Q&A: Nothing Slowing Down Liz Carlisle… Except Tractors In Iowa

So you graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, that’s definitely something to brag about. Do you think that it gives you an advantage in your pursuit of your career as an artist? Or do you have other aspirations that your degree has helped prepare you for?

Yes, I think my time at Harvard helped prepare me for my career as an artist. In fact, for me, I think it was a much better way to prepare than focused musical training would have been. I still have so much to learn as both a musician and a person, but my liberal arts education and four years of dorm living really helped me grow up. I got to know myself (very important for a songwriter and performer) and came to better understand the world around me. My focus in folklore and ethnomusicology deepened my appreciation of culture, and it has helped me to deeply enjoy my travel across the country. It also gave me a lot of confidence. It was no small thing for a wide-eyed girl from Missoula to enter the Big Pond of Harvard and find that she could in fact swim.

How does someone like yourself decide they want to enter a program like ethnomusicology? I’m sure you weren’t telling everyone that you wanted to be an ethnomusicologist when you were little.

You’re right. I’d never even heard the word “ethnomusicology” when I entered college. But I have always loved a wide variety of music, so I knew I would be involved in music in some way. When I found out that Harvard had a program that would allow me to study music as a cultural phenomenon, I knew that was a perfect fit. I not only got in on some great music – but all the amazing stories and communities behind it.

The great stories and communities make things so much better, don’t they? I read somewhere that you said your niche has been to comfort the afflicted. Has anybody come to you with a story about your music affecting their life?

I was playing off that quote about journalists, that their job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. I’ve always found that I do a better job of the second than the first. And yes, I have had some incredible experiences after shows – and even over email – about how my songs have tapped into other people’s lives and stories. One of the very first shows when we performed “Maybe in the Next Life,” I had a guy come up to me and tell me he had just gone on his first date after being divorced. He identified with that song’s story right away (it’s inspired by my parents – theirs was a second marriage for both of them), and I think the hope of that song meant a lot to him. I’m amazed how honest and open people have been with me, especially over the heavier material like “Whiskey.” I’ve had people come up to me after a show, hold my hand, and simply say “I’ve been there.” Those are powerful moments.

I know it sounds cliché, but those are the moments that make everything worth it, aren’t they? I know I already asked you about your degree from Harvard preparing you for your career, but do you ever feel any pressure to become financially successful because you did graduate from Harvard with such high honors and does it have any bearing on your goals as an artist? Or do you think they mesh pretty well?

I don’t feel pressure to get rich, but I think my time at Harvard did instill a sense of responsibility. More than anything, I feel that my post-college years should be a time for me to contribute as much as I can – to make the best use of the knowledge and skills I developed. I am well aware that my education was supported by many scholarship donors (as well as my own parents) and I want to fulfill that promise they invested in when they contributed money. As much as possible, I want my music and career to reach outward, rather than inward – to be a force of connection and inspiration rather than just being about me. And, actually, I had a lot of friends at school who aren’t getting rich either – they are teaching at public schools, working in video production – and one of my freshman roommates is a ballroom dancer. I think the economic diversity of recent Harvard classes has done wonders for conceptions of success that look beyond wealth.

I would say you’re definitely on the road to success. You graduated from Harvard, just released your second album, Big Dreams, recently redesigned your website, and you’ve opened for a number of big names in the country music industry. It doesn’t seem like much is standing in your way.

You never know when you might get stuck behind a tractor in Iowa…

Speaking of which, who has been your favorite person to open for?

That’s a tough call. I really love the veteran performers, though – there’s so much to learn from artists like Travis Tritt, Diamond Rio, LeAnn Rimes. (I can’t believe a young woman my age has been out there for that many albums and developed such a mature voice and performance style).

You had a hand in writing the majority of the songs on Big Dreams, where does the inspiration to write come from?

I think all of us humans have a desire to make some meaning out of life – or as my mom would say, “order our world.” We see evidence of some greater entity all around us – whether that is love or god or nature – and we try to express that. Big Dreams has a lot of relationship songs – second marriage, first love, painful breakup, marriage tarnished by alcoholism or childhood abuse, friendship become romance – it’s all in there. I am really moved by the full range of love – what people are able to achieve or endure through their care for one another. It’s a human universal – and yet, none of us really completely understand it. So I do my best to get some kind of grasp on it, writing and writing and writing.

That’s pretty interesting; It sounds like you use writing as a channel to attain a deeper understanding of life. Do you have to get in a certain frame of mind before you’re able to write, or does an idea just randomly pop into your head?

Being a songwriter – or an artist of any sort – is what redeems all those life experiences that we might otherwise characterize as “bad” or “wasted.” You can always just chalk it up to “inspiration.” I don’t think a life experience inspires me unless it challenges me in some way – insight doesn’t come from the same old, same old. So something has to affect me – by surprising me, moving me, hurting me, or otherwise turning my world around pretty significantly. Once I feel like that, all I have to do is find some private space to work that into a song.

I see, so if you had to pick three songs from your catalog to introduce someone to your music, which three would you pick and why those particular songs?

1. Montana – this is where I’m from, this was my first song to release nationally, and we play it at pretty much every show.
2. Maybe in the Next Life – story song with a groove off the new record – the “honest but hopeful” take on life that pervades a lot of my work
3. Whiskey – the most acoustic track on the new record – we close almost every show with it. Wring-your-soul-out country.

Excellent choice with “Whiskey”; I thought that song had a haunting, empty feel to it and keeping it acoustic just added another element that made it even more beautiful. Well, I think it’s time we wrap this up, so I would just like to thank you for your time and patience in answering these questions for us and good luck in your future endeavors. Is there any last thing that you’d like to tell our readers?

I’m glad you liked Whiskey. When we went into the studio with the band, I really wanted to keep that one the way it is live.

It’s been fun!

To your readers: thanks so much for reading and listening. I am incredibly blessed to be a full time musician and songwriter, and I know that it is all of you who make that possible.

Head on over to Liz’s MySpace page where all three of the songs she recommended are currently available for listening or check out her schedule to see if she’s coming to an area near you.