We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carissa McElravy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Carissa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted to pursue a creative life. Pursuing a “regular” job or career was never an option for me or my brother. Sitting at a desk from 9 – 5? Total nightmare. Since I’ve always known this about myself, the question has more been: which artistic path should I pursue exactly? Singing has always been my favorite form of expression and my artistic choices have continually circled around that. At first, I was a full blown theatre kid, destined for Broadway! Then, I went to film school to pursue directing. I’ve had quite the winding path (much to my parents dismay), but I’ve always come back to performing and singing. Jimmy on the other hand has always known he’d pursue music with guitar as his main instrument since high school. He got into Berklee College of music and is a talented musician and songwriter himself. With both of us pursuing music separately, it just made sense to start up a band together.

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?

My brother and I officially started our band The Split Manics a year ago, but we’ve been collaborating together for much longer. We were always creating stories and putting on performances for our family since we were kids – dramatic reenactments of our favorite Star Wars movie scenes, dancing to our favorite music, and creating little jingles to convince our parents to get us Happy Meal’s. Later on when I was in film school, he composed the music for my short films. Here we are years later, still working together to put on an engaging and fun show. But this time, as a surreal post grunge rock band. In a world that seems to value virtual and digital spaces more and more each day, we try our best to create an experience worth coming out in person for. We want our audiences to feel present, alive, and drawn in. We want people to feel like they were a part of something. It’s always a co-creation between us and the audience. As the front person, I try to give people permission to be their most weird and unleashed selves by embodying that myself on stage. Whenever I feel people are meeting me in my rawness, are moving, sweating, and dancing it out – that’s when I know we’ve put on a good show. That’s when I feel the most proud.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

We want to be known as the best live band in LA. Keeping that goal in mind, we’re always trying to come up with innovate ways to create a unique experience that’s more than just seeing a band play their music. We want to create genuine engagement and community. I do this thing where I bring a disposable camera out on stage and take a few pictures before giving it to the audience. It’s always so fun getting those photos developed and seeing what pictures people took. Of us and of each other. Being the best live band also takes a lot of discipline and hard work. We rehearse often and it’s important to us that we sound locked in musically. I’ve found that when you’re grounded in structure, it can lead to more play and improvisation in the moment.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

We’re both really inspired by the poem Style and Go All The Way both by Bukowski. Style showcases how the medium is the message. Bukowski illustrates that *how* you do something is more important than what you’re actually doing. Go All The Way is a poem we recommend to anyone who wants to seriously pursue an artistic path of any kind.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/thesplitmanics
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesplitmanics/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2nRUqfS20fMZKO2QLC8jjA/videos

Image Credits
Aparna Brielle Dylan Snyder Emerson Kyle