspiring performances from their albums, as well as stories from life as a disabled person and how their disability and chronic pain has guided the direction of their career. We talk about their musical development, and their experiences both bad and good as they navigated their musical education. Renée explains the kind of work they do with trans vocal exploration and we dive into all kinds of topics in the usual tangential style of this series. You’ll find the link to both the video and podcast along with the transcript, in the description. Hi Renée Yoxon, thanks for being here.
Renée Yoxon:
Thank you so much for having me.
Leah Roseman:
I heard you once live, it was very memorable concert. It was a CD release party with Mark Ferguson, who is a wonderful jazz pianist and trombone player who's a previous guest of the series. It's very memorable hearing your voice and they were all original songs from what I remember.
Renée Yoxon:
Right. That would've been 10 years ago, at the Fourth Stage.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So when I was looking around for guests, I remembered you and I thought, "Oh yeah, there's Renée. I wonder what they're up to." And I had no idea you had this super interesting journey with trans voice alteration. So we're going to go into that a lot. That's your business now and it's what - your passion.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
But I'd like to go back to your life as a jazz singer and composer because it's an interesting journey. I think you're the third singer I've had on this series who has a science degree.
Renée Yoxon:
The third?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Wow. There are many of us, I guess.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, Megan Jerome, and Diane Nalini, and now yourself.
Renée Yoxon:
Right.
Leah Roseman:
So physics, why did you pursue physics?
Renée Yoxon:
When I was in high school, I kind of believed that that was my only option. I know that sounds funny, but to me it was like you go into science to get a job. I don't know where I got that belief, but I also really enjoyed science. And when I originally applied to university, I got into Carleton for neuroscience and I spent one semester there and immediately fell in love with my physics professors and physics classes. So within one semester I had transferred into the program.
Leah Roseman:
And I think your scientific mind helps you explain concepts very clearly.
Renée Yoxon:
I think it definitely gives me a leg up. Yes. I really like being a logical.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. But when you were a kid, you were playing sax in the school band and you were doing musical theater and then you went to JazzWorks.
Renée Yoxon:
Yes. Yeah, I went to JazzWorks when I was 15. This was before I really had an interest in jazz. I was just playing the saxophone in high school and I think it was my father who was like, "Oh, I heard about this jazz camp. Do you want to go?" And I was like, "Okay, sure, whatever." And I had the most transformative time you know when you're a kid and something blows your mind to pieces. And I just remember the year after that, I think there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't think about going back to jazz camp. And so by the time I got back there the following year, it was like I never left because it was on my mind the whole year.
Leah Roseman:
And it's short, right? It's just a long weekend.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. It's only four or five days. It was really, really impactful.
Leah Roseman:
I went to JazzWorks, where I met-
Renée Yoxon:
Oh, yeah?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. That's where I met Roddy Ellias. We've been friends since then.
Renée Yoxon:
Small world.
Leah Roseman:
He was also a guest on this series. Not that I pursued jazz, but I've always loved jazz so much. And anyway. So let's go back to teenage Renée. And you came from a pretty small community outside Ottawa?
Renée Yoxon:
Well, I mean Orleans. I think now it's considered part of Ottawa, so it's part of the mega city. But I always consider myself just from Ottawa.
Leah Roseman:
I was just curious because I got a reference to the fact that you were in this free improv ensemble as a teenager, but in a small community, which I thought was interesting.
Renée Yoxon:
I used to drive from Orleans to Almonte once a week to hang with these old guys and improvise. Actually, my dad used to drive me out there because he was a car guy and he had a Mustang. And so he would just take the opportunity to drive really far and really fast and I would get to go play improvising music, so that was really cool. But it was a really long drive to go for that kind of activity.
Leah Roseman:
It's like an hour and a half, maybe.
Renée Yoxon:
Yes, it was like at least 80 minutes or something like that.
Leah Roseman:
And what was that like, that experience of just being in the moment and making stuff up?
Renée Yoxon:
It's so long ago now, I can't remember what drew me to that. But I think those people that were out there, like Sietze Praamsma, he's the man who's a baritone saxophone player who used to host this group. They were just cool, weird, artistic old dudes and I was a teenager. I couldn't believe that they even wanted me to be there. But of course, in retrospect I'm sure they were also energized by my presence. And we just had a really good weird time together.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
And I used to go to parties at his house also, afterwards we became friends. And that intergenerational friendship, it's not something that everybody has access to. And at the time, as a teenager, it was really special for me.
Leah Roseman:
It struck me when I left university and started working in the music profession that you're suddenly... This must be true for other jobs too, but it may be more in music you're thrust in with so many generations of colleagues and it's such a different feeling than just being a student and mostly being with your peers.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. It was like that for me from the get go. I didn't go to jazz school first. I had a little jazz career before going to university for jazz. So I definitely got the experience of many intergenerational friendships. I'm sure that the younger people on the end of that spectrum would not appreciate being referred to as an intergenerational friendship. But anyway, you know what I mean, we're kind of all over the spectrum of places in life and it's really, really cool now that I think about it that I got to have that.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. So I know you're willing to share generously some of your four recorded albums and you recorded some standards at the beginning.
Renée Yoxon:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
And I wanted to mention "Willow Weep For Me", because I just love your rendition of that.
Renée Yoxon:
Oh, thank you.
Leah Roseman:
Does that song have a certain meaning for you in terms of the composer being a woman or anything?
Renée Yoxon:
Wow, these are some deep cuts.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. I'm trying to think back to how we even chose the songs on that because that record wasn't intended to be a record, like the way it started was René Gely just asked me to come over and jam and I was of course, again, young and delighted to be invited to do these things. And after we played a few songs together, we were both like, "Well, if we just played a few more and then a few more we'd have an album." And so there wasn't a ton of intention behind the selection process when it came to choosing the tunes. "Willow Weep For Me" was probably a tune where he was like, "Do you know Willow Weep For Me?" And I was like, "Yeah, I do." And then we played it and we were like, "Wow, this sounds great." You know what I mean? It was as simple as that when it came to choosing repertoire for that record.
Leah Roseman:
When you said deep cuts just now, do you mean you want me to cut that out or?
Renée Yoxon:
No, not at all. I mean, it's just like you seem to know a lot of very small facts from my life that I've never been asked about before. So I think that's super cool.
Leah Roseman:
Well, when I heard that song, your beautiful rendition, I associated it with Billie Holiday and different famous singers. And then I googled it and it came up Nina Simone. And I thought, "She didn't write that." It's funny how things get ascribed to people. So actually the woman's name was Ann Ronell, born Rosenblatt. And she was friends with George Gershwin who said, "Your name's too Jewish. Take my advice, change it."
Renée Yoxon:
Yikes.
Leah Roseman:
Because he was originally Gershowitz, anyway.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
But she was very much a trailblazer in terms of being a woman, successful composer and in that world. And then I was looking her up more, like I go down these rabbit holes, and her life partner was 30 years younger than her and I thought, "You go girl. That's great."
