We had the pleasure of interviewing Erin O’Neill, and here’s what she had to say:
Q: What started your musical journey? Did you always know you’d become a musician?
O’NEILL: I was always around music growing up. My dad played guitar and did sound, and my brother and I curated our own personal music tastes from a really young age. I was always writing as a kid, even before I started putting myself out there as a singer. I was very nervous and needed a lot of encouragement to get started, but once I did, I could not be stopped! I took a couple detours on the way to really committing to myself as a musician and artist, but I think I always knew deep down that that is what I wanted. I’m glad I found my way and am grateful for the life I’m living now.
Q: What do you like the most about being able to create music?
O’NEILL: I love the idea of capturing a feeling or a moment in time with a song. Writing has always been a way for me to process how I am feeling, whether it’s happy, sad, confused, anxious, in love, evolving, etc. I can look back at my life and see very clearly who I was and what I cared about most if I’ve put it into a song. It’s sort of a time capsule that I am always adding to.
Q: How did the idea for “Tequila” develop?
O’NEILL: On tour last year, our trailer broke down so we stopped at a Mexican restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri, called Tequila’s. We had to wait there a bit while the trailer was being fixed and I remember walking around the parking lot singing “Tequila makes me dance, tequila makes me cry” and started recording it as a voice memo on my phone and then the rest of the lyrics came to me all at once. As soon as we got rolling again, I pulled out my laptop and made a quick demo track in Logic. When we got to our hotel, I recorded the demo vocals and sent the track over to my producer, Shankar Tucker. He used his magical synth powers to make it incredible and we actually ended up keeping the demo vocals on the track. The part where I say “solo” was also from the demo as a way to mark what I heard for the next section, and we ended up keeping that as well. For the solo itself, I had originally intended to have a friend come in and play something, so I horribly played a placeholder solo, but then we ended up running that through a bunch of effects and filters and got the chaotic, noise solo you hear on the track, which ended up working out really well.
Q: What would you like your music to mean to people now and in the future?
O’NEILL: I don’t think that I can say what my music means to other people, but I hope that when people listen to my music they hear someone who is telling the truth as they see it. Honesty is so important to me in my writing, and I hope that whether someone connects to what I say or not, they can hear my heart.
Q: What is one aspect you would personally say is the most stressful about releasing new music?
O’NEILL: Managing expectations! It is incredibly difficult to put your heart and soul into making something you love and then release it into the universe and have no control over how it may be received. I guess that’s probably true of all creative works. I want to believe in myself and have high hopes that people will love it, but I also know that things find their way in their own time. Being creative, fearless, strategic, hopeful, and hands-off all at the same time requires an immense amount of emotional fortitude.
Q: Who are your top 3 artists that you would love to work with at some point?
O’NEILL: This is an impossible question because there are SO MANY and the list changes all the time…but, for right now I would say Khruangbin, The Maria’s, and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Interviewed by Zoey King
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