Q&A: Alicia Blue Makes Space for Healing with Newest EP ‘Inner Child Work’
THIS SPICY PISCES IS GIVING IT HER ALL — in her newest EP, Inner Child Work, released today via Magnetic Moon. Alicia Blue is an indie folk singer-songwriter based in Nashville, TN whose dreamy melodies and complex lyricism leave listeners spellbound and longing for more.
Blue’s life as an artist began as a poet perusing through the words of Sylvia Plath, Joan Didion, and Jack Kerouac, but her fierce love for words ultimately led her to pursue songwriting full-time. Blue employs the lyrical prowess of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell into her own discography, and with an album and several singles under her belt, it’s safe to say that this singer-songwriter is taking her newfound life as a musician in confident strides.
Blue has a diverse range of influences to pull from — her early days as a singer-songwriter were spent under the tutelage of soul musician Malcolm Hayes; she studied guitar under the guidance of the virtuosic guitarist Nong, whom she had seen gigging in restaurants in LA.
All of Blue’s life experiences have culminated in the creation of Inner Child Work, a purifying look into the machinations of her own mind. In these five tracks, Blue takes a more introspective approach to songwriting than ever before. Each song is imbued with powerful healing energy, as Blue grants both herself and listeners the space to look inside themselves and cater to the whims of their inner child. From the mellow sonic landscape of “Dog Days in LA” to the upbeat and snappy “Dirty Hippie,” Blue gives listeners a taste of the highs and lows of human life in this chaotic but beautiful world.
Read below to get some insight into Blue’s creative process, learn how she stays grounded in this chaotic world, and hear all about Inner Child Work.
LUNA: Congratulations on your newest EP, Inner Child Work. It's super beautiful — you have a lot to be proud of! How do you normally feel when releasing new music? Excited? Nervous? Maybe a little bit of both?
BLUE: Definitely both. There isn't anything else in life that I put more into so that probably creates some nervousness. It's like a baby, and you just want it to have the best life it possibly can.
LUNA: Definitely. How would you describe your music to those who just aren't familiar with your work so far?
BLUE: On a broad level, I would say it's indie folk, singer-songwriter, with a little bit of indie rock mixed in here and there. But mostly, I consider myself a poet first who finds songs to be the best vehicle for what I have to say.
LUNA: I want to get into chatting about the EP, but before we do that, I want to learn a little bit more about you as an artist. Your career is full of a bunch of amazing releases before this EP but a lot of that would not be possible without some of the mentors that you've had along the way. Could you talk a little bit about how these two figures — Malcolm Hayes and Nong — have influenced you as an artist?
BLUE: They're dear to my heart — both not in my life anymore for different reasons — but before them, I had no musical background. I was a musical expeditionary, traveling like an astronaut out into space with no idea of what I was doing, just that I wanted to do it.
I wanted to be a poet and had gone to school for English. In my last year of college, I met Malcolm. He was an aging soul singer in a wheelchair. I looked out for him and found these old vinyl records and cassette tapes in his apartment that had his name and image on them. I took them home. I later found out that he had toured with Little Richard, and Jimi Hendrix was his band leader. I would go over every Saturday to look out for him and help him clean up.
We ended up grabbing our first bite to eat at this Thai restaurant. There was this woman there singing James Taylor, The Beatles, and Carole King songs, and it was essentially flawless. I couldn't believe how beautiful her acoustic fingerpicking was. Malcolm was like, "Well, you need to go talk to her. If you want to get into music, you need to learn how to do it. You need to talk to her and ask her if she teaches." I was like, "No, I'm not gonna go up to her." I was so shy but I ended up going up to her. We ended up becoming fast friends for the next two years — she took me to buy my first guitar and taught me how to fingerpick and how to play. Then she moved back to Thailand to care for her mother. Malcolm and Nong were truly my first introductions into music.
LUNA: That's really beautiful. It's like the universe gave you a path. You mentioned that you didn't really seriously start playing music until you were ending college. Did you ever feel like you had to play catch-up to survive in an industry full of other musicians who had gone to college for it and who have been playing music for their whole lives?
BLUE: Yes. Even though I'm sort of where I want to be, busting my ass is never going to go away. I remember when I was 23, that moment where I was like, "Oh my god, I'm making this choice." I could feel the weight of what it was going to require. I can't think of anything I'll do in my life that is more daunting, but I did it and I'm doing it.
