Dia Frampton keeping busy with ‘Voice’ tour, planning solo debut

Before "The Voice," before performing in front of an audience of pop stars and 12 million people on national TV, there were all-ages gigs in churches and in the back of music stores accompanied by her sister and a fake nose piercing.

Back then, Dia Frampton was just known as Dia, playing equally folky and fiery tunes with her older sibling, Meg, at since-shuttered local venues such as The Alley and Jillian's.

"That was my high school punk-rock phase," says Frampton, a native of Utah who lived here for a time and graduated from Vegas' Shadow Ridge High School in 2005, referring to Meg & Dia, the band she formed with her sister in 2004. "I was going through such a weird phase, just trying to fit in. It was actually really cool to see Vegas have a scene like that. It was such a little community of kids just trying to find their musical styles.

"I think we were a terrible band," she adds with a chuckle. "We were all still learning. Meg was just barely starting to play guitar, but that's some of the most precious music, when you're growing and learning. It always holds a soft spot."

Meg & Dia would generate considerable momentum for the Framptons, leading to a major label deal with Warner Bros. records, which released their third disc, "Here, Here and Here" in 2009, as well as a trio of appearances on the Warped Tour.

But last year, they were dropped by Warner, and the financial grind of being in a band led Frampton to audition for "The Voice," NBC's new talent show with star vocal coaches Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine and country crooner Blake Shelton, whom Frampton was paired with.

She ended up coming in second on the show.

"To be honest, I was a little bit desperate," Frampton says of her decision to audition for "The Voice." "With the band, I never would have thought I would have gone to TV. But we'd released our record, and it had come and gone. I was still living at my parents' house. It got to the point where we were like, 'Well, let's go on tour this fall,' and our guitar player would be like, 'I have a job and I need to keep it. I can't go out on tour and make $100 a week.' It was kind of the same thing with Meg. She has a jewelry business right now, and she's like, 'I can't stop making jewelry. This is how I pay my rent.'

"We were all getting stressed out, and music was on the back burner," she continues, "so my manager said, 'Try out for this, it will be a good way to promote the band.' I didn't think I'd get very far. He didn't even think I'd get very far."

But Frampton ended up being one of the show's breakout performers, duetting with Miranda Lambert on her hit "The House that Built Me" on "The Voice" finale, which led Shelton, Lambert's husband, to tell Frampton "You're family to me now, and I love you."

Currently, Frampton is ensconced on "The Voice Live on Tour," where the show's top eight contestants perform each night, and is in the midst of penning her solo debut.

It's a new challenge for her, as she's been best known, up to this point, for her willowy, often acoustic-based and delicately sung songs.

"I like to play really soft stuff, just kind of mellow music," she says. "And every day I'm changing. I've been really going on an upbeat dance kick lately, just really fun music that you kind of move to, which is really different for me, because I'm usually crooning on my guitar and writing really sad love songs."

This is also the first time Frampton is striking out on her own, though she says she's going to continue writing with her sister and hopes to reconvene their band at some point.

"Meg and I still want to play together," she says. "I still want to tour with the same Meg & Dia band and do all that stuff, but I'm going to be working on a record right now. I just wasn't ready to write a record so soon and so fast, but there's so much momentum with the show. I've been writing every day, like three different songs. I want to write at least a hundred songs and then pick out like 12 that I think are the best for the record."

If her songwriting has been taking place at an accelerated pace of late, so has Frampton's life in general.

To wit, she has to cut the interview short to hop a flight to London prior to hitting the road stateside.

She manages to catch the plane, if not her breath.

"It's been really busy," she says before parting. "I'm still kind of just trying to wrap my head around everything."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.