We recently connected with Olivia Maria and have shared our conversation below.

Olivia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had started sooner?

When you have the benefit of hindsight I think it’s easy to look back and second-guess your path as a creative and compare your journey to other people’s, but I think that the artist I am right now and the art I’m able to make at this point in my life is a direct product of all the learning I’ve done up til this point. As you get older it’s easy to feel like you’re racing against the clock, but I truly feel like I’m at the right place at the right time to be making the music I want to make. I don’t feel like that’s something you can force or rush.

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?

My name is Olivia and I play in a power-pop band called COWBOY BOY. My creative partner Mike and I have been making music together since 2016, and we released our first full-length record, GOOD GIRL, in 2021 on Get Better Records. Mike and I met in Boston, and we’ve continued to make music together long-distance since I moved to Los Angeles in 2017. We just finished recording our second full length record, and we can’t wait for it to be out in the world.

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

The driving force behind wanting to make music and work in the music industry has always been to make my younger self proud. I spent a lot of my childhood and young adulthood feeling like my dreams were unattainable, and I’ve spent my life working as hard as I can to show that little girl that all the hours she spent in her bedroom dreaming of what it would be like to be in a band wasn’t just wasted time. Music has this magical power to make people feel held and understood and so much less alone, and if I can do that for even one person then I’m happy with what I’ve achieved.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The coolest thing about music is that it’s the closest you can get to doing magic in real life – you’re literally conjuring something out of nothing. It sounds so simple, but to me the most rewarding thing about being an artist is making something really cool that you’re proud of and being able to share that with other people and hopefully eliciting some kind of emotional reaction in them. I’ve also been lucky enough to have built an incredible community of artists and creatives that constantly inspire me to improve, and it’s so rewarding to be surrounded by artists that I love and respect so deeply.

Contact Info:

• Website: cowboyboyband.bandcamp.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/cowboyboy_band
• Twitter: twitter.com/cowboyboyband

Image Credits
Main photo & Mike guitar photo by Joshua Rowe Full band photo by Paige Mount Studio photo by Elle DioGuardi