'You have a dream. You work hard for it. You make many sacrifices. You find friends who share your passion. You create something. You hope for success through hard work and determination and talent. It's a classic storyline-America loves when good things happen to people who work hard, and Vietmanese-born Vi Tran is second to none in personifying that American dream. He's an actor, a musician, a tireless voice for and supporter of the arts community, and a pretty decent card player to boot. Above all, his singing, songwriting, and storytelling have been heard around Kansas City through his shows with Hot Caution, a lively cover band featuring a rotating lineup, and his 2010 EP Goodbye, Summer. Hearing him at Czar Bar or the Kill Devil Club or any of the other venues he plays, however, cannot properly prepare you for what you will hear with his debut full-length release, American Heroine. It's an album that is less about singles and radio play and more about musical theatre and song craft. Tran's professional Facebook page tells of the literary inspiration he called upon to help create Heroine's sonic grandeur; it's a projection that is tied in with the album artwork, which hearkens to the golden days of Hollywood and all the magic that art was and is capable of. He is fond of saying that he is "part wheat fields, part sea salt," and this is his Wheat album, a tribute to authors such as Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald-authors whose protagonists have dealt with struggles and challenges that mirror those of Tran's family as they struggled with the challenges of being refugees in a new world. Those stories have been with him for the better part of a decade, waiting for the right time to be shared. When he felt that time had come, and he had amassed the strongest overall support staff possible, he threw himself completely into the project with the intent to make American Heroine look and sound like a well-worn paperback novel. There's a commonly used phrase in the world of poker: "all-in," which is what it's called when you put every one of your chips at risk. Sometimes it's an act of desperation, when you're almost out of the game and you want to take one last shot at a big payoff so you can keep playing ... but other times it shows supreme confidence, a sense of invulnerability, when the player is so sure of what he has that he dares anyone to challenge him. Vi Tran knows he's put everything he has-emotionally, mentally, financially, and every-other-ally you can think of-into his new album ... ... and I think American Heroine is a winning hand.' --Michael Byars, The Deli Magazine.
