Conversations with Lisset Diaz

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisset Diaz

Hi Lisset , can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born in Havana, Cuba, March 2nd, 1991, in the middle of what was called “The Special Period”, particularly difficult years that started with the fall of the Socialist bloc. As a Communist country, Cuba completely relied on the USSR for pretty much every aspect of the economy, so basically over night everything changed dramatically. Grocery stores were empty, power blackouts, not even toys for kids.
In spite of the precarious situation, I had a wonderful childhood, very connected with my family and my friends. Everyone in my neighborhood was very poor but nobody felt that way cause we were all the same. We would help each other out. I started going to school at the age of 5 and immediately realized how much I loved it. I loved learning, drawing, writing. I also loved numbers. Math became a passion. I also discovered a could sing and I loved it. In middle school, my mom got me my first guitar through a family member that was visiting from Spain. That’s when I learned my first chords and started writing songs.
When I turned 15 I went to a boarding school. Back then, it was the best school in the country for kids pursuing a carrier in science. After 3 years there I decided to go to the University of Havana to study Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
College was a very busy time for me. I used to live very far away from the University and all of the classes were in person. In Cuba, most of the people don’t have a car and public transportation is really bad and unreliable. I had to travel for over an hour to go to school from Monday to Friday and the Saturdays I started taking French classes. Back then some of my classmates started a band so I joined it as a backup singer.
In my fourth grade at the University, I thought it would be a good idea to record my songs. Just for fun, just to have them and maybe show them to my grandkids in the future so they would think their grandma was cool. That’s how I found Miguel Comas, long time producer and guitar player of several famous Cuban bands. He had built a working recording studio in an apartment bedroom, with computers and audio gear that had to be purchased in the gray market or traded among friends. When recording my songs, the connection happened immediately. From the very beginning I wrote my lyrics in English (mostly because I didn’t want anyone to know what I was saying) and my musical influences back then were Alanis Morissette, Avril Lavigne, Linkin Park, etc. Miguel was a songwriter too and his songs were also “different”. It’s important to understand that this music was distributed in a very underground way. The Communist government always considered this foreign music “the music of the enemy” so you would listen to this songs on the radio or the TV. Also nobody had access to Internet. Finding Miguel was a musical oasis. He had the idea of putting writing an album together with all of our songs and we called it “The Beginning”. The album got some unexpected attention in Cuba. An Indie-pop-rock album in English was certainly a surprise for a lot of people. We started getting gig offers from venues and we didn’t even have a band. In 2013, a few moths after The Beginning was finished, we created Sweet Lizzy Project as an experiment to see if we could perform this album.
Sweet Lizzy Project became one of the most popular bands in the city (and the country), especially after releasing our version of the popular latin hit “Subeme la Radio”, Turn up the Radio. I graduated from college and I got hired by the University as a professor/ researcher. My students would turn in their exams and ask about the next gigs or next songs. It was interesting.
In 2016, PBS filmed a special documentary in Cuba called “Havana Time Machine” featuring different artists representing the Cuban music scene. Sweet Lizzy Project made it to the showing that’s how we met Raul Malo and the Mavericks. Raul Malo, whose parents were Cuban, felt inspired by the band and our music and was starting his own record label. He thought it would be cool to sign a Cuban band to his label and record the next album in Nashville, TN. However, this plan needed to be executed quickly as the American Embassy in Havana was getting closed again and Cubans need visa to come to the US.
With a record deal and what it was one of the most stressful times of my life, the band moved to Nashville at the end of 2017. However, the original plan of coming to record and then return to Cuba was quickly discarded. After arriving here, we realized we knew nothing about the life in this country. We had no money, no experience in the music business and we were 7 people back then. On top of that we were homesick, missing the life we had left behind and questioning every decision we had made. We went from being famous and successful in our country to starting from scratch here. And not even that, more like below zero because we didn’t even have the right immigration status to be able to perform or get paid.
We started doing whatever jobs we could get as we also started working on the new album “Technicolor”. I really missed performing so we bought an old minivan and I started contacting venues all over the country acting as my own booking agent trying to get gigs. And that’s how we started touring the US. By the end of 2019 we had performed coast to coast and has gone from never having been in an arena, to performing in front of an audience of 20,000 people opening for our idols, Heart and Joan Jett. Along the way, the band earned a prime performance broadcast for PBS’s Havana Time Machine; an artist profile on NPR’s “Weekend Edition”; and a cover story in the Miami Herald. With the album ready and an extensive tour schedule the album was set to release February 21st, 2020.
One by one, I saw every single big festival get canceled. The pandemic left us with broken hearts and a basement full of vinyls that we were supposed to take on tour. Since 2018 our band had downsized to 5 members and since the beginning to 2019 we had decided to move in together and have a band house. It was our studio and rehearsal space during the very few days we were in town, not touring. With the pandemic, we got stuck living together 24/7 for over a year. Surprisingly, it ended up being pretty magical. We never played more music in our entire lives than we did in 2020. We were pioneers in the livestream world, offering shows from home every single night to everyone who was stuck at home. We virtually surrounded ourselves with the most beautiful and supporting community of fans. We also spent 2020 and 2021 working on our next album Pirate Radio, this time with a full Spanish version Radio Pirata.
This new album was inspired by the protests that were happening in Cuba at the time. Something we had never seen before since our people have always been to afraid to speak up against the Communist government. This album got us back on the road and received immediate DSP support, with key playlist adds across New Release, Rock & Latin playlists at Spotify and Apple Music, as well as airplay from multiple terrestrial stations and The Latin Alternative widely syndicated among NPR affiliates.
After this album was completed so it was our commitment with the record label. In 2023, we were finally able to go completely independent which had been our desire for a long time.
Since then we have been sustainably creating music, touring, live-streaming and growing our community through platforms like TikTok and Patreon. We became American citizens 2 years ago and we are able to call Nashville our new home. Although we are open to the possibility of collaborating with other music companies I learned the hard way that developing a strategy that supports my artistic freedom, my creative process and my most importantly my mental health is my main priority. This year we are working on a new full album and I can’t be more excited about it.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I feel that from my previous answer you can tell that it has not been smooth at all haha. Even from my early days in Cuba, writing songs in English and a music genre that was not traditional Cuban music closed A LOT of doors for me, especially because I didn’t come from a music school. Just for context, in Cuba is not as easy as it is here. You create your band, buy your equipment, get a car and find gigs. In Cuba you need permission from government institutions to be able to perform in public and become what they call “a professional musician”. It doesn’t matter how much the venue wants you or the owner loves your music you need a piece of paper to be able to perform. There’s a lot of red tape and corruption behind the process of getting those permissions. It took us months to be able to finally start performing in public. Plus, no Guitar Centers in Cuba. Even guitar strings or drumsticks can be a problem to find. During my last year in Cuba I already had a “designated government person” following my every move because we used to perform for several embassies in Havana including the American Embassy.

