Dark Americana singer-songwriter Lisa De Angelis has a penchant for the spooky and an ear for a melody, and continues to impress audiences with her Americana sound and style. Lisa says, “This song, on a micro level, is about coming from a broken family and struggling with that as an adult trying to build relationships, but also about that streak of anxiety and depressive disorders that runs through the women on my mother’s side, and how none of us quite managed to escape it.”
2024 has been a whirlwind year for De Angelis, having played Nashville’s CMA Fest, Tamworth Country Music Festival, and being named a semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. She has also toured with Australian music icons like Steve Kilbey, Phil Jamieson, and Catherine Britt.
Lisa reflected on her personal struggles and poured her heart into songwriting based on those experiences. “I was fiddling around with some guitar chords in my bedroom, sang the opening line as a placeholder for the melody, and the whole song just came pouring out in one sitting. I had no idea it was in there or wanted to come out. It was the middle of the night when it was finished, and I just put my head in my hands and cried,” says Lisa.
“Hands down, the most interesting thing that has happened to me since I began my career was going on tour through the Australian outback with Steve Kilbey of The Church. We spent a few weeks on a tour bus through outback New South Wales, playing both planned and impromptu gigs in the small venues along the way. I had this totally out-of-body moment when I was onstage at The Palace Hotel in Broken Hill, where ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ was filmed, like “I’m opening for Steve Kilbey and I’m on stage at the Priscilla hotel”. My dad used to sing “Under the Milky Way” to me as a child, and then the man who wrote it asked me to duet it with him on the porch of a bush pub. “
Lisa writes through a collaborative process with her partner Paul Bain, who is the drummer for Travis Collins and Kristy Lee Akers, at their private studio in Brisbane. The result is what you’d expect from a Dark Americana singer songwriter.
