Jessica Lloyce makes her dreams come true
Never forgetting that often the difference between a good song and your favorite song are the details, Jessica ensures that all the elements of her music are thoughtful from the original composition to the final mix. From the very first piano lesson as a young child to graduating with two bachelor’s degrees from Berklee College of Music, her love for music has only grown as she grew in her skills from pianist to vocalist, songwriter, arranger and more.
Gulie Carrington: Hey Jessica! Thanks for taking the time to chat today. I’d love to know more about you, tell me about your journey of becoming a pianist, moving to LA and what encouraged you to join the music industry.
Jessica Lloyce: Okay, so that's a tricky one to answer. I started playing music when I was really little, around age five my parents put me in piano lessons. I think my parents put me in lessons because most of my dad's side of the family is musical, so I think they just assumed I would like it (I did) and I stuck with it forever. Then I started taking voice lessons when I was 13. I was one of those over-scheduled kids who had like a million activities all year round. Slowly but surely all the activities fell away, but music was never something I wanted to give up. I just continued to love music, the more I played it, the more I learned about it to the point where I went to a music college. I have two bachelor's degrees in music related things. I don't know about what inspired me to get into the music industry because I don't think the music industry is particularly inspiring to be a part of. But if you want to make music professionally, you have to be in it. I want to make music and I want to make money off my music so I feel like I’ve got to be in music industry, I’ve got to know about it and be up on what's going on and things like that.
GC: Yeah, of course, of course. I'm curious who would you say your influences are- who do you think you sound like if anyone? Can you speak to that at all?
JL: Yeah, I love answering this question. So I feel like I have three main influences. The first is, most of what I grew up hearing which is 60/70s and 80s r&b but I think more specifically with me the influences were 70s 80s r&b. This includes Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Prince, Earth, Wind & Fire. I love that kind of sound. R&B that has rock and roll influences and funk influences, but also r&b that's like it's big, you know? I mean it's got strings and horns and keyboard parts and countermelodies and the lead vocal and background vocals- I love that era of music, and I was hearing it all the time when I was a kid so I think that's one pillar of my influences.
The next one is, as a child of the 90s, Max Martin style 90s pop. When I was a kid I listened to Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, The Spice Girls, Christina Aguilera, and those types of artists. I love pop! It was such a big part of my childhood and I still love that sound.
Then the third one is Disney music. Honestly, watching Disney movies was such a huge part of really planting the seed in me as far as my love of composition, my love of arrangement and my love of orchestration. The songs are great. If you simply play them on a piano, they're fantastic. But every time I listened to the arrangements, I would hear a little something else that I didn't hear before. I just love all the intricate details of those arrangements and I watched those movies over and over and over again and sometimes I still jam out in the car to Disney songs. So I don't know who I sound like, but I think when you hear my music a lot of times, you can hear, Disney 90s Pop, and 70s and 80s r&b combined but I think that's part of what makes me unique. Obviously we're all influenced by tons of different things but I think those three styles really feel like who I am as a writer, producer and arranger.
GC: I like that. I love Disney music too, all the princess movies included. They have the most beautiful soundtracks, oh my gosh they're iconic. I'm SOOOO with you there.
So I wanted to step away from music for a moment and ask, you know, it's your day off. What does a perfect day look like to you. Tell me how this day goes.
JL: So when you say day off, do you mean like I'm not doing music this day because a perfect day involves doing music…
GC: I mean a day off from whatever holds you down that you don't necessarily like to do, where you can do whatever you want. What is that perfect day for you?
JL: So a perfect day where I could do whatever I want is I wake up on my own terms. I just moved to LA from the east coast, and it's so interesting, I've never been a morning person my entire life. I've always been a ‘stay up super-duper late’ person, I hated the mornings, but I've been here since January and I still wake up before 9am. But I think my perfect day would be sleep till maybe like 9 or 10, have a really good breakfast, you know, juice, scramble some eggs and toast or something like that. I think my favorite days and my best days are days where I have really good conversations with people who I love and care about. So that’s having a good conversation with a friend or with my family members or just having a really enriching conversation with anyone.
Of course, my favorite days are days where I do music. There are some things for my music I only trust myself to do. But I do LOVE to collaborate. So I think my ideal day would be a rested day, maybe even go to the beach a little bit, have some good food have some really good conversations then go to a session, and collaborate with somebody and make something amazing.
GC: I love that! So what I'm hearing is lots of genuine interaction and enjoyment, which includes making music- by the way, that's interesting that you mentioned that you like to work alone, because I was going to ask- what is your ideal setting when you're creating.
Do you like ambient lighting like when you're making music, silence, a bit of noise? What do you find to be the best environment to do that?
JL: I mean, to be honest, for the most part, like I don't really need much, as far as.. I don't light candles and shit, I get cold really easily (laughs) so as long as it's not too cold, it's fine, but I don't need, you know, special lighting… I’m real simple. Most of the time when I'm at the house doing my own music stuff, I'm just in my room, being normal. Nice lighting is cool, I’m not knocking it but I'm not one of those people who's like I need to have lavender scents.. Just put me in the room and it's fine.
