Q&A: Odie Leigh at Hinterland
BEFORE HER CAREER STARTED WITH A BET BETWEEN FRIENDS — Odie Leigh was studying film, costuming, and English in New Orleans. The bet? To record a song, and whoever went viral first won. Obviously, Leigh was deemed the winner, and with the official release of “Ronnie’s Song” shortly after, her life as a musician officially began.
Leigh’s debut album, Carrier Pigeon, was released via Mom + Pop shortly before we chatted with her at Hinterland Music Festival in St. Charles, Iowa. The album marked the beginning stages of her Carrier Pigeon tour, which runs through the end of the year. She is an artist that is New Orleans bred and Detroit-based, showcasing the backgrounds of her eccentric but well-rounded nature. In our interview, she stated that she enjoys flashy outfits with a “hint of trashiness,” and we absolutely love that.
Leigh has named herself the carrier pigeon of her album’s title, delivering the messages of each song to the person they are about. In a recent press release, she expressed, “Standing in a bar in the French Quarter and dressed up like a clown, I invited the tourist I met the night before to come home with me. 'We’ve had a great night and I don’t want to spoil it,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I try to get too much out of a good thing.'
“I agreed with him — our one evening had already turned into two, and the rational thing to do would be to spend the rest of our Halloween weekend with friends, not a stranger from out of town. Fortunately, I am not always rational. The stranger stuck around.
"I wrote 'A Good Thing' the next day and the rest of the album in the year that followed. This whole project is just a play-by-play of me falling in love.
"Songwriting has always been a means for me to get my thoughts out about real people and situations, and it’s scary how they then get to hear my raw, heat-of-the-moment thoughts about them later on. I’ll be writing all the things I wish I could say to a particular person and thinking, 'I might as well just be throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean.' This album really reflects that concept. Every song is a specific moment, a captured feeling, something that needed to be said. It's called Carrier Pigeon because this album is the means of delivery.
"I’ve learned that happy songs are scarier to talk about than sad ones. Sadness is something to be fixed, happiness is something that can be taken away.”
Read our interview with Leigh below.
LUNA: I would love to know more about your outfit. What inspired it? Did you or someone else make it?
LEIGH: I used to be a costumer in film, and I love to dress up. Unfortunately, in my everyday life I don’t get the chance to dress up because I’m just constantly painting my house, running around, getting groceries, and so I can’t wear crazy things. When I was living in New Orleans, there was always a party or a parade. It’s why I have a huge wardrobe of insane shit that I never get to wear, and so playing festivals is my chance to whip out my weird stuff.
The skirt I got from someone off Instagram, it’s called raphismadeit. They make the most beautiful pieces. I saw it and knew I was going to purchase it. I bought these boots a long time ago for Mardi Gras because I was obsessed with nice Victorian boots at the time. I’m still obsessed with Victorian boots, and when I play I love to have my legs out. I like to have tiny little shows. I don’t want to be running around in a long skirt — that’s not my vibe. I don’t want to be that lady. I love a hint of trashiness.
LUNA: Your career as a musician started in a more nontraditional way. Now that you’re a few years out, are you feeling like this could’ve been your life journey all along?
LEIGH: I believe that there are no wrong choices because you did what you were supposed to do. I definitely think this is the life I was meant to be living and it’s great.
LUNA: You were originally planning to pursue film. Are you still able to tap into those skills to help your music career?
LEIGH: I wish I could say yes, but it is so hard. You think I would be doing my own music videos and all this stuff but the thing is I don’t have any of my own equipment and so I’ve really left that in the past. I’ve left my visuals up to whoever’s directing them, but then my problem is that I’m out here backseat driving which is worse. Every time I do a music video I think, “God, I should really just do it myself next time,” but it’s complicated. I wish I could say yes, but no.
LUNA: Congrats on the release of Carrier Pigeon! That’s so exciting. Tell me a little bit more about the album as a whole.
LEIGH: I put out these two EPs in the last two years, and they were so important to me for what they taught me. I learned how to be in a studio, how to record, how to interact with producers, and how to interact with other musicians. So those two EPs, at the time, gave me enough music to make an album but I just knew that it wasn’t the time yet. I knew that I had so much more to learn and so much growth that I wanted to accomplish before I just rushed into a first album. Again, this isn’t something I ever expected. I’m not a very technical musician and so to just jump into an album felt like it would do it a disservice in a way.
An album was always a plan, for sure. I don’t think anyone is like, “I’m just going to write about my life.” I write about exactly what’s going on. The album is just a play by play of me getting into a relationship and how horrible and confusing that is and how, in the moment, everything always seems like the end of the world and I think that is something that’s really reflected in my music. The littlest thing can feel like the biggest thing to me, just because I’m a sensitive girl. I’ve been writing all these songs about this thing I was experiencing and I was like, “Oh, this is an album.” This now makes sense for an album, and I didn’t just want an album to be a bunch of random songs — I wanted there to be a theme running through it.
