05.25.06 - Volume 2, Episode #7 - Length 27:39
Gifted song writing and intimate, warm vocals will gentle pull your emotional state into heavyheartedness. Liz Stahler’s unique style can only begin to be describes as folk roots-rock with profoundly pleasing delight and sadness.
AAC 25.7 MB
MP3 25.3 MB
[music: Liz Stahler: Not That Easy]
Liz Stahler: It’s not that I want anybody to invade on my art, because I think it is really my experience, but I want it to be accessible to people. Like not because I want to sell out but because like I want to give something back and feel like I’m being understood.
[music: Liz Stahler: Not That Easy]
Liz Stahler: My parents had a piano in their house and when I grew up I wasn’t taking lessons or anything but like I’d listen to Carly Simon songs or like really bad radio pop and like do it by ear in the key of C and my parents were like, “Oh, she’s musically gifted.” I don’t think that that was really the case so much but it slowly went from that into me writing like this gigantic catalog of awful songs on the piano and recording them all to a cassette. I don’t know, I wrote a song for my sixth grade graduation. So it was really like a writing thing. My voice used to totally suck. I was so not a singer as a kid. I was never really encouraged about it but I just loved it so much that I kept doing it and I just insisted on getting better at it. The Indigo Girls inspired me to get a guitar and I switched my whole world to guitar at the end of high school. By the time I had finished one year at college and started writing more normal songs than the high school catalog that has been burned now I think, I realized that it was exactly what I wanted to do. There’s nothing that I felt more comfortable doing than writing songs and sharing them.
[music: Liz Stahler: BrightSideBroadcast.com Exclusive:]
Liz Stahler: A piano was in the house and I didn’t really learn it. I learned three chords, which I later learned when I went to music school were the fundamental major chords, and I worked with those three chords for like the majority of my younger career that didn’t really exist. Then I started taking some classical lessons. I did that for four years and I was really into it but, once I got hold of a guitar, I just abandoned the piano and forgot the entire catalog that I had learned. I was supposed to be learning to read music but I thought, “OK, ears” and so this entire classical catalog that I had was in my head. After five years away from the piano, I went back to try and play some Chopin Nocturne that I thought was beautiful and I realized that I couldn’t play a damn thing. Reincorporating piano back into my set has only happened in the last five months. I started writing on the piano because I was doing some babysitting for kids while their families were away and they had pianos in their house so I just started playing the piano.
[music: Liz Stahler: BrightSideBroadcast.com Exclusive:]
Liz Stahler: It’s so hard because, on one end, you are your own worst critic. So like when other people start telling you stuff is bad, and you’re already assuming you’re being the hardest on yourself, it starts to make me personally think that hey I’m a moron and I don’t know what I’m talking about or whatever. And it’s also just like when someone’s like, even someone you trust and love and who respects you as an artist, it’s like I don’t know about that song and you’re feeling it, it can be really heartbreaking. I really want to be open to feedback and I really want to be able to grow. Like I know songwriters that are so afraid of getting feedback on their songs because it’s like their babies.
[music: Liz Stahler: BrightSideBroadcast.com Exclusive:]
Liz Stahler: Well, OK, so there’s this thing that’s called Sonicbids, which is really cool. It’s this website that was set up by these guys in Boston. I had no idea that it’s from Boston but it’s like a sort of hub for independent musicians to find new opportunities and submit to them using this electronic press kit. So sometimes I’ll look through Sonicbids and apply to stuff and almost every time I get rejected from everything I apply to. But Rockrgrl came up and it’s this music conference and I’d never been to a music conference and I’d gotten some mixed reviews of them. So I decided to submit for a showcase because a showcase was a free ticket into the conference except for not including a plane ticket. I got a showcase and it was so cool. I don’t know how hard or easy it was for me when I opened up the email and it said congratulations. It was really, really exciting. I was jumping up and down. So I flew out to Seattle to go to the conference. I was really panicked because I had wanted to book more gigs out here. I didn’t do a good job and so I ended up coming out here with just that one showcase date, not knowing whether the conference was going to be awesome, feeling like I didn’t know what I was going to do in Seattle, like I was going to have all this free time and the cheap plane ticket had me out here for a whole week, and it was nothing like I thought. The conference was so informative. I learned so much. I saw some awesome music. I met some amazing musicians. I met Kim Tuvim who like has changed my world. I came out to Seattle not knowing who I was going to stay with and like stumbled to this stranger’s house who had kindly offered to leave a key out for me, though we’d never met. From that blossomed this new friendship that I’m totally excited about. The conference, the Rockrgrl thing, was totally empowering for women. Like the artists that were involved in it that I listened to were great. The panels were so interesting and it was so cool to be around all these people that are like, “I’m doing music for a career and I’m making it happen.” When I’d talk about myself, it was like I was really being looked at as a musician who’s making it happen. No matter where I was at it, people just gave me that freedom and it’s different because back home I was just like the nanny who plays gigs every week.
