Maryland-based folk musician Lev to perform
Staff writer Luke Parker spoke with folk musician and Silver Spring native Eli Lev ahead of his June 17 performance at the Cult Classic Brewery on Kent Island. Building lyrics from his multicultural experiences and his place-to-place adventures, Lev achieves both honesty and empathy in his work. A self-described cross between the Avett Brothers and the Lumineers, Lev’s latest album, “True North,” is available on all streaming platforms.
Eli Lev will be performing at the Cult Classic Brewery Friday, June 17, at 7 p.m. Learn more about Eli at his website, eli-lev.com.
Parker: How would you introduce your style of music to someone?
Lev: I like to say my music is essentially rooted in old-school songwriting, with John Denver, that are lyric-forward songs but with modern production. So, it’s like a modern kind of pop sound with an old-school songwriting sound. But my vocals, like how I deliver them, is like a Jack Johnson style, you could say.
So songwriting and lyrics wise, blast from the past — 60s, 70s songwriters. I would say the sound approach is very rooted in modern pop artists. With all that said, I do pay attention to lyrics and the story behinds songs, so that is a main theme in my songs.
Parker: You’ve also described your work as empathetic and having this pan-cultural perspective.
Lev: Yeah! So the thematic elements of the music are essentially nature, adventure, the open road, but also like, human empathy.
Parker: What is the key to be empathetic artistically?
Lev: It’s really kind of honoring my own truth and kind of speaking my reality. And by speaking my actual truth and my actual feelings, people connect with that at a more visceral level themselves.
If I’m just singing about the trees and the sun, you know, [chuckles] it doesn’t really open someone’s heart. It’s nice. It’s cool. But if I talk about actually going up to a tree and feeling it and having a conversation with it like it’s my grandfather or something, then someone’s going to be like, “woah. I have a grandfather. I’ve felt trees before and I’ve been scared to say things before.”
So, I would say the more my lyrics kind of hit the root of my own human experience, the more that relates to my listeners.
Parker: What experiences have fed your sense of empathy?
Lev: Whenever I’m a new arrival in a new area, it breaks down all of my pretensions and all of the things I’m usually able to build up around a place that I’ve made my self known, where I’ve constructed an identity. So whenever I enter a new space and I have to construct a new identity, there’s a lot of humility there. There’s a lot of listening; there’s a lot of paying attention; there’s a lot of understanding how others are conversing with themselves and connecting with the community.
You can be kind of aloof and have the savior complex when you go to new places, but it never ends up well. [laughs] It’s always better, I’ve found, while traveling to just listen and pay attention and really connect with people. And as a solo traveler without any friends or family with you, that’s kind of the name of the game.
Parker: Now, did I see you were a Navajo nation teacher as well?
Lev: Yeah! As a student teacher at Indiana University, I had a choice of going to inner-city schools, or going abroad, or student teaching at a Navajo reservation. I realized I may never get another chance to actually connect with the indigenous people of this continent ever again in my life, so I said yes, sign me up for Navajo land. And I went, and it was a huge, eye-opening, life-changing experience. I stayed there for three years.
Parker: Talk about a group of people that there needs to be more empathy for.
Lev: Exactly, exactly. Everything I had learned of the white savior complex, the culture being superior to every other culture in the world — like America being the best country in the world — I wouldn’t say it was shattered, I would say it was put into context with a much broader worldview.
Parker: Your Four Directions album — where you compile the music from your adventures, essentially, across the four compass points — conceptually covers a large area. What about your music brings audiences into your specific experiences?
Lev: I think it has a lot to do with how many different experiences there are. Because if I was a country artist, and I only sang songs about country life, that would be cool — a lot of people from the country life could identify with that, but maybe not in other genres. People would hear that and go, “oh, that’s not for me.”
What I’m trying to do with my music is to make it specific enough so that it’s personal, but also universal enough that people feel like there’s a seat open for them on the plane, on the train, on the bicycle as I’m going along. I want it to be accessible for them to just kind of slip in.
Parker: Is that a tough balance when you’re writing? I understand there are shared experiences across all humanity, but is that hard to translate, hard to balance in your writing?
Lev: The more specific, the more personal I can get, interestingly enough, the more universal it is — people can connect with those senses. That’s something I’ve developed in my songwriting. You know, I just started this. I’ve been doing the full-time artist thing for four, five years, so I’m actually pretty new to this in the whole scheme of artistry. I’ve written silly songs since I was 12, but actually crafting a song and recording it has been a recent phenomenon.
Parker: What made you finally press the button and move forward with music?
Lev: You know, I think it just finally caught up to me. I’ve always had a guitar or a piano or gone to festivals. But I think there was a slight pause after I came back from grad school to Maryland to hang out with my family for a bit, and that’s when I started getting shows.
It was never like, “from this day forward, I will be a musician.” It was more like I played one show, people liked it, so they asked when my next show was, and I kept booking them. Then they said I should start recording, so I did — just following what other people said, following the breadcrumbs.