On August 9th, 2024, KCSU’s Podcast Director, Erin Fuller, had the opportunity to sit down with singer/songwriter Eli Lev for an in-depth interview. Hailing from Silver Spring Maryland, Lev describes his sound as “Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac, Jason Mraz, and Jack Johnson all on a roadtrip in the Red Woods sipping oat milk lattes”. He is currently on tour for his newest album, “Present Journey”.
ERIN FULLER: Well, let’s just start simple: how did you pick up music, what inspired you to become more professional? Just start from the beginning.
ELI LEV: I have always been writing silly songs my whole life. My first silly song in the middle school talent show was “My White Underwear”, that was a huge hit with my classmates. I got a taste of fame and fortune from that moment. And I just wrote songs to entertain myself, my friends, my family, but I didn’t really do the full-time music thing until very recently in life. I’m actually a former middle school teacher, I taught 8th grade English on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Starting about seven years ago, 2017, is when I went full-time with music.
FULLER: That’s super cool. So you’ve always been into writing, you’ve always been into English.
LEV: Yeah! You know, I was in newspaper and yearbook in high school, and then in college I wrote for the Indiana University IDS, the newspaper. And as an English teacher, obviously, words and phrases and all that stuff has always been interesting to me and interestingly enough, I can put it to music and it’s a song. So I really enjoy the format of, you know, having the song convey a meaning and a message.
FULLER: That’s cool that you went from teaching to actually playing and traveling. Was that hard with that transition, to go from, like, a smaller role into something bigger and in front of more people and more professionals?
LEV: I think there’s some similarities of just the action of teaching and performing. You know, you’re in front of a group of people, in a room, there’s a certain amount of time, and you have to entertain them somehow. But the actual switch from guaranteed paycheck to starting my own business and not knowing how that would go was quite the leap. Yeah, there’s a leap of faith that I had to take, but I’ve actually been really interested in how to build businesses, how to market, how to really bring together a community; that’s been really interesting to me as well along with the music.
FULLER: I mean, I’m also in English and teaching was always an option for me, so when I got involved with media, that’s what hooked me rather than teaching. Congrats for you for getting out there and taking that leap, because that’s terrifying.
LEV: It kind of is, but as you were saying, finding something that we love or you’re really into is huge. I also had a college radio station show back in the day, at the Sunday four a.m. slot. I co-hosted with my friend and I really enjoyed it. I think we made up new DJ names for every show, and I actually still have the cassette tapes, can you believe that? We actually recorded our radio shows on cassettes and I shared that with my co-DJ recently and she was like, “I don’t want to listen to this right now, it’s so painful”. It was a great time, and it introduced both of us to different music: underground hip-hop, indie, folk, instrumental, world music.
FULLER: So have you always been into that folk-sy, guitar kind of genre? Or was there a time where you wanted to go a different direction?
LEV: I grew up in the grunge era: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots. And I had a strat, a Fender amp, and then of course, here I am playing the acoustic guitar, which is hilarious. But I did grow up with the folk greats of Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Cat Stevens just around the house; my mom and dad would play those records. I started in a grunge band and my hair was down to my shoulders in high school, doing the head-banging thing, that was what was up. I’ve been in cover bands and jam bands throughout my life, but something about the acoustic guitar really has drawn me in, where, you know, I can plug it in on a massive stage, I can bring it to a campfire, I can bring it into a studio, and I can just carry it around with me as I go. So it’s a great unifying instrument, which I’ve really enjoyed.
FULLER: Wow, what a beautiful way to put it. Why did you decide to go solo then? Did you like what you were doing with bands, or was it just something that wasn’t your vibe?
LEV: Oh, yeah. Bands are amazing. It’s one of the best things in the world, and I play with full bands in Maryland and more locally; but on tour, I usually just do solo, just because I’m gone for so long, like two and a half months on this tour. It’s hard to find three or four people that are really into that.
FULLER: Okay, cool. So you’ve talked a little bit about who you kind of sound like and a little bit of your inspiration. Who would you say is the biggest inspiration for the kind of music that you make today?
LEV: I would say my kind of current influences are Jason Isbell, Tyler Childers, Noah Kahan, and Trevor Hall. So there’s like a there’s a range of, like, country, songwriter, and spirituality, and pop there, yeah. So I really love those kind of, those songwriters. Also boygenius, you know, like, they’re amazing. That kind of really modern matter of fact, straight ahead lyrics delivery, I really enjoy as well.
FULLER: Yeah, I hear you. Coming off that then, how do you go about writing lyrics? What do you choose to put down on the page? What do you leave out?
LEV: It’s interesting with your experience, you know, with languages. It depends on the format, sometimes if we’re writing poetry, it’s just like, whatever we feel and our emotions just comes out on the page, and then we kind of edit it later. Sometimes it’s like a essay where I have a topic, like a song title, I’ll start there, and then I’ll write the song around that. So lately, these days, I’ve been writing with ideas or thoughts. For example, there’s this thought that I had where it’s like, maybe we’re both right and maybe we’re both wrong. Like, what does that mean? That means, let’s write a song about it and see what happens.
FULLER: Beautiful. So you’ve been on tour for two months. What’s that been like? Give me your most interesting or weirdest show, and then your favorite show based on whatever you think is like the best.
