We recently connected with Maygen and Noah have shared our conversation below.

Maygen and Noah, we appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

This is a great question that we often have dialog about internally. We are both in our mid to later 30’s, we both have families, Me has two kids, and Noah has a full time career. As we continue to move with momentum it’s more and more apparent that being 20 and having no responsibility would make much of this way easier. It makes it difficult for us to travel or take chances on opportunities when we have to dramatically shift our life around each time. On the other hand, we’re incredibly thankful to have the life and industry experience we do to navigate the ever-changing landscape. It grants us the ability to say ‘no’ to certain opportunities that don’t fit our best interest or goals. You won’t see us out playing every chance we get, which is one way that many younger artists develop a following quite quickly, but it’s also something we don’t have the luxury of doing because more often than not, we will choose our families over low or no-pay “exposure” type settings. This then helps us to build momentum and excitment over the full band shows that we DO do, because they are much less often. So, even though there’s an incredible challenge of pursuing your creative career ‘later’ we still think it’s the right move for us.

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 background and context?

Sure! We are Maygen Lacey and Noah Neumann and no, we are not married! We met in 2017 when we were performing at the same church a handful of times and at the same time my first band was looking for a guitarist. We hit it off and enjoyed our working dynamic because we can both be light, and funny, not taking things too too seriously ever. After a few months of playing in my band, we both decided we wanted to branch off from that genre so we started to write songs with just the two of us, Noah coming up with guitar parts and I am writing lyrics and singing. That collected into quite a few songs and we decided to look to record them properly and “maybe play out a little bit.” We released our EP in late 2018 and played a handful of different opportunities but felt quite a lacking in our show because we really love music that can fill a space and entertain! We are a little bit less of storytellers for coffee shops and a little bit more of… well, I don’t know…

So in 2019 we started the process of building out our full band sound, which became what you know now as “Maygen & The Birdwatcher” which is actually a 6-piece! We’ve been described as “an exciting goulash of Kacey Musgraves, Chris Stapleton, Florence + The Machine, and Joe Cocker” (MostlyMinnesota) and now both of us are penning songs and taking lead on vocals. We approach songs in a way that feels natural and fun to us… blurring the sounds of country, bluegrass, folk, and blues – keepin’ it all fresh. 2020 was really a wash and we barely got together but we did enough to be able to record in March 2021 and then release our debut full length record “Moonshine” in Oct 2021. Now we are also following that up with a companion-piece EP called “Bootleggin’ At The Flower Shoppe” which comes out on Oct 14 this year. :) It’s been a really big year of growth and opportunities so we feel we’re on the right track, having a ball along the way here.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

In our society there exists a narrative that an artist must struggle. Most people are all too familiar with the ‘Starving Artist’ or ‘Poor Poet’ description. While we know that it is incredibly challenging to push and produce your creative career, I think there exists a group of people who use that narrative to their advantage. They use the “Starving Artist’ narrative to benefit off of the art while giving very little back to the artist. Of course, this is not everyone. We’ve had the privilege to work with some amazing promoters, bookers, agents, etc, throughout the industry and know there are countless others who genuinely care for the artist and the art. Unfortunately the ‘Starving Artist’ narrative still exists in and around our culture. I think we need to start shifting our focus, specifically around creatives, away from “how much revenue can you generate in the short term” and more to a long-term societal benefit. I see the changes that places like Ireland are making and believe something like that would equally benefit our creatives as well.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For us it’s the ability to give people something to connect with. That’s what music has done for us throughout our lives, so it’s good to be able to give those experiences, rather than just take. It’s pure magic. It’s easy to get bogged down in all the to-do’s involved with promoting ourselves and our art, but at the end of the day we’re really just hoping to touch someone.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.maygenlacey.com/birdwatcher/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maygenandthebirdwatcher/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaygenandtheBirdwatcher/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ2-_mdHFJ5jezkm4s6thnA

Image Credits
Brandon Lenzmeier
Chelsea Lopez
Tom Smouse