We were lucky to catch up with Lydia Gentry recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lydia, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

Many of us in the band knew we wanted to pursue an artistic path professionally since we were in high school, some of us even younger. Brendan, our lead guitarist, knew he wanted to be a professional guitarist since he was in middle school! We individually have all been gigging in various forms since before college.

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?

We’re a band called Gentry Blue and we hail from the Nashville, Tennessee area. I like to call the music we make a type of psychedelic progressive rock, almost a hybrid between Rush and Janis Joplin with some electric violin thrown in for fun.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think one hard lesson I had to unlearn was to not identify as the trade you have or the service you may bring to the table. It sounds a little odd at first. When I first came to college, I was a violin performance major. I lived, breathed, and identified myself as a violinist first. I didn’t really sing too much then either. As soon as I started to dabble in other hobbies such as singing and realized that perhaps majoring in music wasn’t exactly for me, I had a slight identity crisis. I had put myself in such a box that it was a little difficult to crawl out of it. Luckily I did and it wasn’t the end of the world, but it’s good to not put yourself in a corner when things may turn out differently than you expect them to. I wrote our song “What Lies on the Other Side” about this concept a couple of years ago in the midst of that situation alongside being burnt out.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

One goal is to particularly better myself as a musician and writer. I’m going to confess something: since graduating college, I have not had the time or made myself time to practice much. That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? I’m instituting some deadlines and goals for myself to song write more, practice violin and vocals more often, and maybe even dabble in some producing work. I feel like I’m on my phone so much (who isn’t?) and have had a huge backlog of things to get done recently, such as wedding planning since I got married super recently. I have a good work ethic but it’s difficult to prioritize correctly a lot.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gentryblue.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/gentry.blue/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/gentrybandrocks/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4utVEsz7jtq2kIe36WYWWw

Image Credits
Pictures by Taylor Rose / Royal Rose Studios Pictures by Jake Rosen