I am here introducing with great pleasure an American artist: Elizabeth Winterbourne. Elizabeth is a singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist originally from Arizona, currently based in NYC. Her music can best be described as "folky dream pop", entwining her classical and contemporary music backgrounds with her southwest roots.
Elizabeth has been writing deeply personal and always authentic music since she was 12 years old. In 2022 she moved to New York and released her first EP "Christina's World".
This February she released her latest single "Evergreen". Her music brings in a dreamy pop sound as well as her classical voice training to create something almost ethereal at times, a landscape of sound and words over a foundation of incredibly personal storytelling.
Enjoy your reading!
“I was there on the mountainside
And I watched the rain fall from me
And the beautiful way she died
I still feel it on my skin
Blowing in the wind
This evergreen, it has me
And I'm never going back again”
Evergreen – Elizabeth Winterbourne
Hi Elizabeth, thank you for being here with Art-Waves. I'm so delighted to meet you and learn more about who you are as an artist! Before we get going, I would like you to introduce yourself to our readers. Tell us a little bit about your story: how did you discover your passion for music, where are you from originally, your studies, music influences…
First of all, thank you so much for having me! So, hi, I’m Elizabeth, and I’m a singer/songwriter currently based in NYC, but I was born and raised in Tucson and Phoenix, AZ. I started writing music around age 11/12, but I started studying voice performance when I was about 7 through choir, so I’ve been doing music for most of my life.
I also studied piano, violin, guitar, saxophone, clarinet, banjo, and a bit of bass and mandolin, so my life has VERY much been characterized by music in different directions.
In terms of musical inspirations, I grew up in the folk music scene of the southwest, and that resulted in me playing music with the Ronstadt family. That had a huge influence on my music, and Linda is such a big inspiration to me as a singer.
What is lead you to write music for the first time?
I found a passion for songwriting as a means of dealing with trauma and stress in my life when I was really young and didn’t have any other outlets or structures for managing those things.
Who are your masters and inspirational muses? (not just for music)
What’s interesting is that I don’t really have inspirations when it comes to songwriting. I have people that I admire, but songwriting feels like such a personal thing to me that I don’t find myself being inspired by the canon’s of other artists. I’m really inspired by people like Lady Gaga, Viola Davis, and feminist mindset coach Kara Lowentheil who have really paved their own paths in their respective fields and not allowed other people’s models shape the way that they wanted to live their lives.
Was there anything in particular that inspired you when writing “Evergreen" ?
The title was the really big part. That’s usually how I write music: I just have this huge list of words and phrases in my phone notes app filled with things that I think I could use to talk about something important/could be used to elucidate a complicated experience. I had written down the word ‘evergreen,’ and then one day I was messing around with this chord progression and strumming pattern, and everything just kind of came together.
I would like to imagine your music as a metaphor with certain colors, particular scents, images of scenery … how would you describe yourself?
That’s awesome because I actually have synesthesia! So all my music has designated colors. “Evergreen” is (well, of course) mostly green, but it depends on the part of the song. The verses are very brown, dark yellow, faded, and the chorus alternates between darker, earthier greens, and brighter greens.
If you had to pick one song that best encompasses who you are as an artist, which would it be and why?
I think it would probably be “Evergreen.” The combination of the songwriting as well as the production just feels like the best encapsulation of where I currently feel my music is stylistically and thematically.
An album that changed your life is… (and why)
If I had to pick a single album in its entirety, I would probably say Taylor Swift’s Red. I would be lying if I said that she wasn’t a massive inspiration for me as a kid to start pursuing this. Seeing her start so young was kind of the permission I needed to start trying to do music professionally.
I got like 5 copies of the Red CD for my 12th birthday, and that was the only time I’ve seen her perform live. My family didn’t have a lot of money, so my mom buying me tickets to go see her for Christmas was kind of a big deal.
I also think that her lyricism on that album contributed a lot to how I started to really define my writing style (and that’s still my favorite album of hers :)
What is the general creative path of song writing for you?
Beyond what I already mentioned about this in the previous question about “Evergreen,” I write a lot from a place of either emotional difficulty or simply a need to talk about something I feel like isn’t talked about enough. It’s either mostly about processing my own emotions or it’s taking what I’ve already processed and finding a way to talk about it with others.
How has the NYC music scene challenged or benefited you artistically and individually?
I honestly love this question. Weirdly enough I don’t feel like the music scene here has really challenged or benefited me. The scene feels very similar in a lot of ways to what I grew up with in the southwest but with more musical diversity I would say. More or less all of the new opportunities I’ve gotten in the past year haven’t really been as a result of being in NYC, and at the same time, I feel like breaking into the indie scene here was pretty much the same as it was in Arizona when I was a teenager.
I love NYC for all the history and culture that exist here, and I think that in that way NYC as a place has benefitted me a lot (it’s also kind of a geographical central point to a lot of other creative hubs), but the music industry nowadays is just so much based on the internet that I feel like you can be in any decent sized city and have the same experience from a professional standpoint.