Renée Yoxon:
Talk about intergenerational.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
I think that song is one of the first on the record too. It's really early in the track list. And René did such an amazing rendition of it. I had very little to do with the accompaniment piece. He pretty much produced, arranged all of the tunes on that record. He's so playful when it comes to arranging, so that's what created such a beautiful rendition, I think. He's a big hand in that. (Singing).
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I’m an independant podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce this series, and there are a lot of costs I bear as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip or becoming a monthly supporter starting at 3 dollars Canadian (which is close to 2 dollars US or 2 Euros) and getting access to unique perks! The link is in the description. Now back to the episode!
And you play piano, you learned some piano as a kid, but you haven't played on your recordings.
Renée Yoxon:
I think I play on Beautiful Alchemy.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Renée Yoxon:
In a few little places. Yeah. But for the majority of my records, no, I'm not playing on them. I really only dug into piano in the last five years or so. So now I accompany myself a lot. But it's still a more practical skill, more than it is a musical skill.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there's a photo of you playing ukulele. Do you play that actively or just a little bit?
Renée Yoxon:
A little bit, yeah. I played it again on Beautiful Alchemy, there's a few songs. I use it more as a writing tool. So I find that when I change the instrument I'm writing on, I usually get more different chord progressions or interesting ideas. So I bought a ukulele just for fun a couple years ago and wrote a few songs specifically. It was while I was at McGill, somebody was asking for, a recording student was asking for someone to come in and record something. And it's always easier for them when you can accompany yourself. So I brought my little ukulele and I learned. And yeah, so there's definitely... Maybe there's some ukulele parts on Beautiful Alchemy. But recently actually, someone commissioned me to write a song for their engagement, for a proposal. So I wrote a little custom song on ukulele. So I literally have been using it quite a lot recently actually.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
People should commission you for all their Kickstarter campaigns. They always use ukulele!
Renée Yoxon:
Good idea.
Leah Roseman:
I wanted to ask, so on Beautiful Alchemy. I think my favorite song is Terrible Alchemy. It's just so touching.
Renée Yoxon:
That was written on the ukulele.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
So you played it. Yeah. So are these songs we can share? We've already talked about Willow Weep For Me.
Renée Yoxon:
Yes, absolutely. I think on the record, on the recorded version, what you're hearing is not ukulele, it's guitar. So Matt Schultz is the guitarist. So he graciously adapted the ukulele part, which is very easy to play on the ukulele and very challenging on the guitar.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Renée Yoxon:
But that's what you'll be hearing on this piece.
Leah Roseman:
And the film, I watched the film, Beautiful Alchemy. What was the process? Were you approached by the filmmaker to make this?
Renée Yoxon:
Yes. So Teagan Lance is the filmmaker and she was doing a BFA in film at Concordia, and she's a trans woman, and she had been looking for a trans subject for her thesis film, essentially. And it was a little bit challenging for her to find someone who was out enough that they would be okay with having their likeness sort of in a film. And so somebody in the community recommended me and we met and right away we hit it off. And actually, the recording that we did both in the film and for the record was for a recording student's Masters project. So there was two Masters projects happening and a recording. And when I met Teagan, I was like, "This is perfect, you can just come tomorrow. We're going to have a midnight recording tomorrow night." So she met me and then the next day showed up at Midnight at McGill with her camera and was ready to film. So we had literally, just met when you see us together in the film.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
Wow, that's quite an accomplishment.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, she's amazing. I love her so much. It was her proposal actually, that I wrote the ukulele song for, her now fiance, Sarah, proposed to her. So yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Nice. (Singing). And I wanted to also ask you, you had a pretty unusual album. Ah. Oh yeah. No. Before we leave Let's Call it a Day, your 2010 album.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
Everything available on Bandcamp.
Renée Yoxon:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
You recorded "Par ce beau jour de printemps" by Rodgers & Hammerstein. It wasn't a French song originally. Did you translate it or?
Renée Yoxon:
No, I was obsessed with Blossom Dearie growing up.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Renée Yoxon:
Do you know that picture of her on... Do you know her records at all? Her first record, she has hair a lot like yours actually, and these big kind of Woody Allen mid-century glasses and she's looking so beautiful. And I was like, "I want to be that. You're so cool and beatniky." Anyway, she did a lot of French versions of jazz standards and this was one of them. So I got the lyrics from her. She has a really little voice just like this.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Renée Yoxon:
She has a very distinct singing voice.
Leah Roseman:
On São Paulo. You did this beautiful no lyrics song. And in another interview I heard you talk about how you love doing wordless improv and how you hate the word scat.
Renée Yoxon:
It's an unfortunate word. Let's just be honest.
Leah Roseman:
I think I knew that meaning of it way before I knew the other meaning, actually.
Renée Yoxon:
Well, I think it kind of diminishes what vocalists are doing and it also sets them apart for no reason. Like vocalists are improvising in the same way that trumpet players are or anybody else. And so it's just like, "Oh, you're doing this cute thing, you're scatting." It's like, "No, I'm actually doing the very same thing that everyone else is doing." So that's what my beef is with scat, not the unfortunate other meaning actually.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. And you had also mentioned in another interview, Jay Clayton was an influence that way. Had you had contact with her? Was it lessons or just listening or being aware of?
Renée Yoxon:
Jay Clayton? Yeah, I mean we briefly met, and I mean extremely briefly. We had a phone call.
Leah Roseman:
Yes.
Renée Yoxon:
When I was living in New York in 2010 or 11, must have been must 11. But I think I had called her because I was looking to get a lesson with another famous jazz singer from New York who is still alive and working today. Sheila Jordan. It was Sheila Jordan.
Leah Roseman:
Oh, okay.
Renée Yoxon:
So Sheila Jordan and Jay Clayton were living together. And I knew Sheila Jordan from her records and from people in the Canada who know her very well. I think Ori Dagan is good friends with Sheila Jordan, he's a jazz singer from Toronto. So I was in New York and I was trying to get a lesson with Sheila and someone gave me their phone number. New York is so wild for this. So I called and it was Jay Clayton on the phone and that was the only interaction we had. But of course I love Jay Clayton's music and yeah, I learned a lot about improvising from the people I met while living in New York, actually. I did a lot of wordless improvising.
Leah Roseman:
So you got this special grant, I think you were one of the first recipients in order to go study in New York.
Renée Yoxon:
So this is funny. Yeah, what I got was an award from the Fourth Stage from the NAC. I don't remember what it was. It was like-
Leah Roseman:
It was Astral Media.
Renée Yoxon:
That's it. Yeah, it was an Astral Media award. It wasn't for anything, I could have done anything with the money, but the stars kind of aligned. I had this money from Astral Media, I had a little tax return and I saw that someone I knew in New York was renting their room in their apartment in Brooklyn for $500 a month. And I was like, "This is all just coming together." I had this money, this opportunity has happened. So I went down there for 10 weeks and learned a lot about a lot of different things, not just music.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
Were they personal things or just?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. Well, at the time I was learning how disabled I was. Like I have chronic pain, I've had chronic pain since I was 20 years old and I'm 34 now. But at the time I really hadn't accepted that, that was a reality in my life. And it wasn't until I went to live in a third story walk up in New York and didn't have my car that I was like, "Oh, I actually, get one trip a day and that's all I can manage physically." But the upside of this was that I practiced for eight hours a day for 10 weeks. I left my house just to get groceries or go to music lessons or see a show sometimes. And the rest of the time I was practicing because I literally, couldn't leave the house. So all I did was practice.
