Photo Credit: Pang Tubhirin
Editor’s Note: Olivia Ellen Lloyd is No Depression’s Spotlight Artist for March 2025. Learn more about her life and new album, Do It Myself, released March 21, in this feature, and this video, and keep an eye out for more all month long.
It is 8:47 AM. I am trying to get through my precious morning routine without looking at my phone. Grinding beans for coffee, feeding my dog, writing my morning reflections. As I am writing down a list of things I am grateful for, hopeful for, looking forward to – in a world that feels increasingly bleak and bereft of blessings – my phone buzzes twice. I see the skull emoji and I know that somebody’s got good news.
Lizzie No: I was nominated for an AMA-UK Award for Heartbreak Store!
Reflections on the brilliance of Heartbreak Store are pouring into my little glow box. The group chat is celebrating Lizzie’s win as though it is shared praise. Like we wrote it together. I love this corner of my digital life. The Girl’s Girls (skull emoji) consists of fellow artists Isa Burke, Kaïa Kater, Lizzie No and…somehow!…me. I come to these three for comfort, wisdom, reassurance, and gut checks. We ask each other for advice and do some light gossiping, but mostly we use the chat as a space to share career wins.
Isa Burke: My new apartment has a huge porch! I can’t wait to get settled into this new city, it’s going to make my touring life a lot easier.
My understanding of work was always this: you should take a look around your community and see what is needed. Then, take a look within yourself and identify what you enjoy doing. The combination of those two things amounts to Your Life’s Work. It’s a small town kind of perception of work, and that tracks.
I was raised in a small town in West Virginia, the same area where my parents were raised. We’re Service Industry People – nurses, teachers, bartenders…etc. The only problem with this perspective is that I am a musician and I am operating within The Music Industry™ and that arena is more akin to a gladiator tournament than a small town.
But under the canopies of folk festival popup tents, cozied into the worn wooden booths of hundred-year-old bars, written in the pages of indie music magazines, I found a parallel cottage music industry. This small “m” music industry promised an emphasis on community, a ceasefire from cutthroat competitiveness, a haven for sensitive people just trying to make a living doing honest (and hard) work. This, I thought, is my place.
Kaïa Kater: I can’t believe it. Strange Medicine was nominated for a Juno!
My parents both grew up in small towns. They had sidewalks leading to neighbors’ houses and dime stores and little local groceries. My grandfather (who was also mayor of our hometown for a long time) ran a dominos game out of the local bar and rumor had it that it was the best place to get your town-related business dealt with. Still, these literal backroom dealings were more Andy Griffith than Boss Tweed.
I was raised on the outskirts of that town. My family was priced out a generation ago, and I watched it fill with wealthy D.C. expats, AirBnBers and then finally: Investment Property people. At least the DC types supported the local economy and half of them sent their kids to public school. Everyone else seems to like the look of empty houses.
Just as my cute, quaint, eclectic small town has been slowly pricing out the people who made it that way, The Music Industry™ seems to be encroaching on my music industry with increasing fervor. Big tech oligarchs want to have their cake, eat it, and then take bites out of yours too. Labels and indie artists struggle to understand how to get people to pay attention as we find ourselves looking up from our various screens at 5 p.m. only to wonder, what did I do with my entire day?
We’re all feeling the squeeze. Handmade, steadily-built careers are usurped by viral sensations before we even find out if they’re any good or just got a good take. And can you really blame or hold it against them? Even Tik Tok stars are just kids trying to live their dreams (for now…we’re not far from an AI-generated viral Americana sensation.)
This scarcity is, of course, artificial. The Music Industry™ is a multi-billion dollar industry and the tech platforms that have made prodigious posting a prerequisite for having a music career have taken over how we communicate, receive news, and consume culture. There’s enough money to go around, it’s just going into the wrong pile.
Kaïa: Has anyone ever been to Savannah? Looking for something to do on my day off
Isa: Wait, are you in Savannah?! I’m in Savannah!
(One hour later, a photo comes through: Isa and Kaia at the movie theatre)
Lizzie: don’t do this to us
Me: seriously, I am dying of jealousy
So what does one do? The uncertainty keeps me up at night, and as a prodigious and accomplished worrier I fuss over my precious Topics of Concern. Is there space for us to build something small but real in this gladiator pit of content creation?
In response to this growing tide of worry, I decided to switch industries. I am pleased to announce that my songs are part of the Service Industry now. I have a skill which allows people to come together as a group and experience some kind of catharsis. You can dance to at least half of my songs and I really insist that you do. Shaking ass is good for the soul!
The other stuff is noise. It will remain hard – and maybe get more difficult – to make a living performing this service, in part because a lot of people are good at it (cool!) and because our attention is being divided in weird ways (lame!).
But since I am in the Service Industry, my fellow independent musicians are no longer my competition but rather my coworkers, my partners in the trenches. Much like in the other service industries, there are FAR more of us than them and they need us a lot more than they are letting on (at least for now) and we should look at some real organizing. But that means everybody’s gotta get aboard the lifeboat–and we’ve got to get better at sharing. All of us.
I refuse to believe that this world and industry does not have room for both the TikTok charmers and the hard-touring independent artists that built this genre and sound. Americana is a hybrid genre, but one of its foundational threads is folk music–a sound that embodies resistance and challenges the status quo.
As we move forward into this Brave New World (and we’re certainly going to need to be brave about it) I think it is valuable to keep that thread of resistance at the forefront of our creative minds; Our heroes didn’t become heroes by coloring within the lines. We can resist the tide of homogenization and tech-led culture. We will get there together, but we’re going to Do It Ourselves (my managers would like for you to remember that this essay is about me; please buy my new record Do It Yourself, out everywhere March 21st).
And yet…Our digital lives keep us connected to things worth celebrating, too. These little distraction machines are useful if we can figure out how to shrink them down to small-town scale and put them to use, instead of the other way around.
My phone buzzes again. Lizzie saw that I signed with a management company before I had a chance to announce. The lotto machine has landed on 7s for me this week and the Girls Girls (skull emoji) are heaping praise and congratulations onto my lap. It’s their win, too–that’s how we do it over here.