LEV: It has to be Canada, this tour. Canada is weird. I mean, for Canadians, it’s not weird, but for people from the US, it’s different, definitely different, but it’s definitely also the same. And it’s hard to tell where the difference and the same begins and ends. So my first show there was on Canada Day, I was an American playing in this bar in the Rockies on Canada Day. And so I was playing all these covers from Canadian artists, and I really enjoyed that. And you know, Canadian money is very different US money, it’s almost like plastic. It’s very interesting. So it was just a fun show. It was a weird show, though, but I had a great time in Canada, and they said that I was so nice that I could almost be Canadian. I think that’s a compliment.
FULLER: [laughs] I think it is, too.
LEV: My favorite show was when my dad joined me on tour for a week, and he knows sign language. So one show, he came up on stage with me, and he sign language interpreted one of my songs called “Oh My Lord” on stage. It was pretty awesome. I was in all the feels for the whole song.
FULLER: Does he also do music and things like that?
LEV: Yeah, he plays oboe and guitar. My mom plays piano and sings, so music was always around growing up. I have a sister, too; she was a amazing piano player in her early ages as well.
FULLER: In big music families, I feel like, if your parents are into music, or if they teach music or play music, it’s almost kind of destined that their kids are gonna play music.
LEV: It’s its own language. I think if we grow up around a certain language, then we learn how to speak it and hear it and contribute to it. I really think music is a language, and it’s a great language to know. It can really kind of can light up someone’s creativity.
FULLER: So how did you decide to get into English or writing then in the first place?
LEV: So, I always wrote poetry, and I really enjoyed writing articles for newspaper and essays were really interesting to me. I read a lot fiction and nonfiction. I got into philosophy for some reason, and just the power of words has always been a big thing in the family. Both my mom and dad were lawyers, so they also value words and letter the law. So yeah, that just kind of naturally blossomed into, you know, sharing messages through through page or through poetry. And then I found songwriting as well.
FULLER: Was there a favorite, either a favorite kind of genre you like to read or write before you got into songwriting?
LEV: I really liked the coming of age novels. I don’t know why. I mean, Catcher in the Rye devastated me, but I really enjoyed it. I loved seeing how characters developed, and I love imagining the setting that they were in. So I kind of want to translate that into my songs where there would be a character and it could be very obvious that you know what’s what the message is, and the listener would be able to be taken through a whole story. So that was always important to me for writing, and I think that, you know, that’s really come through on my latest album. It’s called “Present Journey”, and the songs are very lyric forward and take the listener on a journey.
FULLER: I love albums that like, talk and tell a story about a certain character. That’s so cool. Okay, so you have about 46,000 listeners, according to Spotify. Have you run into any, like, big fans or people that you’ve like, met personally and either hung out with or just kind of interacted with?
LEV: Yeah! So I have a community called the Levitators. Get it. Eli Levitators.
FULLER: [laughs] Lovely.
LEV: And you know, that really took off during the pandemic. Interestingly enough, I did a lot of live streams pretty much every day on all the platforms, and started getting a lot of followers from around the country and around the world that are tuning in. So when I went on the road for tour in 2023, it was the first time [seeing me] for a lot of these amazing folks, and I mean, people were driving six, eight, ten hours to get to the shows and to finally get to meet me after live stream after live stream. And they’re helping each other through the pandemic, so. Really wonderful experiences, always a powerful experience. Fans in Canada, that were driving ten hours to see shows. And it’s really amazing, amazing to see how the music can impact people, and how the song really mean a lot to folks. And also, you know, just that sense of community can really bring people together and give folks that positivity and that connection that they’re looking for.
FULLER: Yeah, I feel like it’s important for not not necessarily smaller artists, but just artists in general, to connect with their fan base. And kind of not give them what they want, but just kind of see what they’re enjoying. Was there any time where you were like, oh, I think my fans want this kind of different kind of lyric or genre, or do you just kind of play what you play and see what happens? Do you take criticism, or do you just go and play whatever you want?
LEV: No, I really, really believe in that feedback process, and I really believe in that co-creation and collaboration process. I’ve done three music videos now that are participatory; Levitators will send in videos of themselves to be in the music video. We did one for “Chasing Daylight”, we had one for “Dancin’ on the Lawn”, we did one for “Anywhere We Can Go”. And there’s just great ways for the community to meet each other and to see each other and to participate in creating. Whether it’s like the next merch design or the next song or the next album cover, I always kind of ask the Levitators what they think and take that into consideration.
FULLER: Awesome. So, in Colorado, you’re going to Jamestown, Woodland Park, and Denver. And then where are you going, after Colorado?
LEV: Back east, through Missouri, Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia and back to Maryland. I’ll be heading back pretty quick, so I’ll be rocking the road.
FULLER: Heck yeah. When did you release that new album?
LEV: So “Present Journey: was released just recently [in July]. It’s got five new songs on it.
FULLER: Awesome dude. Well, congrats on releasing the new album, and I hope that you either take a break to rest or keep on writing, and I hope that the tour has been fulfilling for you and helpful in seeing all of your community.
LEV: It’s been awesome, and I really appreciate you taking the time and supporting independent musicians. It means a lot, and it’s been great talking to you. Thank you!
“Present Journey” is out now, everywhere!