Leah Roseman:
So Renée, what does that look like? I just don't understand what you'd be... Like I'm a violinist, we just have a technique. I'm just curious, what would you be practicing?
Renée Yoxon:
Well, yeah. So I practiced technique. I took a classical singing lesson with Karen Nimereala who has a teaching studio in both New York and Paris and it was amazing. She lives in the 25th floor overlooking Central Park. So I got to study with her a couple of times. Yeah, so a lot of technique stuff. And then, a lot of ear training. I remember specifically, I learned the chromatic scale really, really well. I was able to sing it very specifically up and down on a ton of different syllables, which were important for improvising. What else did I do? I practiced a lot of songs, but it was mostly technique, singing technique. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And you also had coachings with... Oh yeah. Peter Eldridge and did-
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. Well, it was there. Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And I heard you, this is an old interview, you probably don't remember it, but you said something about he had coached you on your speaking voice, which I found interesting in terms of what you're doing now.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, he wasn't the only one who coached me on my speaking voice. I've had a bunch of teachers who notice quite rightly, that I have a very heavy, sort of thick speaking voice. I'm kind of taking it off right now a little bit because I'm in a professional setting. But with my friends, I'm like... I have a really clowny, a very thick speaking voice is how the only way I know how to describe it. So that can cause the loss of the voice if it's not well managed over time. And when I sing now, I definitely use a technique that's healthier. So I'm not actively causing laryngitis for myself all the time. But multiple teachers have pointed this out to me and for good reasons, I have lost my voice before. And I used to chronically lose my voice until I learned how to manage that.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
So you were singing in a rock band when you were young and that was-
Renée Yoxon:
You do your research-
Leah Roseman:
Well-
Renée Yoxon:
This is so impressive. Yes, I did. Yeah. I sang in a band called Gorgeous George, which was a rapper... Not a rapper, pardon me. A boxer who was very feminine, like he used to put makeup on in the ring and wear a little blonde wig or something. And I don't know why we chose that. In retrospect, it's like very trans, very on brand for me now. But at the time that wasn't on my mind so much. But yeah, we used to get together and play pretty regularly at the Mercury Lounge in Ottawa.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
We had a regular Sunday there.
Leah Roseman:
But you were already doing jazz, so were you worried about your voice? Did you feel that it was a strain?
Renée Yoxon:
No. I mean, contemporary... What is it called? Contemporary music kind of shares a lot of the same technique. So I was in a rock band, yes. But I was singing with my jazz technique. I wasn't really changing that too much, maybe sometimes. And also just rock band living was a little bit harder on the voice than the actual singing. Like we stayed up really late. We would drink, probably smoke, I don't know. Habits that were bad for the voice. But I'm pretty careful about that stuff, I take good care of my voice.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
I wonder what it's like for singers that this instrument is so delicate. Like it's your body. I mean, I can feel terrible and still play violin, which might feel bad, but I can do it. What's that like in terms of just going through a career worrying about that you're touring in the past?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, that's a really good question. I like to say that the voice is not as delicate as people think it is.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Because I have a lot of students, especially now in my trans voice practice, which we'll talk about later, who are not singers and don't have any musical background and are of the belief that the voice is super delicate and if they do it wrong, they're going to hurt their voice. And I have to be like, "Listen, if you can run and have sore legs and then your legs recover, you can also sing and have a sore voice and then your voice recovers. It's a muscle like anything else. So obviously if it's starting to hurt, you shouldn't keep going, just you wouldn't keep running if your legs were hurting and you have to take care of it just like you have to take care of anything else."
But I think some people believe the voice is so delicate that they are too scared to push it in the way that you would push yourself in other ways, if you are doing a sport or whatever. So it's delicate, but you get the warning signs, especially if you've been singing for many years. You start to learn when you're reaching your limits and you train so that you can extend your limits. Like when I was really singing all the time, making records and doing gigs, I could sing for eight hours a day and it did not bother me in the slightest. Now that's not the case, but it's not required of me now. But then I was training like an athlete to be able to maintain that kind of endurance.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
There's so much to talk about and I want to circle back to some other things earlier on. But let's get into your coaching and what you do now, which is so compelling. And I have to say, I watched a whole bunch of your TikTok videos. Would we be able to share any of them as part of this?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, absolutely. Whichever one you want, I'm happy to share.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, that's cool. And some of the things you say are just gold, I think for anyone learning anything or even with anxiety. Like one of your quotes was, "What if I was sure this was easy to do?"
Renée Yoxon:
That's my favorite quote, Leah. I love that. It just turns a switch in people's brains sometimes.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Hi, I'm a gender affirming voice teacher and today I want to talk about pitch lowering. This is one of the most common questions I get in my comments section. How do I lower my pitch? How do I have a lower voice? I wanted to clarify some myths around this. There is no direct analog for lowering pitch for masculinization and raising pitch for feminization because we have a lot more headroom generally in higher notes than we do in lower notes. I would say most people sort of speak in about the low to mid part of their range. So we can't go super far down, but we can move one or two semitones and I'm going to show you what that means in a second, and that will make a really huge difference.
So the first thing to do is to figure out where you sort sit range wise already. And the way I like to do that is by counting to 10. So just in a normal way. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. One, one, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. 10, 10. So I kind of have this octave, so that's pretty common as the feminine perceived octave. I'll talk more about that in a future video. But if I wanted to masculinize that, I could start by just lowering that whole counting by a semitone. So if I give myself a new note, one, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. 10, 10. Or I could start a semitone lower than that.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So I'm trying to keep the average sort of the same, but that's as low as I would like to go. I really don't want to go lower than this, but we'll see in the next video that there is a lot more you can do with other characteristics other than pitch. So we'll you see there.
Leah Roseman:
We were just talking about TikTok and oh, another quote of yours I loved is you said, "Grow the bounds of silliness in your life."
Renée Yoxon:
I love that too, because we're all, as adults, too serious. Be sillier, makes for a happier life.
Leah Roseman:
Especially, when you're trying new things. You have to be willing to not be successful at first or feel out of your comfort zone, right?
Renée Yoxon:
There's a quote from Adventure Time, which is a cartoon that I really love. There's this little dog called Jake, and his quote is, "Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something." That's how I live my life.
Leah Roseman:
So you'd been teaching voice for many, many years as quite a young person actually, right?
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think I started around age 20.
Leah Roseman:
And then tell the story about how you got invited to do these kind of workshops.
