Carving Canyons

Product Information

Pais, Matt (9 November 2009). "Local Q&A: Lissie". Metromix Chicago. Archived from the original on 11 February 2010 . Retrieved 1 June 2010. Lissie Takes Her California Farewell to London on 'Live at Union Chapel' Album: Exclusive First Listen". billboard.com . Retrieved 18 November 2016. L: Yeah and, I mean, talk about working with a total legend – she’s written some of the best songs ever! That was a huge honor. We again have a lot of friends of friends and kinda knew each other, but were connected through our teams to do a write. And we ended up writing over FaceTime, because it was during COVID, and it was right before Thanksgiving, and everyone was getting COVID. So November 2020 I was in Nashville, but we ended up just writing via FaceTime. With that song, Natalie, since she’s just an incredible crafter of songs, really had brought a title and a shape with her to the session, so I was able to sort of fill in the blanks alongside her via FaceTime to make the story work for me. To tell a side of my story which is, ultimately, you can’t make people love you, you have to love yourself, and you have to find the people that will. Grepperud, Amund (10 February 2010). "Lydverket elsker: Lissie" (in Norwegian). Lydverket . Retrieved 28 May 2010.

So she had ‘Otts’ Pops’ and I had ‘Indie Pop.’ We realized—this is early COVID—‘What are we gonna do this summer and winter? We don't know what to do.’ So we decided, ‘Let's just do it.’ There is this commercial kitchen that let us make it. And so we handmake pop-music-inspired popcorn flavors. It's been fun. It was a good pandemic project.” An established artist such as Lissie always has to pull off a delicate balancing act when releasing a new album. They need to bring something new without alienating the fans that have been with them from the beginning. This is exactly what she achieves with Carving Canyons. It’s a must-listen for fans, old and new. When I'm Alone" has been chosen by iTunes UK as their SONG OF THE YEAR!!". iTunes. 21 December 2010 . Retrieved 21 December 2010. L: Yeah, she’s just absolutely brilliant. Her [2021 album] History of a Feeling is very solid, an incredible record. In season 3 of the TV show Loudermilk that was released in 2020, she played a fictional character called Lizzie Poole who used to be a singer-songwriter in a band called Pool, but gave that career up after a negative review written by the title character, Sam Loudermilk, played by Ron Livingston. The songs that character performs in the show are previously released Lissie songs, including "When I'm Alone."AH: Yeah, yeah. But it’s fun, too. You end up, if you do it enough, you find some really good ones. And you find some not-so-good ones, admittedly. On 4 November 2015, she announced the released date for her new album, My Wild West, as 12 February 2016. [25] L: It’s been four years since I’ve put out a full album of new songs. I did a lot of reissues and covers and things in the meantime. Like so many people, COVID definitely hit the big pause button, but I’m proud of these songs. They’re all true, and it was really healing for me to make this record. So I think as a musician, what I really hope, even aside from how the critics respond, or the industry, it’s more important to me, I think, that the people who get this music can then use it and apply it to their own experiences and heartaches and process, because I think that’s just such a gift. I feel honored to make music, and it sounds cheesy, but you have to feel your feelings, and if I can help people feel deeply and cry or ruminate on something in their own life – I just think that process of feeling and release is the path toward peace in this world. Is everyone taking responsibility for their emotional world and not going around projecting it on other people? I think it would just be more peaceful if more people took responsibility for their emotions and did a little bit better of a job of being right with themselves so they didn’t have to go around and be sh!tty to other people. So that’s how I feel about that! Other than that, I’ve got a popcorn company – it’s called Otts’ Pops Indie Pop, and we make pop music-themed popcorn, so we have Folk Pop, Cheesy Pop, Dream Pop, Synth Pop, Country Pop, Brit Pop. We make all this popcorn that’s based on pop music, and that’s been a really good project to do during COVID, since I couldn’t really play shows. I like to stay busy! I like a project. Among the other things that Lissie has been working on aside from music has been her 45-acre farm in Iowa, where she relocated to in 2015 after spending over a decade in California. Additionally, Lissie has been involved in a homemade popcorn-making venture, Otts’ Pops Indie Pop, that she started with Diane Ott Whealy, a co-founder of the Seed Savers Exchange. “I always was a huge fangirl of hers, and we ended up becoming friends,” says the singer. “And then I was like, “Oh, I always wanted to start a popcorn company called ‘Indie Pop,’ and every flavor is gonna be inspired by a kind of pop music: ‘Cheesy Pop,’ ‘Brit Pop,’ ‘Country Pop,’ ‘Classic Pop,’ ‘Folk Pop,’ ‘Power Pop’—all the pops.’ And she had this family caramel corn recipe and she'd always wanted to start selling it as Otts’ Pops because her family name is Ott. L: No, Since I put out [2010’s] Catching a Tiger, my first big release – I’d written a lot of songs prior, but my proper first album – I’ve always co-written. In part because songwriters aren’t getting enough love right now – not only recognition, but the industry really doesn’t compensate them properly – I felt even more compelled to shine a light on the fact that I couldn’t really write these songs alone. All the lyrics are true to me, and I’m making these songs about my life. But I kinda joke, I don’t write songs alone anymore because I’ll start something, then I’ll go clean my kitchen, or I’ll go to the grocery store – I’ve turned into such a procrastinator that I’ve felt like if I’m really going to do this and I’m gonna write this song and see it through to the end and be able to be objective about it…some of the songs on the album I mostly wrote by myself, but I always like to bring in someone that I trust to bounce some ideas, because it’s sometimes hard to see things objectively when you’re just in it by yourself. I’ve always co-written a lot but, particularly on this record, because I’ve been in the game and I’ve made friends, I was really able to write with a lot of friends and sort of navigate setting up writing – a lot on Zoom and FaceTime – just through relationships that I had, “Hey, you wanna write a song on FaceTime today?” It was surprisingly effective, and really worked out! And not even on purpose, but there was just a ton of women who I wrote with on this record, and I did find there was something much more somehow efficient about that, whether that’s a coincidence or not. I felt like I was writing with a lot of my women friends, and we’re just bustin’ out the tunes. It felt really good.

