06.22.22
Why don't we start off by telling me a little bit about what drew you into songwriting.

When I was younger, I played music in temple. I would sing Jewish songs with everybody, and I really liked how community based it was. I liked singing songs with my friends, and I liked singing songs that we all knew. I've been involved in a lot of creative stuff and writing and thinking for a long time, but when I was 14 or 15 I was like ‘What I really want to do is write songs and write music, and make my own music, but I’m far too old.’ Finally, when I was 14, I was like ‘okay i'm going to write my first song’, and then I did, and I got very addicted to it. Songwriting is probably the most important component of making music for me. I always learned and got better at instruments, and got better at singing so that I could write better songs. So it feels like the key component for me.

You started by singing? Did you play an instrument before you sat down to write a song?

I learned guitar so I could write songs at some local place, and then I was like ‘ okay I know enough chords to start writing songs’. Piano would have been a little easier. Not easier to learn, but it seems like it's a great songwriting tool, and I want to pick it up at some point. It seems like type of thing that is very difficult to learn. So we shall see.

I play guitar and I also remember thinking I was way too old to be starting to learn this stuff. But that was 2 years ago, not when I was 14.

Yeah. When I felt like I was too old to learn how to mix or record music, I was like well, in 2 years from now I'll think I'm too old, but I could have 2 years of experience already. That's also something my mom always tells me. All to say, I don't think that you're too old for anything.

I'm still curious about what inspired you to write your first song. Was there a certain song you heard, or an interview with somebody that you saw, and you were like, ‘I gotta do this’?

I used to draw a lot when I was younger. In high school, I took a lot of drawing classes, and I kind of reached a point with it where I wanted to pursue something different creatively. And I was like ‘all I'm doing is singing Avril Lavigne to myself in my room, I want to write a song.’ I didn't really know how to start, and so I drew a comic where I like wrote the lyrics of the song out in the comic. I was very into like a lot of female singer-songwriters in middle school, like Ingrid Michaelson and Regina Spektor. Especially Regina Spektor. I felt like she was able to be so weird and unusual with her song forms and the things she did with her voice. I also felt like, unlike some songwriting, it wasn't like there to be pretty. There are artists I've known where the song is there to serve the voice, or the songs are there to serve the ability to write a pop song, and I felt like with Regina Spektor everything was in service of the song, so I was really inspired by her. I wrote out all the words of the song in a little comic, and then I set them to music on the guitar, and that was my very first song. This is another thing my mom always says. The gulf between zero and one is so much bigger than the gulf between one and any other number. And so, after I wrote my first song, I was off. I was writing a lot.

So do you still write them in a comic today?

No, just the first one. Now I don't write the lyrics first. It does start sometimes with a single lyric. And then I play that on the guitar and sort it out a little bit, and then keep looping it with myself until I find something interesting. I've been trying to go back to writing some lyrics first, because I fall into a little melody ruts where I like the same sound. When I sing them, or when I’m writing something, I take to the same things, unless I specifically try not to. So I've been specifically trying not to.

Where do you usually get your inspiration from? Is it usually a melody that pops into your head, or do you ever intentionally sit down and try to come up with something?

I like to sit down. I read somewhere this person – I can't remember who – was saying I only write my inspiration strikes and luckily, inspiration strikes at 9 o'clock every single morning, and I really believe in that type of thing. I like to give myself time and space to get inspired, because if I’m not practicing the things I get inspired by shrink, whereas if I'm practicing and I know that I'm going to practice at the end of the day, I'm collecting things all day. I released an EP last year called Make Me a Man. I really like reading and thinking about other work, and then like doing things that are derivative of or inspired by other experiences or works or life. There's so many rich stories in history and in other experiences. If a friend tells me a story about their life, and what they're up to, I'll spin that sometimes, or if I read a book that I like a lot. I'm often writing songs for the next few days, or a few weeks, even writing songs that are from the perspective of certain characters, whether or not I like say that as I did with Make Me a Man.

My favorite song that I've written is called pull the plug, and I wrote it just because I had the idea of wanting a lover who will pull the plug when you're unconscious, like if you're dying or if you're a vegetable. You want a lover who will pull the plug right? And I was like this would be a great little jokey song. I wrote it with my friend Ari when I was in Los Angeles. Ari and I did the guitar part together, and I was writing it. That was inspired from arguments with friends about this like, ‘At what point would you want your friends to pull the plug?’ It hasn't come out yet, but I’ve been playing a lot this year, and I'll hopefully record it this summer, and then put it up.

