We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ali Sperry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ali below.
Hi Ali , 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?
I honestly think a good deal of my resilience comes from the fact that I’ve practiced meditation since I was a child. And not only the practice of meditation itself, but the fact of growing up in a family and a community that valued taking care of oneself by going inward every day, sitting quietly with yourself and being still. I think that practice and that philosophy started instilling in me from a young age how to not get overshadowed by things, how to cultivate inner strength and calm. Both of my parents were teachers of Transcendental Meditation when I was born, and some of my youngest years were spent living in T.M. centers, where they would be teaching people every day. When I was old enough—I was just under four years old when I got my “Word of Wisdom”, like the junior version of TM for kids, and 10 when I was taught the classic TM technique—my parents taught me, and it seemed the most normal thing ever. We meditated and did yoga in school every day before class. I never thought much of it when I was young, it was just a part of the daily routine. But in hindsight, I’m so grateful that this became part of my life from such a young age, because I’ve always understood on some level how easy it is to do and how much better I feel afterwards.
As a songwriter living in Nashville, resilience is crucial. It took me a long time to let go of the magical thinking that there is some fast track to success in the music industry and to realize that being tenacious and doing work that I am proud of are the things that are within my control. These are the things that can and do actually lead to the successes that slowly amount to a meaningful career. Not to say you don’t still hear stories now and then of how so-and-so got discovered in a karaoke bar or what have you, but when I finally let go of that kind of thinking, I started to learn how to actually focus on the important work of writing and recording and performing songs that I like and that represent who I am as an artist. Everyone I look up to in this town, peers who have accomplished beautiful things in their careers, have worked very very long and hard and not given up in order to get where they are now. There are no guarantees of where or what this resilience will bring you, but it is certainly necessary.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I’ve always felt called to the performing arts. Growing up I was frequently singing and making up songs, as well as being in every play I could get involved in. After graduating from Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm, I attended college at Syracuse University to study musical theater. My parents were both musicians, so music and singing had been with me from birth and were part of the fabric of my daily life. I dabbled in songwriting in my younger years, but it wasn’t until I moved to Nashville in 2009 to join all-girl country band Sweetwater Rose that I began to take songwriting more seriously. Previously it was just something I did when the mood struck me, or as a form of therapy, like journal-writing. In Nashville, I began to understand more about the craft and practice of songwriting. One of the greatest gifts of being in Sweetwater Rose was getting the opportunity to co-write songs with the band, including writing with our producer, legendary songwriter and family friend of ours, Mac Gayden. I had known Mac’s songwriting and guitar playing from a young age through his friendship with my parents, and it was amazing to get to write with him. After a couple years with the band, I became inspired to create my first solo project. What I’d planned to be a 5-song EP soon became a full-length record— Storybook. That recording process was one that I’ll never forget, as it was my first time having the intoxicating experience of being surrounded by dear friends who are also incredible musicians, and who are all putting their heads and skills together to make songs I had written live to their fullest potential. There is really nothing else like that in the world.
I have now recorded four studio albums and several singles, and have toured with a band as well as on my own for the past eleven or so years. My most recent record was the 2021 release In Front of Us, which my husband and I recorded from our home during the pandemic, with contributions from myriad friends who were recording from their own home studios. I will always listen to it and recall that unique time in our lives, and how it felt to get to collaborate with musicians I love, even when we couldn’t be in the same room.
I have a couple new singles releasing this fall that I am excited to share. After making In Front of Us largely out of a makeshift studio set up in our guest room, we were inspired to build a proper home studio and have now converted the space that was previously our garage into a beautiful room for recording and for living in. Having this space feels like having a creativity playground in our home. My husband Jamie Dick is a gifted drummer/percussionist and producer, and I count myself very lucky to have spent the last nearly-twelve years collaborating with him musically. Now that we have this dedicated space in our home, it feels like we are only just beginning to discover all of the ways we can put it to use. We recently recorded my new singles, “A Woman Needs the Words” and “My Walk to You” in the home studio and I’m thrilled with how they came out.
When I’m not writing my own songs, I also write for Songfinch, a company that pairs songwriters with people seeking personalized songs for their loved ones to commemorate a life event or simply just to show someone you care. I love the challenge of putting all of the puzzle pieces together and trying to craft the right song for the person and occasion.
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?
Three most important qualities or skills for me— 1. Discipline. This is one that hasn’t always come easily to me and that I am working on improving constantly. But it’s absolutely necessary and when I am disciplined in my approach, it always yields the best results. It’s pretty much impossible to be good at something—certainly playing an instrument or songwriting—without the discipline to practice it. And to recognize that practicing and working on your craft has no end. It also takes discipline to put in the time and effort necessary to do the business-side of music, such as booking shows, fostering contacts, planning a release, etc.
2. Being gracious and kind. There are plenty of big egos out there, but the people that I see both thriving at what they do and also happy within themselves, are the ones that are kind and maintain a sense of humility. Nothing can be achieved completely on ones own and if you are kind to the people you encounter along your path, you will receive kindness and respect back.
3. Fortitude and patience. As I mentioned before, I have learned (and am always learning) that things don’t happen in this business the way you might expect them to, and often things don’t happen quickly. There’s not some straightforward corporate ladder to climb in music. It’s a mysterious, winding path with all sorts of surprises. Learning to be patient and not give up when things take longer than I’d hoped or don’t go quite as I’d planned is a quality that serves me well and helps me to focus on the task at hand—simply making better and better music.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
One of the most challenging obstacles of recording and performing music is that until you get to a certain level of success, it is far from a lucrative career path, to put it mildly, and in fact, asks a lot of one financially. For example, it takes a sizeable investment to cover the expenses of making a record. There is studio time to pay for, musicians to pay, a recording engineer, mixing, mastering, artwork, creating CDs and/or vinyl, and publicizing it. The hope is that once the record comes out, playing shows and selling CDs/vinyl as well as streaming royalties eventually add up to cover the cost of what you invested. When you are putting an album out independently though, without a record label providing upfront financial and marketing support, it’s honestly very hard to recoup those expenses. So, you make a record as a labor of love and then find other ways to make that money back. But then you want to make a new record and you have to scrape together a large sum of money all over again. So, it’s a challenging cycle. That’s why so many independent artists, including myself, turn to crowd-funding services like Kickstarter and Patreon. One of the ways I support my music is by having a Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/alisperry) where people who want to be involved in my musical journey can subscribe for a monthly fee and get certain perks in return, like first-listens to new singles, or videos that aren’t released elsewhere, etc. Another effort to overcome this challenge has been setting up our home studio, so that now we have the freedom to record from home without having to pay for studio time elsewhere.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://alisperry.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aligreeno/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alisperry
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrwqYtxx8y7o0D-7drqdqyw
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ali-sperry
- Other: https://www.patreon.com/alisperry
Image Credits
Fairlight Hubbard Joe Hiles Colleen Dwyer Rob Goergen Danica Dora