Vedera

Kristen May grew up in the Kansas City suburb of Blue Springs, as did the rest of her bandmates. Her entire family was musical; her mother was a singer who loved Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Jim Croce. “I listened to those artists, as well as my older brother’s rock records,” she says. «He loved Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, and Nirvana, so that rubbed off on me. Otherwise maybe I’d have holed up in my room and become a folk artist!”

When May was 17, her father, a drummer, gave her a guitar and she began writing her own songs. “It felt really good for me to express myself in that way,” she says. “That’s when I began wanting to be in a band.”

Meanwhile, Brian Little’s father gave his son his first guitar at age 13 and Little played in bands throughout high school. “I played trumpet as a kid and performed in competitions,” he recalls. “It was so nerve-wracking to have to memorize six pages of a classical movement and perform it perfectly onstage, alone. So to play with a band was exhilarating for me.” Little loved classic guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Lindsey Buckingham, whom he cites as someone who “knows how to add melody to a song, but not take away from what the singer is trying to say.”

May and Little knew each other in high school and began playing in a band together called, Red Authentic, after May returned home following an aborted stint at college in Nashville. “I didn’t want to study music anymore, I just wanted to play it,” she says. In 2003, the band she had formed with her brothers needed a guitarist and they called Little. “He and I clicked and our worlds collided in the greatest way,” she says. With her brothers unable to travel and pursue the career musician life that May and Little craved, they asked Little’s high-school friend Jason Douglas to join and also recruited Brian’s younger brother Drew to play drums.

In the summer of 2004, Vedera recorded its six-song EP, This Broken City, at Black Lodge with the support of Ed Rose. In 2005, the band released an LP entitled The Weight of an Empty Room. Since the summer of 2005, Vedera has been touring at various times with Dredg, MewithoutYou, Communiqué, Thrice, Mae, and Underoath. In early January 2006, Vedera went on a 40 city tour opening for MUTEMATH, followed by an opening stint for Owen. In the Summer of 2006, Vedera joined a tour with Lucero and Murder By Death. After a month off, they headed back on the road for another tour with Mae and The New Amsterdams.

In early December 2005, Vedera’s label, Second Nature Recordings, announced that the band had been forced to change its name from «Veda» to avoid legal complications with another band of «a similar moniker.» Though the other band Vaeda spells their name differently, it’s pronounced exactly the same way and had caused them several instances of confusion in the marketplace.

Kristen May and Brian Little recently married.

Band members
Kristen May: vocals, guitar, piano
Brian Little: lead guitar
Jason Douglas: bass guitar
Drew Little: drums

Discography
2004: This Broken City
2005: The Weight of an Empty Room
2009: Stages