Once a week, photo journalist Brian Leli has a brief behind-the-scenes encounter with a compelling band, musician, or artist and reports back on the experience.
Lissie: “Everywhere I Go”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/LissIe_Everywhere_I_Go.mp3|titles=Lissie: “Everywhere I Go”]Chicago, IL: First, a photo shoot. Hundreds of tiny shutter clicks can be heard dancing around singer-songwriter Lissie‘s dressing room. Her tour manager sets down two records and a black permanent marker on the table outside her door. She should be done in just a moment, he says. So that he does not forget, he points to the records and repeats their first names — Justin, and whomever. Downstairs, coffee and beer are being poured for the few people sitting inside the bar at Lincoln Hall.
It is not yet 5 PM, and the barroom sun has barely risen. Behind it, however, is another room where there is perpetual night. The lights that hang inside form a soft glow that drapes the stage, like moonlight, or a perennial night light. Way up above them, the shutters have just stopped clicking. And Lissie is moving a black marker across the covers of two records — To: Justin, and whomever.
Four white walls, concrete floor, poorly lit, cold — the dressing room. Lissie is sitting on an old red couch and wearing a warm green sweater. She is pulling her collar up over her face, and then down again. She has just put on a black winter coat. Last night in Minneapolis, she says, it was negative 20 degrees. And with the wind chill? With the wind chill it was nearly negative a million. Cold air rushes in through the ceiling vent. Lissie moves a space heater closer to where she sits. “Having control over your life is something you start to miss,” she says. Over her head she pulls a plaid trooper hat with fake fur sprouting out from the earflaps.
“Fear, fear of everything — ” Lissie begins. “The thing in our hearts that makes us feel uncomfortable when we walk into a room, the thing that makes us think people won’t like us, or that we’ll never be able to succeed.” A list of influences. “The fear that’s just in people, that makes us grumpy, and angry, and insecure and worried.” Inherent inspirations. “That emotion, when it comes up, I need to write something. Because that’s the only way that I can get it to go away.”
“Fear, fear of everything…that emotion, when it comes up, I need to write something. Because that’s the only way that I can get it to go away.”
It will not come to her here in this room. But when it does come, it will begin with a melody, a lyric. It will come when she is walking up the stairs, or doing something other than trying to write one. She will start to sing the words, whatever they may be, so that the melody does not leave her. And then she will write the song. But it will not come to her here, no, not into this cold dressing room. Not here, where there are so many people around.
“Solitude,” Lissie says. “Solitude is important.”
“I used to be by myself so much, and now I’m never alone anymore,” she explains. “And if you can’t be in your own head, you can’t really ever figure things out.” But what does one have to figure out? The world is filled with such limitless contentment, such grand panoramas of distraction and complacency — why would one want to burden oneself with the inconveniences of introspection? With the discomforts of reflection? With the complexities of one’s own thoughts, of one’s own growth? “Learning how to be okay with your own thoughts,” she says. “That’s step one in how to find peace in life.” Before walking off to sound check, Lissie smiles, and says, “You have to start at the beginning.”
Elisabeth Maurus was born in Rock Island, Illinois in 1982. She is keen on the importance of singing sweetly and finding solitude where one can. She embraces her fears, rather than hiding from them. She believes in goodness and hope, whether it is cheesy to believe in such things or not. She believes in growth, in learning compassion and patience. She believes that one’s energy will affect the energy of those around them — and that one who radiates warmth and kindness will generate a reality that shimmers, glistens, and shines.