Renée Yoxon:
The Trans Voice workshops?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. So I had been teaching for, as you say, at least 10 years. And what happen... It's kind of a long story. It's kind of a complicated journey. But basically, sure. I was in Ireland studying songwriting and when we were there we were asked to do a lot of five year planning. There was a lot of business stuff built into the music degree, which I really appreciated because I didn't get that at McGill during my jazz degree. So I had to spend a lot of time critically thinking about what I wanted out of my teaching practice, out of my music practice. And something I had been feeling for a while was that I appreciate more when I'm teaching students who share my axes of marginalization. So I have a better time when I'm teaching students with disabilities and students who are trans. And that's because we get along, there's unspoken things that we just inherently understand.
So I decided I wanted to focus my singing teaching practice towards those students, but those groups don't historically have a lot of disposable income to spend on singing lessons. So I created, at that time, the Right to Sing award, which was a little scholarship. I raised about a thousand dollars and I was able to give 10 free lessons to people of those communities. So I pitched it as like free lessons for disabled and/or trans people, but actually everyone who received a scholarship was both. And that's because those groups have a lot of overlap in general. So I was advertising the scholarship program, I was fundraising, I was searching for people to apply. And because I did that, I think I purchased an Instagram ad or something and a group in Montreal called Project 10 saw the Instagram ad and they reached out to me and said, "Hey, we saw your ad, we see your teaching trans people. We just had a workshop at our organization on trans voice alteration or modification, but it was with an SLP, a Speech Language Pathologist who was cisgender."
So his gender aligned with the one who was assigned at birth. And the way he was going about explaining trans voice alteration didn't align with the value system of Project 10, which is a little bit more open in terms of gender roles. I'm not trying to say anything bad about this particular SLP, but if you don't live like in the non-binary space where gender is exploded and everything is whatever you want it to be, you could have regressive ideas about you do this to be a woman and you do this to be a man.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
So they didn't like that. And so they asked me, "We want somebody trans to come and teach this material and would you do that?" And I had never done that before, but I was like, "Yes. 100%, that sounds exactly like what I want to be doing." And I was immediately really excited by it because I had never thought to do that. It had never occurred to me to teach this material. But as soon as I thought about how exploratory of a process trans voice alteration can be, I was totally into it from day one. So I did a lot of learning, self-study. I put together a workshop, which looks very different from what my teaching looks like now, but that was the first one and that was the first workshop.
So that was, they called that one Trans Vocal Exploration, that was what they called it. And that's now the name of one of my E-course that I have online. And then they kept hiring me back to teach the workshop in French and in English. And I did it maybe four times over a couple years and got to hone that skill and then started teaching at other organizations, online and in person.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. And you said it's very different than what you've arrived now. What things did you feel you had to change to make it better?
Renée Yoxon:
Well, I think I was leaning more on... At the time, I focused on how do people use their voice already? That was the easiest way in I could see for young people, especially. Like the group, Project 10, has a 25 and under mandate. So I was thinking specifically about young teens and how to connect with them. So it was like, "When you're happy, how does your voice sound? And when you're frightened, how does your voice sound? When you're tired, how does your..." And those are still things that I use in my teaching, but it's not the first thing that I'll go for anymore. I think I'm a little more efficient at the process now than I was at the beginning.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I want to talk about gender presentation and gender identity because for a lot of people they don't really understand that.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
And probably I don't really as well-
Renée Yoxon:
That's okay.
Leah Roseman:
As much as I should.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, I mean is your question, what is the difference between those two things?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, how do they intersect?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. So that's why when I'm talking about my practice, I always say that I help people, trans people, create voices that align with their gender presentation because any gender can have any voice. If you're a woman, you have a woman's voice, that's what I believe. If you're a man, you have a man's voice and if non-binary, you have a non-binary voice. So it would be strange for me to say, "I'm going to help you create a voice that aligns with your gender because you already have a voice that aligns with your gender." However, your presentation is how you present yourself to the world. So you might want to be really feminine and that might express itself with lots of makeup or a particular kind of makeup or a particular kind of hairstyle or clothes or your voice, right? If you changed, like if you wore overalls one day and then a wedding dress the next day, your gender hasn't changed. It's just how you're presenting yourself and the voice is the same. You could modify your voice, but it doesn't change your gender, it just modifies your presentation.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Does that make sense?
Leah Roseman:
It does make sense. And would you say that a lot of people who aren't quite, let's say in certain context, they'll present differently maybe at work they present a certain way that they would also consciously modify their voice if they so wish?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, absolutely. I watch these two drag queens a lot on YouTube, Trixie and Katya, and there's this really amazing quote that I love where Katya asks Trixie, "Do you ever masculinize your gait and or voice?" And they're in full drag and Trixie is like, "I'm doing it now. I'm masculinizing my voice now." Cis people modify their voice for any number of reasons to be treated with differently or with more respect or to be taken more seriously. I know a lot of cis women will kind of butch it up in a meeting so that they get taken more seriously. It's very common. And also if you're even less dire circumstances, if you're talking with your lover, like if you're having pillow talk. If you're talking with your lover, you're not going to talk in the same way you would if you're talking to your best friend or to your boss. You might be talking in a sweeter voice, and that's a normal part of the human experience is modifying the voice.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So can you talk about the different ways we can modify your voice? I understand like the vocal fold, these terms, they are a little confusing.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, I mean there are a number of characteristics that we can work on sort of pseudo independently, but they all kind of intersect and interconnect. One of them is pitch, that's the one everyone's most familiar with. So I'm speaking with a baseline pitch right now, and I could kind of bring my pitch up higher and this would be a different type of voice. A lot of people speak in this place and that's totally fine. And even I might speak up there if I was really excited about something. But right now it's kind of early in the morning, so I'm in a lower part of my voice, so that's pitch. And then there's resonance and that is the relative brightness or darkness of a voice. And that's controlled by the vocal tract. So it's everything after the actual sound is produced at the level of the vocal folds.
So I can not change my pitch at all. I'm changing right now is the resonance. And actually I did this earlier when I did the Blossom Dearie voice, she has a little higher and brighter voice, right? So that's resonance. Or I can make it darker by opening up the vocal tract. So my pitch has not changed, I can also bring the pitch down and you see what's happening here. These are interconnected characteristics. And then vocal fold mass is the third one. And it's a little bit more challenging because it's not so strictly gendered in the way that we think of pitch and resonance. Like with pitch and resonance, high and bright is feminine, low and dark is masculine under pretty much all circumstances. Of course, there are people of all genders who are all over that spectrum, whereas vocal fold mass is a measure of thickness and thinness. And we tend to associate thinness with a more feminine voice.
So I've kind of removed some of the thickness from my voice. And you can remove so much that you get breathiness where it's like you're not getting good vocal contact, vocal fold contact. Or a really thick voice is considered masculine because vocal folds that have been exposed to testosterone tend to be thicker. However, if a person is shouting, it's perfectly feminine for someone to go, "Hey." With a very thick vocal fold mass that is also bright. So thickness and thinness is not strictly all the time one way feminine, one way masculine, it kind of depends on the circumstance. It's a lot going on up in here, sorry. And vocal fold mass is directly related to pitch. So a higher pitch will produce just mechanically, a thinner vocal fold because of how they're being stretched. And a lower pitch will produce a thicker vocal fold. And volume, if you have a louder sound, you need more vocal fold mass to resist the subglottic pressure, Whereas a softer sound like a whisper can be very thin.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
That was a extremely abridged version of all the information that I give people every day.
