A Thousand More Dreams: An Interview with Lyra Star
Music has always been a staple in Lyra Star’s life, even
when it wasn’t her first career move.
She left her hometown of Nashville right after high school to
travel, receive both an undergrad and graduate degree, and figure out who she
wanted to be. She had dabbled at songwriting but was focused on a career in
Montessori education and tried her hand at various forms of teaching. She doesn’t
remember how it happened, but one day she knew she needed to play music again
and that it needed to come before teaching. She loved her experiences, but she
was burned out and ready to dive into something new.
She had to choose between moving back to Nashville,
essentially starting over as a singer/songwriter, or utilizing her Los Angeles
connections to establish herself there. She chose Los Angeles not only for the
music scene, but for her other passion – yoga. She is a yoga instructor, has participated
in competitions and has developed extreme flexibility to the point of learning
to become a contortionist. Completely self-taught, she has just recently
started incorporating it into her music.
“My plan is to see how everything works out in LA,” she
said. “I want to see what happens; who I can meet, who I can create things with
and push myself.”
After the move to Los Angeles, her job as a yoga instructor
gave her the time to pursue music and learn aspects of it that she had never known
before. She taught herself ukulele, actively attended concerts and busked on
the street to gain any sort of knowledge on what she wanted to further pursue. She
released her first album, A Thousand
Dreams, in 2018 and was able to devote resources to promoting it. It gave
her a first-hand look into how to spread the word about her music and helped
her understand how music is being explored in today’s world of streaming.
“I love that album,” she said. “I think it's such a
beautiful collection of songs, but I see what artists are doing now - releasing
singles one song at a time, so I think I could have maybe done more with
promoting when that album came out. Some people release one song at a time
before they do the full album and pay attention to each song, but those are
things that I'm just learning since moving down here. You can't dwell on it;
you just have to learn from that.”
A Thousand Dreams
was a major learning experience and gave her a thousand ideas for what to do
differently as she gears up for her next release. Her latest single, “Under the
Water”, combines new experiments of beatboxing and the use of a loop pedal to
branch out and give more meaning to the lyrics. It’s a song about her building
up her self-confidence and learning to embrace who she is.
“It's a magical song for me,” she said. “I essentially wrote
it about having a connection to the water and the ocean, but it's also part of
me coming out of my shell.”
Lyra Star is actively learning about what it takes to be a singer and a songwriter, and is not only enjoying the creation process but all that it takes to share her music with the world. She has found her two passions – music and yoga – and found the best place for her to share those passions with anyone willing to learn alongside her.
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