Peach Jam Podcast: IVEEN

 

IVEEN: So my name is IVEEN and I'm from Smyrna, Ga., and I play ethereal Celtic folk pop.

Jeremy Powell: That's not quite the music that you would expect to come out of Smyrna, Ga. Like, there's the Braves stadium, and the cute little downtown, and the Jonquil City, and then Celtic folk-pop.

IVEEN: Yep.

Jeremy Powell: How does that happen?

IVEEN: Honestly, I don't really know. How does anything happen? But it's probably because I grew up playing traditional Irish music and Celtic music because my dad's Irish. So he taught me Irish music as a kid and we had an Irish family band starting when I was 9 years old. Me and my brothers and my dad put a band together and we toured all around the Southeast at all the Georgia Celtic festivals and all the states around the Southeast doing Irish music and traditional Irish music. So I've always wanted to put Irish Celtic music with pop and blues and jazz and rock. So I kind of just mixed a lot of that. And, I do some electronic music as well, so it's just a fun combination of all of those things.

Jeremy Powell: But you do it as a one-man band.

IVEEN: I do. Yep.

 

 

Jeremy Powell: How many pieces of equipment were you working with today?

IVEEN: Today? Let's see. We had harp. We had guitar. We had synth. We had flute. We had drum pads and vocals. So six.

Jeremy Powell: And then running through that loop guy.

IVEEN: Yeah, the looperboard. Yep. It's a Headrush Looperboard is what it's called.

Jeremy Powell: And you're doing all of that yourself?

IVEEN: Mm hmm.

Jeremy Powell: Just one person.

IVEEN: Yeah.

Jeremy Powell: Making all that sound.

IVEEN: Yep.

Jeremy Powell: How in the world do you learn how to do that?

IVEEN: Just basically shut yourself in your house for about a year and already have previous knowledge of how to play instruments. And then, um, I started doing the looper board stuff at the same time I was learning audio engineering and, you know, music production. And learning how to do producing really helped me with knowing how to put songs together while I was performing them. So, you know, having you don't have to have knowledge of how to produce music to use the looper pedal, I know a lot of musicians who are just good at music and they can just figure out how to do that, but definitely helps to know a little bit of how to produce music to know how to kind of like put the parts together and make it make sense. So yeah, just taking a lot of time and practice. 

 

 

Jeremy Powell: And you're obviously very good at it because you have been recognized in Hollywood.

IVEEN: Yeah. Yeah, that was last year and that was something I was not expecting to happen. I actually submitted one of my songs was actually the first song I had ever produced and mixed myself is a song called "Good Enough" that I put out, I think two years ago. And I put that song out just kind of like, meh. It's ironic because it's called "Good Enough," and I didn't think it was good enough. But it was the first song that got Spotify to put me on Spotify radio. And then, you know, my Spotify listeners started going up big time because of that song. And then people started listening to all my other songs because of that song. And I submitted that song for kind of like this, it's called The Music Hustler Award. You know, just for independent artists. It's — it's led by a woman named Christine Morrell, and she does amazing things for independent artists and independent labels and musicians. So I submitted the song last year and I got a call a week before the award ceremony. And they're like, "hey, we want to Facetime you." And they called me like "you won." So they flew me out to Hollywood. I got to walk a red carpet for the first time and I got to give an award speech in front of Tom Hanks and Weird Al and, like, Hans Zimmer-type people. And I — it was surreal. I didn't think anything like that would ever happen in my life. And only good things have come from it.

 

The Peach Jam podcast from GPB features songs and stories from a variety of the incredibly talented and diverse bands and artists who call the Peach State home.

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