We recently connected with Laena Myers and have shared our conversation below.
Laena , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
Sort of! It’s been a lot of trial and error, and I definitely have multiple streams of income which ebb and flow with the idea that when one source of income is slow and other is busy, etc. When I started out as. a musician I was working retail full-time and playing in sometimes as many as 5 bands (for free), sleeping in my car on lunch breaks, that kind of thing! Then I was recruited to join a band that payed salary and we toured for a couple years. When that was over I was pretty determined to not have a full-time employer again and I started my own band (Raw Geronimo which became FEELS). I started charging for session work and basically would just work part time at some random spot in between our tours, quitting before each major one and then finding another when we returned. Living in LA it’s pretty easy to find odd jobs too if you’re open to it, one-off gigs and things like that. Not to say that money wasn’t tight, even though I always kept my overhead as low as possible. But over time I steadily became more in demand as a session player, and after FEELS’ last big tour in 2019 I started working freelance/part-time as a mentor/producer/songwriting teacher through Jail Guitar Doors- a non-profit that uses music to empower people experiencing incarceration as well as marginalized youth. During the pandemic I converted the office in my 1 bdrm apt into a sound-proofed recording studio so that I could do remote violin and vocal sessions, and soon I was commissioned to make an album of vocalese movie trailer cues, one of which has been used already. I also just released a solo album and I’m about to tour overseas with that. So basically everything I do falls under the umbrella of creative music making- it may not all be my own passion project and sometimes it’s a lot to juggle but it’s all things that I genuinely care a lot about and it’s a living so I feel very fortunate!
Laena , 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?
Laena Myers (formerly known as Laena Geronimo, Laena Myers-Ionita and Laena M.I.) is a singer, songwriter, composer, violinist and multi-instrumentalist from Los Angeles, CA. She studied classical violin for 15 years and has spent the last 18 years touring and recording internationally as a singer, songwriter and musician specializing in violin, bass, and guitar. Laena is also active as a songwriting teacher/mentor/producer through the non-profit organization Jail Guitar Doors USA.
Laena picked up violin in elementary school then honed her skills with several private tutors, eventually dedicating eight years to studying under Russian violin virtuoso and opera singer Anna Libefort. She was a member of The Southern Oregon Youth Orchestra as well as the Junior Philharmonic Orchestra of California during her teen years. In 2005 she began playing in a busking band, performing purely improvised material on street corners in Hollywood as well as at The Hammer Museum as a part of their weekly Summer film series. Soon after she began touring as a member of Devon Williams’ live band and subsequently joining other artists to perform live and track in the studio with ever-increasing regularity. Laena has since become the go-to violinist in L.A.’s underground art/rock scene, touring internationally and contributing to a multitude of genre spanning recordings and live performances- from John Frusciante’s 2012 album PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone- to 2020’s Bent Arcana jazz improvisation project created by John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees. As a violinist, Laena is sought out for her fluency in improvisation and her ability to quickly decipher melodies by-ear. Her unique strengths lie in her emotionally evocative tone and in her ability to intuitively supplement whomever she’s accompanying in a wide range of genres. She is also a proficient sight-reader and has considerable experience with playing in quartets, orchestras, symphonies, and other various configurations.
Many of these qualities carry over into Laena’s work as a multi-instrumentalist. She spent the entirety of her young adulthood cutting her teeth as a supportive player in countless live bands operating in the L.A. area- at times as many as five simultaneously- most consistently as a bass player and backing vocalist. She’s well known for her years of touring world-wide as the bass player/backing vocalist of Motown-inspired pop outfit The Like, as well as darkwave punk band Numb.er. She has also worked extensively over the years as a session vocalist, often in studios specializing in producing movie trailers and other commercial soundtracking. Her voice was featured in the official Netflix trailers for 2022’s “Barbarians: Season 2”, as well as in 2023’s “The Deepest Breath”- featuring a track which she composed in her home studio for an album of trailer cues called “Tessellations”, produced by Eternal Music Group.
Since 2011 however, Laena has devoted her main focus towards her own creative projects, beginning with Raw Geronimo- a six-piece band which she lead as sole songwriter and main vocalist (LP Dream Fever released by Neurotic Yell Records in 2013). In 2015 the band was renamed FEELS after it took on a distinctly more collaborative and punk ethos as a four-piece, with Laena adding guitar to her vocal duties (full-length albums FEELS, released by Castle Face Records in 2016, Post Earth, released by Wichita Recordings in 2019, and EP Subversive Reaction released by Deemed Printable in 2021). FEELS toured regularly, completing three European tours as well as countless US jaunts, headlining as well as supporting artists such as Ty Segall, Ex Hex, Screaming Females, and Metz. In 2018 she began sporadically performing original works as a solo artist, including a live set at Echo Park Rising Festival. Laena adopted the moniker L.M.I. for the project in 2019, amidst the the recording of her debut release. The track “L.U.V.” off of the album was used in advertising for fashion brand CELINE’s Spring 2020 Women’s campaign. She has since re-named the project to simply Laena Myers and is currently on tour in Europe supporting the release of LUV (Songs of Yesterday, released by Taxi Gauche Records on February 24th, 2024 .
Studio Laena – Laena’s dedicated home studio – was built in the Spring of 2020 and since she has offered remote collaborations of all kinds: recording sessions, string arrangements, composition and soundtrack works. She became seriously invested in the soundtracking world in 2022 having been picked up by Eternal Music Group’s ARKIVAL to produce a 15-track album of Vocalese movie trailer cues for their composer powered, music supervisor curated branch Arkival, and has since become happily immersed in experimenting with the art of electronic sound design.
Laena’s true passions are in creating as well as connecting with others through music. In 2019, she began working as a teaching artist for Jail Guitar Doors- a non-profit organization which focuses on rehabilitating incarcerated individuals and empowering underserved youth through musical expression. She is working on the ground to help develop their youth programming in collaboration with the Arts for Healing and Justice Network as well as with Youth Development Diversion, acting preventatively to enrich the lives of students in low-income communities, in addition to teens already being held within the criminal justice system.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Hands-down the most rewarding aspect for me is when a fan tells me that my music has become a part of their own story. I’ve received messages from fans before who’ve been kind enough to share with me that a song of mine helped them get through something, or an album became the soundtrack to a beloved period of their life, things like that. As an artist it’s easy to doubt oneself and ask like, “am I just pulling my own chain here, thinking that my silly feelings are gonna mean something to someone else”, but then when you get feedback like that, where people tell me that they really connect, it’s like, “ok, phew!”
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Therapy! For a long time I really identified with my suffering and believed that it made me a better artist, but I think it actually paralyzed me in many ways… I didn’t “waste my time” shooting for the stars- because I was absolutely convinced that I would fail- and that’s really how I saw it.. I surrounded myself with people who were similarly tormented and we stuck together, which was good for a while. It’s a lot easier to believe in a team. But I’ve learned that one really has to believe in themself and what they’re doing to come into their own power, especially as a DIY artist who- aside from making the art itself- has to do all the other jobs too- marketing for instance, or pitching to labels, negotiating fees for shows, strategizing and managing and financing… its a huge amount of work and requires serious confidence in the cause!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.LaenaSounds.com
- Instagram: @laena________
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laena.myers.ionita/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y78To2yjMs
Image Credits
solo uploaded pic P4111496.jpg by Mieszko Majewski All others (6 images: DSC_xxxx.jpg) by Don Marcelo