Meet LOVECOLOR

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful LOVECOLOR a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi LOVECOLOR, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

We’ve both been through a lot in our lives — losses, disappointments, untimely death, family challenges, addiction, and the list goes on. All of those difficult situations and experiences can definitely help foster a more adaptable, resilient approach to life. The circumstances can also have the opposite effect — and sadly, many times do for some people. Fortunately, for us, we are both just very committed to living life on life’s terms and taking the hits as they come, getting back up, and getting back in the arena. We are committed to learning lessons through the strife and to asking ourselves how we can improve our attitude, outlook, and approach to difficult situations. We’re also both pretty committed to putting the pain into our art. That can be a very cathartic process.

We also both come from families to who instilled in us a very healthy work ethic. It can be really disappointing when things don’t work out the way that we wanted them to, or when people let us down and don’t show up for us in the ways they’ve said that they would. At the same time, we also know that we aren’t owed anything by the industry or by life. We show up and work hard day in and day out. That’s a practice, and with time, that sort of practice and daily commitment to “chop wood, carry water,” has ripple effects. It builds the internal muscle and bandwidth to be able to not only survive, but thrive, in extremely difficult industries that can certainly chew up and spit out people who are unprepared or unwilling to develop the necessary mental and emotional skill sets. Much of the time, it’s not at all about talent. It’s about whether or not someone has ability to manage their own internal landscape in the face of tremendous rejection, negative odds and uncertainty. It’s about whether that person has not only the ability, but the desire, to dust themselves off and have another go. That’s called grit. We’ve both been through enough pain, sadness, disappointment, and dark nights of the soul in order to develop the kind of resilience it takes have staying power. Art is often a war of attrition, and if one is going to stick around until it’s “their turn,” takes unfathomable grit.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

We’re LOVECOLOR – an alt-pop/rock-synth duo, based in Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA. If you dig St. Vincent, Phantogram, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lana del Rey, Madonna, Muse, Chvrches, and The 1975, you just might dig what we’re up to. We (Vanessa Silberman and Ryan Carnes) first met at a holiday party in 2015. We started collaborating heavily around November 2019, and we officially formed our band in November of 2022.

When it comes down to it, we make music that we love making and that we would want to hear as listeners. We’ve both loved music since we were young kids, and we often still feel like young kids when we get to get in the studio and make new music, and especially when we’re on the road playing live shows. We really do feel grateful to get to do what we do, while having lots of fun with 80s synths!

We love to make what’s been described as “cinematic” music that gives the listener an experience, that transports them to another place and time, whether that be the 80s (ha!) or somewhere deep within the recesses of their own hearts and minds… to mourn a lost love or celebrate a new one. We write about love a lot — love lost, love found, what love can be, and ultimately, sometimes, what it can’t be. We feel that what’s most exciting about what we get to do is that we get to create a soundscape that is hopefully somehow transformative and cathartic. We’re grateful to know that sometimes we do just that, as we’ve had many listeners tell us that when they listen to our songs, they feel like they’re on some sort of wild trip, teleported elsewhere and need no outside substance to achieve that feeling. We think that’s pretty cool, and it always puts a smile on our faces. We’d both love to work on/score a soundtrack one of these days… something that would fit the sounds and overall aesthetic of our work.

Currently, we are getting set to release our 5th single as a band, “New York Baby,” as well as our debut, self-titled full length record, with 9 original songs. We’re really proud of the work we’ve put into this and very happy with the result. Our focus track for the record will give listeners and fans a nice preview of the direction that we’re going to be taking on the next record. It sits in the sweet spot of all of the different genres of music that we most love, as well as the rock edge that we both were first drawn to growing up.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

We are still very much “on” our journey, so it’s tough to recount the book, as it’s still being written. However, that said, we’d say these are the top 3:

1) Integrity — Most people (not all, unfortunately) want to work with good, honest, integral, self-responsible people. At least, that’s who good people want to work with. Good, honest people want to work with, and build last relationships with, other good, honest people. They just do. So, that’s very important. Build your character, so that you have the self-reliance and self-leadership skills to conduct yourself in those ways. We’ve definitely kissed some frogs through both our individual and collective journeys. However, we also are finding that the more we stick to the truth of who we are, and the more we honor what’s important to us, the more like-minded, like-hearted people come our way.

2) Perseverance — The music, TV, and film industries are really, really hard. Flat out. There’s no avoiding that truth. There are more “NOs” and disappointments than you can possibly imagine. Sometimes it seems like no one will ever say “yes,” again. That’s when it becomes important to be able to say yes to ourselves, to validate ourselves and validate our own unique processes. And, to reference our answer in #1, there are also a lot of flakey, disingenuous folks out there, who don’t have the artist’s best interest at heart. It can get very discouraging and enormously frustrating when encountering industry professionals like that. One must simply stay focused, stay committed to the process and to the work, and move on. Entertainment is often a war of attrition, and there are countless stories out there of artists who didn’t get their so-called break until their 40s, 50s, 60s, or even posthumously. As long as it’s fun (even though some days it won’t be), inspiring, and fulfilling that part of you that knows it has to create, just keep going. Stay committed to your vision and your dreams.

3) Vision — If you don’t know what you want or where you want to go, how will you ever get there? That would be like getting in the car with no destination. Do you want to just drive in circles, or aimlessly wander around? Sure, that might be fun for a weekend road trip, but it’s certainly not an efficient or effective way to get things done.

Sometimes good fortune and success just happen, though we believe that most times, that just in not the case. Most times, success and good fortune happen for a number of reasons, including having a beneficial mindset, patience, perseverance, etc, and having a map of where one wants to go. We have no idea exactly how we’ll get there, but we damn sure know the destination. We know exactly what we want. We know the venues we want to play. We know the artists we want to play with. We know the producers we want to work with. We know how we want to feel when we’re out there on stage. We know how we want our music to make people feel. We even know what clothing brands we want to wear. Does knowing all of those things guarantee it will all happen? Of course not. But NOT knowing all of those things will almost guarantee that it WON’T happen.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

We both have a lot on our plates and a lot of daily responsibilities, including multiple businesses, so the feeling of overwhelm is not uncommon for us!

We’re both pretty similar in how we respond to that feeling, which works out well for us when we’re spending extensive time together in the studio or on the road. We both tend to gravitate toward some combination of meditation, breath work, yoga, weightlifting (Ryan’s go-to), bicycling (Vanessa’s favorite) spending time in nature, and eating wholesome healthy foods that we enjoy. We keep it pretty simple around here! We’re both definitely committed to navigating these challenging feelings in the healthiest ways possible, which is not always easy. Yet, we recognize how important for our well-being and longevity it is to implement and utilize healthy coping mechanisms. Anything other than this, we know is destructive and counter-productive.

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Image Credits

Zachariah Schmitt
Michelle LoBianco
Michelle LoBianco
Adam Ninyo
Michelle LoBianco
Michelle LoBianco
Brian Kasnyik
Brian Kasnyik

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