Meet Eli Lucas

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eli Lucas.

Eli, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember, but I really began making music when I was nine years old. I was really good at Guitar Hero as a kid and my dad played guitar, so I asked for a real guitar and fell in love. I started recording songs I wrote into a 4-track recording device. I taught myself how to play guitar, then I learned many other instruments throughout my teenage years from piano to drums, to ukulele and violin, with vocals being my main focus. I also taught myself how to record and produce music because it was very important to me that I do everything involved on a track by myself. Still to this day, I won’t let anyone else have involvement with creating my songs.

Upon graduating high school, I received a scholarship to attend University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where I attended for a single semester before flunking out. I’m not very academic-based in my approach to music. I very much play based on feeling and how it sounds.

After dropping out, I moved back home to Huntington, WV at the start of 2017 to live with my grandparents. I got a job working 60 hour weeks at a grocery store to pay off what student debt I had. After taking a semester off, I decided to return to school locally for a major in visual art. Suffice to say, I was very lost at age 18 (as most 18 years old probably are) and was really trying to figure out what to do with my life. I was doing well in school but I really hated it. I decided to drop out that November 2017 to really try to make music happen. Something within me felt like I was ready. After almost ten years on Youtube, I had 500 followers and my videos were getting no views. I had nothing to show for nearly an entire decade of work but music has always been my hobby and passion.

As soon as I dropped out of college, everything changed for me. It was as if I willed into existence my place in music when I finally believed in myself. My song, “I’m sad,” which was released that same November, started to pick up online. It got 20,000 views on my channel in a month’s time- something I had certainly never had happen before. The turning point for me, the defining moment of my career, was when a friend I made on Instagram used the song in an edit on his account. My friend Matt, who I believe was only 15 years old at the time, single-handedly sky-rocketed me and my song. Back then, he was primarily making “sad” niche cartoon edits for his Instagram account (@sc6ut) of 25k followers, which has now grown to twenty times that size. After posting an edit with my song, hundreds of meme pages and edit accounts were reposting his edit, which likely reached up to a multi-million account reach in total.

That January of 2018, a lot of big music channels on YouTube started to post the song and one of them hit a million views in just a single month. I was getting 10k YouTube followers per month for the first quarter of that year and I began to post a new song every week for three months. I took full advantage of the traffic I was receiving and now the rest Is history!

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I make music primarily and I’m all over the place in terms of genre and sound. I also do photography and take all of my artwork photos myself. I guess my primary classification in music would be alternative R&B, but I also make hardcore/rock, rap, acoustic singer-songwriter, and soul. In a lot of my songs, I really am trying to fuse R&B with punk music because those were my main influences growing up. My last album took a lot of emo and hardcore influence, while my first album was more hip-hop oriented, but I’m actively working to merge 5 or more genres into a single song. My next album that comes out in August is very much a traditional R&B/Soul album in many ways, while stilling having an alternative/hip-hop twist. I’m always changing my sound.

I very much desire to make music that gives positive encouragement to the youth, but I also want to make more mature-sounding music that people in their 20’s and 30’s can enjoy as well. I want to make people think and examine their lives. Being 20 years old myself, I remember very clearly how I felt when I was 16-18 years old and I definitely find tremendous value in creating something that I know some kid somewhere can relate to and then feel less alone as a result. Life is constant and horrible suffering, and it never ends, so we need to adopt responsibility and find purpose through that in order to have a life worth living. You have to have something to outweigh the misery. For me, making music is what outweighs the misery. Ultimately, my message is that despite the suffering we face, life is worth living. That’s that message. That’s what I’m about. The most fulfilling thing I have experienced in life is getting a comment or message from someone who explains in detail how I have had profoundly positive impact on their life. I often get emotional and am amazed by how I have had such a huge impact on someone just a couple of years younger than me. Just recently, a listener told me that they were nihilistic and aimlessly wondering through life until being influenced by my music and message. They went on to say that they’ve gotten their life together and decided to join the military as a result. I still tear up a bit just thinking about that. Making music and getting messages like that is my purpose, my reason for living and the goodness that outweighs the suffering. My life is livable because of my listeners.

My catalog definitely consists of a lot of sad music, but I don’t consider myself a primarily “sad” artist by any means. There’s something very cathartic about both making and listening to sad or emotional music, but I certainly don’t consider myself a sad person by default. Sadness is a transient state of being and not a personality characteristic that defines a person. I write about anything that I think or feel. If I have experienced wrong-doing in a relationship, I write a song about that and hope people can relate to it. If I’m head over heels in love with someone, I write a song about that, while still hoping someone relates to it. If I need encouragement in my own life, I write an encouraging song. As I mature as a person, my art rapidly changes with it as a result. The music I’m making now is very different lyrically and musically from what I was making even just six months ago. I know my audience will grow and evolve with me. Really, that’s what art is. It’s a journey that evolves in the process of creating it. Just like when you read a great book, it’s likely that before writing it, the author didn’t know every single thing that was going to happen between the start and the end of the book. They are taking you on a journey with them, and in some sense, you watch the story evolve and develop in real time. That’s why we love great literature. My listeners are watching me as a person develop in real time by listening to me as an artist, all while they evolve and mature along with me.

As for how I make my music, the process is always different for the writing aspect. The one thing that is constant throughout every song I put out is that it was made in my bedroom, from my grandparents house in West Virginia where I still live, and it was made without any outside help. I don’t even let anyone mix or master my music for me, even if they would do a better job than me (which they certainly would!) because I feel like I lose a part of myself for every part of the process that I give away. The song goes from being a complete representation of my capabilities as an artist, 100% mine, to being slightly less mine. If I let someone mix my music or if I let someone else record the guitar, is it really a representation of me and what I’m capable of? I’m dedicated to making something completely authentic in the truest sense of the word. I realize it’s pretty unusual to hold these beliefs, given that hardly anyone in the music industry cares about mixing their own music. The most professional artists are having the best engineers in the world produce and mix their music. They probably have multiple writers for each song, too. I completely understand that, but as for me, it’s important that I’m doing it myself. Not only that, but it goes back to making the artwork photos myself too. That’s just as important to me as well. I even direct all of my own music videos and just have a friend film them with my camera.

What do you know now that you wished you had learned earlier?
My advice to other artists, musicians in particular, is to just be consistent and focus on the music. I have friends in Los Angeles and elsewhere who get swept up into the music industry and forget the music. They focus on networking and building the right team, etc. I certainly don’t neglect or undervalue a good connection and what that could do for you, but overall, people are unreliable. They say things they don’t mean and most of them aren’t genuinely interested in you or your music. You can certainly find some great, honest people to help push your music, as I have been fortunate enough to find, but you need to stay in charge. Be very wary of business people interfering with your art. I still refuse to sign to a label and I refuse getting a manager as well. Take responsibility for your own business and don’t try to rely on other people to do it for you. No one in the world cares about your music as much as you do.

Don’t trust a manager who wants to manage you and instantly tells you to stop releasing music. They want to groom you for a fat, and TERRIBLE, record deal so they can take their 20% cut and bail on you. You will be trapped in a horrible deal. Know when people are lying to you to serve their own self-interests and never forget that everyone has an agenda, usually one that involves making a ton of money off of you at your expense. Be cautious and stay paranoid. I’m an incredibly paranoid person and it has served me well.

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My music is out anywhere that you want to listen to music. From Soundcloud and Youtube to Spotify and even the more obscure streaming platforms, I’m on there. I can likely be found as a top result if you search my first name wherever you listen. On my website, imelilucas.com, I have multiple portals on the homepage that people can use to find me! My next album comes out on August 23rd and I have a show performing in LA on July 25th with LA locals Nico and Chelsea Collins. It’s actually my first show ever.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.imelilucas.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/imelilucas
• Twitter: twitter.com/imelilucas

Image Credit:
Eli Lucas

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