Leah Roseman:
Do you find when you speak French that your voice changes just the way you produce it, because it's a different language?
Renée Yoxon:
A 100%, every language does have... And that creates some interesting challenges for students who speak a language that is darker naturally. I mean, I've met many trans women or feminine people, for instance. I'm thinking specifically of one who was from Saguenay, one woman from Saguenay and the French in Saguenay is quite far back in the throat. It's very dark: "la grande gueule." And so what was important for her was to maintain her accent that was cultural, but then also feminize it. And this is always the balance we have to walk. How do we maintain the remnants of a cultural accent while also modifying the sound to be feminine or masculine as the case may be. And different languages present different challenges and different regions of different languages present different challenges.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
So you have to really know your student individually.
Leah Roseman:
And how this vocal fry, how is that produced technically?
Renée Yoxon:
Vocal fry, it's like when the vocal folds come together and then they kind of bubble open very slightly. It's sort of the same as if you were to put your lips together and do this... A little lip trail. So if you can imagine that happening here, it's literally the same mechanism.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
It's something I just find irritating in some actors I've seen and I'm very aware of it. But of course it's just a natural part of some people's voice, it's not necessarily something-
Renée Yoxon:
As a podcaster, you might find it irritating because you listen to people's voices all day. But what's interesting is culturally, sometimes we tend to find things that are coded as feminine, more, quote-unquote, annoying, and sometimes we have to question like, "Why do we find that thing annoying?" Like vocal fry specifically in the last 10 years or so, or even more than that, maybe 15 years, has become extremely feminine coded because of like Britney Spears and Kim Kardashian. It's a very feminine thing to do. But if you look back to the early 2000s, it was up speak that people found really annoying. And even then this was coded culturally feminine. So as time goes on, these things that are coded feminine, we find, quote-unquote, annoying. So whenever I'm finding something about the way someone's speaking annoying, I try to stop myself and go, "What other things are happening here in my brain that I'm not... Like my biases are coming out." So.
Leah Roseman:
That's very interesting and a really, really important point actually. So you were talking about how you got going with your workshops, but I think it was May 2021 when your TikTok went viral, that happened quite suddenly for you, right?
Renée Yoxon:
Yes, very suddenly. Very suddenly I put out my first TikTok. And the reason I did that was I kind of just gave in. I figured, "I'm committing to being a trans voice teacher. Where are the young trans people on TikTok? So I better get on TikTok." And the first TikTok I made went viral.
Leah Roseman:
Wow.
Renée Yoxon:
It was very scary when that happened.
Leah Roseman:
How viral did it go?
Renée Yoxon:
It had 10,000 likes within the first 24 hours.
Leah Roseman:
Wow.
Renée Yoxon:
And I might be misquoting that, I think my account ended up with 10,000 followers within a couple of days. And on TikTok, the numbers seem a little inflated and it's because you can grow an account much faster on TikTok than other things. So 10,000 TikTok followers are relatively equal to like 2000 Instagram followers just because of the way that the app is created. So I grew the account to over a 100,000 in the last year, which is wild, but that is much easier to do on TikTok. So I don't take a ton of credit for that because the algorithm helps a lot. But yeah, within one week I had booked out all of my private lessons. I had to change my whole business practice in a week. It was quite the week.
Leah Roseman:
And now you have one of your E-course is to teach other teachers and do they need to be voice teachers?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. So you're talking about "Learn to Teach Trans Voice Alteration in Five Weeks", which I just started the third cohort a couple of days ago. And I market it towards people who have a singing practice, so they don't need to be a teacher necessarily. But also SLPs take the course pretty regularly. So a lot of them don't have it necessarily a singing practice. But yeah, it's typically voice professionals of any kind.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
And you said it's the third cohort, so you have some contact with them. It's not all virtual, it's not all prerecorded.
Renée Yoxon:
Correct. So the last two cohorts were completely live actually. So we would meet for four hours every week, and I would lecture. That was hard on the voice, doing four hours of lecturing. This cohort, I have prerecorded most of the lectures and we're still meeting, but just for one hour, for like an office hour. And instead I'm doing Voxer Support. So each teacher is allowed to message me directly over an app called Voxer. And then we just exchange voice memos. And it's been an interesting change of pace because now I get to know each teacher individually, on a one-on-one basis. And they're all wonderful. They're all great people. So it's wonderful.
Leah Roseman:
Why did you choose a voice message app for that?
Renée Yoxon:
Just an experiment. I didn't want to be emailing. I have pretty good work boundaries, so I try not to be on my computer all the time. I work restricted hours like 9:00 to whatever, 4:00 or something. But I wanted to be able to answer questions sort of on the go. So if I was out getting groceries or in the car, I could answer them pretty quickly. We'll see. I might decide that it doesn't align with my values around boundaries, but I'm just trying it out this time.
Leah Roseman:
No, that's cool. I was wondering also about disability in terms of people who are visually impaired that, that would be a good choice.
Renée Yoxon:
Totally. I mean, most people who are visually impaired and who use a phone would have a text-to-speech app anyway. So even if we were texting, they would probably use their text-to-speech. But yeah, it's nice. You could have both. Like any app nowadays, you can do either text or audio. For me, it's a lot faster to record an audio reply than to craft a text message and better for my joints and stuff.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
You mentioned at the University of Limerick that they had, when you did the songwriting Masters, that they had a businessy part to it. And I have to say, I went to McGill for my undergraduate in music, and then I did a Masters in Indiana. And yeah, if there were courses like that, I wasn't aware of them.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
We had nothing beyond just the very basic old fashioned courses and I had no clue entering the profession of any options. And now I think particularly people have to be able to be entrepreneurial in the music business.
Renée Yoxon:
Absolutely. I think they always did. But now especially, you have to know a little bit about marketing because it's part of how you tell your story.
Leah Roseman:
So what kind of things did you learn there from that aspect?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. The way that courses work in Europe are a little bit different. You get a certain number of course hours. So some courses can be the whole semester, but some are half semester courses. So we had a half semester course on grant writing where we had to find a grant and write it, which I had never been asked to do. I mean I had written grants before university, but I had never been asked in university to write a grant. But it was so lovely to get a feedback on a grant that I wrote. And then the second course was on writing a business plan. So they asked us to either write a business plan for one organization if we had one, or which most musicians decided to do, was write what's called a three strand plan.
So as a musician you're likely going to be performing and teaching in some third thing. And so we had to look at each strand of our business and then write a business plan for each strand. So each strand would be slightly less involved than if we were doing one business plan for the whole organization. But that was wonderful. I got a chance to be like, "Okay, if I was a performing artist and a teacher and a professional songwriter, what would I have to do to reach my goals in five years for each of those things?"
