The Multifaceted Musician Reveals Her Creative Alchemy, Reflects on Milestones, and Sets Her Sights on New Horizons
Elaine Eagle © 2023
Today We Have The Pleasure To Have Elaine On Goathead!
GH: Elaine! Great to have you here on Goathead! With your classical music education and diverse range of genres, how do you find ways to blend your classical background with modern writing and performance sensibilities in your original material?
Elaine: First off, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me! It is a fantastic opportunity for me to be able to talk with you and I really appreciate it. To answer your question, yes, I do come from a classical music education. I had private piano lessons from age ten and up, which ignited my deep love of music and gave me a fantastic base of musical knowledge. Going to music school really helped me to find my own original voice in both my musical compositions and lyrical writing.
I am so grateful for all of the various aspects of my music education because it has really given me the tools to be able to draw from in order to have a flowing and effective creative process. I think that studying the classics and the time-tested masterpieces of music is the best way to learn. If you learn by studying the best, then hopefully it will permeate your own work as well, and that is certainly my hope for my own music.
GH: Could you walk us through your creative process for writing songs, particularly the ones coming out of your self-titled album, considering your background as a pianist, vocalist, and songwriter?
Elaine: That’s a great question with a somewhat unsatisfactory answer I’m afraid. I believe there are really two main aspects to songwriting- craft and inspiration. Oftentimes, they are on rotation, like passing ships in the night, and you either get one or the other. It is magical when both happen simultaneously. One of the biggest takeaways from my time as a Songwriting student at Berklee was learning how to rely on craft even at the times when inspiration is elusive. However, it is also important to me to draw inspiration from many different sources. Personal experiences, childhood memories, classic stories, television shows…the list goes on. The songs from my self-titled EP (released in February of this year) are mostly auto-biographical. For example, a song on that project entitled “Purple Ink” was written as a gift for my best friend, who journals exclusively with her large collection of purple pens. That song was one of those lightning bolt moments when both the lyrics and music came to me at the same time and I finished the song in one sitting. On other songs, I usually start with either lyrics or a melody, and continue crafting from there, like a sculptor carving away at the idea until I am happy with the end result.
GH: What inspired you to pursue a career in music, and how did your experiences with projects like "End of the Line" and "Artemidorus" shape your early professional journey after completing your BA in Songwriting from the Berklee College of Music?
Elaine: Music has been a dream of mine for a long time. After high school when I started thinking about a career that I could be fulfilled with for the rest of my life, music was really the only thing that made sense to me. I have always loved writing and wordsmithing, and when I realized that I could combine my two great loves (writing and music) it was a no brainer that songwriting was something that I wanted to pursue. I come from a musical family and they are incredibly supportive of me and my work, which I am so grateful for.
In terms of my work with other acts such as End of the Line and Artemidorus, I am always hungry for any musical opportunities where I have a chance to grow. With both of these projects, I have studied and performed music that I never would have done on my own, but it has made me a much more well-rounded musician. The musicians that I am lucky enough to play with in those bands are so talented and have propelled me to a higher level of professionalism and musicality.
GH: Looking back on your music career so far, could you share some of the standout moments or milestones that have had a significant impact on you as an artist?
Elaine: Absolutely! Some of the most recent milestones have been completing my degree from Berklee and putting out my debut EP. Putting out my own music has been and continues to be such a rewarding process. It challenges my perfectionistic tendencies, because at some point, you have to relinquish control of the music and share it with other people. There comes a point when there are no more edits to be made, which is always a scary place for me! But it is so rewarding to hear how people have responded to the music. I especially love performing my songs during my live shows and seeing the reactions in real time. I am actually coming up on another milestone with the release of my newest EP “End of the Line” on May 26th. This is a collection of 5 songs that my longtime musical partner Ramiro Espinoza and I have co-written and recorded. It marks a semi-permanent hiatus for our performing duo of the same name, and releasing this music feels like a very fitting punctuation mark at the end of our time together. I am so happy with this music and so grateful to have a record of my and Ramiro’s time together.
GH: Looking back on your music career so far, could you share some of the standout moments or milestones that have had a significant impact on you as an artist?
Elaine: Balancing my roles is definitely a dance that I am still learning the steps to. As an independent artist, I also am my own “team” as it were, heading up all of the aspects of my business as well as my creative time. It is a lot to juggle! However, I have found that having accountability is very helpful for me. Setting aside time to rehearse when there is a deadline approaching is the best way for me to move forward. In much of my work, I am singing and playing the piano at the same time and that relationship between the voice and the keys has become symbiotic and automatic over the years. It is refreshing to practice each individually though; I savor the time that I set aside to learn a new solo piano piece or sing along to a track to really focus on my vocals.
GH: Being a multi-talented musician, how do you manage to balance your roles as a pianist, vocalist, and songwriter, ensuring that each aspect receives equal attention and development in your career and what the future holds, any new project in sight ?
Elaine: In terms of new projects in sight, I currently have two goals in mind for the rest of this year and heading into 2024: prepare to record my first full-length album, and expand my performance venues. This summer and fall I will be working on writing a lot of new music and I expect to have a project ready to take to the studio this coming winter. It is also a big goal of mine to continue performing live music and to take my music to new venues. I currently play all around my home state of Washington, but it is my goal to expand out into Oregon and Idaho within the next nine months or so.
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