Lily Winwood
wants to step out of her dad’s shadow.
Musicians Lilly Winwood and Weston Harris Hill don’t travel with many frills.
“We’re calling this The Sick Tour because we both have colds,” joked Winwood from the road. They have all their equipment squeezed into a Subaru for this sevenstop tour. “We’ve sort of had to play Jenga with everything. It’s pretty cozy.”
It’s not the way one pictures the daughter of British classic rock icon Steve Winwood traveling. But coming off “Silver Stage,” her debut EP released last year, Winwood is out to distinguish herself. “Eventually you just have to get away from the name and be your own person,” she said. “We’re just being real indie.”
She and Hill will perform Monday in Orlando at Lil Indies, next door to Will’s Pub (9 p.m., free, 21 and older, willspub.org).
Winwood, 22, grew up in her native England, but she moved to her mother’s hometown of Nashville, Tenn., in 2015. Like her father, known for the hits “Higher Love” and “Roll With It,” the songwriter was drawn to American roots music. She said she loves “the stories that come along with it … I just love listening to people’s stories.”
But unlike her blues-focused father, Winwood pulls deeper from the catalog of folk music traditions. “That definitely pulls me and my father’s sense of musicality apart,” said Winwood. “I’m definitely more lyrics based and he’s more music based.”
“We both just write really honest songs,” said Hill, 31, of how he started working with Winwood. “I really respect her musical knowledge. We’re influenced by a lot of the same stuff.”
Winwood has been writing since childhood, such as her track “London” that she wrote after a breakup at 15. “That was my very first breakup ever. And that was when I started pouring my heart out.”
She acknowledges that she’s still learning from others. “I’ve taken a lot of influence from people that I play with now that are older than me, and I think all I can really do is grow from that,” she said.
Even her father, a multiinstrumentalist who played with bands such as Spencer Davis Group and Traffic, is still teaching her things. Winwood was his opening act for a national tour last year. “I had no idea what I was stepping into,” she said. “They just gave me a guitar and threw me on the stage.
“But I definitely learned a lot. He gives me so much room to do what I want to do. It’s my show. He doesn’t tell me to play anything or wear anything.”
She’ll be hitting the road with her dad again this February. One lesson she says she has learned: It isn’t the size of the crowd but how they act that determines a good show.
“It really is all about the audience. I prefer when people just sit down and shut up,” she said, laughing. “As long people do that … you feel like you’re getting something out there.”
For Winwood, it isn’t about being as big as her dad; just being heard as herself. “I’m really not worried about the whole fame thing,” she said. “When people would recognize me and come up to me … that’s when I realized people really listened to me.”