{"id":147030,"date":"2025-02-14T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=147030"},"modified":"2025-02-14T08:26:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T16:26:46","slug":"lisa-loeb-looks-back-at-her-multifaceted-career-and-ongoing-education-as-a-guitarist-and-songwriter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/lisa-loeb-looks-back-at-her-multifaceted-career-and-ongoing-education-as-a-guitarist-and-songwriter\/","title":{"rendered":"Lisa Loeb Looks Back at Her Multifaceted Career and Ongoing Education as a Guitarist and Songwriter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back in 1994, Lisa Loeb burst onto the pop scene with \u201cStay (I Missed You),\u201d featured in the movie Reality Bites<\/a><\/em>. Loeb\u2019s song, built on her colorful chord voicings and R&B-style grooves on a Taylor guitar, became a touchstone of \u201990s music, a companion to countless romantics mulling over breakups, and a major hit\u2014earning Loeb a Grammy nomination and the distinction of being the first unsigned artist to top the Billboard<\/em> Hot 100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loeb, who was in her mid-20s at the time, was one of those overnight successes many years in the making. She\u2019d been learning, performing, and writing music since she was a kid growing up in Dallas; released two albums with her college friend Elizabeth Mitchell, as Liz and Lisa; written music for theater; and founded the New York City\u2013based band Nine Stories. And along the way she\u2019d grown into a versatile guitarist, studying styles from folk to rock to jazz standards, both privately and in a summer session at Berklee College of Music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these experiences have fed into the multifaceted career that Loeb has built in the three decades since \u201cStay\u201d\u2014as a musician, film\/TV\/voice actor, theater writer and composer, SiriusXM radio host, and entrepreneur, with her own line of eyewear. As a singer-songwriter, Loeb has continued to make smart, sophisticated pop rock, most recently with the 2020 album A Simple Trick to Happiness<\/a><\/em>. And like her college bandmate Elizabeth Mitchell, Loeb became a prolific kids\u2019 music artist, winning a Grammy for her 2018 release Feel What U Feel.<\/a> <\/em>The 2017 not-for-kids-only album Lullaby Girl<\/a><\/em> showcases Loeb as a gifted vocalist interpreting standards, show tunes, Motown, and soft rock hits. Her newest album, That\u2019s What It\u2019s All About<\/a><\/em>, is a family-music collaboration with the folk\/Americana band the Hollow Trees, celebrating songs recalled from childhood and adding some new co-written originals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fall I connected with Loeb, based in Los Angeles, for a conversation on her path\u2014and ongoing education\u2014as a guitarist and songwriter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m curious how you learned guitar. Was it from lessons, songbooks, records? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started as a pianist, and I came from a family where to learn an instrument, you took lessons. My interest in guitar started at my all-girls school. They had classical guitar as part of the curriculum in seventh or maybe eighth grade, and it was full of folk songs on guitar, like \u201cStewball\u201d and \u201cEdelweiss.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My friend Alma Doll showed me a few things at summer camp on an acoustic guitar. She started teaching me \u201cStairway to Heaven,\u201d and then I took lessons from the same teacher she had: Mark Menza, who\u2019s still a composer in Dallas, Texas. I learned a lot of theory, some jazz, and songs I liked at the time\u2014David Bowie songs and the Police, like \u201cBring on the Night.\u201d One of the first songs I played with some friends in a talent show was \u201cOver the Hills and Far Away\u201d by Led Zeppelin. I also tried to use sheet music books and learned to figure out songs by ear. I was already writing music a little bit, starting with piano when I was a kid, so I definitely continued with that as a young teen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds like you had a lot of tools and approaches to learn from.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. I was playing in a cover band in my senior year of high school, and we would figure out songs in different ways. And then I took guitar lessons off and on through the years. After college, I went to Berklee summer school because my little brother had gone there, and I wanted to have that opportunity to woodshed and really focus on guitar playing. I played a lot growing up, but I have so many different interests that I felt like I needed time to dig in more deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, I will mention that my brother was a really amazing classical pianist; even as a young child, he was doing tons of competitions. On one hand, there\u2019s this feeling of needing to be the best, to be a prodigy and to know every chord and all the theory behind everything. And I have to say, although that\u2019s a great drive to be better and have more knowledge and skill, also the great thing with playing guitar is you can do so much with so little. That\u2019s also something to embrace. We can have both of those things at the same time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was first really writing a lot of songs with lyrics, I was at an acting school in London for the summer and borrowed a guitar, and two of the strings were missing. I wrote songs all summer! It was great. I just think that\u2019s important, because sometimes you feel like you can\u2019t do it at all if you can\u2019t be amazing at it. You know, it\u2019s the old thing: even with two or three chords you can play so many songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Loeb
