MacD on Music: Lizzie No and the Outlaws

In this column, the vast bulk of my interviews are with local (or semi-local) artists and bands. Others are coming here for a gig or have a new album coming out that they want to promote. Others still are just singers or bands I heard somewhere and decided to reach out to for an interview. Today’s column falls into the third category.

Today, I’m talking to Lizzie No, a singer from New York (with roots in Co. Clare) that I stumbled across when I heard her song ‘Lagunita’ on the radio somewhere. Her music “pulls from the rhythms and traditions of blues, folk and country”, and protest songs in the sense that, “as a Queer, Black woman, her entire existence is a living, breathing, singing protest against a genre and a country that, on their best days, are reluctant to reckon with the very foundations upon which they were built”.

I spoke with Lizzie about her musical journey up to this point: “I got into music from birth, honestly. My dad is a musician so there was always singing in the house. Everything from Stevie Wonder to Earth, Wind and Fire to gospel to folk, and so I started singing and playing violin at a young age. It was just from the jump start.”

I asked about her main influences: “There’s so many aspects of music that I look up to heroes for. When it comes to singing, I’m listening to Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin. When I make a record I want it to sound like the vocals are beautiful like on those records. In terms of songwriting, there are so many heroes. I’m very into the Americana greats, like Aimee Mann, Kathleen Edwards, the Indigo Girls. I’m super inspired also by the whole Lilith Fair, Queer women’s songwriting movement of the nineties. I feel like that’s a big influence on me today. Ani DiFranco, Tracy Chapman and all those amazing songwriters for sure.”

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“I would describe my sound as Commie Country (it’s the name of my live album). The communism comes in using the materials and the sounds and opportunities we have in the moment and making the most of it, rather than hoping to create a perfect, polished sound in the studio. It’s country, and it’s rock, and it’s raw, and I like to keep a lot of live recordings in my records. I want my music to always sound like a bitching country band in the room with you right now.”

Next, I asked if she’d ever played this side of the water: “First of all, I’m Irish! Playing the harp is a big way I feel like I connect with my Irish heritage. I also played Kilkenny Roots last year, and I toured with Iron & Wine and we hit some great Ireland stops. I was also very stoked to do my own solo gig at Whelan’s two summers ago. That felt like a big rite of passage. I’m always trying to come back and play more in Ireland because the audiences are unparalleled. They’re so welcoming.”

“You know how it is in the US, where a lot of our roots get obscured at the border and people change their names and lose a lot of the history, but I’m super close with my Irish family, and getting to tour Ireland over the past few years has kind of reawakened my sense of having Irish heritage and a connection to Ireland now. It’s not just a story from the past.”

This interview was done in March, but recently Lizzie was in touch to let me know that she’ll be moving to Dublin in September to do her Masters in Dublin City University, so hopefully we’ll be hearing a lot more from her soon.

Lizzie is also releasing a compilation album ‘Outlaw’ Almanac’ on the 19th of this month, featuring herself, Kaïa Kater, Nathan Evans Fox, Olivia Ellen Lloyd and more. Lizzie is the executive producer of the album that was “conceived as a ‘new public works project’” and “responds to the 250th anniversary of the United States of America”.

The album centres on “Black, brown, indigenous, queer, rural and women’s voices, with traditional and contemporary music melding in a manner that brings to mind America’s promise of being a melting pot”, a promise that, Lizzie says, doesn’t resonate with everyone. “The assimilationist project of America flattens and glosses over the racial, gender and class differences that deeply striate the lived American experience”.

“The album’s sonic landscape ranges from live-in-the-room Americana originals and call-and-response protest music to atmospheric folk-pop and a trippy, delay-drenched solo saxophone rendition of ‘Ol’ Man River’.”

‘Outlaws’ Almanac’ is out on June 19th and will be available on Lizzie’s Bandcamp page, along with her own albums and singles.

For more about Lizzie No, visit her website lizzieno.com. She can also be found on Instagram @lizzie.no.