In your song you often explore topics covering life, love, and identity. Is there something personal in there, like something that really happened to you or some emotions that you've personally felt on your skin?
Well first of all, I love the “Evergreen” reference here ;)
The music I write is incredibly personal to me, and as I mentioned above, that’s how I started writing songs in the first place. All of my songs talk about personal experiences of mine at least in some way. Sometimes it’s very literal, and sometimes I build stories out of events in my life that don’t necessarily stick to real circumstances. I’m honestly not sure how I would write music if it didn’t come from a personal place.
How do you stay inspired and creative?
Another awesome question! And sometimes the answer is that it’s really freaking hard.
The biggest thing for me is to get out of my own head and just be open to whatever I might create. When I get bogged down by some of the BS in this industry, it’s very easy for my creativity to become kind of zapped. I have to really step back from the business side of things and reconnect with why I write music in the first place.
I also just try to do and experience as much as I can in life, and then I can just trust that something will come out of the things that I’m living through and seeing around me.
Also art museums are great for inspiration :)
What was your dream job as a child?
I wanted to be an actor and singer :) So I’ve been an artist as long as I can remember.
If you got the chance to write a song based on your favorite book. What book would that be and why?
Oooooh this is a good one. So I actually have written off of books before (“Evelina” comes from an 18th century British novel), but if I were to write a song based on my favorite book, it would be the novel Saltwater by Jessica Andrews. It’s this really gorgeously written story about a mother-daughter relationship, and it’s something that I can very much relate to as well as just being really poetic with extraordinary imagery. All of that lends itself to being something that I think I could pretty easily create off of.
What does music and making music mean to you and your listeners? Tell us about the power of music.
Because I started creating music as a means of processing difficult emotions when I was very young, music is very much just a part of who I am as a person. It came to me as a sort of therapy and lifeline, and then when I started to perform my songs for people, I found that not only was it all of that for me, but it could provide comfort to other people, people I didn’t even know.
That really hooked me. For 13-year-old Elizabeth who was really struggling, it felt like a super power. I could turn terrible things into something beautiful that in turn could bring joy and healing to others, and I just really felt like that was (and still is) my task in life.
I write my songs to help myself with difficult things in life, and so when I share them, I just really want them to serve other people in the same way.
What was your most memorable live show? (and why)
2016. The Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix, AZ. A photographer friend of mine had passed away from cancer, and his partner put together a music scholarship fund in his name and held a Bob Dylan tribute concert (one of his all-time favorite artists) to raise money for the scholarship fund. She brought together all of the local artists that he had photographed through the years to play, and I’ve honestly never had an experience quite like that again in my life. You could just feel the love and joy and community in the room, and it just made us all feel so alive. It was one of those reminders of why music is so powerful and special.
What are the musical goals you wish for?
I hope that I can bring what I create to as big of an audience as possible. I really believe in the music that I write and its ability to help people, not only from how it’s helped me, but from the feedback that I’ve received, and so the most that I can hope for is reach. I know that not everyone will like and connect with what I make, and that is absolutely fine :) I just want people to have the option to use it if it can help them.
A venue on your bucket list to perform at?
The Troubadour. Hands down. Especially having grown up playing with the Ronstadts and that being such a pivotal venue for so many artists like Linda Ronstadt during that time period. That would be a very full-circle moment for me.
Where and when are you going to perform next?
Well, I’m taking a little break at the moment from doing live shows to prep some new things that are coming this summer…but suffice it to say that I may or may not be doing some light touring in July…
Do you have any advice for those that might not know where to begin, or may be too afraid to share their talent with the world?
There’s no “right” place to begin; you just have to begin. That’s the hardest part, and it’s also the part that is the biggest step in your journey. You just have to start in some way, and ideally you start in a way that feels good to you, authentically as yourself :) If you feel really hesitant and afraid to start, I encourage you to question why you feel that way. The world needs more art and authenticity, and no matter what, some people won’t like what you do because we’re all humans with complicated brains, but that’s totally fine! Not everyone has to like what you do.
The important thing is that some people might really LOVE what you do, and you could really help people if you just give yourself permission to be vulnerable (which I promise seems scary, but it’s not that bad once you do it).
I close this interview with our usual question: what is Art and who are the artists in your opinion?
In my opinion, art is emotion put into a transferable medium. It’s taking human vulnerability and putting it into a form that can communicate that vulnerability to others. The artists are the ones who sacrifice themselves to do this, not in a self-righteous way, but just in a “wow-it’s-scary-to-be-human-but-I’m-letting-myself-be-scared” way. I think honestly that’s pretty much all being an artist is. It’s allowing yourself to create through vulnerability with the hope of perpetuating human authenticity and connection over all else.
Elizabeth, thank you for taking the time to talk with me. I hope your music comes to be more and more known and can bring deep emotions to tons of souls. I wish you much success and for your dreams to come true! We hope to see you in Italy for a live show soon.
Thank you so much for talking with me! And I hope I can play there soon as well :)
To keep up with Elizabeth and listen to more of her music check her out online on her official website, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify
Interview by Marianna L. for Art-Waves
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