Loeb with Greg McIlvaine and Traci Green of the Hollow Trees<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many of the bands that inspired you as a teenager were more electric oriented, but the acoustic guitar became such a prominent part of your own sound. What pointed you in that direction? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, a lot of the music I grew up listening to was more on the rock side. If there was acoustic guitar, it was more about the arrangement, like [Elton John\u2019s] \u201cSomeone Saved My Life Tonight\u201d I think has a strummy acoustic guitar in the background when the song gets really emotional, or David Bowie liked to play around with folk rock on some of his earlier albums. The Cure might have acoustic guitar in there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Police was mostly electric. I loved electric guitar. When I first started playing, because I had seen Andy Summers in some photos with a Peavey Backstage amp, I got one of those. That was a good size for a kid, as opposed to the huge [Roland] Jazz Chorus that I got later. I bought a Peavey electric guitar, which I quickly returned because it was too heavy for me. I ended up getting a reissued 1978 Stratocaster, which I loved. But for a five-foot-two person, carrying or wheeling around that Jazz Chorus amp and the Strat in one of those Fender hard cases, it was so, so heavy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So little by little, as a shy person who wanted to quietly write songs in my room, and because of the heaviness of the equipment, I moved over to acoustics. You could hear it in your room, and it was much lighter and easier to transport. The acoustic goes well with my voice, which is on the quieter side, and then I did start falling in love more and more with the acoustic sound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also the feeling of playing acoustic guitar. It\u2019s like playing drums\u2014you actually can feel the instrument in a simpler way than the electric. It\u2019s just you with your instrument. You don\u2019t need an amplifier and a cable and whatever pedals you might use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your breakthrough song \u201cStay (I Missed You)\u201d dates from your time studying at Berklee. That song has a really distinctive guitar part, capoed and fretted way up the neck with unusual voicings. Do you discover parts like that just by experimenting on the fingerboard, or through more of a theoretical sense of what you are going for?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s always a combination of things. I do like messing around to find guitar licks, patterns, chord progressions, and chord voicings that I like, and I might build an entire song around those at times. Or I might get to a place in a song where I want to say something melodically and lyrically, and I try to have a relationship of that with the guitar part that I\u2019m writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For \u201cStay,\u201d though, it was specifically that I heard from somebody I knew at BMI Music that Daryl Hall, from Hall and Oates, might be looking for songs for a solo record. I\u2019d never written a song for anyone else, but I thought, ooh, that would be so cool to write a classic \u201970s Hall and Oates song that had an R&B groove. So that\u2019s where I got the basic groove of the song and the chord progression\u2014not the [opening] lick, but the groove. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did you find the pattern that takes you so high up the neck, all the way to the 16th fret?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often I\u2019ll start writing, and I\u2019m in my room and it\u2019s very quiet, so I\u2019m writing songs that are too low for my voice. I end up using a capo to move it to a place that fits my voice better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With \u201cStay\u201d it just was natural to look for an interesting guitar lick, hand in hand with the way the lyrics and the story were developing. The song ended up being an unusual structure, but it tells the story of the song. I think the structure tells the feeling of the song almost better than the lyrics do, if that makes sense. The song has a quiet, introspective beginning and ends in a similar way, after going through a lot of different emotions and feelings and mental struggles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How would you describe the structure of the song? It doesn\u2019t really follow the conventions of verse, chorus, bridge, etc.