Courtesy of Jen Gray
Ava Jane is an 8-year-old who with a mission—to ask bands the hard-hitting questions like, "What was your favorite subject in school?” to the scene-closing “Can you show me your favorite dance moves?”
Although Jen Gray lives about three hours east of St. Louis, a lot of her family remains here in her native city. She’s in St. Louis to visit them on a regular basis, as well as to take concert photos at clubs and concert venues around town, which makes her trips even more frequent. Of late, her 8-year-old daughter, Ava Jane, has also been found in that narrow gangway between stage and audience, shooting pictures alongside her mom at shows like El Monstero’s most-recent gig.
Double-dipping her involvement at those shows, Ava Jane’s began interviewing artists for a YouTube channel called The Spectatour.
“My mom was shooting a show, and thought it would be cute for me to interview people,” the young YouTuber says. “That’s how I started.”
The pair sat down and “brainstormed questions, the ones that these musicians don’t normally get asked in interviews,” according to Gray. And that run of questions now includes such fare as “What was your favorite subject in school?” to the scene-closing “Can you show me your favorite dance moves?”
In just shy of 20 videos uploaded to The Spectatour so far, most guests seem in on the fun, giving thoughtful, if slightly whimsical answers to Ava Jane’s no-nonsense line of questioning. Dave Grelle of Celebration Day, for example, has two young kids and is clearly enjoying the experience; as does Dave Farver of El Monstero, who’s had a long side gig as a 'kindie-core' musician named Mr. Saxophone. Chip Self (the lighting designer of El Monstero’s massive stage spectacle), on the other hand, seems to be having as much fun as someone being held for ransom.
The good thing is that no matter how an interview plays out, the young host is happy at the conclusion of each.
“She’s pretty humble,” Gray says by phone, to background laughter from both her daughter and husband. “That’s a lie. She’s not humble, though she says that she’s awesome at being humble. The kids at school don’t know about it, she doesn’t talk about it there. I think the teachers are more impressed. As are the people in our community.
“She’s told me that she likes to have a YouTube channel,” Gray adds. “Interviewing celebrity rock stars is pretty cool, but she might be doing it more for me.”
Asked what it’s like to watch herself on screen, the pre-tween YouTuber says, “It makes me giggle.”
And her motivations? She speaks like a veteran of the form, saying, “I like the likes and the comments and also to get subscribers.”
A dream interview? First, she asks “living or dead?” Confirmed that a live human would be a better choice, she picks the omnipresent media entity of Dave Grohl.
When it’s suggested that Grohl’s exactly the type of person who would bite on the opportunity to be interviewed by an 8-year-old Midwestern YouTuber, Gray laughs and asks, “Do you have any connections?”
Although we don’t, we believe in the power of The Internet to make this dream come true.
In the meantime, a host of St. Louis musicians may wanna get prepped for Ava Jane’s grilling. She’s on a roll, and those subscribers are gonna demand new content.
Here's Ava Jane interviewing Farver:
