INTERVIEW: Lizzie & The Makers
Lizzie & The Makers
The Photo Ladies Interview - by Emily May
New York musician Lizzie Edwards grew up surrounded by music. With a grandfather who was an opera singer, a grandmother who was a classical harpsichordist, and a father who was a sideman for artists such as Chuck Berry and was in a band himself, it seemed inevitable that a career in music would find Edwards. Going to concerts with her father from a young age exposed her to many different kinds of music, but the genre that made the biggest impact on her was jazz, with its ability to allow one to get lost in the music and allow it to take them over. Edwards studied music theory and classical piano at The New School in NYC, as well as music and English at Dartmouth College, and upon graduating from college she worked at The Jazz Foundation of America. During that time, amongst other things, she worked as a caretaker for two blues and jazz singers, Abbey Lincoln and Sweet Georgia Brown, who inspired her to develop a love and appreciation for the blues, later incorporating those sounds into her music. Later, she worked as a sound engineer at the legendary Brooklyn venue Pete's Candy Store, and organized Bourbon Fest, a day fest that she was supposed to play with a band she was in at the time. When her band broke up a week before the fest, she received offers from some of the venue's regular musicians to form a new band to perform, and thus Lizzie & The Makers were born. Although parts of the line up have changed over the years, The Maker's have solidified their line up over the years and currently consist of guitarist and songwriting partner Greg McMullen (who has been with Lizzie from the start), Brett Bass (Gregg Allman, Bernie Worrell) on bass, Steve Williams (Sadé, Digable Planets) on drums and Rob Clores on keys. Having sung with bands in the past, many of which heard her powerful vocals and labeled her a rock or power singer and tried to make her a certain type of artist that didn't fit who she truly was as an artist, caused her to struggle over the years to find her voice and stay true to her authentic self. Since that time, she has been finding her voice as an artist and has found a group of musicians with which she can shine as her true self. Lizzie & The Makers have been working in recent years with legendary producers Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie, Tin Machine) and Mario J. McNulty (David Bowie, Prince). Most recently, the band released "Mermaid", the first single from their soon-to-be-released new album. “It was right after Mardi Gras and there was still glitter, beads, and pieces of costumes in the streets, littering the wet, black pavement,” says Edwards. “I was nursing a broken heart and just started journaling as I was walking around. Pete’s Candy Store is like my home away from home, so I went there for solace, old friendships, and just started writing what I saw around me to try to process why my relationship with this person had suddenly shifted from close to distant.” The band also released a music video for the track that was mostly filmed at Art Factory Studios in Paterson, NJ and reflects the somber yet powerful sentiments behind the track, “emerging from a dark cave and going toward the light,” Edwards says. Recorded at Mission Sound Recording in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the new music threads shoegazey, psychedelic layers throughout its core. “I think we’ve been on this kind of ethereal tear,” mulled Edwards. “It’s almost like when we wrote these songs they went through a David Lynch portal, they and came out a little bizarre.” Infusing elements of art-rock, dream-pop, and a celestial atmosphere Lizzie & The Makers have spawned something entirely their own. The band is focused on their album release, with plans to also create some online live stream events and do some interviews that will also see them perform a bit. With plenty for their fans to look forward to, make sure to follow Lizzie & The Makers to stay up-to-date with all upcoming album and live performance news! You can connect with Lizzie & The Makers via the following links:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Spotify | iTunes/Apple Music | YouTube | Bandcamp
Your grandfather was an opera singer, your grandmother was a classical harpsichordist and your father was a sideman for artists such as Chuck Berry and was in a band himself. Growing up in such a musical family, what kind of influence do you feel that had on you as an artist and your love for music? Did you know from an early age that you wanted a career in music?
I think from an early age I knew that I loved music and it was in my blood a little bit and came naturally. It wasn't until later that I really wanted to pursue it as a career. I think it was something I just loved doing and it was therapeutic. As an angsty teenager, I loved playing Chopin and Rachmaninoff, and that was kind of how I would channel my mood swings (laughs). I think it wasn't until around then, at 12 or 13, where I thought "You know, I really want to sing and pursue this professionally."
You frequently went to shows with your father from a young age and have said that you developed a particular love for jazz. What was it that drew you to jazz in particular? Do you have any favorite memories from that time?
I think, growing up in New York City, I was just lucky to have access to a lot of great jazz clubs. When going with my dad, he would explain to me...I mean, it's not necessarily the most accessible genre of music, depending on what kind of jazz you're listening to. Cole Porter might be more accessible than Thelonious Monk. But when going with my dad, he would always tell me about the artists and give me their history. He knew so much, and so I think that kind of was part of what drew me to it. Also, I felt like there were a lot of female vocalists that I could really relate to and identify with, who I got to see perform live. I think I saw a little bit of myself in them and it kind of inspired me to pursue music, by seeing these strong female examples. I also just like the ability to get lost in jazz and kind of just close your eyes and feel the music and let it take you over. I feel like that is a genre that really does that and it's a little mysterious too, sometimes.
You studied classical piano and music theory at The New School in NYC, as well as music and English at Dartmouth College, and after college, you worked for The Jazz Foundation of America. How did that opportunity come about and what was that experience like? What kind of influence did it have on your singing and writing styles?
My dad actually had done some work with The Jazz Foundation. I was looking for a job and they had an opening to work on a program they had called 'Jazz In The Schools', which employed out of work older jazz musicians as teachers in schools because music programs had been cut. It was a really cool program that brought music to underfunded schools but also provided employment to these struggling musicians. It was just a perfect fit and I got to talk to the musicians a lot. I also worked for a little bit as a caretaker for Abbey Lincoln, the late jazz singer, and would go to her house and helped her buy groceries and walk her dog. She would tell me stories and sit at her piano and play for me and it was really an amazing privilege. I also became close with another female blues singer who goes by Sweet Georgia Brown. I think that talking to the two of them is really when I got into the blues and really started to find my voice there. After spending so much time with musicians like the two of them, when I started writing, finally, I found that most of the songs I wrote were blues progressions. It just kind of came out of me, so they definitely inspired me creatively and just in being a confident woman. They had great stories and it was a really, really rewarding experience and probably the best job I've ever had. It didn't feel like a job!
You've talked about struggling in the past with bands wanting you to sing in a key that didn't work for you and just how people wanted you to be a certain way as an artist. What has your journey been like in finding your voice as a singer and being true to yourself as an artist and not giving in to the pressure to be something you're not?
I think people have kind of their first impressions, just based on what they look like. So, there's that, right off the bat before you even open your mouth to sing that you have to deal with. I think once I sing and people hear that I have a powerful voice, they label me as a rock singer or a power singer. I like to sing soft songs too (laughs), and there are a lot of jazz songs I love to sing that aren't about blowing it out on every verse and chorus. I do think, at first, it's hard to find your voice and you're seeking approval from people and from the band. I worked with a lot of instrumentalists who are really talented and was always very intimidated by them. I feel like at first, I was trying to fit into this box of being a powerful singer or a rock singer. After a while, I just felt like I was following a script and not necessarily being true to myself. The more I wrote and explored music, I think I started to really develop my voice. It was challenging, but I would say it's probably like that for a lot of artists. You have your influences and you have mentors who want you to do a certain thing and you want to make people happy. After a while, you kind of start to listen to your own soul and try to translate your influences through yourself and into your own voice. It was a process, but I finally got there (laughs)!
A few years back, you were working as a sound engineer at the legendary Brooklyn venue Pete's Candy Store and put on a day fest called Bourbon Fest, which is how you have said that Lizzie & The Makers was born. What can you tell me about that impromptu formation of the band and the early days and how you have progressed as a band since then?
