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24 illinoisentertainer.com june 2018
ing the spiritual world in a grander scope
or simply Iowa itself, and all the life-
changing possibilities this rustic world
entails. It’s her second record to be
released independently, after 2016’s My
Wild West, and has its roots in the DIY
home studio that Lissie has set up in Iowa.
"It’s like a bedroom studio with speakers, a
mic, and a mic stand, and a laptop,” she
says. ”And I was able to track some of the
album’s vocals from my new home, then
write and record it, then E-mail it to my
producers/collaborators in London to put
the finishing polish on it. We live in inter-
esting times now, where you can make a onstage with my guitar when I’m 70 and
still hold people’s interest. So I was on
Columbia, but I was still close enough to
L.A. that I would pop in and out whenev-
er I needed. But I did feel creatively stunt-
ed at times or felt like I had people over-
seeing everything that I did, and it made
me a little miserable. So I got dropped from
Sony after my second record in 2015 (Back
to Forever, which followed her overseas
smash debut Catching a Tiger in 2010)
which didn’t do as well as the first one,
which went Gold.” After losing her covet-
ed contract, all of Lissie’s friends contacted
her, urging her to get back on the horse, get
record remotely and still have it feel very
cohesive and heartfelt.”
Lissie has an unusually long and color-
ful history with England, oddly enough.
After leaving Rock Island to study at
Colorado State University in Fort Collins,
then in exotic Paris, she released a 2009 EP,
Why You Runnin,’ that featured the first of
a long line of top-shelf collaborators – pro-
ducer Bill Reynolds and, on “Oh
Mississippi,” the wily Ed Harcourt. And
while Lenny Kravitz himself would throw
his estimable weight behind the kid by hir-
ing her to open his Love Revolution Tour,
it was London that proved most influen-
tial. “I was actually signed to Columbia
Records in the UK, signed out of London
on that major, and in the States, I was on
(hip indie) Fat Possum,” she says. “So in
the States, my career always grew at a
slower, more DIY pace. And I’m not com-
plaining – I’ve always seen my career as
something where I’ll be able to get up back out there and find another lucrative
deal. But the more she considered that
option, the more her gut instinct pushed
her in the other direction. “I was like, ‘You
know what? I don’t think I want another
record deal. And I’m actually going to buy
a farm in Iowa, and I’m going to move and
simplify my life and make music for me
again.’ So I did that,” she chortles. “And it
worked out.”
Many more kudos and honors would
continue to come the lady’s way. She per-
formed a version of Lady Gaga’s “Bad
Romance” that picked up enough speed to
be included on her Cuckoo EP, and her take
on Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”
stunned the presenters of BBC Radio’s The
Great British Songbook. She guested with
Gary Lightbody on four cuts from Fallen
Empires, his 2011 effort with Snow Patrol,
and her version of Fleetwood Mac’s classic
“Go Your Own Way” found usage in a
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