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. Fascinating. And how did you find out about this program?
Renée Yoxon:
It's another kind of long story, Leah. Basically, I was in Banff in 2012 for the Jazz and Creative Music Program, which was awesome. It's like a three week program. 2012 was a particularly good year too. We had a lot of good friends. We got along really well. It's a very tight group. And I became friends with an Irish singer named Edel Meade, who is wonderful and I love her. And we stayed in touch after Banff. And then actually one side quest story, when we were in Banff together, we were sitting down talking about who our favorite singers were, and she was like, "Oh, I love Mark Murphy." And I said, "Oh, me too. I saw him in New York last year when I was living there. I saw him at Birdland." And she goes, "I saw him at Birdland last year too." And I said, "Were you sitting at the edge of the raised section, writing in a notebook?"
And she goes, "Yes, I was." And I said, "I was sitting right next to you." We were the only two single people in the club. Everyone else had multiple people at their table. So we were sat next to each other. And I just remember seeing her writing in her notebook and thinking, "Why didn't I bring a notebook? That's so smart." And so I remembered her a year later when we met at Banff. So of course that serendipity solidified our friendship forever. And then years went by and we kind of followed each other around the world. She told me that she was going to San Francisco to study with Theo Bleckmann and I should come, but I couldn't go that year. So I went the following year. So she was in San Francisco then I was in San Francisco. And then she told me later that she was planning to go to this new program at the University of Limerick that had just been launched.
She was, I think offered a spot in the first year, but she decided to defer to the second year because she wanted the program to get underway a little bit before she went and did it. And I said, "Well, I think I should apply for that. That sounds pretty good." Actually, when I read the description, it really aligned with everything that I had been missing at McGill. I wanted space to learn about what my voice was as a songwriter, to spread my wings creatively. And that was exactly what I got in Ireland. And so it was really lovely to be there with her. We got to spend a year together. And that was how I heard about that program.
Leah Roseman:
I spoke recently with a Dutch jazz guitarist and composer, Marc van Vugt and his partner is Ineke Vandoorn, who will also appear in the series.
Renée Yoxon:
Oh, cool.
Leah Roseman:
And they had gone to Banff, early on in the '90s I think, and he was saying to me how it was different going there, coming from Europe because they were, in their program in Utrecht. It was all about your own voice and writing your own music as jazz artists. And then he went there and everyone was doing standards and which they didn't know. So he said he went back and studied up on all the standards. So when he went back to Banff two years later, he kind of knew that repertoire, which I found interesting.
Renée Yoxon:
But it really depends on the director because when I was there, Vijay Iyer was taking over from Dave. I can't remember the name of the trumpet player. Anyway, so the first director was really into standards. So for the first week we had a lot of standards, but then after Vijay took over, it was free jazz time and there wasn't very much standards at all. But there wasn't a ton of your own composition. I mean, there was. There was a lot of compositions, but it was really a lot about the creative process behind composition, which was really cool. So it really depends from director to director what your experience will be like.
Leah Roseman:
So you mentioned going to McGill, it's a very well known jazz program. And so you graduated from physics and by that point you knew that you didn't want to do graduate work in physics.
Renée Yoxon:
Correct. Yeah, I think it was the third year I knew I wanted to pursue music. I met a young saxophone player in Ottawa who had gotten a music degree. And at that point I was like, "Oh my God, I didn't know that you could just..." That's so silly now that I say it out loud. But I didn't know that was an option. I didn't come from a musical family or a creative family. It really never occurred to me that you could pursue music as a profession. And it's funny because a lot of my teachers after were like, "What did you think we were doing?" It's like, "I don't know. I don't know." So I got out of the honors program in my third year and went into a general and completed my physics degree with all music extracurriculars.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Renée Yoxon:
So that was really good. And then after I graduated I would hit the ground running, I just was performing and I had no connection to physics beyond doing a little TA job. But yeah, it was not a question at the end of my physics degree.
Leah Roseman:
And because you were based in Ottawa, which is... I mean we're a city of... I'm in Ottawa, a city of one million, but still I'd say pretty small community for the performing arts. Would you say that you were able to launch a lot of projects and do your own thing, maybe because it was a smaller scene?
Renée Yoxon:
Absolutely. Ottawa is an amazing place to come up as a musician because there's tons of room for you if you want to grow.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
It was an interesting situation me because there aren't a lot of young musicians who stay in Ottawa at the time. It could be different now, but then people would just go to Toronto or Montreal as soon as they could. But I had just finished my degree so I was not in the mood to go study more. And I was like the hot young thing on the scene. Everybody kind of wanted to play with me. I really had no trouble playing with some of the most accomplished players in the city, which was an incredible gift.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
Did you have mentors at that time that really helped you develop as a writer as well as a performer?
Renée Yoxon:
Yes, Mark. I mean Mark Ferguson was an incredible mentor. First, how Mark and I met was that he heard the record that René Gely and I made and then it just invited me over to hang and that's how we started writing together. So I'm so grateful René Gely for believing in me and making that record with me. And then also for Mark seeing that potential and I wasn't even much of a writer at that time. It's kind of wild that he took a gamble on me like that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I remember he had approached me, I think, he sometimes plays with the National Arts Center Orchestra where I work and he said... Maybe I was at a gig, but I can't remember the context. But he's like, "Renée Yoxon is a really amazing talent and could you please give some money for..." Because I think you were crowdfunding the recording, which I did.
Renée Yoxon:
Thanks.
Leah Roseman:
So.
Renée Yoxon:
Thank you so much.
Leah Roseman:
And actually people can buy the sheet music, I think that's cool. The lead sheets are available.
Renée Yoxon:
I still have some physical copies of that too in my little filing cabinet. If people want that, I got it.
Leah Roseman:
Oh yeah, there was another TikTok you had where you talked about low stakes, micro conversations to practice your different vocal explorations. And as someone, I had suffered with a lot of social anxiety when I was younger, which is kind of ironic now that I'm doing this, so.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah. Come a long way.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. But I can completely relate. And also I love to study languages and when you're just a beginner at any language, it's really nerve-wracking to say anything to anyone in public. So I know exactly what you mean by those low stakes, micro conversations. Can you give some examples for people?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, absolutely. A low stakes, micro conversation would be like when you go to the store and they ask you if you want a plastic or paper bag or how you're going to pay? You know in advance, all you got to say is, "No bag, please. Or debit." It's like four words. Or when you're getting off the bus, you can thank the bus driver. Or when you're ordering your coffee, you order it the same way every time. All you got to say is, "Iced coffee." That's it, "Please." And so that's a really good way to practice. But language, as you say, is an analogy that I use all the time in my teaching because I'm also a language learner. I'm learning Spanish and I know that when your brain has to process it can't also be processing other things.