GC: I love to ask that question because the answer is always completely different. Mostly I get this: “I love to either have ambient sounds like bodies of water or rain or something like that, play very softly, while I’m writing.” Then from rappers- they always love to have their friends in the room for encouragement and to get ideas and to, you know, freestyle with and stuff like that because that gets them going to make a song… some people they just want like a purple or blue or green light and to be completely alone and have nothing else going on, and just have you know a bottle of water here, or maybe a cup of tea there.
It's really interesting to hear artist by artist, what you enjoy and how you can create. But the simple approach, I have not heard that one yet, so props to you on that. (laughs)
JL: Yeah, I've definitely had people who I've collaborated with before who needed certain things to feel comfortable and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think what I've kind of realized for me is sometimes when people need a lot of stuff, it's that they don't trust their own talent, or their own mind or their own creativity, and it's kind of like, “oh I have to go through the purple light or through, you know, ice water, or through, you know, a lavender candle” or whatever to be able to trust that I can get to where I want to go.
I think for me, I've been doing music so long that it's not that I feel extremely confident every time I go to make music with someone. My best offering doesn't always come out. But I do know that I have something to offer and I trust my own brain, so I don't feel like I need a lot of stuff. My attitude is very much “let's just sit in a room together and have a good time”.
GC: Yeah, I dig it. I love the natural flow and progression of how you create. I would be inclined to agree that this is how the best work is done. I wanted to speak a little bit about your creative process and production process as they vary quite differently as I'm sure you know from artist to artist, so I'm just curious about yours.
What do you start with? How do you how do you create? How do you go through finding that perfect sound?
JL: Yeah, so it's kind of different for a lot of different songs but most of the time these days when it's a song that I'm starting on my own- most of the time the lyrics will come first. They won't even come as I'm sitting down to write- it will be that I'm in the grocery store and a lyric pops up in my head and I'll write a few lines. Then when I'm ready to write when I'm like “okay today is going to be a day where I make music either on my own or with other people”. I go back and I look through all the things I've just written down for the past few months so I can just think, “Oh, that seemed interesting, let's flesh that out.” Then I'll try and flesh it out with either a track if I'm top lining with people or on my own, or on the piano because the piano is my main songwriting tool most of the time.
Honestly, the way I prefer to write is that I write to the piano and then we produce it later as opposed to top lining, but when the tracks are really good to top line to, it makes it a lot easier than tracks that are just okay. So that's my main process most of the time, if it's something that I start, or that I'm going to do on my own. But then, a lot of times when I write with other people, it comes out of conversations. You know I tend to go into writing sessions, I'll be like, “Okay, what have you been thinking about lately, what have you been experiencing lately, what's been on your mind?” People will just talk to me about having trouble in their relationships, or things they’re really grateful for, or things that have been happening in life and we just have conversations, and the song happens out of that.
Now sometimes, we're trying to write for a very specific thing. If we're trying to write a song for X artist or x TV show, we think of what would be well suited for that. But I love songs that come out of conversations because they just feel so much more honest and organic. So, you know songs come from all over the place but I think as long as you are trying to stay as authentic as you can and stay true the whole time, however way you get there's, you know there's a million ways to get to a great song.
GC: For sure, for sure, agreed. So we've been in a pandemic for a year and a half. What have you learned from being in a pandemic and what is something you're looking forward to doing now that we're coming out of it?
JL: I think I learned in the pandemic what I always kind of knew which was that I wait a little too long to make decisions, big decisions, life altering decisions, and I don't want to be that person anymore. I want to take more chances and take bigger risks and take bigger swings. There is no right time, which is something that people always say all the time but I've been talking about moving to LA for at least a year if not two. It took me until the pandemic to be like okay girl. Let's go. What are we really doing sitting around talking about where we want to be and not making plans and making moves to be there? But I think overall my lesson has been “girl just do it!” because time is the only luxury. The 0ne thing that is for certain is right now. How do you want to make the most of your days and how do you want to live your life? If you want something…. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy or there's gonna be no challenges but you can't just sit around and say that you want shit. You got to go get. Sometimes I get all sad and mopey if I'm not achieving the things that I want to achieve. Part of that doesn't have anything to do with me and has to do with, you know God and timing and what God is putting in my life and taking out of my life and things like that.
But part of that also has to do with me encouraging myself and thinking, “Get your ass up and go do this shit.” One of the things that pandemic had me thinking about a lot is, I want to make sure that I'm holding up my end of the bargain with my own success.
Also, I want to go to a party so bad!!!!!!! I've been out to eat a few times but I really want to go to a party, dancing; the last time I went to a party where it was like intended for people to dance was, I think February of 2020. So it was right before pandemic hit. It was so fun, it was in Atlanta where they had these really great parties where it's mostly black people there. They were just playing all these throwbacks, like black people classics and it was so great. I’m hoping we can get back to that soon.
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