We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Abigail Marie. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Abigail below.

Abigail, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I have worked on is one that I am still working on and I hope to work on for a long time.

I’m in a Minneapolis based alt rock band called pity party. I have always wanted to be in a band. When I was in kindergarten I was asked what I want to be when I’m older and I replied, “rock star.” Little Abbie would be so proud! I met my band members while doing Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story at Wayward Theatre Company. My guitar player is one of the owners of the company. On closing night, he sat across from me at the bar and asked if I wanted to join the Wayward Theatre cover band. Of course I said yes. After playing a couple shows with them, I knew we had something good going and asked if they wanted to try writing our own music. The rest is history. We’ve been a band for almost 2 years now.

I will always love theatre, but the lifestyle is not one that agrees with me anymore. I love having time to read and create when I want to and still have a good paying job. pity party gives me the freedom to do this. I get to take all of my favorite parts of performing on stage during a musical, but I get to write my own music and I have control over the hours I spend on it. Being able to perform on stage while singing about things I have gone through is so rewarding.

We are always writing and releasing new music, so be on the look out for that! We also perform monthly at different venues around the Twin Cities.

I’ve worked on so many creative things from film, to theatre, to dance, and they all taught me so much and shaped me into the artist I am today. However, pity party is the one that has had the biggest impact on me. It fills my creative cup every single day. I am the luckiest person alive.

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 background and context?

My name is Abigail Marie. I am a Twin Cities based singer and musician. I started ballet and piano lessons when I was 3. I branched out to learn guitar, mandolin, ukulele, harp, flute, violin, and synth from there. I also explored other areas of dance and fell in love with jazz. I was cast in my first play, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, at 4 and even got to say a line in the show which I remembered 40% of the time. Once I started theatre, I never stopped. I went to North Dakota State University (Go Bison!) and got my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre with an emphasis in Dance. I went on to work for Netflix and do shows all over the country. I finally found my way back to Minneapolis in 2022 and acted here professionally for a couple years before switching over to do music full time. pity party has truly changed my life. Having a creative outlet like this while being able to maintain a life outside of the art is exactly what I needed.

I went through a lot while growing up and into my early 20s and it really changed me as a person. I honestly don’t really know how to talk about it here, but being able to put what I went through into music has healed me in so many ways. Hearing people scream along to our songs helps me feel like I am not alone in what I’ve gone through.

I know music is work, but most of the time it doesn’t feel like it. I am always learning and trying new things. It’s so incredibly cool to take a song idea to my band and watch them run with it and make it their own. They take our music to places I hadn’t even thought it could go. We are always adding new elements to our songs like new pedals, vocoders – nothing is off limits.

Music aside, I am so proud that we have created a little community between the 4 of us, but also with our fans. We have the best fans and I mean it. The way they show up for us over and over again is amazing. pity party resonates with a lot of people and I think it heals them while it heals me too.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Society needs to fund the arts. The United States spends our money on wars that make billionaires richer instead of putting that money back into the community. Imagine how much we would thrive if we had health care (which, turns out we could easily have that! The US has spent $16.5 billion on the war in Iran in the first 12 days of war. Make that make sense!) Take the money and put it back into the community so we can spend our time worrying less about money and more on creating whatever we want to create.

We should also support our local artists by going to local shows! Tickets are cheap and the music is unbelievably good.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I would have started learning Logic Pro sooner. I am currently teaching myself how to use it and I am creating more than I ever have. If I had started on it sooner, I would have a lot more songs under my belt. I would also like to have found The Artist’s Way sooner than I did. The exercises in that book really help get me out of writers block.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pityparty.bandzoogle.com/home
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pitypartytheband
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@pitypartytheband

Image Credits

Haley June