INTERVIEW: From Chile to Los Angeles and back again with Yael Meyer
Yael Meyer has a busy year of recording and touring, and the Chilean singer-songwriter seems not daunted but excited for the prospects to share her music with the world.
“I’m working on a new album, so that’s kind of the main thing for me this year is to finish my record, which is going to be my fourth studio album,” Meyer said recently in a phone interview. “You work on one record, and then you promote that record for a really long time. But in the middle of promoting that record, you start writing the new one. It’s a secret until you get to share it, so I’m excited to share the new music with people.”
Meyer has received worldwide acclaim for her four previous efforts, including 2014’s Warrior Heart, which features such songs as “Carry On,” “When the Road Ends (Friends)” and “Good Things Are Coming My Way.” The singer said she was “very happy” with the album and hopes to replicate the success with her new set of songs.
“[On Warrior Heart], I worked with the same producer I worked with for the previous record, which was called Everything Will Be Alright, and I love working with him,” she said. “His name is Bill Lefler, and we’ve been working together for about eight years now. So we have a very good dynamic between us. It’s a very collaborative process, and I think we understand each other very well and complement each other very well.”
Meyer seems to enjoy the recording process. The sense of energy and experimentation in the room can be palpable. For Warrior Heart, she had the songs ready to go before stepping foot in the studio. She essentially came to Lefler with the album already complete.
“I said, ‘Well, these are the songs I want to record,'” she said. “With Everything Will Be Alright, I also had everything ready, but there were some blank spaces that I wasn’t sure. I felt like I was going to write in the process of recording, but, for the most part, I usually have all the songs ready. With this record, it’s been a little different because I’m living in Chile right now, and I was living in L.A. for the other two albums. So I was able to work with Bill whenever I wanted. Here, now it’s different, so I kind of have to organize it differently, and I also wanted to have the experience of working with other producers.”
When Meyer writes a song, she is able to immediately decipher how much she enjoys the tune and whether it will make the final cut for an album. As soon as she approves, she heads for the studio and starts recording. This new album also features some co-written songs, which is a novelty for Meyer.
“I think the most beautiful thing that can happen to a song is when it just goes into the world, and people make it their own,” she said. “Then it’s not what you think or what you want anymore. … It takes a life of its own. There’s people who write in New York and post stuff online or social media or whatever and let me know what they feel about a song or how it affects them, and that always is so exciting and inspiring to me and rewarding. But at the same time, I also know that there’s people who listen to my music that I’ll never know what they think or feel, and I think that’s what music is supposed to do. It’s supposed to be part of people’s lives in the most intimate or day-to-day moments, and that to me is the ultimate success of music.”
Meyer’s father was a music aficionado who appreciated the art form and would have liked to be a musician. Meyer was the first born and encouraged to enter the music world. By age 13, she made a decision to start playing seriously. She eventually transitioned from playing piano to playing guitar, and she also started writing original songs.
“I started performing for audiences and participating in different festivals,” she said. “I started getting rewarded for it, and I started to identify my place in the world with being a musician. So in a way I felt like it was my place in society. I don’t know how to explain it. At the same time, personally music was always a thing that I did to make myself feel better. If I was sad or if I was worried or whatever I was feeling, I would write. I would sing, or I would play. And it was just something I did to comfort myself, so it kind of had this double thing where it served a personal purpose of making me feel better of processing stuff, and, at the same time, I felt also I could contribute something to other people. So from a very young age, I started identifying myself in that way.”
Meyer fine-tuned her musical talents at Berklee College of Music in Boston, an experience she still cherishes. “I think Berklee was a big, big thing for me,” she said. “I started practicing yoga and meditation and vocal toning and sound healing and a lot of the eastern traditions of sound and how it affects the body, and, at the same time, I was going to Berklee. And I was taking voice lessons and trying to get what my teachers were trying to teach me, and I really couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t until I started to do all the yoga stuff and the vocal toning that I started to discover my voice in a different way when I incorporated both techniques, like the techniques I was learning in school with the eastern spiritual voice traditions.”
In the coming weeks, Meyer is headed around the United States. She’ll play in Los Angeles at Hotel Café Monday, Feb. 27 and at MiMoDa Studio Wednesday, March 1, followed by concerts in New York City (March 8-9) and at SXSW in Austin, Texas (March 14-16).
The venues over the years have included intimate clubs and large stages at festivals that gather thousands of music lovers. Meyer loves both settings, but the intimacy of a small room seems to fit her music well. “I like it when it’s intimate,” she said. “I like intimate settings where people are quiet, and everyone is hearing and listening. That’s my favorite place to play. I feel that the intimacy and the exchange with the crowd in that setting is much more rewarding and deeper.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Yael Meyer will release new music later this year. She will perform at Hotel Café in Los Angeles Monday, Feb. 27 and MiMoDa Studio Wednesday, March 1. Other concerts include shows in New York City (March 8-9) and at SXSW in Austin, Texas (March 14-16). Boston dates have not been confirmed. Click here for more information and tickets.
