Latest / WEHM All Access / WEHM All Access - Jessie Altman Interview

Transcript

WEHM All Access - Jessie Altman Interview · WEHM All Access

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's W E H M All Access.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Getting to know the uh musicians performing at this year's Tag Harbor American Music Festival on the lineup is Jesse Altman, and she's got quite an interesting story to tell, including a new record actually coming out, I believe, this weekend.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Jesse, how are you?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good, how are you?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Very good.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for doing this and sitting down.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you've had quite the uh the path to to music, I guess.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh well, I guess why don't we start with well first off, where are you initially from?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh originally from Maryland, just outside Washington, DC, which, you know, maybe some foreshadowing because it's hard to go anywhere in DC without finding yourself a lawyer.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's just it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you you have you had a lore career uh that you were building.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um had you always been uh musical and involved with music, or when like when if you think back to like when you were trying to figure out who you were or are as a person, uh were you always listening to music and singing and doing in writing when as a kid?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, not as much writing.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Writing I really got into a little bit later, but as a kid, you know, I joined my first chorus when I was six years old.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just any chance to be on a stage and perform, and I loved live performances like musical theater, concerts, playing CDs in the car.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would just I'd be obsessed and I would listen to the same CD over and over and over again until I knew every single song, and then would go to the next one.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was always something I loved.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I just I always thought that it felt like something that was unattainable, just out of reach, and just completely impractical.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was much more, you know, in that logical state of mind.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I, you know, graduated high school and I just thought that, you know, it would be a silly, it was a silly girl's dream.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to college.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: College turned into law school, and that's kind of when I started performing again, was when I was in law school, and that was when I was decided that I had to go ahead and I had to do this.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just wasn't sure what it would look like and how I would get there.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, not wanting to be foolish about it, I kind of pursued both things simultaneously for a while until it, you know, there's that point of tension.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Both things require a lot of dedication and a lot of work.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't give what I wanted to really either, but definitely not to music, and that's where my heart was.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I quit my law firm like six years ago, six and a half years ago, and been doing this ever since.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you the I was looking at the timing and I was curious because it was either right before COVID or right during.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was wondering what was that like to take such a leap of faith?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: What was the reaction of your friends and family when you were saying, no, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna be I'm gonna do music full-time.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it I think everyone felt like it was a long time coming.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So while while I was at my law firm, I was spending my weekends going down to Nashville and recording, and I was, you know, playing shows on weekends, and that's how I spent all of my free time.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I had my first EP that came out January 2020, and I was planning on quitting my job and touring and really just going for it.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then the pandemic, the day that I was gonna give notice, everything shut down, and you know, I bided my time for about like a month, maybe two, and then gave my notice.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, you know, I can't let this stop me.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta keep going forward with the plan.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so instead of touring and being able to approach it the way that I thought I would, I just pivoted and was like, I'm just gonna get better at all the things that I have not had the time to really dedicate.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So um I I worked with Joan Later, who's a voice teacher here in New York City, and at the time I wasn't in New York full-time, so I would only see her when I came, and I started doing Zoom sessions with her because everything had moved to Zoom, so I was all of a sudden getting to do a voice lesson every single week, and then most of that time I really spent writing and trying to hone that craft.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, I came to it a little bit later, and I really I love it.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but there's a lot of I mean, that's it requires a lot of skill.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's some things that are um kind of just it's ca capturing something floating in the air, but to be able to grab it and put it down and put something to to words and music, and it was something that I just decided to focus on.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in a way it was the it was perfect timing because things were had shut down and you can kind of explore some things you might not have had the time to do if you were at the same time.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was like it's like playing catch-up.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like the whole world kind of slowed down, and it was like, okay, now's my chance to like catch up and get where I want to go and be better on the other side.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: What'd you learn?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I w you mentioned songwriting and working with someone on it.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So what did you learn about yourself and kind of did you have songs that like the a few songs that you you wanted to kind of work on, but then I guess just really edit and kind of figure out how to to make them better.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: What was that like?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, did you have a lot of kind of a lot of stuff to work with, or did you just start completely over?