Boulder musician Ngoc CC chats with KGNU’s Anya Sanchez. Ngoc discusses their journey into music, and shares how day-to-day life and personal experiences fuel their songwriting, emphasizing the therapeutic and cathartic nature of music. Ngoc also talks about their recent EP “Out the Texas Heat,” which reflects their experiences and emotions tied to leaving Texas (Interview date: 7/16/2024)
Anya Sanchez: I have local Boulder musician Ngoc CC here in the studio with me. Ngoc, let’s begin by telling me a bit about yourself and your musical journey, and about when you first realized it was something that you wanted to pursue seriously.
Ngoc CC: Thanks Anya. I knew I wanted to do music at a really young age, like four or five. But, growing up with migrant parents and them being refugees, that’s not really an option to do music. They never discouraged us from doing arts at home, but it wasn’t ever thought of as something that you could do as a career.
That was a thought very young, but I didn’t actually consider doing it professionally until I was 21 or 22. I was about to graduate, and I was like, I legitimately cannot work a regular office job, even if it’s enjoyable in some capacity. I cannot do this for the rest of my life, it would not be okay for my livelihood.
So I was like, okay, I love music. Can I actually do this? I started playing music a little bit more and I was considering it, but I was still really scared. Then my friend heard me play guitar one time and was like, you should do this professionally.
Anya Sanchez: You went to college. Were you involved in music during that time or was it just after college that you really got into it?
Ngoc CC: Yeah, it was after college. I had stopped playing music when I was 14 because I got really depressed. I didn’t pick up the guitar again until I was 21. I learned the guitar when I was 11 or 12. I was really good. I played all the time. I was in this middle school band, I was in orchestra. I played the violin. I played the bass. I was very active in music and it was awesome. It was like my thing. But yeah, I was 14 and I moved from Missouri to Texas and that was a huge change.
I pretty much dropped the guitar because it literally did not feel like anything to me anymore. It wasn’t stimulating. Then when I was 21, the band Khruangbin. It was listening to the guitar playing on that band that was the first spark. I was like, whoa, this guitar is awesome. I haven’t heard anything like it in American funk music. So I picked up the guitar again and started playing, and the rest is history.
Anya Sanchez: That’s amazing. What inspires you to write or play music?
Ngoc CC: The first thing that comes to my head is just day to day life. My experiences, coping and processing whatever I’m going through and that feels really good. That feels cathartic, healthy. It’s very therapeutic to play music. But also, sharing the love of sounds and music. Music has gotten me through some very dark periods and has lifted me up. I think about that, not when I’m making music immediately, but when I think about my career in general. I’m like, oh, I know this is going to be super helpful to some folks, even if it’s just one person.
Anya Sanchez: That’s awesome. And you had an EP come out last year. Tell us a little bit about that and what the process was like.
Ngoc CC: “Out the Texas Heat” EP came out last June, and I made that over the span of four months. It’s five tracks. I started playing a lot of acoustic songs in January of 2023. The singles and music that I had been making before were much more bedroom pop, not as stripped back. There was this one day that I wrote three songs, which I’ve still never done since. Three songs in one day is crazy.
At the end of the week, when I had recorded some demos, I was like, oh man, I think this is an EP. All the songs were on the acoustic guitar and they all sounded thematically cohesive. So all the songs that were recorded that day, I was like, okay, we’ll make an EP out of it. They all had to do with my grief, leaving Texas with that happiness, relief, anger, frustration. Every track but one on that EP references Texas in some way.
Anya Sanchez: How was it moving to Boulder from Texas? I know that must have been a big transition and there’s probably differences and similarities in the music scene.
Ngoc CC: Yeah, in terms of music, super different. In Texas, at least in Dallas, the music is super diverse. Dallas is very diverse. There’s house, there’s R&B, there’s soul, there’s hip hop, there’s alternative. And here, it’s mostly punk. That’s a generalization, but from a lot of the folks that I’ve played with, and the gigs where there’s multiple people in the lineup, it’s a lot of punk. I had never really interacted with the punk scene.
What’s also different in the scene here is that there’s so many more trans kids playing music versus in Texas. There’s no community. At least, I wasn’t a part of any trans music community in Dallas. I also wasn’t as deep into my music career in Dallas as I have been here. That’s something that has been super beneficial for me – to be within my trans community and hang out with all those folks.
It also has been challenging in another aspect. It’s not racially diverse. And that’s very hard. I feel like there’s a lot less eclectic sounds in comparison to Dallas. In Dallas, there’s way more different cultural sounds coming in, but there’s not trans representation. So it’s like an ebb and flow, right? Pros here, cons here, pros there, cons there.
Anya Sanchez: Do you want to play a song for us?
Anya Sanchez: That was “Yellow” by Ngoc CC, and that’s an unreleased song, right?
Ngoc CC: Yes, so I’m making an album right now, and that should be released at the end of this year, beginning of next year.
Anya Sanchez: Okay, that’s so exciting to look forward to. Is that a song that you wrote recently or is that one you’ve been sitting on for a while?
Ngoc CC: I wrote it in October of last year, so I have been sitting on it for a while. Almost a year now. Since the release of my last EP, I’ve been writing songs without any end goal in mind. But over the past few weeks, I’ve been like, okay, I’ve collected like a good amount of songs. It’s time.
Anya Sanchez: Do you find that having that goal of creating an EP or album motivates you to write, or does it feel stressful and constrictive?
