Today we’d like to introduce you to Elise Leavy.
Hi Elise, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started writing songs before I can clearly remember. When I was 7, I wrote the first song I ever performed (at the elementary school talent show), it was called “Yesterday It Was So Rainy” and I had two little girls stand behind me with umbrellas to keep me company on stage.
I don’t remember if I knew that music was important at that point.
When I was thirteen I discovered “fiddle camp”. The world had opened its doors and I saw my path; I found my people, and I knew what I was doing.
I went to music school in Boston 3 years later at 17 years old and discovered jazz, the city, love, and heartbreak, and I discovered that when I played the songs I was writing for people, it fixed everything that seemed to be falling apart.
I graduated a year early and moved to New York City at 20 years old. I remember struggling to get into shows that were 21+ and thinking how silly it was that I was so young, music was timeless, why did it matter?
When the pandemic hit, I was 21 and in the midst of recording my first full-length record with a band. We stayed there working on it until it was nearing winter again and my producer and I both fled for California.
Six months later, I drove across the country back to New York only to discover that I couldn’t be there anymore. Something had changed and I needed to leave, I found a place in Nashville, and I moved 2 months later. And here I am! Finally, about to release the record I started as the pandemic began, and thriving in a new music scene full of people I’ve known since I was thirteen and “found myself”.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
They say that starting young is the key to success. I can’t say where I would be if hadn’t started young, but I can definitely say it has its challenges as well as its rewards.
My identity as a person has been “musician” for as long as I can remember. I was playing accordion in bars as a 14-year-old in my stepdad’s band, homeschooling because it allowed me to follow my musical path, and avoiding other people my age because I felt unseen and different.
Everything is inevitably difficult when you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s strange to realize at age 23 that I’ve been expecting myself to “know everything” all of these years because I just dove in, head first, at such a young age, with very limited perspective due to lack of years on the planet.
Music is one of the most timeless things, and it’s oddly easy to forget when you’re in it that you are human and that knowing the secret of music doesn’t mean you know all of the secrets of the world.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My deepest love is for writing songs, singing and playing them for people.
The art of songwriting is something that I never tire of. It’s an endless game of waiting and snatching ideas from the depths of my being, from the smoke twisting in the sunlight, from the note I didn’t expect to sing. The way that words and melody can not only coexist but support and wind around each other into something that is inexplicably perfectly imperfect; it makes you want to cry because it’s life, all of existence, in a note, a word, a song.
But it isn’t just writing that keeps me going, it’s playing these songs for people, it’s feeling them wind into other people’s hearts the way they have wound into mine, and sharing that experience.
It’s the cheesiest thing there is really, but it’s my favorite thing in the world. I know there are a lot of people out there writing and playing songs, and thank goodness for it. I also know that only a handful of those people write and sing and play because they have to, because if they didn’t they would fall to pieces.
That’s how it is for me. I often think that I am just so lucky to get to be the boat that takes these songs across the sea of eternity, that plucks them from beyond the veil and sings them. What would I be if I couldn’t do that? I wouldn’t be me.
So maybe we end by discussing what matters most to you and why?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
The pandemic has made me seriously question what matters most to me. When I was isolated among my books and guitars and unexamined emotions, I found that there were things missing, things I had taken for granted.
Things that mattered! I found out that the things that mattered most were the people, the music, singing songs, dancing, the trees, the ocean, rain, and sharing my love for these things. Love is a wonderful thing, wherever you find it. But what makes it meaningful is the ability to share it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.eliseleavymusic.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doodleev/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elise.leavy.58/
