Called “So endearing and warm you want to go back for seconds” by Hollywood’s own Perez Hilton, Erin Ivey is taking over. After attending The University of Texas, Erin moved to Illinois to work on her music. “It cleansed my pallet, it was a good year, but I’m glad I don’t live there all the time,” Erin said. Becoming a musician, however, was not always in Erin’s plan. “I started doing musical theater when I was about 10 and then once I got to college is when I started writing songs,” Erin explained. “I started off in the business school and I was fortunate enough to go to France to study and that just completely changed everything. I began to wonder why I was in the business school, I didn’t like it there, I loved history, I loved art, I loved poetry, those were the things I wanted to study.” Beginning in musical theater, Erin took a different turn when it came time for her music. “I guess it was when I started writing songs on my own,” the urban-folk singer said. “It was sort of a natural outgrowth of my songwriting of experiences I was going through, plus just loving the lights and makeup and the feeling of being on stage in front of an audience. For about four years now I’ve made it [music] my full time job, but before then it was for fun, though it’s still fun now.” When it comes to writing her songs, Erin is constantly in the creative process. “I’m definitely always thinking of words and I’m always writing,” she explained. “Sometimes I can’t not write poems which drives me crazy actually. Sometimes it takes me five minutes to write a song and sometimes it takes me three years. I always have little scraps around, either words or melodies or both together. It’s just a cycle, sometimes I’m into creating scraps of ideas and sometimes I’m into putting them all together.” Erin uses the songwriting process as a way to relax. “Most of the time when I write it’s therapy, to get out what I’m feeling or thinking,” Erin revealed. “If I don’t write things down I don’t remember them, so I’m constantly writing all the time.” Besides using her own life experiences, Erin also channels her theater experience to get into character. “I wrote a song for Michael Jackson and I wrote a song for Amelia Earhart. I love to pretend that I know how it feels to be someone else.”
The influence of other artists on this Austin songstress is not to be disregarded. “If I had to pick a top three it would be The Sundays, Bob Marley, and Pink Floyd, but there are thousands others,” Erin noted. Erin also takes in her surroundings for inspiration. “Everything we see and everything we hear, I think it offsets us somehow, so I try to be careful about what I hear,” she explained. “I tend to protect myself too much from music and news, so I put up these walls since we are so much what we see and hear. I have to be careful to not keep everything out, but also not to let everything in at the same time.” Recently, Erin has been performing songs off her latest album, “Broken Gold.” “For this record I took the tape out to Las Angeles where they were mixed and mastered, so it’s got a little bit of the Austin flavor and a little bit of the L.A. flavor, so I think it’s got a nice mix,” Erin said. When it comes to promoting, however, Erin tends to shutter at the idea. “I think once the artist creates something he’s kind of over it, he doesn’t want to talk about it for 17 more years, he wants other people to do that, but the reality of that work is that you have to constantly be engaged in promotion and find new ways to be interested in older work,” she revealed. “I wrote these songs a couple years ago and right now artistically I’m in a different place.” Fans of the Austin-based singer can expect her next installment to be in the near future. “Releasing my next record depends on when I get my music together,” Erin said. “Best case scenario, maybe by next summer, that would be amazing!” For now, fans can catch her at her latest stint of shows. “I’m starting a month of band shows,” she explained. “It’s going to be a totally different vibe. It’s going to be with The Finest Kind, which is an R&B/dub trio. It’s going to be more of an exploration of a down-tempo dub sound. That will start next week and all through September in Austin at a place called Club Deville.” Although she calls Austin ‘home’, there is hope on the horizon for her Oklahoma followers. “I have a lot of family still in Oklahoma, so I’m hoping to get back there, hopefully sometime in the next six months!” For a list of shows, upcoming performances, and music news, visit www.ErinIvey.com. Written by Meredith Foerster