Interview #615: Lissie

Hailing from the musical hot-bed of Rock Island, Illinois, 2010 saw scruffy female rocker Lissie belt her way up and down the UK with a voice, guitar and little else in tow. Her debut album Catching A Tiger was recorded in Nashville with Jacquire King (Kings of Leon), and her summer festival sets and vast touring schedule proved her to be a no-frills singer-songwriter worth watching.

I Like Music caught up with Lissie for a chat about writing songs, her rebellious past, listening to Mumford and Sons and Bobbie Gentry and her musical heritage.

"I Like Music because…it makes me feel emotions that I can’t describe. When I listen to music, it conjures up things I’ve maybe been stuffing down in my chest. I think we take our feelings and we push them down inside. I like music because it unwraps my feelings and it makes me feel a really true emotion that I'm not really able to describe in words myself." Lissie

ILM: Hi! How are you?

Lissie: Pretty good, just been hanging out getting ready to sound check in a couple of hours. Just chilling right now really!

ILM: You played a lot of shows in 2010!

Lissie: I know, I know! The thing is it pays off, you’ve just got to get out there in front of as many people as possible if you want to make it stick. So I guess we’ve realised it’s a lot of hard work but it’s also fun.

ILM: What do you look forward to most about playing live?

Lissie: We’ve played a couple of shows where people have been singing along and kind of bouncing around and being really fun and energetic. I really always look forward to those shows because if I get that energy projected at me I give it back a million times over. I look forward to feeling like it’s a united front of people that are all having a good time and have a lot of energy. But in general I just enjoy playing, I’ve always loved to sing so music has sort of come naturally and it’s a very cathartic process for me to just get up and sing live. It’s like second nature and it makes me feel good, so I look forward to that!

ILM: Which have been some of the most memorable gigs?

Lissie: Back when I was about 18 or 19 I played in a Pizza Hut. There were only like 2 people outside on the patio and when I started singing they went inside so I played to no-one! I was excited though because I got paid $50, so there’s that, which was memorable just because it was so pathetic. Glastonbury 2010, The Park Stage on Friday – that was super memorable, there were so many people who were all so excited, the weather was great…So Glastonbury was a total highlight. A lot of the festivals I’ve played have been highlights, we’ve had a good time. The night that my record came out and we were in Nottingham, that was a great show. So there’s sort of a bunch of them.

ILM: Do you write whilst you’re on the road?

Lissie: I do if I feel like it. If I feel like I have some sort of little line, a melody or just a little chunk of lyrics, then I’ll make sure that I capture them, that I hurry up and write them down. I was doing all these voice memos on my phone but then my phone got stolen! So I do write, but I’m going to need to take some time off to just be by myself and process my thoughts and my feelings before I make another album.

ILM: How would you describe your music making process?

Lissie: It’s always different, I don’t really think I have much of a method to anything. I just go through stuff that I’ve been thinking about for a while and see if there’s anything there. I feel creative when I’m meeting people and being in my home and going for walks and stuff. So I don’t really know how it happens, it happens a bit naturally, generally and when I start recording. I don’t go into it with any sort of plan, I’d rather just be creative and fulfill my spontaneous thoughts and moods.

ILM: That sounds good, not giving yourself a set of achievements…

Lissie: Yeah. I think some people are good at picking out what it is they’re trying to do and then figuring out how to do it. But I sometimes think that if I say “it’s going to be this way” then I almost put too much pressure on it to be that way and it’s sort of contrived. I like to let things happen by accident or by coincidence, and just let them unravel as they’re happening.

ILM: Does image play an important role for you and your music?

Lissie: Um...not really. I guess I don’t think about it a ton. When I see other people who do get costumes and have elaborate sets I think that’s really interesting. I like to look at it and I like to watch it, so it’s not that I don’t like that. But...it’s just not something that I would even begin to know how to do! If I go out I’ll wear some eye make up and want to be sort of cute sometimes! But in general I think my songs are about how I feel, so I don’t think I’ll probably ever be a huge pop star. Hopefully I’ll be successful and do well. But I don’t think there’s really been that pressure, I guess sometimes if I’m going on TV I should brush my hair and put on a fresh shirt. But I don’t think anyone’s pressured me, I think it’s almost worked in my favour that there is so much pressure maybe for the has-beens, so there’s all these really outlandish female acts out at the moment. I kind of got lucky with the timing, it was ok for me to do my thing ‘cause it was different.