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: I started completely over, and you know, I I was doing it really by myself and just working on my own for a really long time, and then um probably the the best thing that happened for me regards to songwriting was I met you know, virtually uh this amazing writer, uh Palmer Lee, and so she and I she was kind of my mentor, and I would come to her at the end of the week and I would show her what I had written, and she, you know, she had her own publishing deal down in Nashville.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: She had been writing in Nashville for years and years, and so she'd give me feedback on the songs, and that very organically turned into a really dear friendship, and um, you know, we've been collaborators f ever since.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: We uh on my album that comes out on Friday, we've got two songs on that album together, and um it just yeah, came so naturally, and she's still, you know, one of my favorite people to write with.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is it like for you to start a song?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh where does it where do the ideas come from?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is it what you're going through at the moment or experienced?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, where does a song begin for you?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I will I'll have like a running list of ideas that I always like to be prepared for because sometimes I want to go in, you know, prepared, but sometimes somebody has got a great piece of music, and so some so then you just get inspired by that and it comes exactly in the moment.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: I do like to write about my own experience, and I I feel like, in my opinion, at least for now, that feels the most honest, and I still have a lot of stories that I want to tell.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there's a song on my album, it's called Slow Love, and I was on tour with um my guitar player Matt Dozat, and his wife was with us, and she and I were to they've been together forever, and we were talking about you know, falling in love, and she was like, you know, people love that big passion, but she's like, No, give me that slow love.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be in love and married to my best friend.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember she said that, and I was like, I'm gonna write that song tomorrow.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I the next day I was having lunch with Palmer in Nashville, and she and I wrote the song before lunch.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Did you uh do you find I'm curious because you have a legal background and you it in order to go to law school, you obviously know about structure and studying and kind of creating this path to things.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: In a way, could you use that?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'd imagine it it helps you when you're writing as well, um, to kind of give you a little bit of a path to something.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think for a while, I mean, legal writing is not the same as writing a song.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would say the best thing that I got from it was like the discipline and taking the time to craft and say exactly what you mean.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the things that I had to kind of unlearn, uh, which I actually read it in the The Artist's Way, was the idea of like the creator and the editor, and you can't have them both living simultaneously.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So something that I ran into very early when I was trying to hone my craft of songwriting was I would write something and I would immediately be like, that's bad, that's stupid, and I just I couldn't break free because I was constantly editing and analyzing what I was putting down.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And at least the way that I like to write, it's you know, might not be good, but just kind of letting your mind go.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe maybe it might all be terrible, but there might be a line or a word that's like, okay, this is good, and then you take that and you run with it that way.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so just kind of separating those two things and trusting yourself and your kind of just let yourself enter that free-flow state and just let yourself feel and get that on paper, and then go back and edit it and finesse and fine-tune.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it difficult?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Was it difficult in the beginning?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'd imagine it might have gotten easier, but and and I imagine Palmer really helped with this as well.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of the lyrics are very personal.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, your feelings and kind of letting people in uh to see you in a whole different way.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: What was that like to be able to release that and and and get those those thoughts and feelings out to the world for you?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to writing, I have no issues.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty much an open I'm pretty much an open book.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: But when it came to releasing, there was uh my first original song I ever released was a song called Lucky One.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I wrote that uh actually I wrote a lot of it when I was walking my dog, I was just like singing into my phone.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I just had this idea.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh at the time my dad was uh was sick and he was uh having to go into the hospital, and at the time it was COVID, and so family members couldn't be with their um loved ones in the hospital.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I had written this song and I uh that was for him.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was just, you know, I think a lot of kids feel just like they're so lucky that they get the parents that they have, and I certainly felt that way.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I wrote this song called Lucky One, and I did like a very simple recording of it and gave it to him to have um in the hospital just as you know, not that he needed the reminder, but you know, something to have physically to know how loved he was.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And um when I was releasing that song for the first time, and I kept the guitar was the stay the same and my vocal stayed the same for the song that was that ended up being released.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And right before that release, I hesitated and I I felt like that felt too personal.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I was talking to my producer at the time, Jason Lenning, and I was kind of telling him, you know, that I was nervous about it, and he was like, you know, you don't have to release it, but what you're feeling, that's kind of it's kind of the point.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of the reason we make music is to put things out that do feel that way.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, maybe somebody else finds a piece of their story in that song, and uh and he was right.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that's ever since then it was like, yeah, okay, that's right, and I've never thought about it again.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when I sing those really personal songs on stage, uh looking out to the audience and for that song in particular, you know, a lot of the time people come to the shows and it's their date night, and they're with people that they love.