I actually had been singing with a blues band that was supposed to headline the festival that day, and the band broke up, like a week before the show was supposed to happen. So, it was really just a lot of timing and being in the right place at the right time with certain people. I think I was talking about how the band broke up, and through the rumor mill of the tiny venue, other musicians who play there found out and I would do sound for their set and they'd come up to me and said "Hey. I heard you need a band. I want to be in it." That's what Greg said to me, the guitarist in The Makers, and it just kind of was natural. Everybody who played there, or who worked at Pete's Candy Store, conglomerated characters from that scene to form a band. I think it just went better than we expected it to (laughs), for it is a last-minute, one-week advance show. Greg really motivated me to start writing and maybe have another gig and see where this goes. We did go through a few bass players at first because I find that the really good ones are in really high demand. We'd have someone playing bass for a couple of months and then they'd have to go on tour with someone, so we'd have to find someone else. Even my dad sat in as our bass player for a couple of gigs, because we had a last-minute need for a fill-in. Eventually, we found a drummer who was initially in the beginning years of The Makers. We were at a show at Spike Hill where Brett Bass, our current bass player, was playing and Greg said to me "That's the guy. That's the guy you should have in your band playing bass." I heard him play and said, "You're right." He joined us 6 months in, I think and has been with us ever since. Throughout the years, as our sound has changed, we've needed different things, from our drummer and guitarist-we used to have a rhythm guitarist and now we don't. We even had backup singers at one point and now we don't, so it was like a little puzzle and we were replacing pieces of it and seeing what worked. We found Steve Williams, who is our current drummer, I think it was three years ago, and it just really clicked. Our keyboard player has been with us for about 6 years. But other than that, it's been me, Brett and Greg, since the beginning. I think it makes a difference. We can all kind of read each other's minds at this point, so it helps.
You recently released "Mermaid", the first single from your upcoming album, and is described as emerging from a dark cave and going towards the light. What can you tell me about the track and the process of writing it? You've talked about how you journaled different thoughts you were having. Do you typically journal when songwriting?
I would say that is definitely how I would start an idea for a song. I try, first thing in the morning, to open up my notebook and I'll pick a random word from the dictionary and use that as my theme word and just write for 5 minutes. Once I get a lot of pages of those down, I'll go back and look through them and certain sentences or words will pop up and I'll think "Oh. That's an interesting idea." I kind of had a few passages of that which inspired the original idea for "Mermaid", and I had written a blues progression. Going back to the blues, I felt like we had a lot of rock and roll songs and not a lot of blues songs and I really wanted to write a more bluesy, soulful song for us. I brought my chords to Greg and he made it really groovy. I was going through a break-up at the time, I think, and it was at that confusing stage where you know it's ending but you're not really sure why or what happened and are trying to figure it out. I had some ideas for my journaling, but I went back to Pete's Candy Store where everything started and just sat at the bar and observed people and listened to their conversations and was kind of describing the decorations in the bar metaphorically. While I was listening to the track that Greg created, it just kind of came out. The story, I guess, is really just about longing and confusion and feeling like you keep ending up in this same place and you don't want to be in this sad place but you always somehow come out of it ok. And kind of getting lost in those feelings of sadness but resilience while also remembering the present and reality and being in touch with reality. So, like, this dreamy state of love lost but also being very aware of my surroundings and literally sitting at the bar, but just in general, in my life. And there are other things I have going for me and that this man is not the "be all, end all" of my existence (laughs)!
You all worked with producers Reeves Gabrels and Mario McNulty and have said that on "Mermaid", they had you sing the melody differently than usual and laying back a bit on the vocals, and showing vulnerability. What can you tell me about working with them and the influence they have had on your music and sound?
