Alyssa Allgood Interview

bookies new and used books is a supporter of wxav 88.3 fm and wxav.com located at 10324 southwestern avenue in chicago bookies offers a selection of new and used books with orders available for books not currently in stock for more information visit their website at bookiesbookstores.com support for wxav 88.3 is being provided by northwest community credit union located on campus inside the grand school of management the credit union provides members a variety of financial products and services to help them achieve their financial goals members can access services and bank on nwccu's mobile app for more information visit their website at nwccu.com or call them at 1-800-2-BLONG this is a wxav 773 sounds podcast introducing you to the best local bands in the chicagoland area hi this is peter kratzen from 773 sounds here on wxav 88.3 fm chicago your escape from ordinary radio and i'm really excited because we have one of the most exciting jazz musicians not only just for the chicagoland area but for the entire country we have the up-and-coming musician alissa allgood alissa how are you today um i'm doing really great thank you so much for having me for that beautiful introduction it's wonderful to be here oh it's great to have you um you know i always like to start my interviews by going back to the beginning can you tell me a little bit about how you first discovered music but also specifically how you first discovered jazz music yeah absolutely well i am um from the suburbs of chicago i grew up in westmont illinois and um i was really fortunate to have a supportive family so i was involved with music from a very young age um started singing with a jazz band when i was in sixth grade and i just really fell in love with i love getting to um you know just sing with other people and create this beautiful music in the moment and around that time i also started going to a vocal jazz summer camp that was held at north central college in naperville which is actually where i ended up doing my undergrad degree um so i just yeah i've been really involved with it i'm from an early age and i'm grateful for a lot of mentors and opportunities um kind of throughout my life well not only that you got the great college of the page wdcb the jazz radio station out there of course so jazz is a special place in my heart because my dad is a jazz guitarist so growing up i just remember him sitting on the couch playing the guitar and things like that you don't hear a lot of people talking about jazz today which is really unfortunate because it's america's music and everything so how have you as a jazz musician experienced it when you've gone out and you've played at clubs and everything people's reaction and and you think there's almost like a little bit of a renaissance happening with the genre because i work in higher education and it's amazing because i have people going to be like have you ever heard of miles davis have you ever heard of coltrane have you ever heard you know joe pass and it's like yes yes i have that's cool they're finally getting hip so that's cool good for them you know um but yeah you know it's just interesting because i feel like that's certainly true right obviously jazz used to be the popular music you know 100 years ago and it's certainly not but i also don't think it's dead right i think that which is not what you're saying but i think there are a performance last night of our residency at winters jazz club in the city and we had two like really full sets on a cold sunday night so you know i think that there's still a lot of people who like the music um and what i found is oftentimes maybe somebody comes in and they're just looking for kind of a night out or an experience if they're not like diehard jazz fans so i think it's important for us as jazz musicians to be really thoughtful about how can we just um make this music accessible and make it you know um i don't want to say user-friendly but yeah sort of user-friendly make it an experience that people can really enjoy it so people want to come back and they want to go through the catalog and learn about john coltrane and miles davis and all the other greats before us yeah no that's fabulous um so who are some of your musical heroes when you're throwing a record on the turntable uh who you're gonna listen to yeah i have a couple um one of my very favorites is actually a chicago and the great dina washington um she's somebody who i've listened to um quite a lot i love i mean she just had she could sing anything but she just had such a beautiful like soulful voice and a lot of grit in her sound and i just really um you know try to um encapsulate that sometimes i'm singing but i just really appreciate that kind of style um i also really um love betty carter she's somebody who again i think somebody's a very like fierce vocalist and somebody who was really like a musician first whose instrument was voice versus being kind of a separate thing so i really um you know gravitate towards that kind of singing as well um of course uh ella um you know the greatest of all time i think it's very easy to say that um i've listened to her and what i love about ella is she had a lot of different um parts of her career and you know um styles within what she did and i think there's so much to learn from sort of how she her career um expands so long and sort of how her sound changed and evolved in that time um carmen mcrae is one of my favorite singers um i could just talk for hours and hours about them but i have so many singers who i think have just really inspired my um understanding of you know how to what i was mentioning before you know how to connect with an audience how to express a lyric how to make somebody feel something and how to also again be a musician first when you're doing that which i think is really important a big part of my identity as a vocalist you said something earlier that um really piqued my interest in everything that was using your voice as an instrument and listening to you i think that's kind of your approach with how you sing and everything as a performer as a singer you know what's that like how do you approach your when you're at that microphone and you're engaging with your audience and everything and you are using your voice as an instrument well i think for me it's really important because i mean jazz really is an instrumental art form if you think about like the sort of the biggest innovators and sort of where the music originally comes from um so for me like my approach is like i want to just be part of that so i the way that i've like really studied the music and the way i continue to study um is feeling like when i'm on the bandstand i'm able to really like help push the music forward just as if i was like an alto saxophonist or just as if i was the drummer right so being able to interact with the other musicians on the stage being able to um you know as i mentioned yeah sort of pushing things forward whether that's taking a scat solo or changing the phrasing things like that changing the timbre of my voice all those things um i think some of there is