So you perform a lot too?

Yeah, I like to perform. I did this series at school based on the 7 deadly sins. During last year, my junior year, I produced and booked and put on 7 different shows, each one based on like one of the 7 sins. I played in 3 of them and in the last show I had a big set where I played with my friends, and they were awesome. It was great to play with the full band. I used to play a lot solo when I was in high school, but I've been recording with other musicians for a long time. so it's great to play with the band.

It was such a good time getting to put together other musicians. For the other shows, and, like some of them, had poetry in them. There was a lot of visual art, because we’d have painting parties before the shows, and my friends and I would just paint everything and decorate and it was a fantastic project. I also got to make friends with a lot of bands. I’d get a permanent mattress set up in my house for a couple of months because there were just so many bands crashing. I also met and made friends with a lot of New Haven bands.One of the bands who played in my show opened for Faye Webster just a couple of weeks after the show! It was a super sick experience.

So you’re also in the event planning side of the business?

Yeah, I wanna find the right combination. Right now I love my job a lot, and I love the event planning side of things, and I like working with artists. The dream thing to do after college is to have the type of job where I’m working with artists in a long term capacity, so either management or figuring out how to help people execute their creative vision over time, like at a label. And I also want to have a lot of time in space to work on my own music and see where that takes me. Because it's very important to me and I wanna play shows and go on little tours and stuff like that.

In the vein of working with other artists, do you often write with other people, or is it mostly a solo like all by yourself in your room?

Usually I write the bones of a song by myself, but the process itself is really collaborative. I've worked with a couple of producers, and that's an incredibly generative writing process because the song is not just the bare bones guitar chords. When I work with producers, I like to have someone who is really involving a lot of their own creative input in it. It was good to work with my friend Ari last summer. Hopefully some of the songs we made we're gonna put out soon. I like to play shows with other songwriters. The final product of the Make Me a Man project was the product of so many people's creative input and I really appreciate that. But I like to write by myself.

That's the safest place to do it for sure.

Right? I have like a teeny tiny Tik Tok audience, and I felt like there was a time when, every time I would read something, or do something, or say something it was first for me, and then it was for Tik Tok. I was like ‘How would this feel to be on the Internet?’ And that was very unhealthy. I like to have a part of the writing process that just exists in a bubble and doesn't need to go anywhere. And then after that I can sort through what is good and what is not good.

When was the first time you showed a song that you wrote to somebody else?

I wrote a song about kissing a bee when I was like 15, maybe it was a couple of months after I’d written my first one. I put it on ukulele and I think that I liked showing it to people because it was a little bit silly, and so I felt like there was this distance. I could say I like this and also it's silly so if you don't like it like it's just silly, and I think that that was great. And, to be honest, I still feel like my songs are either a little bit silly still, or they're quite good – or at least relatively good. I like to write sad things, but most of it doesn't make it anywhere, because I think that writing sad things that are also at a new angle, or really meaningful, takes a lot.

Do you have final one piece of advice for me as a beginner looking to get more into songwriting?

I was thinking about writing in my room and the thing that I look forward to consistently, the thing that I never have to force myself to do, is just like going to rehearsal with other musicians for my own songs. I love being in a room with other people, and seeing a song of mine come to life. It's sometimes frustrating, but rarely, and always generative. So all to say, I think, if you ever find yourself kind of stuck, bringing a song to someone else who you trust a lot, even if it's not done all the way, and just adding whether it's another layer like another instrument is really fun. Even though I don't really write with people that often I'd like to start doing that more. It's just nice to hear it played by someone else to hear a fresh angle, and then you might be like, ‘Wow, I'm not like the worst songwriter on planet Earth’. Everyone thinks that at some point.

I took this class called Daily Themes. I would write my theme for daily themes every morning, and what it taught me was the more I write little stories, or the more I write songs, the more I can write. You reach little plateaus, but the only way to do it is to do it, and sometimes you have to make yourself do it. When I was in high school, the reason I played so much was because my philosophy was if I'm ever doing something I don't want to do, then I should stop and go do something I want to do. And in high school I wanted to play music, so I would stop doing my homework and go play music. Which was great, but I think discipline is important, and if you make space for yourself to practice and to write it'll just get easier and easier and more generative.