I think a great thing about Reeves and Mario is that first of all they loved our sound the way it is. They didn't really want to change too much. In working with producers, Greg and I really wanted to make sure we weren't going to work with someone that tried to change us. Being authentic and being ourselves were really important. But we knew that Reeves and Mario already liked the music and would have really good advice, as far as little details that maybe we didn't think of. Maybe a guitar riff should start out slow instead of really loud and tumultuous right at the beginning of a solo. Or with my vocals, one song, in particular, I felt it was like a soul song, so I was singing it in an Aretha-style vocal and really, really powerful the whole time. Having their perspective and having them be able to listen to the song and listen to the lyrics and add a new perspective to it, outside of mine and Greg's, was really interesting. Their experience working with amazing musicians and bands, they know how to create the arc of a song and I think that's why they wanted me to come in gently and not so forceful the whole time. One of the things they said was "You have nowhere to go and you want the song to build", so it was those little things, like in "Mermaid" but in other songs too, that just really helped to sharpen our sound. It was the missing link or missing ingredient in a recipe that we'd been looking for to really electrify these songs we've been working on.
You all also released a music video for "Mermaid". What inspired the idea behind the video?
I have to give all of that credit to the directors of the video and the studio we worked with called Alpha Wave Studios. I came to them with a song and really no idea. One of them is a really good friend of mine named David Malone, and I said "I need a video. Here's the song. I don't know what I'm doing." I knew I wanted to have some shots of the band playing live but that it would be cool to have a little storyline. He and his co-workers just ran with it and listened to the song and said "Ok. We have this idea. We're going to go to this place and there are Edison bulbs everywhere and it's going to magical. There's darkness and lightness and we'll get you on a trolley and we'll make a bar and you're sitting at the bar." They knew I had written a lot of the lyrics of the song sitting at Pete's Candy Store, and so I really had nothing to do with the concept. It was so lucky that they were so inspired by the song to kind of just come up with this whole storyboard. I really hope to work with them more. It's the same thing with the single artwork that we have, and even with the band. I usually don't give a lot of direction. I just give them the music that I have and let their creative flow run freely. It's worked out so far (laughs)! But yeah. They just felt inspired and came up with a story almost right away.
You have said that you all have been on a bit of an ethereal tear in writing the songs for the upcoming album, describing them as having gone through a David Lynch portal and coming out a bit bizarre. What can you tell me about the upcoming album and the process of writing the songs and the direction that the music went?
Greg and I have always been really big fans of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti and Greg does a lot of ambient guitar work as a solo musician. We've always had a fun time creating songs like that with each other. We never played them live. I felt like we always thought we needed to be rock and roll or be in a certain genre. People will ask "What kind of music do you play?" and I can never really answer that question accurately (laughs). I think that we finally felt confident enough to start bringing the ambient music and songs out. I think I was concerned at first because people can't really dance to it and it's not blowing you out and is not raging rock anthems, and asking "How are people going to respond to this? Are they going to fall asleep?". We wrote a couple of songs that were really rock and there were heavy guitars and powerful vocals, but a lot of pedal steel and howling and these other weird sounds. I think people liked it and, to our surprise, they liked it even more than the stuff we'd already been doing. We really started to indulge that part of our creative brains together. Again, I think that's why it makes working with Reeves and Mario a perfect fit, because Mario, having worked with David Bowie and Prince, there's always this weird, to me, outer space sound cloud surrounding their songs. It's not just a rock song and it's not just a blues song, but there's always something a little eerie or unsettling that happens, or there's a chord that you think is going to end or resolve a certain way that goes the opposite way. So yeah. I think that the more we write together, the more our songs take on that shape. I think that's really becoming our voice now. Our keyboard player Rob is great at just adding these bizarre tones that really take it to another planet and make it more than just a pop song or rock song.
You lost your father to Covid in April of last year, which I am very sorry to hear. You have talked about how he was memorialized in New Orleans alongside some other legendary blues and jazz musicians. What can you tell me about The Krewe du Jazz float that was transformed by Casey Lipscomb and other local New Orleans artists and to know that he had been memorialized in that way? I'm sure that was really nice to hear about.
