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

Alright, Larry thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

When I was in grade school, I realized I had musical ability. I volunteered to take lessons in violin and I performed with my instructor during a school assembly. As I got older, I realized I had singing and writing talent. I began to sing songs at home and emulate other artists like the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Beach Boys, Elton John, Tom Jones. Singing helped me deal with stresses at home and school. In my 20s I started to take classical guitar lessons and composed my first songs. At this time, I had dreams of becoming a songwriter and singer.

I knew that it would be difficult to pursue a career in music and be successful. Not many people can earn a living in this business so I went to college and majored in Biochemistry. After finishing college I started working as a Quality professional in Pharma and Medical Device Companies, I had very demanding jobs and did not have the time/ energy to continue with the music. Nevertheless, I continued to write melodies and themes for songs in my mind during this time period. After working for over 25 years in the Medical world, I retired in December 2023 and started to focus on the music. I received training in guitar, voice, and piano for about 1 year to build up my skills, and began to document my songs. I started working with a studio engineer/ musician in his studio in San Clemente and completed work on 9 songs. Two have been released and 7 are targeted for release in the first half of 2025. Another 10 songs are currently in production. I am getting very positive feedback on the first 2 songs and feel like my dreams are in reach!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My passion is to create powerful, uplifting, melodic pop/ rock songs with lyrics that are meaningful, tell a story, and inspire others. I am a very positive and spiritual person and this is reflected in my work. During my professional career, I worked with many people and teams, successfully building individual and team skills, solving complex problems/issues, growing individuals by providing coaching and mentoring and striving to be a positive influence. I have brought these experiences and learnings in addition to my personal life experiences to the music I am creating.

I also have a goal to help drive greater quality and creativity to the current state of pop/rock music genre by creating beautiful songs reminiscent of great music from 60s, 70s, 80s, Motown, but at the same time creating unique songs and performances with my own style and originality.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is to continue to develop personally, learn and grow my artistic skills and spiritually as well as to foster growth, love, spirituality, positive thinking, and inspire others.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I did not have any experience with social media when I started this journey about 1 year ago but I have learned a lot in the past few months. My music teachers advised me that to be successful in the music world, I needed to have a significant presence in social media. I engaged people with expertise in branding and social media to help me create a band name (The Charging Lions), logo, trademark the logo, copyright my songs, create a website, open social media accounts in Instagram and TikTok, create video content and post the content on these social media platforms. I also got some help with creating the artwork for each song and to submit the songs to all major music platforms such as Spotify, AppleMusic, YouTube, etc. using Distrokid. So far, there has been amazing response from the social media posts and release of my first pop song “Come Dance with Me”. Many family members and friends were unaware of my music activities and were amazed that I am producing songs, the caliber of the songs and vocal performance.

I think it is important to build a strong team of people with expertise in branding, marketing, social media, studio performing artists, etc to have good results. Be open and take initiative to learn these areas for yourself. For social media, the content and messaging is very important in order to be interesting and relate to others. Above all, do not let others influence you when your artistry and intuition tells you otherwise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thecharginglions.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/larryelavi
• Youtube: “Come Dance With Me” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr2T44qMMAM&list=OLAK5uy_nviEWcZpPJELX0nry44r7wCEz7J6KqxqY “The Christmas Gift” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyLxPiKzhG8&list=OLAK5uy_lcjeJor-mL76NbslCn9XUi8uKO3ll-zp4
• Other: https://tiktok.com/@larry.lavi

Image Credits

David Ely created the cover art for “Come Dance with Me” and “The Christmas Gift”. Studio shots taken by Jim Cheo. Other pictures taken by Larry Lavi.