Featured Artist

Addie Loy - vocals, acoustic guitar
Jim Rubin - lead guitar
Tim Shepard - drums and auxiliary percussion

Interview with Addie Loy
by Sarah Powell

As music is her release, Addie Loy puts herself into her music, drawing her listeners in with her raw, passionate voice and expressive lyrics. With Jim Rubin on lead guitar and Tim Shepard on the drums, they complete her contemporary, folk sound. Addie shares that “Jim, – a professor of education at Union College- also builds guitars so he knows that instrument very personally. It’s like an extension of his hand. I’m comfortable when I can get someone to play and I get to set the guitar down and explore my voice a little more… You know how people talk about musicians as unreliable? I’ve dealt with my share of that… Now I actually have a very reliable structure. It makes me a more confident performer to have these two guys [Jim and Tim] with me because they are so much more dedicated than what I’m used to.”

Addie tells about the time her passion for music and performance first began. “I’ve always performed even before I was a teenager. I was in dance and show choir. You know, nerdy stuff like that. Well, it was nerdy to other kids. I just loved it. I loved being a performer. I just loved getting out there. I’m not a timid person so I love getting out there entertaining and making people enjoy themselves. I have a tendency to be more emotional about the things I do when I perform. I’m not like a crybaby but I’m very passionate in general. I didn’t really think about emotions then; I was a teenager. I sang, danced, and things like that. I loved to perform but the emotional part of it didn’t come until I got older… My partner, my parents, my sisters or brother, none of them are musicians. Not even close cousins though I have a second cousin who’s a musician but he lives in Florida and I never see him. They appreciated me dancing and things like that, but I didn’t learn to play an instrument until I was much older. That’s just something my parents never could afford, or we never explored it. I always wanted to do it, just didn’t do it. I didn’t pick up my guitar until I was in my twenties. I still practice everyday.”

With the encouragement of her friend Dave, Addie began writing music within the past couple years. “My friend Dave, an art teacher, is a really creative guy but he’s sort of timid about performing in front of people. The more time that he and I spend together, the more I saw the process of it, and I knew I could probably do it. I knew I could probably write songs. I’ve always had something in my mind – something I see or say, but I never really did anything with it. Dave was the one who said ‘You know, you should really explore that.’ Then Dave would come up with things. The more I started doing that with Dave for his songs, the more it started to develop for me. I guess I just needed someone to be more encouraging about it.”

When asked about her inspirations for her songwriting, Addie explains that most of her songs are influenced by spontaneous creative moments or people’s lives around her. Addie explains that “People ask me all the time why I write a particular song.  I have a song ‘Not This Time’ that’s coming out on my new CD… Somebody asked me ‘Man! What happened that you wrote that song?’ I said ‘Nothing. It has nothing to do with me.’ She asked ‘Well, how did you write it?’ and I said ‘I don’t know. It just comes out.’ Sometimes I don’t really have any emotional issues in my life. I’m a teacher and have a good relationship - no problem, but I write really emotional songs. I don’t know.  Maybe it’s my subconscious… I put it out there. I say what I have to say, and it’s done.  It’s like I’ve purged or something… There is another song [‘Give It Away’] that I wrote that is actually more about my friends. When I first wrote it, I played it when my friend was over.  She said ‘That sounds a lot like my relationship.’ I was like ‘Well, it kind of is.’… They live together and when one’s parents come over, the other one hides, which is referred to in parts of the song ‘I hide inside your closet’ or ‘I wait underneath your bed’… So that particular song is directly related to a friend.  But sometimes, like the song ‘Not This Time’, I don’t really know where it came from.  I have another song ‘Travel On’. I don’t even know where that one came from. Maybe it was just kind of what I was thinking at the time. I always just kind of purge that out and then I don’t look back. It’s part of my personality. It’s like problem solving. You purge something, you get over it, you get it done and then you move on…I’m not a linear thinker, I don’t plan ahead. So that moment of writing a song just comes right there. If it’s not there, then I can’t write that song. I don’t sit down and plan ‘OK. Today I’m gonna write a song.’  It just comes out. Most of the songs that I’ve written have been within minutes. Usually I can pull the whole thing together in a short period of time… Toby and Dave has helped with many arrangements and lyrics. Dave will have kind of a melody of how he wants it to go, no real libretto or no real story behind it. We just think, ‘How can we shape it? How can we make it something?’ There’s days when we have this idea and it just comes out. That’s usually with Dave or Toby. Toby is also a creative driving force behind many of my arrangements and a great mentor. When I’m by myself it’s kind of like spontaneous – spontaneous combustion I suppose.”