Yeah. I was in shock, I think, for two days. I mean, my dad was an amazing person and really touched a lot of lives. That memorial is one of many that, throughout this entire year I feel like every week or so there's something else like that we hear about happening. People we haven't even met, who my dad worked with or helped or inspired, memorializing him in beautiful and touching ways. I remember, it was actually my former co-worker, who is now the executive director of The Jazz Foundation of America, who emailed me and my mother and brother to let us know that was happening. It felt like that is right where he belongs and felt perfect, but also just really...I don't know. I've always been in awe of my dad, but that really took it to another level. I think my little brother beat me to it. He reached out to the artist and said "I'll pay whatever I can to get that panel sent to me once you're done with it." I wish I had asked for that first (laughs)! It just speaks to the kind of impact he had on the music industry and on The Jazz Foundation and just on how much he loved music. He really loved all kinds of music and helping people, and so to see that appreciated in the form of a memorial was really touching and moving. He deserves it.
You also recently did a duet with Rembert Block for 'The Love Hangover'. What can you tell me about that, as well as the non-profit Sounds of Saving that the donations went to?
Rembert and I are actually neighbors and we've been singing together for about 5 years now. Time is really hard to measure (laughs)! This was an event that we had both done before and is usually done live and is done live at many venues around the world, simultaneously. They still really wanted to do something this year, but it all had to be virtual. It's always done the day after Valentine's Day and in February, and even now still people aren't really playing live. We reached out to each other, since we're neighbors, and figured that would be the easiest way to do a duet. She had picked the Richard Thompson song "Keep Your Distance", which we felt was appropriate due to Covid (laughs). There was a Buddy & Julie Miller version that had really tight two-part harmonies and so we thought that would be perfect. Sounds of Saving is really, and I don't want to paraphrase it too much, an organization that supports music but also supports bettering your mental health through music and the impact music can have on someone who is suicidal or depressed and how it can uplift someone and how music can really create hope in the most hopeless situations. Being able to perform and raise money for that, especially during this time when it's so easy while being isolated to feel down and hopeless, was really important to us. Rembert and I also have another group we're in, a female trio, so this was kind of us maybe laying down the groundwork for music to come.
Following "Mermaid", you all plan to release a single every month leading up to the release of the new album, so what can you tell me about the next single that will be released? What else you all have coming up?
I believe the next single to be released will be a song called "Bottle". It's another very blues-inspired song, but it has some weird, unexpected turnarounds in the chord progression, which I really like. It's about kind of a similar theme. It's feeling, like, a hurricane of emotions and being out a bar by yourself but you're broke so you have to go home and hope you have more to drink at home. The line I borrow a little bit from "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World"...the chorus is "Tell me how, darlin' how. I'm just trying to find my place in this bad world. Tell me how, darlin' how do you make it as a woman or a girl", so I think there's a lot of expression of how hard it is. I think I was having a hard time being a female in the rock genre, but just also in general. I'm definitely a feminist and do think that there's a lot of sexism still in music, but also just in general with the "Me too" movement. I hate bringing up "Me too" because it's been going on for so long, but just when you have that feeling of "Oh god. This would be so much easier if I were a guy." Like, what am I going to do? I'm going to go out and drink. Oh, I'm too broke to drink, because I don't make enough money because I'm not a guy, so I've gotta go home (laughs). It opens with this message, this SOS alert that Greg and I heard on the radio while driving from Austin to Houston. There was a tornado warning, so it opens with that message of kind of the alarm going off saying "There's a tornado coming. Move inside and close your windows." So, I guess in the song I'm kind of the tornado and trying too not get too angry and to keep pushing forward and not let my rage get the best of me, but it's there nonetheless. And trying to find the answers, somehow, somewhere (laughs).
Do you have anything else coming up or are you just focusing on the album release?
Yeah. We're focusing on the album release. I think we're going to have some online livestream shows coming up and some interviews where we'll also perform a little bit. We'll definitely post about that when those happen. They are in the works but not scheduled yet. Hopefully by June, when we release the album, we can have a real outdoor show!