Elise Leavy on Life as an Independent Artist and the True Value of Music — What the FOLK is Up?
Leavy smiles brightly against a backdrop of flourishing greenery, her hands comfortably crossed atop her accordion.
Elise Leavy’s inquisitive nature and sense of adventure have always led her to push her musical boundaries, with her experiences flowing into the music that she has sought to share with others.
Leavy is a folk singer-songwriter based in Nashville, Tennessee, who specializes in making the mundane seem unique with her peaceful, stripped-down acoustic songs. She weaves soothing lyrics through her melodies, allowing listeners to forgo the usual listlessness of life for a few moments, sprinkling moments of joy and sorrow throughout her discography.
“Songwriting is the deepest form of therapy for any problems happening in my life,” she emphatically states. Writing is a spontaneous flow for her — she never sits down to write with the intention of hammering out a chart-topping hit. "It's much more inspiration strikes and I can't help it, I have to write this song,” she claims. “It's like eating or sleeping.”
Many of her songs deal with the concept of home, possibly due to the fact of Leavy residing in many different places throughout her life. She attended college in Boston, lived in New York City for a brief stint, and as mentioned, is currently based in Nashville.
Nashville truly feels like home for Leavy — she feels a deep sense of community connection that many bustling cities full of go-getter musicians have not offered her. “Everybody's really present for what's going on here right now [...],” she says, “This is where it's at. I'm experiencing the thing that I was looking for that was just out of my reach in New York.”
New York, known for its famed Greenwich Village folk scene peaking during the 1960s, seemed almost picturesque to Leavy from the outside peering in. “It looked like this crazy, ideal, amazing moment — but it didn't feel the same to me being there,” she asserts.
This new artistic environment fostered by the music industry’s business practices is not what Leavy expected, and she questions as to how much influence money has over this change. “Nashville's cheaper and that's a lot of the reason that people have moved [there],” she says, “I wonder if some of the being able to be present is that it's not so overpriced, and people aren't constantly feeling right on the edge of going broke because they're trying to live in New York.”
Leavy looks off contently into the distance, her fingers naturally clutching the strings of her acoustic guitar.
Artists face many struggles that they have to deal with: finances, finding the inspiration to write songs, dealing with gatekeepers, you name it. As an independent musician, Leavy navigates through all of this by herself. Many artists have only “made it” in the industry after receiving support from a label or agent. While the DIY aspect of creation has treated Leavy well, she has reached a threshold in her career, now questioning whether or not she actually needs the backing of the industry to reach a broader audience.
“My priority isn't making a lot of money [...], it's not about fame, but I do want people to hear my music,” she says. The music industry today largely relies on executives, agents and managers to propel artists’ careers, and Leavy honestly doesn’t know how far she can make it without that backing.
Being an independent artist is truly a double edged sword. “It's really hard to be independent,” she says, “[...] but in some ways, it’s ideal to be able to — but also to have to — make all of your own decisions for yourself.” If Leavy was signed to a label, she would likely be subjected to the whims and demands of others. “They'd be making a lot of decisions for me,” she asserts. “That is a scary possibility, to be pushed around by someone else, and to have that control taken up by someone else. But it's a lot harder to do it yourself, and to know what the right thing is.”
Much of Leavy’s trepidation about remaining independent or not has to do with her “own doubt built on the patriarchy,” she confesses. General rhetoric that she has observed within the folk scene causes her to second guess herself and question whether she’ll actually be taken seriously by others. Though Leavy is not alone in this plight; “That's [...] the case for many women,” she asserts, “they have way more self doubt in their ability to succeed.”
In order to fix this, we all need to reframe the way we think. Leavy asserts, “Part of the problem is that we try to give all the control of this to men [...]. We like to think that men are controlling everything, but it's a dynamic — you can't blame it on one gender.”
There are undoubtedly women that play as well as so many men, but Leavy notes that women haven’t been allowed to play music for as long as men have. “If we could get to a point where there was sort of an equal number of people doing everything, [...] there would be a whole new spectrum of possibilities,” she excitedly says. More than anything, Leavy wants her music to inspire others.
“I want my music to reach and move people in such a way that inspires people who are not necessarily White men. I’d like to inspire White men also, but mostly people who are inevitably going to struggle more to make it in the music industry. I want to inspire those people to go for it — to write good songs and play good music and experience music in a really deep way. Not just on the surface level, writing for the music industry, that’s a tool. I want to inspire people to go deeper than that with music.”
One can support Leavy by making it a priority to actually purchase her work. Streaming fosters a sense of ambivalence toward music, as music is so accessible. Complacency around art has become so prevalent, leading many fans to bypass the priority of directly supporting artists. “Because of streaming services, people will not want to spend $20 going to a show or buying a record,” Leavy points out, “but they'll spend $50 going out to dinner. They don't think about that as being related.”
“There's so much value that's at risk of disappearing because there's so little financial value put on music these days,” she asserts, “The more that people can buy records and have means of listening to music that's not on Spotify, and break out of the system to actively support music. That's what I want. That's the best way to support me and all musicians.”
And while Leavy might still have many questions left to be answered, there is one thing for sure: music is integral to who she is, and she will find a way to do it, no matter what.
One can support Leavy by following her on Instagram and buying her music and merch on Bandcamp!