ILM: What’s your earliest musical memory?

Lissie: I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t sing. I think I sang as early as I can remember, I just always liked to hum and sing and just kept doing it and took classes in my local performing artists group. In our local community we had a dancing-singing class that you could go to and put on shows with other kids your age, so I did those sorts of things and did some theatre. I just always had this kind of belty, big voice and just liked to sing, and as I got older I found that it was a way to get my feelings out. I don’t know when I said “I’m gonna do this”, I just always thought it was what I was meant to be doing.

ILM: You had quite a rebellious past, how has that shaped you into the artist you are today?

Lissie: When I was about late teens early twenties, I probably felt like I had something to prove. I had some negative experiences as a teenager that made me feel a bit rebellious; if I was put in a corner I wouldn't just sit there and take it, I'd fight my way. I just have that kind of feisty spirit if it comes to that, you know? But generally I think I can be pretty easy going about things. In the way it’s affected my music, I think initially it was a motivating factor for me to work hard and stay focused. As I got a bit older I let go of the negative connotations and just did it ‘cause I enjoyed it.

ILM: What would be your advice to young artists?

Lissie: I think to be yourself, and do things because it’s what you want to do. If you don’t quite know exactly what it is that you want to do, don’t start thinking that someone else’s idea is your idea. Don’t let other people put ideas in your head about what you should be doing. It happened to me when I was in my early twenties, and I think I could have ended up letting some people point me in the wrong direction with my music just because you’re a bit desperate to make it. So you kind of try to take any opportunity, but luckily those opportunities didn’t work out. I just think it’s like being yourself and not being desperate. If you believe in yourself, even if it takes you five years longer to make it, it’s going to be worth it in the long run because you’re going to do it on your own terms. I was in LA and you see so many people just so desperate to catch a break that they end up having a backlash. I think just not being desperate! It’s good for anything, it’s good for relationships, for a new career…Having some integrity and some principles.

ILM: Who are your biggest musical inspirations?

Lissie: When I was young and I started writing songs I really liked Sarah McLachlan, Fiona Apple and Tori Amos. People who are doing their own thing, making cool music that was different and unique unto itself, writing their own lyrics. I’m into bands that I sound nothing like. This artist Bobbie Gentry is someone I talk about a lot ‘cause I think she was just such a great songwriter and just had a cool vibe about her. The music I like to listen to if I was going to be driving around would probably be the Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan or Wayward Jennings. That’s the sort of music that makes me feel relaxed and happy.

ILM: The area you’re from has a really strong musical heritage, how do you feel you’ve responded to that?

Lissie: When you’re young and you grow up somewhere you don’t really care. You don’t really pay attention, you have no clue, you’re just like “gosh this town is really boring, I wanna get out of here.” So I think at the time it didn’t feel like it really made a difference, but now I'm older and I've met people from all over the world, I've realised there is a certain kind of spirit that people from the mid-west have, specifically down by the Mississippi river. Like a no BS sort of vibe. And musical heritage – I mean my grandfather was an international barber shop quartet champion, and he was involved in the music scene in town. There was a big spider web of jazz musicians from my area too. I’m not really sure exactly how it’s affected me, but I do think I’m kind of open and enthusiastic and sort of don’t know how not to just be myself, and that maybe comes from here. That kind of plays into the music – it’s simple and straightforward.

ILM: What have you been listening to recently?

Lissie: Catching Mumford and Sons and then buying their album, I think what they’re doing is really cool. I really like Ellie Goulding’s music a lot, ’cause I think it’s just so contagious and she has such a great voice and such a cool sort of persona. I think she’s great. But I don’t listen to a ton of music. Just now I’m downloading a song on my phone that I heard on the radio last night in the car, it’s The Flamingos - I Only Have Eyes For You. Do you know that one? It’s like “shoobap shoobap, oooh, shoobap shoobap, I only have eyes for you!”

ILM: What are your future plans?

Lissie: I kind of look at it in chunks, I can’t look too far ahead ‘cause I know I’ll have an intense period of touring where I take it a day at a time and I don’t really know what’s going to happen the next day. But I do know come Spring – like March, April, May – I might try to get a month off so that I can do some writing and just reconnect with life outside of my career and try to work on my second album. And I’m really looking forward to it!