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like a book. The guitar lick and the walking-up-the-neck sound helps create the space to have a thought: \u201cYou say I only hear what I want to.\u201d I\u2019m kind of thinking about it as I walk up the neck. There\u2019s another thought, and the walk-up again. And then I go into the meat of the story in my mind, which is the groove, and go back to the intro again, like I\u2019m recapping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like the song has different little chapters where I keep starting over. That\u2019s also how we think; as soon as we finally let the snow globe settle and we\u2019re at peace for a minute, some other big thought comes to mind, and it\u2019s like a new chapter again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than repeating sections, the song is continually unfolding.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly. It kind of unfolds and then folds back up again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you typically find a song\u2019s guitar part at the same time you\u2019re writing words or a melody?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all happens in every way. I\u2019ve made up complete songs and then needed to write lyrics for them. I\u2019ve written lyrics and then wondered what that melody is, and found it. I\u2019ve found chord progressions that I really like, and then I play around with melodies and certain words come up. I\u2019ve wanted to write a song with a certain rhythm or a certain feel. . . So really it happens in all different ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if I ever feel like I\u2019m getting stuck, it turns more into happy homework, where I\u2019m like: I want to write a song that has very few words, or a really straightforward song that sounds like a cowboy song, or a song like some other artist\u2019s song. That gives me a little goal. And then in the middle of it all, if you\u2019re lucky, you just get inspired. You\u2019re driving and you hear a melody with music in your head, and lyrics. There are ideas that just happen. Sometimes I\u2019m spelling out chords on my tape recorder to make sure I know exactly what I\u2019m hearing, and then the song develops from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lisa-Loeb-photo-Justin-Higuchi-UP\"
Photo: Justin Higuchi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In terms of guitars, you\u2019ve played the same Taylor grand concert going all the way back to around 1990, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. My friend Liz Mitchell (who I had a band with in college called Liz and Lisa) and I went to New York City to make a demo with Jon Gordon, who was a guitar player with Suzanne Vega. Jon had this custom Taylor guitar that he had gotten at Matt Umanov Guitars [in New York City]. It was smaller than my guitar, it had the cutaway, and it was really beautiful. I ended up getting the exact same one he had, a 512c with gold tuners and a Florentine cutaway and a little bit thinner neck, and I still have it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once \u201cStay\u201d hit and I was touring more, I bought a non-custom version of the same guitar so that I could have a backup. I like that one too\u2014it has a little bit of a wider neck\u2014but I keep coming back to the same [custom] one. I have a bunch of guitars hanging on the walls, but the Taylor is just so comfortable and reliable and sounds really good. It works well for \u201cStay,\u201d for sure, because I can play very high up the neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve released a lot of kids\u2019 music over the years, including your latest album, That\u2019s What It\u2019s All About<\/em>, with the Hollow Trees. Has making music for kids and families taught you lessons about songwriting or music making in general? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One hundred percent, because I feel more free in that place to play around with genres, and with things that might feel silly or too serious or even too heartfelt. Also, the further away you get from having radio hits, the more wide open things feel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a songwriter, I\u2019ve been working a long time on being able to tell stories that people understand. I\u2019ve admired a lot of artists whose stories I did not<\/em> understand\u2014I understood the feeling of the song. But along the way, I\u2019ve also learned I like to tell stories that people understand, and that especially becomes important when I\u2019m playing live concerts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, through collaborating more when making kids\u2019 records, it\u2019s important to communicate with each other as we write music. So that process has really folded back into my grown-up music, both collaborating more and thinking a little bit more about what\u2019s important to me. What do I feel like writing about? What am I saying? That has really affected me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you look at writing or making music for kids as very different than making any other kind of music?