Could you please introduce yourselves and your role in the band?
Emily: I’m Emily, I play guitar and sing and place some percussion.
Kate: My name is Kate, I play ukulele and I sing and do a little bit of hand percussion.
Maddie: My name is Maddie and I play the stand up bass and I sing.
My name is Lydia and I play percussion and sing.
How did yall meet? And how did the band get started?
Ley Line (Lydia): We met in Telluride Colorado in 2013. Kate and Emily had just come back from touring in Brazil, starting a duo project being really inspired by that music. I was about to go to Senegal to study the talking drum and we all met up in Durango Colorado where my twin sister Maddie was living and we all sang together for the first time and it was magic. We never thought we’d see each other again until 3 years later when Maddie moved to austin with her punk band and started playing with Kate and Emily and I moved out shortly after and now we’re here!
Tell me how you came up with the name for the band and the meaning behind it.
Ley Line: So Ley Line is a theory that talks about how this pseudoscience and mysticism about how different sacred sites and places of geographical importance like ocean ridges and mountain ranges and places like Stonehenge and the great pyramids are all connected and lay on these lines. We use the term as a way to describe how we connect the places we’ve been and the people we’ve known and the songs that we’ve learned. We use music as our Ley Line as a way to guide us intuitively throughout the world and life.
You just released Oxum about a month ago, tell me more about the song.
Ley Line (Emily): Oxum was the evolution of many songs coming together. There was a guitar melody then a really amazing encounter with a woman named Kalini in central Brazil in a little town called Alto Paraiso where Kate and I had spent a lot of time before. When we met her she saw us live and was really inspired by the work we were already doing and working on collaboration and songwriting so we had a beautiful morning to sit with her and she passed down a song that she had learned from a teacher of hers from West Africa and it’s a Yoruba song for Oxum which is the deity of freshwater. The song has become and opportunity to use our platform for what we care about really deeply and hope that every human on this planet cares about which is fresh water and keeping it healthy and protecting it.
Who or what influences your music?
Ley Line: There’s a lot of influences like Y la Bamba, it’s a band that we all love, “Ojos del Azul” is an album we all listen to. It inspires us in the ways that you can create an album in this day and age that doesn’t necessarily have to be totally cohesive in the sound but more of storytelling in the way that it can be produced. Natalia Lafourcade is an amazing artist who’s doing a lot to preserve the historical music and sound of Mexico and showing it in this day and age. There’s plenty of female singers from Brazil who we love.
Do you have plans to release another album? What’s it gonna be like if you can tell us.
Ley Line:The upcoming album will be released in March 2020. Oxum is going to be on it as well as a couple of other singles released and some surprise songs. We’re releasing it along with a visual EP which will be a compilation of all the songs that were written or inspired by the travel to Brazil in 2017. We filmed the entire journey so we’re pairing almost documentary style footage and imagery with the songs.
Is this your first time at ACL? If so how do you feel. Any particular places you’d like to perform at?
Ley Line (Kate): Yes! It’s pretty surreal. Emily and I grew up in Austin and going to this festival. It’s been wild to see the city change and have the festival grow and expand this year more than any year seeing the well rounded lineup of artists, both in having headlining female acts and having acts from around the world. We’re honored to be included in this years festival.
Any last words you’d like to say before we finish this interview? Ley Line: For updates about our new album and music you can find us at LeyLineSound.com as well as instagram @LeyLineSound. Follow us on Spotify and thank you for having us!
Interview by Michael Perea | Exclusively for @Music, Why Not!
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