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so you sing that song and you watch people just like hold each other a little bit closer, and that's awesome.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why you it's I think it's so important to put out those things that feel so personal.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's really important, and it's great to see uh as you continue to grow and and write songs, uh, and also perform too.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I was curious, obviously you had been performing um before you decided to make music your full-time uh profession, but I'm curious what you've learned from opening up for different artists along the way and musicians that have sustained long careers.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um I guess I'd imagine you it's a it's an interesting conversation to have because you you did uh walk away from from law.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what what's that been like as far as working with other musicians?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: What have you learned from them?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've been really lucky uh with who I've been able to work with and learn from.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, down from a lot of like one of the big things, which is a little intuitive, it's like when you're out on tour, everything that you do is geared toward how do you put on that best show.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: So getting sleep, resting your voice, exercising, like maintaining those healthy lifestyle choices, at least for me, because when I people have taken time to leave their homes, buy a ticket, like they could be doing a million other things, and they decided to spend it with me.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel a responsibility to make sure that I'm prepared to give the best show.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that was one thing.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um I also got to uh work with uh Wheatus, uh Gabrielle and Brendan from Wheatis, and they're amazing, but and they've been doing it forever.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everybody knows Teenage Dirtbag.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's on everybody's summer, winter, fall, spring playlists.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um they're like they're always striving for excellence and making every single show the best show it can be, and that's really inspiring when you when you get to see people who've, you know, they've played the biggest stages, they've they've been the uh the small emerging artists and everything in between, and cut that constant drive for excellence and holding themselves to the highest possible standard is also really inspiring and awesome to see.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: You've uh you've uh really uh displayed a lot of courage uh and and the way to to to leave law school and go forward on the music career.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm curious, what would you say to people, what advice would you have now that you've kind of gone through it?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and someone who's I don't say stuck, but they're doing something that they don't want to do, and they're they're trying to keep music going in their lives, um, and they feel like that's really what they should be doing.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: What advice would you give them?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I would say that, you know, the rest of your life is a very long time, so you should be doing something that you enjoy and um not to be afraid to reinvent yourself if you need to.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't if you I think that there are people who are creative and they're they don't need to be in a creative field full time.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're they get their satisfaction from playing in a band on the weekends or just having a jam session or you know, doing karaoke or whatever.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: But there are other people that that's not enough, and for me that's not enough, and I think be honest with yourself about what it is and go forward.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think we can all lose sight in the what we should be doing, and at the end of the day, everyone is just trying to live a life that makes them happy, so you should do what makes you happy.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Great advice.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, your new record is coming out.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what's uh what's some of the things that you're as you put this record out that you kind of learned about yourself as an artist with this new project?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: The for this album, you know, I I've each of them everything has been a kind of an evolution, and my last EP that came out, Sleepwalking, it was such a cohesive and I had such a strong vision for it.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is kind of an extension of that where I had such a strong vision of the story I wanted to tell with this album.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's so the album is called Love Light, and it's a bit of an antiquated poetic term, uh, and it means you know, the look in the eyes of somebody is in love, that you know, that twinkle that somebody has when they're looking at the person that they love.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt, you know, I was seeing friends who were in relationships that maybe weren't good, and leaving those relationships and finding the better person and seeing friends date, and you know, maybe the dating scene is a little bit dire, and they kind of lie to themselves and make somebody in their head better than they actually are.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I wanted to kind of lay out, at least from my opinion, you know, how do you say goodbye to those people that are not really the right fit for you, and what I think a real lasting love can and should look like and feel like.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully, I wanted it to be really accessible.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's not these grand sweeping gestures, it's that every day the person who really loves and supports you sees you for exactly who you are, and doesn't just tolerate those parts of yourself, but loves those parts of yourself.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that kind of exploration and taking a deep dive into those themes, it was really my first time doing that.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And to try to take a love album and make it, I mean, writing about love is one of the things that has been done in every possible way.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So having my own spin on it and making sure that it felt distinctly me was a really fun process.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we can't wait to hear it.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Jesse Altman, I'm sure you'll be moving some of those songs on the Marine Park stage, uh Sag Harbor Music.org for the full schedule.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh welcome to Long Island in a couple days, and we appreciate you uh performing this year's festival.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: We can't wait to hear the record and uh see what's next.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse, thanks for your time.