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. With the family-friendly music, it\u2019s really important that there\u2019s no lesser quality of chord progression or melody or lyric or attention to detail. The songs are written and recorded with the exact same quality as grown-up music will be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing is that when I play some of those kids\u2019 songs live at my grown-up shows\u2014you know, evening shows at grown-up locations\u2014the grown-ups really like those songs. That\u2019s what folk music is. I used to resist folk music because I felt like more of a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll person, even though I was a girl with a guitar. But it\u2019s really fun and satisfying to play those songs. The audience really enjoys them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On That\u2019s What It\u2019s All About<\/em> and on some previous records, you interpret a lot of music you grew up with\u2014folk songs, cowboy songs, standards. Do those old songs form a big part of your sensibility as a singer-songwriter?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s definitely a piece of it. My parents had that classic 1940s\u2013\u201950s upbringing, with a lot of musical theater and standards. With those old songs, I always loved how whimsical the lyrics were and how visual they were, and I wanted to be able to make things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a nostalgic person, and when I hear a song, it\u2019s not really just about the music, it\u2019s about where I was and what I did. It\u2019s what the sun looked like coming through the prism in my grandfather\u2019s living room. It\u2019s what we were eating, like the jellybeans out of the jar at my grandparents\u2019 house, or the roses growing up the side of the house. It\u2019s the smell of pancakes, and it\u2019s Sunday morning and my dad is playing \u201cDon\u2019t Fence Me In\u201d from a fake book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did a lullaby record and covered \u201cDream a Little Dream,\u201d which is a song my dad really loved. To be inside those songs is kind of like being in a vintage store trying on old clothes\u2014you feel like you\u2019re there. It\u2019s a full experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

What She Plays<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Lisa Loeb\u2019s go-to guitar throughout her career has been a 1989 Taylor 512c built with custom specs for Matt Umanov Guitars in New York City. That Taylor has a Fishman undersaddle pickup that she runs through a Fishman Aura Spectrum DI; the company created a digital image for the Aura based on her Taylor\u2019s acoustic sound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loeb uses Shubb capos, sometimes way up the neck\u2014as in live performances of \u201cSandalwood\u201d (capo IX) and \u201cWaiting for Wednesday\u201d (capo IX or X). She uses medium Fender or Ernie Ball picks, and Ernie Ball Earthwood phosphor bronze medium light strings (.012\u2013.054). \u2014JPR<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\n\"Acoustic<\/a>\n

This article originally appeared in the March\/April 2025<\/a> issue of Acoustic Guitar<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 30 years since releasing her breakthrough hit, \u201cStay,\u201d Loeb has thrived as a musician, film\/TV\/voice actor, theater writer and composer, radio host, and entrepreneur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":147031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"In the 30 years since releasing her breakthrough hit, \u201cStay,\u201d Loeb has thrived as a musician, film\/TV\/voice actor, theater writer and composer, radio host, and entrepreneur.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1155],"tags":[1963],"ppma_author":[1559],"class_list":["post-147030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guitar-talk","tag-march-april-2025"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/05-LISA-LOEB-Juan-Patino-Photography-.jpg?fit=1200%2C921&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1559,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"jeffrey-pepper-rodgers","display_name":"Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/About-Us-8.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/About-Us-8.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"https:\/\/www.jeffreypepperrodgers.com\/","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, founding editor of Acoustic Guitar<\/em>, is a grand prize winner of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and author of The Complete Singer-Songwriter<\/em><\/a>, Beyond Strumming<\/em><\/a>, and other books and videos for musicians. In addition to his ongoing work with AG<\/em>, he offers live workshops for guitarists and songwriters, plus video lessons, song charts, and tab, on Patreon<\/a>.\r\n"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147030"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147176,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147030\/revisions\/147176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147030"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=147030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}