We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ali Sperry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ali below.
Ali , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
My latest record, In Front of Us, came out this past spring and is extremely meaningful to me on many levels. Firstly, the recording process was different from any studio experience I have had in the past, due to the constraints of recording it in the thick of the pandemic. The record started to come to life at a time where it felt like the world was still. There were hardly any cars on the road, all touring had come to a halt, no one came into our house nor did we enter anyone elses. Our big outings in those days would be to take a nice country drive to pick up eggs from a friend with chickens or to drive to the wine shop for contact-less wine pickup. My husband, Jamie Dick, tours frequently as a drummer with various bands and this was the longest stretch of time we had both been at home together since we met. All of this lent itself to filling the space and time with setting up a home studio, purchasing or borrowing the necessary gear, Jamie stepping into the role of producer and spending long hours learning the ins and outs of pro-tools, as I worked on gathering and writing the right songs. When it came time to record, we would start with a scratch guitar track and scratch vocal track from me, then Jamie would lay down the drums, and then the game of musical tag would begin as we would ship the track off to the next musician to contribute their part and send it back, building the song layer by layer. Being in the Nashville music community comes with the priviladge of having friends who are truly incredible musicians, many of whom would typically have been on tour or very busy, and all of whom—if they hadn’t before—now had the capacity to record themselves from home. At a time that could have felt very lonely and sometimes did feel quite isolating, we were able to work with some of our nearest and dearest to make music together at a safe distance. Another aspect that makes this record dear to my heart are the songs themselves. They are deeply personal to me and also reflect a highly charged time in our country. It wasn’t really until I was out on tour this past summer that I felt the full weight of the political side of this record. There is a song about gun violence in schools, there is a song partially inspired by our previous president, there is a song about the empowerment of women, sparked by Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance in the vice presidential debate. And there is an overall message of hope—hope for a better future for the next generation, hope for more kindness and respect and peace in this world. I feel like I was able to say exactly what I wanted to say, which is what I am striving to do as a songwriter.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
The instinct to sing and write songs has always been with me. Music played a major role in my mom and dad getting together as they performed together in the 70s and 80s—most frequently at concerts and events for the Transcendental Meditation movement, in which they were both actively involved. I am grateful to have inherited my mom’s love of singing, of wordplay, and melodies that get you right in the heart, and my dad’s love of composing and putting all the musical puzzle pieces together, and his knack for harmony singing. Writing songs was something they both did, so it seemed obvious to me to do it too, even in the beginning when it amounted to a six year old’s improvised ramblings into a portable casette recorder. When I got older, I remember the feeling of not knowing how to bridge the gap between loving to sing and actually dong it professionally. I pursured musical theater in highschool and college and after college I set forth with my fellow Syracuse theater graduates to New York to make a go on the old Broad Way. I quickly found myself floundering, unsure of how to work two receptionist jobs (where I still wasn’t making enough money to live in New York City) AND find the time to go on open casting calls to try and land some roles. It was during this time that I took a month away from city life to get my yoga teacher training certification, a job that has proven to be a huge part of my life in addition to making music. I had anticipated that when I returned from yoga school I would be able to support myself by teaching yoga and have enough time to go out on auditions. A couple months later I was still working both receptionist jobs in addition to teaching yoga at a studio, which turned out to be a VOLUNTEER teaching postion. Needless to say, I wasn’t thriving in New York and soon migrated back to the comfortable midwest, where I had spent the bulk of my growing-up years.
It was eventually an opportunity to audition for an all-girl country band that was being developed in Nashville that set me on the path to where I am now. As a member of the band Sweetwater Rose, I was thrown into a whole new world—co-writing songs with other writers, recording in storied studios in Nashville, playing shows with A-list session players. Although the band didn’t evolve to meet the high hopes we all had for it at the time, it was an incredible education for me and a very rich time in my life. Most significantly it showed me that writing and recording my own songs was something I felt called to do and it gave me the confidence to actually do it.
Since that time, I’ve released four albums, a plethora of singles and videos, gotten to write with some of my favorite songwriters and gotten to experience the joys (and challenges) of touring, both with a band and solo. This past summer marked the ten year anniversary of my debut record Storybook, and has brought back a flood of beautiful memories of that time. It was my first taste of hearing my own songs fleshed out by exquisitely creative and talented musicians and of getting to go on tour with a van full of friends to share the music we had made together.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I think the best way to support musicians and artists you love is this: go to the source. Sure, it can feel great for an artist to see Spotify numbers going up (and yes, eventually it will result in some money, varying from pennies to an actual reasonable monthly wage) or YouTube views increasing, but if you care about supporting an artist in a meaningful way, seek out a more direct connection with them. Buy their merchandise straight from their website or at the merch table, buy tickets to their shows, tell your friends to buy tickets to their shows. Many artists these days, myself included, have a Patreon page or some other form of subscription-based patronage. That’s a wonderfully direct and practical way of supporting an artist you care about—you give a small monthly fee in exchange for access to something from them that you’re excited about, and you have helped to provide them with a monthly safety net to keep doing what they are doing. Patreon gained a lot of popularity for musicians during the pandemic when people suddently found themselves unable to tour and needing to creatively generate income. You can also sign up to receive an artist’s newsletter so you can know when they are coming to your town or when they are doing a Kickstarter or pre-order campaign for their next record. For the past few years I have made it a priority to include artists’ merchandise in my holiday gift-giving. It makes me feel good to buy a record or a t-shirt from someone I want to support and give it to someone I care about, and that person might even be discovering new music that they too will be inspired to support.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
The last tour I did before the world fully shut down in March of 2020 was my debut tour to the UK. I don’t have a booking agent, so that means I do the work of booking my own tours, which is one of the most challenging and often frustrating parts of the job. Venues are inundated with inquiries from booking agents, managers, and artists, and building relationships with venues and promoters can take time and tenacity. I am always working on fine-tuning the balance of being assertive (there was at least one instance where I had to send five emails before getting a reponse that yes, that date is available and they’d be happy to book me) and knowing when to back off and not perster someone—after all, they are human beings trying to do their job too. And booking a tour is more than just getting a reponse to an email, it’s making sure that the routing is right, sorting out all of the practical logistics like lodging and meals, negotiating pay and making sure you have a fighting chance of making money and not losing your hat out there. My tour to the UK was one of the most challenging in the booking department as I had no prior experience there and certainly didn’t have relationships with any venues there at the time. It boiled down to a lot of cold-calling (okay, cold-emailing) and essentally saying “I’d like to play your venue. Here’s my music, hope you like it.” I was fortunate to have several friends who had toured there or were in the industry there that shared contacts and helped me along the way. Little by little, I plugged away at making it happen, appraoching booking this tour like it was my full-time job. In addition to the booking part, I also became a full-blown travel agent in preparation for the tour as I opted to avoid renting a car there to take public transportation everywhere instead. I studied up on the train and bus schedules and made sure that I could safely get from point A to point B in time for soundcheck.
In the end, it was extremely rewarding and still remains one of my favorite tours to date. Audiences there were receptive and warm and the whole thing felt like a great adventure. I am currently working on plans to get back there to tour the new record, and can’t wait.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://alisperry.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aligreeno/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alisperry
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/aligreeno
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrwqYtxx8y7o0D-7drqdqyw
- Other: Bandsintown: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/3451236-ali-sperry?came_from=257&utm_medium=web&utm_source=home&utm_campaign=search_bar Bandcamp: https://bandcamp.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/alisperry
Image Credits
Fairlight Hubbard Danica Dora Colleen Dwyer Rob Goergen Fairflight Hubbard Nick Barber Kaitlyn Raitz Sean Modica