Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anaïs Lund. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Anaïs, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I recently made the plunge and moved across the country to pursue music. I was lucky to grow up in beautiful San Diego but for as long as I can remember I had an itch to leave. Growing up, I had always imagined I would join my family and move to Paris for college. When that did not pan out, I thought about San Francisco, Seattle, or New York but when it came down to it, I had no money to make such a move and no opportunities to pull me away.

So I stayed in San Diego and enrolled in community college. I started taking as many music classes as I could until I felt ready to join the music scene. At that point, I had only been flirting with songwriting and my time was heavily invested in becoming a jazz singer.

After college, I went on to play shows several nights a week, singing jazz standards. I had the opportunity to play with some of the best musicians in the city. It was a lot of fun and for a moment the itch to be anywhere else went away.
However after two years, something in me changed. I still loved jazz but every gig began to feel the same. I needed some other creative outlet in order to continue loving music.

So I started writing and it lit this fire in me that I had not felt in years. I was excited again and everything felt new and surprising. I felt this deep sense of pride to have work that I could put my name to.I put together a band and we began working on creating arrangements and recording. The more I wrote, the happier I felt.
I started scouting where I could play my original music in the city and quickly found out that the options were slim. The places that did host songwriters wanted me to bring a following which I did not have. I thought “Yes, this could work for a little bit but then what? How will I ever grow if I only have a handful of opportunities to show my work?”

The itch came back. I started thinking about the cities I had dreamt of living in if I had the opportunity. One city that had left its mark on me was New York. Everything felt so vibrant and music felt like a cherished part of the city’s culture. I remembered how I could find a show in any corner of the city on any night of the week and the wild part was that the music was not just background noise. People stopped to listen. I decided that if I wanted to give my songs and my work any chance of having a life on stage I had to move to New York City.
It felt like a risk leaving San Diego where I had cultivated lasting relationships in the music scene to move to a big city where I knew no one in the music scene or even where to start. I took the plunge, fearing that if I did not give my music a chance I would regret it for the rest of my life.

It has been almost a year since I took that risk. It has been a lot of work and there’s still so much on the horizon but so far I feel like I have done what I set out to do. I’ve played several gigs with just my original songs. I have met and befriended some truly talented musicians. I feel immersed in my art and am excited to be working on my first EP.

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?

I think I am one of those people who is cursed with knowing exactly what they want to be. Though the variations of what kind of artist I want to be have changed, I have always wanted to be a singer. I could not see it any other way. Of course, I have love for other art forms but nothing has a grip on me quite like music.

I think my love for music really blossomed in elementary school. The bus drivers would often play Z 90.3, the local hip hop and R&B station. I would memorize all the songs they played on my bus rides home. When the songs would get too repetitive I had a friend on the bus who had one of the first i-pods and together we would listen to bands like The Beatles, MCR, and Greenday. And when my mom picked me up from the bus stop we would drive home listening to disco and soul.

I think all this exposure to different genres really did shape the way I write music now.
I always have a difficult time telling people what genre I am because there is so much music that inspired me. In a way, all these genres are all rooted in the same idea whether it be rock, R&B, disco, or soul they all can be traced back to blues and they all seem to inspire one another.

As I grew older, musicians like Amy Winehouse, Norah Jones, The Beatles, and Lily Allen began to influence who I wanted to be as an artist.

As a songwriter, I like to be as honest as possible and allow my music to have no boundaries. I think what makes my songs feel unique is my voice and my writing.
Writing music is so special in that no two writers are the same.
I might write a song that’s a little pop and I might write a song that’s a little soft rock but because “I” wrote them, the songs will always sound like me as there is a piece of myself sewn into them. In my songs, I try to tell stories of what it’s like to be human, be frustrated, be loved, to be strong, and to be vulnerable. I want people to relate to my songs and see themselves in the stories I tell.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think a lot of non-musicians do not understand how much work goes into making music. Living in a world where content is churned out daily, people tend to expect musicians and artists to do the same. Everyone only seems to see the end results but behind every song, there is a long process. For example, when releasing a song, artists may go through several rounds of rewrites. Once they have the foundations of a song, arranging and production come in which means meeting with other musicians to work on arrangements or learning how to use a DAW which is a whole other beast.
Sometimes arranging, production and recording can come quickly but oftentimes it can take weeks, even months.
Then there is mixing & mastering to get your song sounding “radio ready”. Once you’re through all that process, you have a song but then you have to build the buzz around your music if you want a chance to be heard. We become our own managers and our own marketing teams. Spending most of our free nights out of the week going to jams and networking, sending hundreds of emails trying to book shows and interviews, rehearsing for hours on our own, commuting to meet band members,
learning how to navigate audio interfaces, and becoming content creators.
Being a musician is much more than just showing up on stage and jamming with your friends. The weight of expectations society puts on artists to quickly produce content becomes incredibly difficult to match but we persist because it is our passion.
I think a lot of creatives who practice different art forms would say similar things.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

To me, the most rewarding aspect of being creative is connecting with others. Through my songwriting, I try to speak to things I have experienced whether it be struggling with anxiety, falling in love, being afraid, or any of life’s uncertainties. Writing these songs has helped me work through my emotions, comforted me, and brought me joy. When I play my songs and have someone relate and feel understood or comforted, that is truly rewarding for me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anais.lund.music/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Ana%C3%AFs-Lund-111434853897827
• Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3K7T5iK4FE3QEUegOK3rgs?si=U_Ul6ScZTv2tBj47DlHprA Sound Cloud: https://soundcloud.com/analund?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing Linktrree: https://linktr.ee/AnaisLund

Image Credits
Lauren Marie Natalie Blooms Michael Gebhardt