conscious choices but a lot of it is just sort of is improvised um but it's through a lot of the study and a lot of the learning and i think that audiences are really drawn to that too because it gives them something that they're also leaning into sort of feeling or sort of seeing okay how's the song going to develop where's the interaction and giving them those kind of little moments as well yeah and it is all about that feeling i mean jazz you're so in the moment with the band and the audience and things like that do you have any moments while you're up on stage and you're just like wow like here i am i'm performing i'm in this moment and you know if you have those moments like what's that like does it like center you does it give you like energy to really like put your heart and soul into it um what do you experience with that yeah that's such a great question and you know i'm really fortunate to say that i do have that feeling i would say like quite often and i have it in different ways um i've been um writing a lot more of my own original music and so that's a really different experience of like working with my regular band and the way that we've like been able to develop the music together and feeling like in the moment where it really goes in these beautiful places and they're pushing me and pushing them and i definitely like wow that's just like really special and i also have moments where um as i mentioned i had a performance last night and that was with a band i'd actually never worked with that exact group of people before but it was amazing we did a bossa nova at night and we had some uh a brazilian bass player and some other musicians who play a lot in that style and they were just incredible and i just had moments where i was like wow this is so great and like just the energy of it so i definitely feel like for me that that grounds me and it just also makes me feel very grateful um to be able to have those kind of opportunities and have those quite often as well lots of great musicians here in chicago yeah we're really spoiled in that regard not that i'm complaining or anything now you mentioned that you're you're beginning to write your own compositions and everything how has that approach been uh for you so far it's been great um it's for me it was something i started to do i was actually i went back to school and did my master a couple years ago and that was something i wanted to sort of pursue while i was there and so um the last album that i had come out um before this new one i was released in april 2024 that was i had 10 original songs on there and that was really like my first of that amount of original music and so for me that was really great and very empowering to just sort of find a different facet of my musicianship um as well as to really think about like my own voice as a performer and as a person but to really think about like okay what are types of songs that i want to be singing or messages i want to be singing so that's been just like very empowering and then the new ep has um three originals on there and i'm actually have a whole new album that i'm getting ready to record it's all originals as well so i'm really kind of like stepping into that and the the process has been uh both empowering and some super overwhelming i think sometimes if you think about oh you know writing music or creating art it's just like all magic yeah it just comes from nowhere sometimes that's true but most of it is just editing editing editing editing editing again it's not actually that glamorous no no it's a lot of sitting at a computer clicking buttons uh now you mentioned you have a brand new ep coming out in fact it's coming out uh in the next few days um can you talk a little bit about it yeah absolutely so the ep is called leap and that is about um this idea of taking risks and really being thoughtful about the ways that we can support ourselves in those moments to try something new but also to honor that that can be challenging you know the kind of moments before we're ready to sort of make that change or take that leap um the title comes from the first song on the ep is called in the sea and that song really is sort of an anthem about you know just like finally putting yourself in that place where you belong and that's an idea for me that i've sort of circles back very often in my experience um as an independent artist um so much i would say that probably every day there's some amount of like risk taking when you're in the arts whether that's you know um sending that booking email or writing the song or posting this thing online a lot of that is all based in putting yourself out there in different ways and i just think i wanted to um you know share a recording that was sort of about that it's also something that i'm releasing on my own and so i've done a lot of work in the last year to really have a better understanding of a little bit more about kind of the business side of things and sort of taking that entrepreneurial leap for myself as well and i hope that audiences feel inspired to take a leap or a small step or something in their own life as well that's wonderful now where can people go to find that ep yes it'll be on bandcamp so you can buy it directly from there and also be on all the streaming platforms i'm not planning to press on physical cds so at this point it's just going to be a digital release only so you can stream it or you can get it on bandcamp okay that's really good to know i'm here with alissa allgood here on 773 sounds now alissa if people want to give you a follow on your social media accounts where can they go and where can they find you that's such a great question thank you so um i'm most active on instagram my handle is allgoodjazz i was blessed with a really good stage name that's my real last name i just throw it into everything so i'm allgoodjazz on instagram tiktok i think i'm just alissa allgood i should probably just triple check it really quick but i'm on tiktok as well facebook i'm on all the things you can find me at alissa allgood fantastic you mentioned something earlier with your approach to songwriting that's really piqued my interest and i'm kind of curious when you're going and you're writing a song what attracts you first do you go more with melody or do you kind of go a little bit more with lyrics that's such a great question i think it's always a little bit different but to be honest my experience has been mostly lyric driven i found that i really have to kind of have a story or a point of view in order to write or to like get something out i could write you know as an exercise of eight bars or something like that but i think for me to like really get a song together i need to have a reason for it so i think like lyrically um that really drives me i do a lot of my writing at the piano i play piano as well so i often find that as i'm working through the lyric i'm kind of connecting that immediately with okay what is the amount of syllables what melody notes could those maybe um connect with and i'm kind of immediately putting it into the harmony so once i kind of get going i'm sort of doing