So something I do with my students a lot is we do what are called cognitive load games and that forces the brain to do a little processing while you're also thinking about maintaining your target voice. And this, as a language learner, that as soon as someone asks you in a simple question about your life, if you're trying to reply in a language you don't speak... Like my Spanish teacher asked me, "What car do you drive?" And I was like, "No sé. I don't know what car I drive." Like my brain just lost that information while it was processing Spanish. And this happens in the exact same way when you're trying to maintain a new speaking voice.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. I was reading the testimonials on your website from such a diverse range of students. And you were saying at the beginning most of your students were trans and disabled, but now that you're selling your E-course, it's not the same. Would you say that's still mostly the majority or?
Renée Yoxon:
Well, I don't know about the disability status of the students anymore because I only know that they come to me usually because they're trans. But also I don't know about the gender status of students, people who are cis also study with me. I've had like gay men, for example, in countries where it's not safe to sound gay.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Talk to me about modifying their voice to sound more masculine and more straight. And then of course, cis women who both want to sound more masculine in business or more feminine to be... There's just no limit to the people who look for this service.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
And are you still actively writing songs?
Renée Yoxon:
Well, I don't have my songwriting practice in the way that I did when I was making albums. But as I mentioned earlier, I sometimes get commissions to write songs for people and I will do that. And I also have been working recently with a friend from the songwriting program in Limerick, Aoife McAtamney, her artist name is Pink Breath. And we love co-writing together. She's such a beautiful writer and singer. And so we've been meeting every other week for a couple of hours. And I'm writing, but it feels more like a dramaturgical role, like a producer role, sort of like I'm looking at the overarching connection between songs and we're trying to make a story out of these songs, and really, I'm just a foil. Like I'll say, "I think it should be this way." And she'll go, "No, I now decided that I like it the other way because I had to think about it." So I really just love the songwriting process and the practice of it, but I'm not committed to it like I was when I was in school or when I was actively making records.
Leah Roseman:
So many of your songs seem like heartbreak songs. Are they all autobiographical or is it some of it just narrative telling a character's story?
Renée Yoxon:
It's a mix of narrative and autobiography, for example, Drinking Coffee is probably my most listened to song. And that one is not autobiographical because it's about a woman with multiple children in a mountain town. (Singing).
Yeah. So sometimes I will write based on a prompt, but I do autobiography. You haven't heard the songs from my Masters degree yet, but I'm happy to share some of them with you. But I made an album in that degree program, so it was an album of nine songs. And it was called The Bad Years, and it's an autobiographical look at the first five years of my chronic illness. So songs that helped me to process what it was going through chronic pain at such a young age. And I hope to release that someday. I don't know when, it might never happen, but someday I hope so.
Leah Roseman:
Why haven't you released it?
Renée Yoxon:
Because they were recorded by me in a little studio, they're not well recorded. They're really just in the demo state right now. So there's kind of just a high bar, high activation energy needed to get to the release process, which would be money and recording and all those things. And I just have other things to focus on, but I know those songs will be there if I ever want to release a record again.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Might be interesting to talk about is you're in your 30s and you grew up sort of the evolution of the internet, but I know when you were first accessing music, it was through Kazaa Music sharing, which I hadn't even heard of.
Renée Yoxon:
Oh no. Did I say that in another interview?
Leah Roseman:
You did.
Renée Yoxon:
The FBI are going to come for me. Yeah, I mean that was how I got into jazz was by... I mean Kazaa, what was special about Kazaa was that what you would do is you would search... Well, what I would do anyway. You'd search for a artist that you knew. So let's say I was familiar with Ella Fitzgerald. And what you would do is you would see who had Ella Fitzgerald in their library, and then you could open the entire library of that person. So people would share their libraries on servers and then you could just download whatever you wanted from other people's music libraries. It's hard to imagine that now, now that we have Spotify, it's like uncurated, just anything. You can go and listen to anything on Spotify. But I would search for one jazz artist I knew and see that Matt 578 has all of Ella Fitzgerald. Well, what else does he have?
And I could go back in the folders, the folder tree and see Matt 578's jazz collection and download it all, all of it. You can just have it all. Terrible in retrospect, but at the time, as a teenager with no moral compass, I was able to find music that I would never have been exposed to unless I had a jazz loving uncle or whatever, which there's nobody in my family who listens to jazz. So at 16, 17, I was listening to Deep Cuts from Eddie Carter. Like why? It's luck that I got into that stuff.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. It's interesting you say everything's on Spotify. I was reading a history of the blues last week and it was... I can't remember the museum, but it was an archive in the deep South and that they had this huge collection of thousands of old 78s and wax cylinder recordings.
Renée Yoxon:
Wow.
Leah Roseman:
And the curator was saying, "No, everything is really not digitized. There's so much material still that's-"
Renée Yoxon:
That's so true. I mean, I have records that I... I don't even have a record player, but I have a couple of records that I can never get rid of because I know they're not digitized. I have one particular Carmen McRae album that I love so much and I take it over to my friend's house, so we listen to it together because I don't have a record player. But yeah, definitely lots of stuff is not on Spotify for sure.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And what would you say in terms of your growing up, musically and the changes. Now you're at this TikTok star, I mean, it's kind of funny.
Renée Yoxon:
Star.
Leah Roseman:
Well, yes.
Renée Yoxon:
Okay. What's your question? Sorry.
Leah Roseman:
So my question is, if you could reflect on the changes in the music industry and promotion and access and how you think it affects people coming up today.
Renée Yoxon:
Well, yeah. My perspective is a little bit different from your average musicians, I think because I knew in my jazz degree that I wasn't going to be able to pursue a performing arts career, which is kind of sad. But when I started at McGill, I was pretty disabled. I had my Rollator, which is a four wheeled walker, like a mobility aid. And I would use my Rollator every day. I parked in the accessible parking. I really could just barely get to school and get home and manage my food and that was it. And even in the setting of McGill, there were, I would say 70% of the performances that I had to do in order to graduate were not accessible. So either they were in a club in Montreal, no venues are accessible, that's a big problem here. Or they were in one of the venues at McGill that was not accessible. And it was just so hostile towards disabled people, the music industry.
And there was a prominent conductor who was disabled, a disabled woman, I forget her name now, Eleanor Stubley, Eleanor Stubley, who was a professor... I could cry thinking about her because she passed away by suicide while she was at McGill. And one of the reasons was that she couldn't get accommodated in the way that she needed to live her life. We used to park next to each other. There was two accessible parking spots and she never learned my name. One time she was like, "Are you supposed to park there?" I was like, "Eleanor, we've been parking next to each other for two years." But when she died, they held her memorial in the main theater. I can't remember what it's called, but it's not accessible. If you want to get on stage there, you have to get into one of those big chair lifts and then five stage hands have to turn it on.
And then once you're on there, you can't use the bathroom. Oh, it was so upsetting to me that I wrote a scathing letter to the dean and was like, "First of all, how dare you hold her memorial in this place that she couldn't access independently? That's disrespectful to her memory. Second of all, you're emailing all the singers to ask us if we can participate in the choir for her memorial. And you're not including any accessibility information. That's why she killed herself." I get so angry when I think about it. So this was the start of my leaving the music industry.