Addie is working on new CD with HAGOODSOUND recording studio based out of Royal Oak, Michigan. “This next CD” Addie explains, “is taking a lot longer because I have an engineer now that actually listens to my ideas… Now I record for free in Royal Oak. I have a studio that asked me to record there but they’re not really paying me. What I like about Joey Hagood is he really stops and listens. He’s trying to work with my voice because I don’t have a studio voice; I have a live voice. When I get in the studio, I feel like a caged rat. I just don’t do well so I’m working on that…He is patient and works with me to build my confidence in the studio… The new CD will be out hopefully by February. My CD is yet to be titled, but it will be mostly acoustic and contemporary music. It’s going to be really easy, really nice. I’m looking forward to it.”

Currently, Addie has live gigs about once or twice a month.  Next year, she has aspirations to tour to various venues around the world. “I have friends that live in Germany so I’ve been talking with them about spending some time there. They love American artists. I could be like the Hasselhoff of the gay and lesbian scene there. I’m still trying to work it out.  I do want to do some college shows here, such as the University of Illinois. I’m talking to them right now. I’m trying to get a few shows at Union College where my band mate teaches... I’m also doing research right now in higher learning. Maybe after I get published, that will be even better. I’ll put that at the bottom of my thesis paper, ‘If you would like live entertainment…’” Addie laughs. “In my thesis, that’d be lovely. Pretty soon I will be exposed to a lot more colleges. Pretty much everything is going to fall back into place next year. Right now I’m getting at the end of everything that I wanted to do for this year and all the accomplishments that I wanted to make.”

Along with her accomplishments of being a talented, passionate musician, Addie also helps support her community as a teacher of adult education and literacy and is working on her graduate degree in English as a Second Language. She shares about her second life, “I teach adult education and literacy. I teach GED prep. I teach ACT prep and I teach English as a Second Language privately. My graduate degree – I graduate in March – is in English as a Second Language. I’m working on bilingual certification in Spanish. It takes up a lot of my time, so I don’t get to be as creative or as much of a writer as I’d like to be since I have so many other things going on. Next year without the extracurricular things as far as my professional living and school, I think I will probably explore that a little more. I’m also going out of the country for a couple months – probably Costa Rica. I have a student who is from Costa Rica. Well, she went back now. I will probably go teach English there for a little while. I’m looking forward to that. It’s a little bit different than what I do here. There, I’m just teaching English. Here, I’m teaching life skills, values, and problem solving. So I’m looking forward to maybe just teaching English where I can just go teach English then go hang out on the beach somewhere… I would love for music to be my only avenue, but it doesn’t work that way. I started as a musician when I was young and I had different bands. For some people it pans out and for others, it doesn’t. Then I got out of it for a very long time.  So now I’m thinking, this is a good supplementary thing. It’s something that just really keeps me sane, but I never really thought about it as being my only course. It’s so much of a relief. This may sound kind of selfish, but it’s the way I take care of me.”

Check out Addie Loy at her upcoming gigs as she draws her listeners into her music with her passionate lyrics and contemporary, folk sound.

A message to Addie Loy’s fans…

“Follow what you do. Take care of yourself. If you have anything missing from your life, find it. You’ll be happier. When you’ve found happiness, it’s just much easier on your constitution, which is like your personal life.”