Ngoc CC: It definitely feels pretty stifling. I feel like it’s this constant battle of, you have to release stuff and you want to release stuff. It’s challenging because you don’t want to be pigeonholed into a date because creativity is so unplanned for. You don’t know when it’s gonna end. It takes a lot of time. At the same time you have to, I guess with anything, be like, I have to call it quits here, or I have to end this here and just release it. It’s always challenging and I don’t think it is helpful creatively, but that’s just what you have to go through.
Anya Sanchez: Yeah, you definitely can’t force creativity or put a time limit on it.
You have made several music videos for your music. I find that having a visual element can add a lot to a song. How did those all come together?
Ngoc CC: So, my homie Jonas was the person who directed all of my music videos. “Moon”, “Coast”, “L.A. Suits You”, and “Colorado Girl”. Jonas and I went to high school together. He’s been doing film and lighting up in the East Coast for a while. When I started making this EP, we had been texting a lot about potential music videos for the future. And then I was like, this is an actual project that’s gonna be released. A lot of the creative elements I gave to Jonas and was like, interpret this song the best that you can and give me the slate of ideas. He came back to me with a bunch of ideas. He’s super talented, very creative. And I was like, cool, sounds good to me. However you’re interpreting it is beautiful. I don’t think that at the time that we recorded it, I really had the skill set to visually create a music video. Whereas Jonas is a filmmaker, so he was able to take my music and understand how it was supposed to look. I flew to New York and we shot two of the music videos in New York. The other two he shot without me in it. They’re short films, essentially.
Anya Sanchez: Awesome. And it’s probably pretty far in the future, but is that something you want to do again for your upcoming album?
Ngoc CC: I actually don’t really know right now. I was texting Jonas about “Yellow”, about potentially doing a music video up in New York during the fall when the leaves are turning yellow. So if there were a music video, it might just be one for this album. We were pretty ambitious and really excited to make four last year, but I’m not really sure if I feel the need to make as many music videos for this project. I think I’m much more interested in one really good one with Jonas, and then maybe that’s it.
Anya Sanchez: I feel like the imagery from the lyrics in “Yellow” would really lend itself to a super cool music video. Was that inspired by the fall here in Colorado?
Ngoc CC: Yes. I wrote at the end of October. Where I live right now, I feel like I live in the wild. I live in North Boulder. Literally, I think it’s called rural North Boulder. I saw a bear the other day. It freaked me out. I’m from Texas. We don’t have bears!
Anya Sanchez: Have you seen a bear before?
Ngoc CC: No, it was eating my trash. I tried to run away, but then I remembered you can’t not face the bear. It was terrifying so I ran into my car.
Anya Sanchez: I’m glad you survived that experience.
Ngoc CC: And then the window was open so I was just screaming in there and it left. It was like, the vibes are off.
So anyways, where I live – trees everywhere. And all the trees were yellow in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced. When I lived in Missouri, the trees obviously went yellow, but this was bright yellow, only yellow. There’s no orange. There’s no red. It’s just yellow. I was going through a really hard time personally with a lot of relationships. I wrote the song in a day and it just made a lot of sense. I was going through a lot of change – leaves were changing. It was very easy. It flowed very naturally.
Anya Sanchez: Do you usually write the lyrics to your songs before you write any of the chords?
Ngoc CC: It can be different every time, but probably more often I’m writing the chord progression and the lyrics at the exact same time. I think for this song, I was like, ooh, that sounds like the start of a song. And then I probably started seeing lyrics on top of it. That’s usually what I do. I’ll keep doing the chord progression over and over until I feel like I’ve landed on lyrics that I like. Then I continue the arrangement of the song. By the end of the day, I wrote an entire song. Then I’ll write everything down and I’ll record it.
Anya Sanchez: Do you have anything coming up in the future? We discussed your new EP. Do you happen to have any live shows or DJ events that you want to talk about?
Ngoc CC: Yes, so I’m working on a live set with my band right now, which feels really good, really exciting. I put a pause on DJing and playing my own original music for a year. I was just super exhausted working my job, and also probably emotionally exhausted. It’s hard constantly putting your music out there when maybe you’re not in a good emotional state, because it’s very vulnerable to sing about your stuff to a whole audience.
Playing shows is exhausting. Most musicians and all my bandmates are working other jobs. Like, you’re working your job, then you go and set up, and then you don’t break down ’till 2am and it can be a lot. I took a pause on that, but luckily I’m feeling a lot more energized and it feels necessary to get back on it. So yeah, me and my homies, we’re making a live set right now. It feels really good. I’m hoping for some more gigs in the next few weeks.
Anya Sanchez: Where can people find information about your music or any shows coming up?
Ngoc CC: My website is ngoc.cc. You can see everything there. And then my Instagram @bakedpotato is super great for that. So any information is the best on those two sites.
Anya Sanchez: Awesome. I’m excited to stay tuned for what’s coming up for you. Do you want to play us out with another song?
Ngoc CC: Oh my gosh. Yes.
Anya Sanchez: Thanks for playing us another one. And what is that one called?
Ngoc CC: “Moon”.
Anya Sanchez: Again, you can find that on your website, correct?
Ngoc CC: Yes. You can find the music video there.
Anya Sanchez: Thank you so much for coming in today, Ngoc. It was my pleasure talking to you today. I’m excited to hear what you have coming up.
Ngoc CC: Thanks, homie.