I just knew that there was no way I was going to be able to manage my chronic pain and also do things that are necessary in order to succeed as a musician in the Canadian scene. Which is like touring long distances, staying in places that are uncomfortable, staying up very late. It's just not built for me. I don't necessarily believe that now, my thoughts and feelings about disability and the arts has changed somewhat. And that's in great part to a program called Sync Leadership, which is a program for disabled leaders in arts and culture. And they taught me that like, "Yes, the world is not created for us, but we can ask for what we need and receive it." And I'm working hard to do that now.
So, when I was about to graduate from McGill, I really thought I would never do music again. And then I found the program in Ireland and was like, "Okay, I'll do one more kick at the can because this program looks really fun." And luckily it was a very accessible program. I really had no problem getting my access needs met while I was there, unlike my time at McGill, which was really, really frustrating while I was there. Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
As a trans person, did you feel welcome in that community?
Renée Yoxon:
Well, I mean, I was very, very early in my coming out process at the time, and I'm also not pursuing a ton of medical transition. So it's sort of funny, when you're both trans and disabled, you sometimes feel like you have to choose like, "What am I going to get met today?" And so I had to talk to every teacher about my access needs and how I was going to miss class sometimes. And so I just didn't also feel like, "And by the way, my pronouns are they/them..." It's just, "Okay, it's a lot. I'll just deal with one thing at a time." Some teachers, yes, I felt comfortable talking to them about my pronouns or whatever else I needed. But there was a lot of homophobia, sexism present at McGill. This is not a secret. I mean, it might be shocking to hear it come out of my mouth, but everybody knows it. It might be different now because I was a couple years ago that I was there, but so transphobia just is homophobia and sexism in disguise, so it didn't feel very comfortable being openly trans.
Leah Roseman:
You said at McGill, but at the University of Limerick-
Renée Yoxon:
A 100%, I felt comfortable. And there were little issues that did happen. But actually, one really funny thing is when I applied, you know how normally you have to pick your honorific from a dropdown box, it's like you're either Miss or Mister or Doctor, those are your options. So I picked whatever, Miss. And then when I went to the next slide, suddenly that dropdown box had changed to a fill-in box and I was like, "A programming error, let me just take advantage of that." And so I just changed it to the non-binary honorific, which is Mix, M-X. So because of that programming error, when I received my acceptance letter, it was addressed to Mx. Yoxon, which was the first time that had ever happened to me ever. And it was really, really beautiful.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And for people that don't understand the importance of pronouns and how that can change for people, do you want to address that at all?
Renée Yoxon:
I mean, I think it's quite simple. If you use like she/her pronouns, just imagine if somebody would call you he and him and Dave, you know what I mean? Just imagine someone calling you the wrong thing, it's that simple. It would just be incorrect. And nowadays every trans person is different, every person is different. But when somebody misgenders me, it's very easy for me to tell if they're doing so from an evil place or from a place of just error or from, they just don't know. So I usually don't get upset when people misgender me on the street. It does chip away at you after a while, obviously. But when someone does gender me correctly, it's an overwhelming sign of respect and love. And I know for certain people in my life it's been very challenging to make that change. Like my parents, for instance, obviously they raised me, so they've known me the longest but my mom is getting really good.
I was telling you before this podcast, I went to a funeral on Monday and I was introduced to a lot of her cousins and she would say, "This is my eldest." Instead of my eldest daughter. Or she would say, "This is my Renée." Which was so cute. And that's a really big change for her because those are habits that are hard to change over time, but when you can do it shows that person that you love them and care for them.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Are you still teaching voice privately occasionally, or songwriting?
Renée Yoxon:
I'm still teaching voice privately, only trans voice at the moment.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Renée Yoxon:
I'm not teaching songwriting at the moment. It is sad. I do miss teaching songwriting, which is a really fun part of my practice, and I assume someday it'll happen again. But right now we've got our eyes on the prize, got a goal.
Leah Roseman:
And your goal is to grow that part of your business.
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And in terms of being a disability rights advocate, are you doing it outside your business or?
Renée Yoxon:
This is a funny... You keep opening these huge topics, which I love, but I don't consider myself a disability rights advocate. And the reason I don't is that there are people whose profession is disability rights advocacy and who have the skills of advocacy, which I don't have. I mean, I used to work for a not-for-profit who did that work. So I've seen those people who really know how to do that work. I think disabled people are in the unfortunate position of having to be disability rights advocates for themselves. And at McGill certainly, I had to do that a lot. I had to advocate for myself and I had to continuously be fighting for my right to be there.
And I mean, some people could say that I'm a disability rights advocate because I continue to advocate for captions on things and other types of access and accommodations. But I think as a teacher, that's just what we should be doing for all of our students. We should be putting the onus of advocacy on ourselves so that our student doesn't have to go through what I went through at McGill. Just the act of asking like, "What do you need so that I can give you the best teaching experience?" That's all it takes.
Leah Roseman:
It sounds like your experience was pretty negative at McGill. Did you consider not finishing your degree there?
Renée Yoxon:
I didn't consider that at any point, I should have. I had all my extracurricular credits covered from my physics degree, so it wasn't that much work actually, to get the jazz degree. Like I went in and did the core courses and my motto during that time was, "Put your head down and do the work." So I would go in... I was a mature student also, so I wasn't have any of the emotional problems of being a young person in university for the first time. But I would go, I'd go to class and then I'd get out of there. And I had some great times too. I had wonderful times making music and making friends. I had some really amazing times with people, but I also did find a deli meat slicer in the accessible washroom. So lots of things, ups and downs at McGill.
Leah Roseman:
But you've made Montreal your home for now, after you returned from Ireland?
Renée Yoxon:
Yeah, I actually never left this apartment. I sublet it for a year while I was in Ireland. So I've been here for nine years now and I love Montreal. I don't think I'm ever going to leave.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Renée Yoxon:
Mm-hmm.
Leah Roseman:
You don't have any problem with the politics of being an anglophone and some of the new rules?
Renée Yoxon:
No. I speak French and I have like half of my family is Francophone and yeah, I'm not as connected to the fully anglophone community that may have issues with that. I do think it's very challenging for especially new immigrants who want to access healthcare and the healthcare system is a 100% in French and that is challenging. I have found that running a business in Quebec has been very difficult for that reason. All of the business services are a 100% in French, which I can speak, but it is challenging sometimes. But no, I really value the multiculturalism of this town, specifically. I love that I have access to a Spanish bookstore and I can speak French whenever I want. I mean this neighborhood where I live in Parc-Extension has a 100 languages being spoken at any given time. My neighbor speaks to Tagalog and my other neighbor speaks Lingala and there's tons of Greek and Swahili, so I really love it here.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for sharing your story with us today and your beautiful music as well.
Renée Yoxon:
Thank you so much for having me, Leah. It was a pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed getting to know Renée and feel like you got to know them better both as person and musician. I so enjoy getting to know a wide diversity of musicians and their fascinating stories . Thanks for following this podcast! Check out the link in the description for how you can help me keep producing this series.