LUNA: What has kept you going as an artist in moments where you might be like, “Oh, maybe I'm not as good as this person,” or just when you're feeling down?
BLUE: I love words and I love writing songs. No matter how poorly things can look or have looked, even in those moments where you're perhaps utterly hopeless or have dipped into despair, I always knew that I would always write songs. There's too much love there. There's a confidence in that because even if none of this works or I don't get what I want, that outlet is still going to be here.
LUNA: It’s definitely an ongoing process, just getting those roots and establishing yourself. Where does the name Alicia Blue come from?
BLUE: Alicia is my birth name, and I have two lifetime favorite records, Blue by Joni Mitchell, and Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The first thing that initiated the name was when I met Malcolm. I told him that I wanted to sing and he asked me, "Can you record something for me so I can hear it?" I wasn't really a singer at all but I made a little voice memo and brought it back to him a week later. He listened and was silent — I was so nervous. Then he said: "What makes you so sad?" I don't think I was sad, but he felt something there. That was the kicker for my being “Alicia Blue.”
LUNA: Let's switch focus to the EP, if that's alright with you! Why did you call the EP Inner Child Work?
BLUE: I got my first therapist in life three years ago — I had never done work like that before. I was bouncing around this life, getting bumped and bruised and not quite having tools to not only succeed but to just be healthy in an optimal way. Things never got really bad but I always felt like there was this glass ceiling I couldn't break through.
To make it succinct, everything I wrote for the record was really overdue. These were realizations, healings, and acknowledgments of things that were not so pretty from my past. It was a lot of reconnecting with someone I'd never really been allowed to touch base with.
LUNA: It sounds like a really cathartic writing experience for you. Going off that, when you write your songs, do you typically start with a word or phrase and then a melody? Or do you start with a melody and then build words upon that?
BLUE: I always start with lyrics — I always have. I have enough song ideas and pieces of songs for three more records. Usually I'll start with words. When I work with others, their strong suit will usually be either melodies or chord progressions. When I write alone it's always the lyric that informs everything else.
LUNA: In songwriting, do you prioritize expressing what's on your own mind or writing about something that listeners can personally relate to?
BLUE: It is always my own mind. One of my greatest pleasures in working that way is, if you're starting with yourself, there's never going to be anything false about it. You can't deny the validity of it. It's true because it was there in your brain reaching out. One of my greatest pleasures is finding the larger connection from my own experiences within the rest of the world’s experiences.
LUNA: Definitely — that's really beautiful. What was it like working with Cage the Elephant’s Lincoln Parish on the record? How was he as a sounding board?
BLUE: Lincoln and I had a time. I'm not able to create a progression with the kind of punch on the level that he is, and he's not really interested in writing lyrics. We had this awesome puzzle piece dynamic and we worked quickly. There was so much space for me to do my thing and for him to do his thing. The amount of flow in the process of writing and recording was wordless. We hardly had to say much to each other, which is amazing. In terms of like, "No, no, that doesn't feel right" or like, "Why are you doing that? I don't understand" — it really didn't happen.
LUNA: It seems that it really paid off because the record is very cohesive and smooth. And now to dive into some of the songs. You wrote "Dog Days In LA" to express the disenchantment you felt with the city. Could you talk a little bit about your experience growing up around LA and then as an artist in LA?
BLUE: To go back to what I said earlier about being bumped and bruised without tools — that was all happening in LA. I was running from so much of my past, which was in a suburb in LA. So many artists do that, but then you hit the point of going, "Oh, gosh, I'm running. Let's stop that." That all happened in LA. I spent years there. I love LA but I needed that exit to get a clear perspective. Part of that inner child work right was leaving and seeing my life clearly.
LUNA: There’s nothing like a good step back to put everything in perspective. How has Nashville treated you? How is the scene different from the one in LA?
BLUE: It's worlds apart. It's vastly different but I love it for different reasons. I need to be here. It is very much nature versus nurture. For me, Nashville is very, very nurturing. I have trees that envelop me, just green everywhere. It's lush, physically. And then there's a lot of grounded energy here. You'll come across a ton of people in LA that are amazingly talented and good at what they do but there's kind of like there's this groundedness in Nashville that I was really yearning for.