Musician or not, being an immigrant supposes numerous struggles, especially right after you moved to a new country. The language, the weather, the culture, the lifestyle. It is overwhelming and it takes time to adjust. Missing my family was the hardest part. Then the music industry is a struggle itself haha. I feel very fortunate that because of my circumstances, being a musician is the only kind of life I know in this country. Music brought me here and that means something to me. I had no plan B so I stuck to plan A.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve already answer some of this.

When it comes to my band and my music I feel like we are very unique. You can like our music or not but we are still very unique haha. I feel like our story is very special and our music is a reflection of our journey. We will never be an American band but we are definitely not what anyone would expect from a Cuban band. We do mostly Rock but not quite. We feel music like one thing that doesn’t need to be categorized (I bet our marketing team loved that hahaha). And I definitely feel our Cuban roots are there.

What was your favorite childhood memory?
I have a lot of very nice childhood memories but for some reason the first thing that came to my mind right now is the day my mom showed up with our first color TV. I was probably 8. Before that it was an old black and white TV that you had to hit on the top to make it work haha. I remember how bright and pretty it was. Tonight I’ll probably remember a more meaning childhood memory and Ill regret this answer haha.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sweetlizzyproject.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sweetlizzyproject/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sweet.Lizzy.Project
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SweetLizzyProj
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SweetLizzyProject
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@sweetlizzyproject?lang=en