[music: Liz Stahler: Turn The Lights Down]
Liz Stahler: The Boston music community is really interesting. There is some awesome stuff going on there. I have some friends playing music back in Boston that kick butt. Berkeley College of Music where I went to school is based on it and there are a lot of really, really great singer-songwriters that are popping out of there. It goes back to Melissa Etheridge and Paula Cole and Gillian Welch and Melissa Ferrick people that are in the mainstream are all in Boston at some point to go to Berkeley. People that are more up-and-coming and new like Adrian and Kyler England also are Berkeley folk and there’s a new generation of singer-songwriters. There’s this world in Boston for it. The folk music community in Boston feels like difficult to get involved with. Like I really struggled with it because I don’t feel like I got… there’s like one room that I feel like thrives that scene and I don’t feel like I’ve really been invited into it. Sometimes I feel like it’s such a struggle but it’s also really cool because there’s so many artists in it. Other than that, there’s this snobby punk bunch thing going on. As much as I’d love to be in a grunge band, I don’t think the spirit has moved me.
[music: Liz Stahler: BrightSideBroadcast.com Exclusive:]
Liz Stahler: Most of my newer songs, the whole record that I’m about to do, are really personal and I don’t think that was true for the first EP that I put out. I mean it was like that, but it was more around the edges, or sort of playing more on my imagination than like married to my personal experience. This whole record is really personal. People may think that I’m super, super sad but I’m really pretty happy but I’ve seen some sad stuff, been through some sad stuff, and so I would say that most of these new songs and definitely the songs that I played tonight all have little stories of either things that I’ve been through or watched other people go through. The record is going to be with my band. I have some awesome people that play with me back in Boston and they will be featured on the record as well as this really eccentric friend of mine who’ll be doing all this fun synthesis on it. I can’t wait to hear what she comes up with because her brain exists in this realm that I can’t even imagine entering. It’s not the same world we live in and, from that space where she dwells, she makes some of the coolest sounds.
[music: Liz Stahler: Torn]
Liz Stahler: I think they’re cool kids. It’s awesome. They are the best. I have like all these children in my life that just really like keep me on my toes and having fun and some of them are really little and it’s like you want to give them the best experience that you can. So it keeps reminding me of like little things that you want to teach a kid to like reincorporate into my life. It’s awesome. I couldn’t have a better second job.
[music: Liz Stahler: Torn]
Liz Stahler: I personally feel like the whole image thing freaks me out sometimes. It’s like, “Oh my god, I’m not skinny enough. I’m not pretty enough to do this.” That can get in my way or just in general being insecure because it’s like I look at my musician friends and I look at the music that’s out there. I was at a Radiohead concert two years ago and I was just beside myself. Like it was the most amazing experience of my life and I was looking at all these adoring fans and everybody’s going crazy and I just thought like how awesome they are. To be successful, you really have to be awesome. So I started thinking that I have to be totally awesome and that’s hard sometimes, to believe in what you’re doing so much and trust it because it’s a scary industry out there. To put all those little image things aside and like outside pressures that aren’t really in the end what it’s about and get down to the core. The big fear is, are you really good enough? And saying yes and believing it and keep going and then when somebody sends you that rejection like, “I’m sorry we don’t want you to showcase here. I’m sorry. This thing is full. You are not a finalist for this. I’m sorry. Why don’t you break your guitar” or something like that. My inbox can get filled with shit like that sometimes and it’s like, “OK, you know what, that asshole’s wrong.” I just have to keep doing it over and over again and that’s hard. That’s definitely the hardest thing. Performing and writing, that’s easy and all the business stuff, all the paperwork, I’m not good at that, all the phone calls and computer files and updating my email, I mean that stuff, forget it. It’s not all fun and games. I need a big team. Does anybody want to be my manager?
[music: Liz Stahler: BrightSideBroadcast.com Exclusive:]
Liz Stahler: Well, I have a really awesome website that was made by this woman who runs RedCat Web Designs. She’s based in New York. My website is www.lizstahler.com/. I also am a MySpace user. I love it when people want to be my friends, so be my friend at MySpace, which is www.myspace.com/lizstahler/. MySpace rocks. That’s how to find me on the web. Thank you for listening. It’s like every single person that hears me makes me excited – one person or five people, granted I want a million – but thank you.
[music: Liz Stahler: BrightSideBroadcast.com Exclusive:]
"I was so not a singer as a kid. I was never really encouraged about it but I just loved it so much that I kept doing it and I just insisted on getting better at it." - Liz Stahler
