Dave and Victoria
Dave Tate and Victoria Lagerström
The poetically crafted lyricism, and expressive acoustic guitar work of Dave Tate beautifully compliments the soulful soaring tones of Victoria Lagerström in this contemporary folk duo.
Tate and Lagerström recently released their debut duet CD, The Same Heart. In 2009 they embarked on a successful European tour to support the album. The Same Heart is a collection of songs about their Trans-Atlantic romance. Lagerström came to the US from Stockholm, Sweden to write and record with Tate. The couple fell in love and Lagerström ended up not using her return ticket to Sweden. The couple was married among the beautiful cliffs of Zion National Park three weeks after her arrival. The Same Heart is a primarily acoustic effort with lush string arrangements supporting the intimate, soulful voices of Tate and Lagerstrom. Much of the album has an introspective, autumnal tone to it, but tracks like the driving “Play” or the rhythmic “Keep Walking” give the album an emotional balance.
The combination of Tate’s fingerstyle and folk/rock influences and Lagerström’s background in Jazz and Soul singing creates a unique soulful acoustic sound. Influenced by artists such as Paul Simon and Anita Baker, Tate and Lagerström lead audiences into an intimate space in their records and in live performances.
Prior to meeting Lagerström in 2006 Tate released The Solitude of Here, which CDBaby called “...By far the most grabbing male folk album we’ve seen in months.” Tate’s next album, The Final Hour in 2008, also received critical acclaim. Heaven Magazine raved, "His own unique style (think of a cross between Paul Simon and Jeff Buckley, not just in style but also in quality) hits such a level of perfection that it's hard to comprehend anything more beautiful." In 2006 Lagerström, across the ocean, was recording Heaven Sent with some of Sweden’s elite musicians. Upon its release in 2008, Folk Forum Stated ”Lagerström’s voice has true Soul in it and I don’t mean the swinging kind but the kind of Soul that gets under your skin and makes you itch.” As a duo Tate and Lagerström have toured throughout the western US and internationally. Tate and Lagerstrom currently reside in Zion Canyon.
Dave and Victoria's Story by Brian Passey
Intercontinental duo finds harmony in music, marriage
By Brian Passey
She’s a former Miss Sweden who discovered music through her homeland heroes, Abba, but idolized American jazz and soul artists. He’s a Utah boy who studied opera but has an affinity for singer-songwriters like Paul Simon. Together, they are Dave and Victoria, the Springdale couple whose mutual love for music – and eventually for each other – could not be separated by an ocean. Victoria Lagerström began singing with a church choir at age 10 but was soon interested in solo performance. She started voice lessons at 14 with a focus on soul and jazz, influenced by her father’s record collection that included Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Roberta Flack, Anita Baker, Gladys Knight and others. Although she had a passion for singing, other pursuits delayed a fulltime investment in music. For a time, she concentrated on modeling, eventually becoming Miss Sweden in 1997. But Lagerström says she got sick of the “superficial mess” of the beauty industry and went on a “spiritual journey” in her mid-20’s where she began to write songs. She recorded an album and began to play live music throughout her native Stockholm.
Meanwhile, half a world away in Southern Utah, Dave Tate was in high school, playing in a ska-punk band called Jimmy’s First Kiss. He started out singing in the Salt Lake Children’s Choir as a kid. He began playing guitar at age 14 so he could write his own songs and his mother had a synthesizer keyboard he used to create the bass lines and drumbeats for his mini-compositions. After gigging locally with Jimmy’s First Kiss, Tate moved to Salt Lake City, attending the University of Utah for a time before he dropped out and returned to performing. Later he moved to Logan where he studied classical voice at Utah State Universtiy and briefly considered a career as an opera singer. In 2006, he chose to concentrate on his own music, which is influenced by Simon, Dave Matthews, Jeff Buckley and James Taylor, among others.
While playing with a band in Salt Lake City, Tate met Victoria via Myspace, the social networking Web site that has helped many musicians launch careers in a recent years. Victoria says she spent a lot of time using her Myspace page to promote her music. “Then I met Dave on Myspace she says. “I had my music up there and he had his music up there and I just found him one day there randomly. I was really awestruck by his voice and music,” she says. Lagerström says she felt the energy of Utah’s landscapes from the nature photos on Tate’s Myspace page. acknowledging it was foreign to her because of her fast paced Stockholm lifestyle. She also felt a similarity in their mellow music and wanted to collaborate. So they began to chat online. “We were very much in love before I came over here,” she says. “I don’t know how that happens. I always said I would never date over the Internet.” Tate says he flet the same way about Internet dating, but that didn’t stop them.
Lagerstrom says she also remembered a tarot card reading during which she was told she would meet a man from the mountains near Las Vegas. She came to the United States in January 2007 armed with a return ticket to Sweden. But she never used it. “We ended up getting married three weeks after my arrival,” Lagerström says. The couple was married on the Kolob Terrace, near Zion National Park, and moved six times before settling in Southern Utah near Tate’s family. During that time they managed to record an album together called “The Same Heart.” They both also have solo albums they continue to sell, many of them via the Internet.
After they were married, the couple traveled to Europe. They toured the Netherlands – even playing a few sold out shows –and spent a month in Sweden with L Lagerström’s family where Tate experienced the culture shock his wife still feels at times. Although the United States is quite different from where she spent most of her life, Lagerström says she is happy to be here. She enjoys how free and positive she feels here and says the energy she feels in Southern Utah is grounding. “Ideally we’d love to live here some day and settle down but we don’t know where our music will take us,” she says. For now, though, the duo is concentrating on treating Southern Utahns to Dave and Victoria’s own brand of contemporary folk music.
Musicians and Artists on "The Same Heart"
Dave Tate - Guitar, Vocals
Victoria Lagerstrom - Vocals
Dan Tate - string arrangements
Alexis Hoggard - Cello
Kelly Astle - Violin
Kristi Geddes - Viola
Pete Jensen - Bass
Jordan Davis - Percussion
Photographers:
- Paul Duane www.paulduanephoto.com
- Natalie Cass www.cassstudios.com
Artwork by Birdhy
Engineered by Mike Simmons at Counterpoint Studios
Mixed and Mastered by Steve Lemmon at Spiral Studios
Produced by Dave Tate and Victoria Lagerstrom
all songs copyright 2008 David G. Tate and Victoria E. Lagerstrom