Today we’d like to introduce you to Liv Greene.
Hi Liv, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in a sweet little house in a wooded corner of D.C. with 2 older sisters, 2 dogs, and 2 parents who loved Americana music immensely. I think that’s kind of where it all started for me. My parents, while not artists themselves (mom was a nurse, dad was a lawyer/cocktail author (look up Philip Greene), were obsessed with music.
Most nights they’d throw on a CD in the kitchen- and those artists have turned out to be some of the most formative for me, musically: Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin, Alison Krauss, Teddy Thompson, Brandi Carlile (her really early stuff), Counting Crows, Crowded House, etc. They’d go see live shows and come home with CDs from the openers (they discovered both Patty and Brandi as openers), and more and more incredible music got added to the rotation (I believe it was a 6 or 7 CD changer, to be exact).
I started singing very young. As a young toddler, I’d put on little concerts for my parents and grandparents- making up my own little songs and choreography on the spot. In elementary school, I took piano lessons for a couple of years but it never really stuck, and growing up primarily attending catholic schools, my main exposure to the arts was through the school musical and the church choir.
I was terrible at acting, so I never got roles in theater, and timidly singing Catholic hymns just wasn’t scratching the musical itch. Finally, at 12, I went to see a Taylor Swift concert (her 2009 fearless tour) and was practically struck by lightning with the epiphany that what I really wanted was to play the guitar. That year my Uncle Rick, a talented classical guitarist, lent me my first guitar, a nylon string Washburn with a cutaway and pickup, and I took off flying with it.
I began teaching myself songs from YouTube tutorials and Ultimate Guitar tabs. Within a couple of months of picking it up, I began writing songs. I spent most of the middle school recording godawful original songs on my mom’s iPod nano voice memo app and burning them on CDs for my friends.
When I got to high school, music became less of a hobby and more of a necessity. Being a closeted lesbian at an all-girls catholic school, I was remarkably depressed. There were only about 2 other queer kids who were out both of whom were bullied for it. I was grappling with so much guilt and shame at that time, piecing together my own queerness, and in a lot of ways, I realize now that music saved my life. I’d spend hours each day playing guitar in my bedroom, learning hundreds of cover songs, and writing dozens of my own. And given that no one really shared my taste in music, my weekends consisted primarily of going to folk shows with my mom.
In high school, music as a life path began to feel more tangible after I discovered the New England folk scene through an incredible all-ages music camp called Miles of Music Camp. After that, I began attending bluegrass and old-time festivals all up and down the east coast with the friends I’d made there. Those summers were everything to me, and the inspiration and long-distance friendships from those gatherings were what carried me through the school year.
Senior year, I left catholic school to attend an arts boarding school in Northern Michigan called Interlochen Arts Academy, where I got to major in songwriting. It was one of the best years of my life- being surrounded for the first time by kids who were just as passionate about songwriting as I was, and by a plethora of other queer kids. For college, I continued on to New England Conservatory up in Boston to continue immersing myself in the New England folk scene.
I studied in the contemporary improvisation program, stretching myself musically, and after school, I waited tables and taught songwriting at a nonprofit music venue/ school called Club Passim. The summer before my senior year, I crowdfunded and recorded my first record, produced by my pal/mentor Isa Burke (Lula Wiles, Aoife O’Donovan), and the pandemic hit just in time for me to release it and graduate from college (May of 2020.)
2021 brought immense change. I came out of the closet, both to myself and to the world, and in June, just as vaccinations made the world come back to life, I moved to Nashville. As you can imagine I did quite a lot of writing in those periods of change, and a lot of those songs are what make up my second record. My life in Nashville has been pretty sweet– full of beautiful musicians, wonderful friends, lots of rollerskating at Shelby (I do it practically every day for exercise), and an incredibly supportive queer community.
The local music scene here is so beautiful and supportive, and being a part of it has inspired me to no end and caused me to grow so much. Because of this community, I trusted myself enough to take the leap and produce my own record this summer, engineered by the brilliant Matt Andrews (Gillian Welch, O Brother Where Art Thou?) at Woodland Sound Studios, and involved playing by some of my musical heroes. Right now, I’m finishing up that record and making plans to release and tour it throughout 2023.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Being a musician has definitely been challenging at times- and the challenges have definitely changed as I’ve grown! When I was younger, I think feeling isolated in my passion was the hardest part. But finding myself in a musical community through camps and festivals really helped with that and shaped me into the artist that I am.
Being raised/socialized as a girl has also had some major pitfalls. Growing up, in the mainstream I wasn’t really exposed to the representation of women ripping guitar solos or producing their own music. Because of that, I am truly so grateful to the female and trans, and non-binary artists who are older than me in the folk/bluegrass/Americana scene who have paved the way and shown me that I could do it too.
I feel so lucky to have had so many incredible women as teachers over the years both at camps and in school (Kristin Andreassen, Miss Tess, Laura Cortese, Anna Roberts-Gevalt, Courtney Kaiser-Sandler, Ana Egge, Isa Burke, Courtney Hartman, Kelley Anderson, Dominique Eade, Nedelka Prescod, Carla Kihlstedt, etc). I really feel that representation is everything, both as a woman and as a queer woman, and I can’t put into words how grateful I am for artists like Brandi Carlile who have led the way in that regard.
The bumps in my road these days mainly just take the shape of normalized financial impossibilities in the industry. Making a record and getting it the exposure it deserves requires an absurd amount of money, and streaming income simply does not cut it- even if you’re getting millions of streams. On top of that, touring, being the primary form of income for most artists these days has been majorly impacted by inflation and Covid!
Most of my peers and I have been suffering from the financial hardship of smaller audiences, as well as loss of income from covid-related cancellations. There are so many impossibilities that we all just somehow manage to continue to find ways around. As Gillian says “we’re gonna do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay.”
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a queer Americana singer-songwriter, producer, and guitarist. I am also a passionate educator and this fall am teaching an online songwriting class through the Passim School of Music as well as having a couple of openings in my private songwriting studio for anyone interested (email livgreenemusic@gmail.com if so!).
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I am absolutely in love with the local music scene here. There really is no other city like Nashville in terms of the Americana/Bluegrass/Old-time/Folk scene.
It’s so beautifully supportive and collaborative, and venues like Dee’s, the 5 Spot, the basement, the basement east, and the legion are truly some of the most special rooms in the country for that. My friends and I call it dream-town on account of these spaces and the people in them.
As for dislikes, I really wish we had a train! I moved from Boston where I took the T everywhere. That and more walkable neighborhoods would make Nashville my absolute dream town.
Contact Info:
- Website: livgreene.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liv_greene_/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/livgreenemusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/livurlife14
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@livgreene?lang=en
Image Credits
Andrea Schollnick and Jack Schneider