a b c d "Lissie". ctnmusic.com. 22 December 2008. Archived from the original on 26 February 2010 . Retrieved 29 May 2010. AH: Well, continue on that, because that’s basically what I was about to ask – how are you feeling about all of this? L: Yeah, and I never want to throw any of my male co-writers under the bus, because we all have our strengths, and you can’t generalize. But I do think that, for as much as I felt like a lot of these songs are about me, and they’re very specific, and they’re about MY life – some of the women I wrote with, they had an equally emotional life experience, that they were really their own perspective to the song, too. And that ended up becoming extra-healing, because sometimes when you go through hard stuff, you feel like, ‘Oh, I’m so alone in this. No one’s ever felt this sad.’ Well, the thing is, everyone’s gone through something, and it’s so universal. Once the song comes out the other side, it belongs to the listener, Writing with people, it was also healing to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, YOU felt this way. YOU felt betrayed. You felt lost. You felt whatever these feelings are.’ It was helpful to remember that this is just a part of life – we all go through it. We’ve all been through it.a b c d Schultz, Paul (1 October 2008). "Music Review: Lissie, "Lissie" EP". The Trades. Archived from the original on 7 March 2012 . Retrieved 27 June 2010. L: I think, just like anything, muscle memory, a decade of kind of being on the go non-stop, you kinda get used to that lifestyle, and the plane rides, and the jetlag, and the days of adjustment to get into the swing of things when you go overseas, and you’re immediately hittin’ the ground runnin’. Those were things that I was pretty in the habit of being able to do. And then I think, even just the last two years, being such a break, that even without touring I’m getting busy. I have a popcorn company and I have a store that I opened. I have my farm and my partner and my family and my friends, my music and my dog. Suddenly, with being busy it’s like, ‘How did I do this before?’ I’m just starting to learn what it’s like again to be on the go. So I think I have felt really excited, I’m really excited to be part of a team again. I love being part of a band. Being able to see my band again and play with them is gonna feel good. I love to be part of a team. I never played sports, really, in high school. It wasn’t ‘til I was an adult that I felt like I knew what it was to be on a team. So I missed that. I’m not drinking. I’m exercising, I’m eating really good food. I’m training as though I’m an athlete right now. Because I’m also turning 40 this year! I know that’s still young. My body doesn’t put up with the things it did when I was 25, and I started doing all this stuff, so I’m a little nervous! But I’m also excited. AH: Yeah, I’ll get myself into those ruts, too, but one there’s one thing you want to hear, that’s all that’ll work for ya.

AH: That kind of leads me to Madi Diaz – she co-wrote one of the songs with you, and she’s becoming a favorite of mine, too.The album’s other singles Sad and Night Moves show two other sides to its story. Sad seethes with an undercurrent of anger, matched with a certain resignation. It’s a bluesy number, and comes complete with echoing guitars that invoke the openness of the Lissie’s native American Midwest. Night Moves by contrast is upbeat, perhaps the poppiest moment of the album, with a wandering bassline and a steady groove. Lissie’s music is often categorised as “pop”. Variations thereof: indie pop, folk pop, etc. appear to lend nuance, but if so, it’s redundant. She doesn’t seem to mind – after all, she co-owns a popcorn brand called Otts’ Pops Indie Pop, which might as well be an edible eyeroll. a b "Barenaked Ladies, Submarines Do Campfire Songs for "Simple Life" ". Artist Direct. 6 July 2007 . Retrieved 27 June 2010. AH: You were out on the farm for a good chunk of the pandemic. How did that kind of isolation affect the songs that ended up on Carving Canyons?