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I know my sonic history. As a Black Southerner, this music -- like ALL American popular music -- is

my heritage and my birthright. I am an ATLien (sic). I am rooted in the Lowcountry. I am Blues
people.

LL: What was 2020 like for you?

QE: It was productive, highly creative, and sometimes it was strange in an upside-down place kind
of way because the city was so deserted. There was never a moment when that didn’t feel bizarre.
Like when they set up a field hospital in Central Park. Or the Javits Center. Because the hospitals
were full, they couldn’t take any more people. They had no place to put them. Or the refrigerated

trucks, full of dead people. Because the hospital morgues, the city morgues, the funeral parlours,
everything was full, they couldn’t take any more people. They had no place to put them. The day
that I returned from my residency at Gettysburg was the first day of the lockdown in New York
City, so I went from solitude on the battlefield to solitude in the city, which was a different kind of
battlefield.

I decided to be productive. I quit my gym immediately. I accepted a residency in a women’s play
writing LAB at New Perspectives Theatre Company in Chelsea. I took guitar lessons and ukulele
lessons online. I wrote and recorded a song cycle about life during the rona (sic) and turned that

into an EP that I’ll release soon digitally. I did a lot of performances online. I worked on a book
proposal, continued to refine the lyrics and ideas from Gettysburg and kept rewriting my solo
show.

After a certain point, I realized that I had simply kept going with the habits I started with my self-
imposed lockdown in Gettysburg. I got into the habit of morning journaling, taking long walks,
working on rewrites, practising, washing, and disinfecting my hands, baking bread and wearing a
mask.

I made a lot of progress.

LL: What can we look forward to coming up for you?

QE: My one act play That’s What Happened that I wrote in residency during the lockdown goes up
from August 9th - August 14th at New Perspectives Theatre Company. My pandemic themed EP gets
released before the end of the year along with the digital release of a Christmas EP. There’s Things
Are Looking Up, a jazz album of Billie Holiday’s rare sides and original songs, to be released in the
spring of 2022. There’s Black Americana showcases at Brooklyn Americana Music Festival in
DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and Americanafest in Nashville TN in
September and a showcase at Joe’s Pub in October. I’m hoping to record my next album this winter.

This summer, I’m work-shopping a jazz opera called The Hang with performance artist/playwright/
musician Taylor Mac. It opens in January 2022 and will run for three months, but they haven’t
announced it yet, so I’ve probably said too much.

And yes, there’s plans in the works for a European tour in 2022.

~ Lawrence Lebo

Lawrence Lebo is an award winning, critically acclaimed Blues recording artist living in Los
Angeles, CA, USA. She can be found on the web at www.lawrencelebo.com