LUNA: Nashville is much more in the moment, rather than just the constant chase of success. Both are great but sometimes it's best to just make music and live a little.
BLUE: For me, I think I'm making better music because I'm having that connection of living and being in the moment. As an artist I want it all — we're all aiming to be gigantic, right? But if you're not feeling pleasure in what you're making it's just not fun.
LUNA: Yeah, definitely. You want to feel like you get to make music instead of having to make music. That's a good way to put it.
BLUE: Yes. There's so much time space here to get rooted and authentic with what you're making. You just have that feeling. I do well when I have that kind of confidence.
LUNA: I want to ask about the track “Don't Tell Me To Smile.” Could you talk a little bit about the inspiration behind that track and why you wrote it?
BLUE: I wrote that with Bre Kennedy, who's an amazing artist here in Nashville. Everyone knows what it's like to walk down the street or be in any work setting and have a man ask: "Why don't you smile more?" or, "What's wrong, why aren't you smiling?" Things like that — which we all know are utterly irritating and ridiculous — inspired the track.
Not that I don't smile a lot. There's nothing wrong with joy — I'm a huge fan. The song really started with my own personal romantic relationship at the time and how that rhetoric even happens on the inside. If you are feeling whatever you're feeling and it doesn't go along with the "everything's okay" mentality, it can be perceived by your lover as unpleasant or negative.
There's space for those emotions; the song is here to shed light and accept those feelings. I'm not gonna pretend to be anything for a partner because that's miserable. It’s not like saying we have to walk around being grouchy — no one likes that. But being honest helps you move through what feels shitty faster.
LUNA: Very wise. What do you hope that listeners take away from Inner Child Work?
BLUE: I hope that they're able to connect with that personal aspect and that inner self that was misperceived as something negative or unpleasant and unshowable to the world. I hope that they can love and celebrate themselves a little bit more, because they're making that space.
LUNA: That's beautiful. We all need a little more space in our lives to just be. You've mentioned in previous interviews that the most important thing for you is staying with yourself and being a friend to yourself. So I just want to get some insight on how you do that. How do you continually be a good friend to yourself?
BLUE: I definitely can't say I'm the master at that yet, but that's the dream. I do that by doing the inner child work — actually going to sessions with a teacher, healer, therapist figure. If it doesn't feel like it's flowing, I try to ask myself why, and then be nice to myself. If we can even just acknowledge that moment, there's already more space created. I just try to check in with myself as much as possible and then see what I can do for myself to help myself out like a friend would.
LUNA: That's all very good advice. I've read in another interview that you did, where you said that if you knew music was your calling when you were younger, you likely wouldn't have been able to afford going to school for it. So I wanted to ask: How do we make the music industry more accessible for artists who don't have the means to apply to these expensive programs and the resources to take lessons and things like that?
BLUE: Artist development is such a sensitive thing, but I think it can happen culturally as a society. It was a teacher that set me on my path. We see the way children learn. I can't even imagine how many times a day a child is showing interest in something like an instrument or painting that is creative. It's almost criminal how many times that is just overlooked and never nurtured. That's where it starts.
Not everyone's parents are going to be able to nurture that. We should be teaching educators how to do that — how to nurture that craft. So many of them already do — that's what saved my creative life: my English teacher in high school.
LUNA: It doesn't help when society seems to only value careers in STEM and things like that. If a kid is drawing, it’s like, “Oh, she's just doodling. She's not actually wanting to go into the arts.” It's a very big issue that definitely needs to be addressed. This is a silly question, but your Instagram bio proudly proclaims that you're a Pisces. Do you think that these astrological characteristics bleed into your music in any way?
BLUE: Oh, I hope so. I love astrology so much. So much of it is true when you understand your birth chart and the way you interact with others. But yes, in terms of the record and my music, I definitely think there's watery, underground, cryptic energy.
LUNA: It's definitely a very sensitive, empathetic, and mindful record, which are all Pisces characteristics. Do you have any advice for up-and-coming artists?
BLUE: You know you're doing it right if you're really in love with what you're making — even if it's not where you want it to be at — if you're in love with the process of making it, writing it and recording it, that's all that needs to be there to keep going. Make sure that's there.
LUNA: My last question is: What else can we expect from Alicia Blue this year?
BLUE: Hopefully in the fall I'll get to tour on the EP, and then I will probably have some more music following that!
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