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

Alright, Leuras thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I started playing music at a very young age. Our sunroom was the music room in the house. We had a standup piano, guitars, accordians, a clarinet, saxophone, recorders, bongos, and a few other types of percussion instruments. I learnt how to read music from about the age of five at home through lessons on the piano from my mum.
I then moved onto clarinet in primary school in the school band, and then drums in my high school music class, and I did music exams on the saxophone until I was about 16. It wasn’t until my late teens that I started to focus on the guitar and I taught myself how to play by learning Bob Dylan songs, luckily I only needed a few chords.
Singing was something I came to later on, and it’s probably something I wish I had started earlier, though songwriting and the stories I tell through my songs are things I probably couldn’t have written at such a young age. They are stories of experience, of adventure. They have come about after reflection. I’m not sure I reflected much as a late teen.
As I progress with my songwriting, I think the skill that is most essential is to put words to feelings and to share that in narrative form. It’s a powerful expression and also a nice way to capture moments in time, but also resolve feelings, similarly to how a chord progression wants to resolve. It’s almost like I want to resolve feelings through my songs.

Leuras, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a songwriter and musician, and I perform under my artist name Leuras. I started this project in San Francisco in 2019 when I immersed myself in the local rock music scene after moving there for a few years.
We recorded just before the pandemic hit, and I released a few singles in early 2020 and then my first EP last year in 2023. It is titled South Van Ness which is named after the first street I lived on there.
I then left San Francisco for warmer weather and a change from the SF city life and moved back down south. I’m currently in the process of recording my second EP with my band mates Dillon and Joel. We just spent a few weekends in the studio recording which was awesome and fun and felt good to lock down the songs together. We’re starting the mixing process now with friends in LA and SF, and plan to release the next singles and EP in early 2025.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I think it’s important to stay true to yourself and your passion on your creative journey. This helps build resilience when faced with all the inevitable challenges along the way. I’ve learnt that life is there to be lived and it’s important to try things out. It’s better to try than regretting having not tried later in life. Usually if something doesn’t work out, the outcome isn’t that bad: so you may as well “give it a go” and something good might come from it.
After releasing my EP last year, over 40,000 people from around the world have listened to my music. Currently, the top five countries where my audience is located are Brazil, USA, Australia, Turkey, and Mexico. I’ve also been able to share my story in interviews and articles across the US and Australia.
If you asked me 5 years ago what my goal was, I would have said: “to share my music with people”. So five years later I’m so pleased that I tried and gave it a go. It warms my heart knowing people are listening to my music.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The main mission that drives my creative journey is that I want to live an authentic life and a life doing the things that make me feel most fulfilled and most like me. Playing guitar, singing my songs, and performing and collaborating with my band. These are the things that feel most natural to me, and are the things I love doing more than anything else. I want to keep doing this, I want to keep creating.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://leurasmusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leuras_music/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Leurasmusic/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@leurasmusic
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/leuras

Image Credits

Ashleigh McArthur