Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Lee Palmer.
Hi Anna, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
My story’s a pretty simple one. I grew up ten miles from a gas station and a river running through my backyard in a small community known as Cedar Lake, AL. I was a pretty outdoorsy kid and loved to hike, camp, and swim, but my favorite thing for the longest time was singing with my dad while he played the guitar. My parents thought it would be a good idea to learn how to play an instrument, so when I was nine years old, they signed me up for piano lessons with my elementary school guidance counselor. I quickly became pretty passionate about it and learned how to play my first classical piece when I was eleven. I kept playing for years and then my piano teacher said that she taught me all that she knew how to and that I should go learn from someone else. Then at 12, I became a music student at Samford University’s Academy of the Arts.
Around this time, I started playing my own instrumental music on the piano and my mom thought it would be a good idea for me to start writing songs. I had tried to write music in the past, but I didn’t know how to create my own sound or something that I was truly proud of. However, the summer I turned 15, I wrote a song called “Boston” and entered it in my high school’s talent show and won. I felt as if that was a little sign that I was meant to pursue a career in music, so I took it and ran. I quickly figured out about a little school in Nashville called Belmont University had a songwriting degree and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. However, my parents told me that I was going to have to work my ass off to send myself there. And work my ass off I did. I played tons of music out with my dad, wrote as many songs as I knew how, spent the entire summer of my senior year studying for the ACT, and ended up graduating at the top of my class.
When I got my scholarship in the mail from Belmont, I knew it had all been worth it. I packed up my bags for Nashville in 2019 and the rest has been history. I’ve met amazing friends that have pushed me to be the best songwriter and person that I can be: Keller Hudson, Sam Ribler, Andrew Grooms, Trey Strange, and Hannah Diones to name a few. I’ve had a lot of “right place right time” situations that have landed me in rooms with incredible people, and one of those times even landed me a dream internship with Make Wake Artists. I also have gotten the opportunity to put my piano talents to good use by playing and singing at Sid Gold’s Request Room in East Nashville.
Every experience I’ve had so far in Nashville in the industry or otherwise is preparing me to be a better creative, a better songwriter, and a better person. Everything that I’ve done since moving to Nashville feels like something out of a movie, but I’m so thankful to tell people that this is the life that I live. I can’t wait to see what will happen in the next year after I graduate from Belmont.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Something I’ve faced a lot as a part of pursuing music is rejection, and I mean mountains of it. While practicing piano three and four hours a day as a young teenager, I was also applying to a prestigious fine arts school in my area.
The audition progress was extremely rigorous and was filled with taped auditions, live auditions, interviews, musical exams, and essays written by both my parents and me. I made it to the final rounds three years in a row and was turned down every single time. I remember feeling close to worthless during this stage of my life. Not only was I dealing with the awkward hardships of middle school life, but I was being told by adults that I looked up to that I didn’t have what it takes to be a part of a program that I had dreamed of for years.
But finally, I put my big girl britches on and decided to make the dream work on my own.
I kept playing classical music and writing songs for anyone that would sit and listen. I worked as hard as I could go to Belmont on a scholarship and graduated top of my class in high school. Now, as a college senior, I’m an intern at my dream company, working at a piano bar, and writing music with my best friends. Life couldn’t be any better, and it wouldn’t be the way it is now if I wouldn’t stare rejection in the face as I did so many years ago.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As of right now, I want to be a full-time songwriter and create music for artists. I have played classical and commercial piano for 12 years and have been songwriting for over 10. I pride myself on the way that I work with artists; I’m never afraid to mold myself as a writer and musician to be what they want for their projects. I feel as if the studio or the writing room is my sanctuary; for some people, it’s a church, their home, their car, and their place of work. For me, I feel safe anywhere a pen and paper are in my hand.
I feel like I’m the proudest of my journey as a writer. I remember when I was in high school, I felt that the thing that set me apart from most songwriters my age wasn’t my lyrics but my musicianship and how I performed on stage. Now at 21, my lyrics are definitely what sets me apart. After being in the room with so many talented writers at Belmont and beyond, I pushed myself to write about topics that some people my age would be scared to discuss: religion, toxic relationships, misogyny, and everything in between. I played a writer’s round last week at The Pond in Franklin and was told by a girl in the same round as me that “my lyrics were like poetry”. This was a compliment that I was extremely humbled by; I just told her that I appreciated it, but I’m just a simple girl from the south that got bored and played the piano one day.
At the end of the day, my songwriting isn’t just a “me thing”. Songwriting, to me, is a continual series of divine appointments where you or a group of people sit in a room, open your mind, and just let the words flow out as they come. And luckily for me, I just keep showing up at the right times.
We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
Ahhhh COVID-19. What a life-changing experience, truly.
I can without a doubt say that my life was forever changed by COVID. I remember leaving my freshman year dorm at Belmont and grabbing two weeks worth of clothes, and being happy to spend some more time with my friends and family back in Alabama. And I don’t think I could’ve been more wrong.
In September, we finally received a message from campus saying that we could come back. I was more than thrilled to return back to Nashville, but the troubles were only beginning. Little did I know that my sophomore year of college was going to be one of the hardest seasons of my life. All of my classes for a year were online because nobody wanted to get each other sick. The only time I could truly see my friends is if we met up on campus for a meal together. There really wasn’t all that much you could do music-wise either, since most venues were still closed and not letting people come to play.
I feel like the two biggest lessons I learned during COVID were this: 1.) Keep creating art even though no one may ever see it… and 2.) Don’t worry about what people think.
When I was in my dorm room for weeks at a time, I focused on writing with my roommate Keller or writing by myself each day. I tried to create song after song, even though there was no way for me to go out and play them to anyone. I did it for the love of writing because, at the end of the day, it never matters who hears my stuff. I love to create for creating’s sake, or because I feel like I would explode if I couldn’t put words on a page and set them to music.
The second lesson was something that people all around me had been trying to explain to me for a long time, but I never got it until the pandemic. All my life, the opinions of others and public perception have taken over my decision-making, henceforth most of my life. But I had never gone through a period of my life where I was completely isolated from people before. During quarantine, I quickly learned to make more decisions for myself without asking for the direction of others because I quite frankly didn’t have anyone around to ask! But since the beginning of the pandemic, so much for me has changed.
At the time, I was a 19-year-old Songwriting and Music Business double major with platinum blonde hair and dreams of going into entertainment law. Now, at 21, I’m a Songwriting major with bright red hair and dreams of getting a publishing deal and this is all because I woke up and started listening to myself and what I wanted.
Pricing:
- I do artist write-ups for the press starting at $50
- I do for-hire gigs/weddings starting at $100
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annaleeeeeeeeeeeeeee/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annalee.palmer.5/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-lee-palmer-72b3621b1/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/eelannamusic
Image Credits
Rose Samy and Keller Rae Hudson
