Lowertown Is Not Creating Music for You

Lowertown opened for beabadoobee on October 22 and 23 at 9:30 Club. Comprised of Olivia Osby and Avshalom Weinberg, the Georgia-formed, now New York-based, duo are carving a spot in the indie scene with their intoxicating lo-fi beats.

Playing songs from their newly minted album, “I Love To Lie,” released on October 21, they sent the venue into a frenzy both nights with their high energy and punchy lyrics.

We spoke with the band following the back-to-back sold-out shows about touring, how they started the band and reaching new audiences.

District Fray: D.C. was the start of the American leg of beabadoobee’s tour. How did it feel opening up for her?
Olivia Osby: It was really fun. Her audience is just the sweetest people ever. We are used to a lot older of a crowd. It was nice just having a bunch of young energy in the room. People that are just really open and receptive to what we are doing. I definitely think that we [perform] sort of scary, so I was learning to be a little less creepy. My stage persona recently has been trying to freak people out as much as possible, and I was like, “Oh shoot. Maybe I shouldn’t be like completely deranged.” But, I had so much fun. Honestly, some of the best shows we have played was the first two of this tour.

Avsha Weinberg: Yeah, I agree, it was a big learning experience. Live performance is so much about learning how to respond to different crowds and stuff. This is an age range we have never really played to, a demographic we never really played to. It was really refreshing to get back to it because we haven’t toured since June or July.

You both met in high school. How did you know you two would mesh musically? How did you guys decide you were going to produce music together?
Weinberg: [Creating music together] happened a little bit later on. The summer after the year that we started becoming friends. We took a trip to Canada and the name of our first project was the area in Canada that we were in on this trip. On the trip, I had a bunch of demos, and I was and still am very insecure about my voice. I don’t think my voice will be able to do what I want it to do. But I think [Osby’s] voice will give the songs the life that it needs. That was how it started. I showed some demos to her. We were sitting on the beach after some festival, and I was like, “Do you want to hear these demos?” I showed them to Liv and said, “If you want to sing on these we should record when we get back.” And she said, “Yeah.” We didn’t immediately start the band. We just recorded and put a couple of vocals on the demos. We thought it was really good and then started putting them out. But we definitely first built a friendship before we even started thinking about doing music together.

Where in Canada did you guys go?
Weinberg: We went to Ottawa. Liv is half-Canadian, and her grandmother lives there.

Oh, me too! Do you have a Canadian citizenship and everything?
Osby: Oh yeah, baby! [laughs]

Photo by Rich Kessler.

I always love asking artists where they bring their inspiration from. Is it a place of fantasy you are creating? Individual pain? Are you looking at societal issues? Where are you going when you’re creating your music or writing your lyrics?
Osby: It depends. It has changed a lot over time for sure. For me, with this recent album, a lot of it was understanding the adult world and understanding how people perceive me as a young woman. How I am treated in the world. I wrote a lot of this when we first moved to New York when we were 19, and we were super naïve and didn’t understand things. A lot of that was just me grappling with how the world was treating me at the time. And being angry with it and feeling that it was a little bit unfair. Also, a lot of it comes from internal mental struggles and the people around me. I think the people in my life are a big inspiration. And the transitory characters that come through and pass me but don’t always stay around.

Weinberg: I think for music in general it’s always coming from my own thoughts. I think inherently any artist who says that it’s something outside of them that’s not really true. It is their own perspective they never really are outside of themselves. With this particular project, it is Liv and her personal experience growing up and self-discovery. But also, self-discovery together and seeing how these ideas morph and combine. It mirrors our friendship together. We are growing up and experiencing our own separate things and feelings because we are our own separate people. But when we talk together, and we hang out it’s like, “How do these ideas and feelings combine?” and “What is the final conclusion we come to about what’s going on around us?” That is like the main part of this project. Our individual feelings, how it comes together, the therapeutic quality of creating art with yourself and about yourself.

Did you always know that this was going to be your path? Did you have this vision in your head or did you think you were going down the college route picking up a degree and then working in an office?
Osby: I definitely never thought I would be an office person because I have always had a hard time with structure. But I never expected our music to take off or even do this well. It started of very earnestly and as an outlet for both of us. The one constant thing was we always believed in what we made, even if we didn’t think it would blow up.

Weinberg: It was difficult to imagine something like this. Growing up in suburban Georgia, where would we even start trying to get a label? We tried to email labels, but we really didn’t know how to do it. This definitely came out of the blue. That is what is important and really good throughout our music. It has never been anything but us. That is what makes it genuine.

What song for the “I Love To Lie” album was the most difficult to record?
Osby: Definitely “Waltz in Aflat Major.” That one was wild. We rewrote the lyrics and melody like 600 times. Avsha kept adjusting the piano parts, and we just kept trying to capture the perfect feeling and emotion without going overboard and sort of forcing this cheesy thing. It took so long, but it is one of my favorite tracks on the album, so it paid off.

Follow Lowertown at @lowrtown . Listen to their newest album, “I Love To Lie,” on all major streaming platforms. 

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Anne Waldron