all of them together but lyric definitely is to me has been most important so far in my writing process and something else that's really really cool that you do is you're not only a musician but you're a music educator and you work with you know college students and you're really getting them into jazz and everything what has that experience been like working with young people uh discovering not only their talent but also this beautiful genre of music and this beautiful way to express themselves yeah um i think you just um nailed it on the head really just expressed it so beautifully because i do think that like this music and the way that i teach is so much about of course we want to like learn about the music but it's so much about like learning about ourself through the music and especially as um vocalists i think singing is an incredibly vulnerable experience because your instrument is your your person and so there's not anything to hide behind right so a lot of times i'm really also helping my students just develop confidence and standing on their own two feet standing in front of people sharing their voice um and so for me it's been incredibly gratifying to be able to support um people's journey through that to help them find a love of this music to help them find a little bit more confidence um with their own voice and experience um and i've teach a lot of different capacities right now i teach uh part-time at lyola university i'm here in chicago and as we were talking about earlier about oh you know maybe jazz isn't as popular when i started last year i teach private lessons i have five students in my studio and going into next semester i have 14 students who are going to be taking jazz lessons so i think people really do actually love this music right and it's just about giving them opportunities to find to find it and to find that connection so that's really exciting um but i also teach um i do like clinic work while i go and work with vocal jazz choirs um doing master classes on songwriting or improvisation um all kinds of things and i i really love it i think it's so important um always but i think especially with jazz is a very long tradition of mentorship um and you can see that really throughout history and so i really feel like this is a way for me to also you know give back to the music and help the music um sustain for many many many more years to come yeah absolutely and i love that you mentioned that mentorship factor how have your mentors influenced you then and how you approach the music yeah it's a great question i mean i think they've been so i've had a lot of mentors who um you know i think push me to dig a little bit deeper into finding my own sound you know make suggestions for different kinds of recordings to check out also just lead by example by being incredible musicians being you know diverse musicians versatile those kind of things um and as i mentioned i have another recording that i'm working on i actually got a grant through chamber music america coaching sessions so i've been working with a wonderful singer nicole zuraitis and she's been doing coaching sessions with my group and so that's been really amazing to have that kind of really direct like mentorship as well and i found that so often people are very open to supporting each other because that's really um what this music is about i think it's really based in community as well i completely agree with you i got a couple more questions for you you mentioned earlier too you know the life of an independent musician and everything and it's really a hustle you gotta market yourself at all times um from your perspective um how has the advent of kind of like social media with like kind of spotify youtube how's that kind of helped you or how's that kind of like hurt a little bit um and the reason why i throw hurt in there not to be negative or anything but i find this interesting phenomenon when i work with students or work with young people is they get so glued to the phone or so glued to spotify and what spotify recommends that that first step into something that they don't know is the scariest step for them to take sure and you know going to a young person who is very used to just pop music which there's nothing wrong with pop music jazz is very very different from pop music so how have you been able as that independent musician to maybe use your platform as a tool to get them to take that first what's scary stop yeah you know that's really interesting and i don't know i've really ever thought about it in that way but you're so right that like the spotify of it all the algorithm is it sort of just recommending these things for you so that takes away the the kind of curiosity factor that i think is really important for just like finding something that you like that's not just handed to you right so that's really interesting um but i found to be honest going back to the new ep that i have coming out one of my um sort of inspirations for it was again this sort of like entrepreneurial leap and doing more research and kind of realizing that it is important to be releasing music more often and having like more content to share for the exact thing that we're talking about so to me this has been a little bit of an experiment honestly of okay if i'm releasing you know singles more often and paying for ads and doing those kind of things is that going to reach different people and more people and so far it's been going pretty well um i think but the negative side of that is that there is a pressure and expectation to be releasing music like i would say pretty much all the time if you think about i think like some of the artists who on the next level from where i'm at like they're releasing music you know once a month or a couple eps a year those kind of things and that's it's expensive and all those things too so i think that there's the benefit is that you can certainly like maybe reach more people um then also the negative side of it is that there is just so it's very saturated right because it is very easy to release music and to do those things so to find a way to sort of cut through the noise i think is still i'm sort of figuring that out so um i'll report back after this release and all that kind of stuff but a double-edged sword but i also think it's it's part of our job as musicians and people who are in the field to adapt and to try and be willing to um you know take the leap even if it's not something that we're maybe wanted to do or expecting to do in terms of the online sort of streaming thing i'm here with elissa allgood again you can check her out on instagram and on bandcamp uh allgoodjazz on instagram correct yes that's right and then also you can just search elissa allgood on bandcamp and you can check out she had a great great album that came out in 2024 called from here and the new ep is coming out in a few days it's called leap so be sure to go and check that out melissa thank you so much for joining us yeah thank you so much for having me thank you for listening to this wxav 773 sounds podcast for more information on 773 sounds please visit our website wxav.com