We recently connected with Elise Leavy and have shared our conversation below.

Elise, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I first started learning to play music when I was around 7 or 8. I took one piano lesson and hated it and quit immediately. But my step dad was a musician and I already had a piano that I would plunk around on and I’d sing along to all the music my parents loved. We played together sometimes and he helped me write my first song when I was 8. When I was 12 or so and started playing accordion he would invite me to sit in with his California zydeco band. I can’t express how valuable this was for me! You couldn’t trade that for any amount of music lessons.
I think, when it comes to music at least, it’s not about how fast you can learn, it’s about the time you put in, all the hours listening and writing and playing around without thinking. I went to music school at age 17, and that was maybe the fastest learning I did. They pack so much into a few small years, I’m sure I’m still processing and learning from those years!
I suppose the main obstacle I have run up against is a lack of education around the music industry. I am still struggling with that. There’s no one to tell you “here are the 10 steps to having a career in music!” and POOF your career takes off. To have a “career” in music is really a completely separate set of skills from being a “musician” or a “songwriter”.

Elise, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a songwriter, singer and musician, and I play guitar, accordion, piano, fiddle, and dapple with other instruments. The closest I’ve been able to get to defining my songs with a genre is “folk”. It’s hard to define a song with a genre sometimes. I don’t write purposefully in any particular genre, I just listen to music I love and soak it in and then write from a combination of that and whatever experiences I’m going through and processing.
My favorite thing aside from writing & performing my songs is singing and arranging harmony parts. It brings me so much joy!
I have recently attended a couple events where there were multitudes of songwriters from many different places, a lot of whom have never played their songs for an audience. I didn’t realize this until someone came up to me at one of these events and suggested if I went to the open mics in the town I live in, I might someday meet some “real musicians”.
To me, having grown up with music always around me and a part of me, it feels like some warped alternate universe that they live in, where “real musicians” are like wild animals you might spot from afar at a safari, like there should be a sign reading “PLEASE DON’T PET THE MUSICIANS”.
This conversation made me realize how fortunate I’ve been. I don’t often think about it, but it is really special to have grown up surrounded by music and always playing something or singing a harmony. All of my friends since I was 13 and first went to a music camp have been musicians, and I’ve been performing my songs on a stage since the 3rd grade talent show.
For me songwriting and performing my songs feels like the truest form of expression for me, but is by no means my only form of musical expression. I suppose I am really quite proud of this!

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

To move people. I write songs from a purely personal place, often as means of processing my own feelings. My hope is that they become that and more for other people.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

“Practice makes perfect.”
It’s possible I have always known that this is not true, but BOY do they try to pound it into you in music lessons. I have always felt like I wasn’t good enough because I didn’t practice enough hours a day. I have always hated practicing.
At some point, I decided that the importance people put on “practicing” wasn’t helping me. All I wanted to do was PLAY and WRITE and SING, and as soon as I let go of my idea that playing music was for the purpose of perfecting something, I was able to learn better and hear better and sing and write and play better.
I also think there is an immense amount of value in having “a practice”. A practice of drawing every day, for instance, or of meditating at 2pm every day, or of eating yogurt and berries first thing in the morning. Playing music and writing songs have been a practice for me at some points in my life, but I think it can sometimes feel like it takes the magic out of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.eliseleavymusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doodleev/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elise.leavy.58
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@eliseleavy8825
• Other: https://doodleev.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits

Photos by Kaitlyn Raitz.