I was writing all these songs about the confusion of falling in love and the vulnerability and insecurity that comes with all of that. This album is very much just a tale of that.
LUNA: Do you see yourself as the carrier pigeon, delivering the messages to your listeners, a live audience, or maybe to the person or thing the song was written about?
LEIGH: Totally. I named the album Carrier Pigeon because the album itself is delivering my thoughts. Whenever you are writing all of these songs about a certain person, and I feel like this with all of my music especially my older stuff, it was kind of darker and confessional. It was definitely crazy because I could just pick up the phone and call this person to say, “You've hurt my feelings” and “What you’re doing is not okay.” Instead, I sit down and write this whole song that really explains my feelings and explains what’s going on and in a year they’re going to hear it but in a year, I’m not going to be around them anymore. My life and everyone’s lives will be completely different.
That’s how the whole carrier pigeon concept came to be. I’m writing all these songs, telling someone something they’re not going to hear for a while. I could have named it any number of stupid things but there’s a beautiful history to pigeons themselves. They were domesticated birds, and then everyone thought they were gross. There’s a lot of different meanings but, the best part is I wrote these songs for someone and now everyone can have them.
LUNA: Do you think there is a song on the album that really defines the project and who you are as an artist?
LEIGH: Oh god, defines the project and defines me would be two different things. I think “Already (On My Mind)” defines the project, and then “Either Way” defines me as a musician.
LUNA: Even though “Ronnie’s Song” was turned around very quickly after blowing up on TikTok, you had mentioned in a previous interview that once it was released you were already looking forward to the next thing. With the release of your debut album, are you finding it easier to sit in the success of the release before looking to the future?
LEIGH: I’m already moving on. There is no rest in this industry and, for the most part, I can’t afford rest right now. If I were to sit back and be like ‘I did it’, then I wouldn’t go on tour. I wouldn’t keep moving forward. It’s like exercising that creative muscle of songwriting. If anything, I rested in the couple of months before it came out when I was promoting the singles. That was my rest period. Now that it’s out, I’m putting more into it and also thinking about the next thing. There’s always more to say and I’m about to go on tour, so no rest. Maybe I’ll rest after the tour but I’ll probably go straight from the tour into recording the next album.
LUNA: You’re born and raised in New Orleans but are now living in Detroit. As a Michigan native, I’m curious what brought you to the state.
LEIGH: I just really like it. I’ve done so much traveling on tour and I’ve been living in a trailer for the last four years. I wanted to go from a trailer to a house and so that’s what I did. People could say I did the wrong thing, people could say I did the right thing, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s where I wanted to be. I’m quite happy in my decisions. Detroit is very special. There’s an energy that isn’t in a lot of places. I don’t even know what the right word would be, but in Metro Detroit there are no chains, no big box stores, or anything like that, so I’m shopping local.
You have to interact directly with the community and that is so good for you. It’s a place where I feel like I can be involved in the community and not just another musician moving somewhere to go to a friend's show and shake hands. I’ll do that when I’m on the clock. I just want to enjoy my life and build a future for myself. That’s why I moved to Detroit.
LUNA: As you make your way to local status in Detroit, are there any places you’ve coined as your favorite? Restaurants, shops, etc.?
LEIGH: I go to Coney Island a lot.
LUNA: Ooh, which one? You know there’s a rivalry between Lafayette and America.
LEIGH: I’ve only been to Lafayette so I’m choosing Lafayette. Yemen Cafe in Hamtramck, you have to go there and you have to get the tea. This is also the first time in my life that I am cooking for pretty much every meal because I lived in a trailer for four years. I didn’t have a good fridge or good kitchen situation, but now that I have a house I’m going to make myself breakfast, lunch, and dinner and feel so good about it.
LUNA: Hinterland is just one of the very first stops to a much more extensive US tour you have coming up. How are you feeling about it all?
LEIGH: I’m feeling really good. I love my new band, I love these new songs, and I’m very excited to share them with everyone.
LUNA: Are there any places you are particularly excited for?
LEIGH: We’re going to some weird kind of mid-east cities that we’ve never been to before and so that’s always really fun. I love to play in places that I haven’t played and see people who have been like, I”’ve been waiting for you to come here!” In New York, they get enough shows. They could go to a show any night, but it’s really cool to be playing Omaha. Yeah, I’m looking forward to Omaha.
LUNA: Now that Carrier Pigeon has been released to the world, what direction do you hope to take the Odie Leigh project in?
LEIGH: The same, just to keep on. I really wish I could answer that question with any intention, but I don’t know yet. It’s just going to depend on what this next year does to me and what it is I need to get off my chest.
