Accessibility
is important for Gaelynn Lea, the American violinist and singer-songwriter who plays
her first ever dates in Scotland next week. This isn’t so much the case with
her work, which has moved from the looped back-woods folk airs of her 2015
album, All the Roads That Lead Us Home, to the just as beautiful but more
fleshed out songs on Learning How to Stay, released in 2018. The accessibility
Lea talks about is more to do with the venues she plays. Having been born with
osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease, which causes
complications in the development of bones and limbs, anywhere with stairs is
understandably off limits.
“It
makes it really difficult to find places to play,” Lea says down the line from her
home in Duluth, Minnesota, “but by talking about the lack of accessible spaces,
hopefully people will think about it more and do something about it.”
Lea
cites Attitude is Everything, a non-profit organisation founded to improve deaf
and disabled people’s access to live music.
“Up
until now, they’ve focussed on audiences getting to shows,” says Lea, “but now
its addressing the needs of artists as well. For people putting on shows as
well, they have a really cool DIY accessibility guide, which is really
practical, and which everyone putting on shows should read.”
Lea
first came to prominence when she won the 2016 Tiny Desk Contest, a National
Public Radio initiative, in which musicians were invited to submit a video of
them performing one of their songs. Lea’s rendering of her song, Someday We’ll
Linger in the Sun, was selected from six thousand entries by a panel that
included Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys and Jess Wolfe of New York band,
Lucius.
“That
changed things a lot,” laughs Lea. “I’d been playing for about ten years, but
very locally, then winning Tiny Desk, first of all it wasn’t instrumental fiddle
music, which is what I’d been doing most of the time. Working on my own songs
was such a shift for me, then the real big change came with touring the
country. My husband and I, we wanted to try it, so we quit our jobs, sold our
home and went out there.”
Lea
came to music from an early age, and developed a technique that enabled her to
play violin with the body of the instrument in front of her attached to her
foot so it wouldn’t slip, while she wielded the bow like a baseball bat above
it.
“My
family’s musical,” says Lea. “My mom sang in the choir at church, and both my
mom and dad did dinner theatre. They actually met when they were doing
Brigadoon shortly before I was born. I’m actually named after a Scottish lady
dancer in Brigadoon, so music was always a big part of our lives.
“What
really set me off was when I was in the fourth grade, and an orchestra came to
our school, but they didn’t have a lot of string players. I was lucky to get a
teacher who helped me adapt the violin so I could play it. If it had been
someone else it might not have happened that way, but I got lucky, and I ended
up playing all the way through high school.”
Key
to Lea’s musical development was fellow Duluth resident and vocalist with Low,
Alan Sparhawk, with whom she formed a duo called The Murder of Crows.
“He
heard me play at a farmers’ market,” says Lea, “and asked me to do a project
with him. He gave me a loop pedal, which was something I’d never heard of
before. That released something in my brain, and I remember being on a bus and
suddenly thinking, oh, I’m writing a song. I played it to Alan, and he said I
should do it at a show. He gave really good constructive criticism as well.”
Prior
to her music career, Lea had studied political science, and had plans to be a
lawyer and advocate of disability rights. Today, she is a frequent speaker on
the subject.
“I
love playing,” she says, “but I think it’s important to talk as well right now.
I spoke in public for the first time about six months before Tiny Desk, and
touring has allowed me to talk at a lot of places I wouldn’t have been able to
do otherwise.
“I
have a profound belief that attitudes to disability are changing. It’s a
different form of diversity, and we should celebrate that. People can fight for
disability rights, not out of pity, but out of a desire for equality. There’s a
lot of negativity around just now, but I think touring can get these ideas
about disability out even farther.
Over
the next year Lea plans to write a book based around her experience.
“It’s
about music, touring and disability,” she says. “The book is the next major
thing I’m going to focus on. I have a bunch of new songs as well, but they’re
not ready yet. My goal right now is to keep talking and do what we’re doing,
then be at home long enough to write.
“One
thing about being DIY, and which I really believe in, is that you don’t have to
succumb to the process of putting out an album a year. I really want to put out
a record I’m happy with, and I don’t want it to be forced. Because I started so
late – I started writing songs when I was twenty-seven – I can’t write five songs
a day. I don’t want the stress of forcing things that way, which I don’t think
would help my creativity.
“I
love being independent, and even though it’s complicated having to do all the
other stuff, and of course I have to get assistance and support with some of
that, I do feel it’s possible to be an independent artist and have a successful
career.
“Life
can be both painful and joyous,” Lea says, “and I don’t want my work to fall
one way or another. Where we’re at right now in the world, it’s good to try and
combine activism with what I do. I just want everything I do to be honest.”
Gaelynn
Lea plays the Glad Café, Glasgow on September 24 and the Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh
College of Art on September 25. Both shows will also feature Kapil Seshasayee.
The Herald, September 19th 2019
ends
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