Lena Maude performs at the Orpheum Theater in Hancock. Her next show there is scheduled for April 6. (Photo courtesy of Jenna De Lisle)
involves multitasking between singing, strumming and the use of a six-channel looping pedal through which she puts different instrumental sounds. Coupled with her songwriting skills, Maude is a one-woman show often affecting the sounds of a full band. The looping pedal was an instrument she picked up and mastered intuitively, using it like a third limb, turning idea into art like a chef with her favorite cutting knife. If you’ve ever had the fortune of witnessing a live show of hers, you’ve also been entranced by Maude’s playful vocals that push the boundaries of what sounds humans can make. She traces her quirky use of vocals to a formative time of her childhood. “My sister had a speech impediment,” she said. “When we were young, people couldn’t understand us, so I think it might have come from that. From [birth to age 5], no one could understand us! We communicated with noises a lot. We played a lot of make-believe.” Maude commented that from birth
to age 7, you’ve become who you were always going to be. And because of her childhood, Maude would always be a bookworm, naturally inclined to song, and a wistful dreamer who sought out wilderness — which is why she headed to the Keweenaw. Maude attended Michigan Tech, where she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. She also studied environmental engineering and spent many years in nature-based circles of the Keweenaw. So, she was asked, why make music? “Ugh, ’cause I can’t help it! Because if I don’t write, I’m a horrible, nasty little person,” she said with a laugh. “I’m just a sad little sack of shit if I don’t write music.” Maude is driven by a desire to explore the intersection of wilderness, mythology, psychology and dreams and is heavily influenced by writers like Joseph Campbell, whose work in mythology and comparative religion, she believes, “brings a playfulness to the deep.”
April 2024
Marquette Monthly
55