Summer Meltdown Preview: Whitney Mongé

Summer Meltdown Preview: Whitney Mongé June 13, 20195 Comments

Dan Ray

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Whitney Mongé performs at the Tractor Tavern in May 2019. // Photo by Zen Wolfang

In honor of Summer Meltdown, Dan’s Tunes will drop a new Q&A with artists playing the festival for the next four Thursdays. Get excited, and then head to Darrington for the festival, from August 1st – 4th. First up, we’re excited to bring you Whitney Mongé, an alt-soul singer-songwriter out of Seattle.

Q: You call your genre alternative soul. How did you land there?

A: You know, this is the bane of most singer-songwriters’s existences. What’s my genre? Especially if you’re inspired by multiple, different styles of music, which I am. But I came up with the term myself, years ago. Basically, I’m heavily inspired by rock music — specifically alternative rock — which is coined from the Northwest, from a lot of the rock ‘n’ roll of the 90s here. And, you know, soul music, which is what I grew up listening to from my parents. Soul and blues or rhythm and blues were really prominent at the homefront, so I took the two styles of genre and melded them together.

Q: Your music always hits home. What message do you want your listeners to take away from your songs?

A: I’m always trying to write from a standpoint that is relatable and that anybody from any walk of life could relate to something that I’m talking about. I’m not necessarily trying to convey anything besides, we’re in this together. We’re all going through the same things, and music is a great way of moving through some of the things in your life. More than anything, I like to evoke emotion. That’s something that I think is lacking in today’s mainstream music. It’s mostly a nice hook line and this and that, and I feel like the music that I’m mostly inspired by is music that’s just really passionate and the people that are saying what they’re saying, they mean it. So, I’m just trying to evoke any kind of emotion out of the listener.

Q: You moved here in 2007. Where did you move from, and why did you choose Seattle?

A: I moved from Spokane. I chose Seattle because it was the closest big city [laughs]. No, I moved from Spokane when I was 20 years old. Yes, it was the closest big city to get out of the small town vibe, but also, I was really attracted to the alternative queer scene here. The queer scene was really vibrant when I moved here. The artist scene was really vibrant. It was a little more diverse than Spokane. It just attracted me, and all the things that I felt like I wasn’t able to be in Spokane, I felt like Seattle gave me the opportunity to be myself more and feel safe about it.

Q: Did that prove true?

A: Yes and no. I can’t really tell if it’s me just getting older and potentially a little more jaded, but yeah, totally. It was a huge part of me finding my purpose within music. I probably wouldn’t have found that at the time I found it if I was still living in Spokane. It totally helped me to have real life experiences so I could actually write songs.

Q: What are you looking forward to most about playing Summer Meltdown?

A: Summer Meltdown is my favorite festival I’ve been to in the Northwest, so it’s just an honor to get to play. I’ve only gone one time, and it was just so awesome. It was a couple years ago, and just watching all the musicians — everybody was on an elevated level of positivity. There’s just something about the culture there that, it kind of renews your spirit about human beings because everybody’s just so friendly and nice and being real, and all the crap that we deal with day to day kind of doesn’t exist while you’re at Meltdown.

Q: What do you think makes it different than other festivals?

A: I’ve met a lot of people that have gone to Summer Meltdown every year for the last 13 years — people that are just die-hard, really love the fest. So there’s a long-running community. There’s a lot of respect, a lot of people taking care of each other. I went alone, and, as a solo female camper, that could have not been fun, and it was totally fine. I felt safe and happy. The music and the intention behind everyone setting up their campgrounds can be really interactive, and it’s just really fun.