The International Folk Music Association Award-winning performer arrives in town revived, refreshed and refocused
Lilli Lewis, winner of the 2022 International Folk Music Association Spirit of Folk Award, will perform with Chastity Brown at Nashville’s City Winery on July 3. On the same subject : What to listen to when Oregon music festivals return this summer. “Arms” is more focused than ever on bringing her honest musical expression to the fore .
“My music addresses the mission of playing for and connecting with serious people who want to be surrounded by others, who want to be connected by beauty, love, encouragement and freedom,” she says.
At the same time, she says there’s one thing her music — and her career — doesn’t deal with: “chasing vanity.”
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However, Lewis’s visibility – and with it the adjacent vanity – is higher than ever. In 2021, her piano-driven artistry merged with her work as a (seemingly) tireless advocate for racial and social justice in country and Americana music. Together, it earned her multiple features from NPR, Rolling Stone acclaim, a nationwide touring schedule, and co-signs from the likes of Kyshona Armstrong and Anita “Lady A” White — the same jazz artist the country act shares her name with years of litigation involved.
To sum up the lack of vanity Lewis has about her excellence, she claims that the content of her critically acclaimed 2021 album Americana is “orphan songs that she finally completed “. That statement, coupled with her note of being in a place where she’s growing beyond her teenage angst well into adulthood.
She also performs a cover of a song that was around when she was an anxious teenager: Radiohead’s moody 1992 alternative rock anthem “Creep.” The song crept into Lewis’s live performance catalog when Prince recorded the track in 2008 during his performance at the Coachella festival.
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“I’m miserable, but I’m full of light,” says Lewis of the impact of her humanity on her art.
Lewis’s most extraordinary ability as an artist is to draw soulful beauty from the darkest depths of human experience. This ability requires cynicism about the stereotypical definition of beauty.
“Just like Nina Simone says, when I sing ‘Creep,’ I mean every word of it,” says Lewis.
“I’m a queer black guy, southern nerd, and trauma survivor. It puts a [metaphorical] film on your skin that makes you feel like you’re not special – but all we ever want is to feel ‘so damn special’. ‘People look at me and think I don’t belong,’ she continues, referring to the song’s lyrics. “But I already know I’m a nutcase and a nutcase. But I still blow shit, never mind.”
Lazy can attribute Lewis’ recent success to her visibility alongside black female artists like Allison Russell and movements like Black Opry and Country Soul Songbook. However, Lewis is anything but lazy.
She laughs for thirty seconds when asked if the work she – and other – artists have done to create a sustainable balance for minority and marginalized artists in underground and mainstream country, Americana and related music, ” stunning” she said wearily.
“It’s not even the work that makes me tired!” exclaims Lewis. She highlights working 100-hour weeks for most of the past year as the most challenging part of her life. For the self-proclaimed “folk rock diva,” 2021 included caring for her mother, who was battling cancer, while trying to unleash “Americana” amid five pandemic-era hurricanes in the area near her home.
Ultimately, her talent as a musician is just as empowering as her passion as an advocate. Her current star moment has to do with people being transfixed by the music that lies beneath the message.
“I’m proud to be part of an empowered community of wide-eyed, conscious professionals who only work in healthy and uplifting ways,” says Lewis of what she’s taken away from her work over the past few years.
When asked what goals she will pursue in her career, she says: “I am everything I am, despite everything I am not. I only have one life to live, so I have to take the time to do it. I’ll be given my best.” Although very modest in her goals and aspirations for herself and her professional allies, a high aspiration for her career remains:
“I want my wife (fellow musician Liz Hogan, who she works with as The Shiz) and I to play Carnegie Hall together. That would be great.”
Tickets for Lilli Lewis and Chastity Brown at Nashville’s City Winery are $18. Admission is at 5:30 p.m., the show is scheduled to start at 7:00 p.m. Visit https://citywinery.com/nashville for more information.
