Eleri Ward On Meditation, Transformation, And The Power Of Music
Her album, Internal Rituals is out September 26—pre-order now!
Photo credits: @alexajaephoto
If you want to read more about Emi’s experience at Eleri Ward’s show in Brooklyn, check out her concert review here :)
You performed at Public Records back in May. Can you tell me about putting on that show?
It was so fulfilling. I care a lot about maintaining the relationship with the audience and creating intimacy through my music. Even though there’s an expansive quality to the way I write and the sonic landscapes that I build, at the root of it is vulnerability. I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I was sharing my original music for the first time.
Finally stepping into the full vision in my mind was so overwhelmingly joyful to me. I was just a whole ball of gratitude. I was grateful for all the things that brought me to this moment. To have a vision of what I wanted of what I wanted things to be and to actually make it happen. It was the most excited I’ve ever been to perform, and that created a very different feeling in my body. If this is what it feels like to perform my own music, I want to just keep doing that. I’m still beaming about it, and I can’t wait for more shows.
“I’m pretty heart-forward in my writing. ”
I noticed that your show was a really immersive, sonic experience. How do you create that experience?
I believe in world-building, and telling a story through a song is one part of it. I think the stories that we create in music, because it’s not just the written word, there’s a whole environment. I like creating an atmosphere to let people fully experience whatever the song is telling. Every aspect is important. The physicality, the way it’s expressed, the way it’s sung, all the instrumentation, the way it’s panned. How each of those instrumentation things and arrangement things go into creating an ambiance and an energy around the story.
I really like layering things, and I kind of write with the arrangement in my head, especially when it comes to background vocals. I stack and have a million background vocal tracks on most of my songs. While I’m writing, I’m hearing that in my head where it’s panned in the ears because that creates a whole 3D experience. Music itself is 3D; it’s spherical. So it’s honoring that in how I tell the story.
What does your writing process look like?
It is all rooted in emotion and knowing what the song is about. I am not someone who is very good at writing without those things attached. Even if I have a melodic thing in my head, it’s usually rooted in an experience I’m going through, something I’m meditating on. It relates to what I’m experiencing. Once I know the bottom line of what I’m trying to say, the entire story makes sense. It’s very organic.
To me, songwriting is magical in the way that it can just kind of arrive before you understand it. I don’t know why the lyric has to be what it is or why the arrangement has to be like this in my head. I don’t question things, I don’t get super technical about my writing. Creativity is at its highest, rooted in flow state, when you’re just so present in what you’re doing that there is no physical reality to make sense of it. So I just really let it be what it wants to be. I just want to listen to my intuition and what feels right. I’m a music and melody person first. Sometimes the lyrics come attached to the music. But to me, the music is the emotional heart of any song that I write. The lyrics are kind of just filling in a puzzle that are rooted in what I know I want to say and what I have to say.
I’m pretty heart-forward in my writing.
You had us start the show with a collective breath. How does that show up in the creation of the show?
I didn’t know exactly how I wanted the frame of the show to be because the whole thing is pretty thematic. I know the album is rooted in transformation, so what kind of framing device do I want to use to lock that in? I’ve been doing meditations that have to do with stepping into a new identity and rewiring your brain to remove old patterns. A huge part of it is breathing in things that you want to let go of and blowing them out as black smoke. I thought, this is so deeply tethered to the overall theme of the show: What if we all do that together? Then by the time we get to “Venusian Light,” all of the black smoke is now gone from your body.
Can you speak a little more to the theme of transformation in your work?
I wrote the first song of this album, “Burden,” in August of 2023. I finished writing “Venusian Light” in August of 2024. There was a whole year of writing these songs and producing the album. It was a huge life change cycle from the first moment of writing this album to the end. So much of it has come from my ability to sit with myself and look at myself and enter into a whole new timeline of who I want to be and what I want to do. It’s just funny how, when I wasn’t conscious of that transformation, it was still happening anyway. I was writing these songs without realizing that they were a byproduct of me changing.
It wasn’t until I was writing “Goodbye, Sojourna” and “Venusian Light” that I saw why I was writing all these other songs and how I got to that endpoint. There’s so much about settling in and centering into your alignment. So much of my transformation was an upheaval of my nervous system, of saying, change is uncomfortable, what’s gonna happen? I’m scared of the unknown. It’s always going to be the unknown, and you’re never going to be fully in control, so you might as well be centered in yourself and live life a little bit more easily and have more fun doing it.
It’s a beautiful thing to experience, to be able to have this tangible thing–to say I’ve been through all this stuff and I’m still going through this stuff and I can find new ways to transform through performing these songs now.
Tell us more about your new single, Someone Something New!
I love that song. It’s the longest song on the album. It’s also the most probably the most produced and the most layered. It was one of those ones where I didn’t totally know why the world of the song needed to be that way until after, then I’m like, of course it is layered and it is deep, there are so many layers to get to the bottom of this. It’s a bit of a cacophony. There are background vocals flying around, and it’s like a whirl.
I started writing it at the beginning of April of last year. I was pretty frustrated with an industry thing–men–feeling dismissed and unimportant and not heard and like I didn’t mean anything to these music men. I was talking to my dad. Who’s really my stepdad, but he’s been in my life since I was three years old, and he’s the man who raised me. I was talking to him about all of this and how frustrated I was, and he then said to me, You know your frustration isn’t really about these men and there’s only truly one man who has dismissed you in this life, and that’s my biological father.
I haven’t seen him since I was 15 or 16 years old, by choice. He’s one of those black hole people. When you recognize you’re never going to get anything back from a void of a human, you cut ties. Which has been a wonderful thing, and I’m grateful that I have a true father in my life to show me what a dad is supposed to be like. But in that moment, I was like “OH MY GOD.” Like you go to therapy, you work through all these things, and then something like this pops up and reminds you that the journey is never over.
I think that’s a universal thing regarding any of our traumas, all of us have stuff from the past. We work through it and it’s not a part of your present moment until you’re upset about something and you realize that’s not the [real] thing you’re upset about, it’s this thing that’s tucked away deep deep deep down and you go ok there’s more work to do there.
So I got off the phone with my dad after having this huge revelation. I have no idea where this finger-picking pattern came from or why I chose to use a capo up the neck. I just plopped down and started playing this thing out of nowhere. It was the guitar pattern that sort of set the groundwork for what I wanted it to be based on, and then the melody fully came out, I didn’t have the words yet. I’m someone who kind of mumbles through melodies as I write them and then words sort of peak through as I write them.
I ultimately came up with this idea of this past thing that you forget about that can reincarnate itself in other people and other situations. It can masquerade as these new things, even though it’s something from your past. I’d never heard anyone write about that kind of experience. I hope that there is some universal truth in that. I think we can all relate to going through patterns and playing out roles with different people and scenarios that pop up in our lives, and we all can break that pattern and heighten our awareness. The beats are probably my favorite beats on the whole album. I love this song.
How does it feel sharing such a vulnerable part of yourself on stage? Especially given your background, this is sort of the first time we’re getting to hear your original music.
It feels really good. I am a vulnerable person. I’m a very open person. When I experience something, I want to share it with people in the hopes that it can touch someone else. It is very fulfilling to me to use my lived experience to inspire and uplift other people. It’s vulnerable, but I’m comfortable being vulnerable.
I think because I love this music more than anything I’ve ever released or created, there’s less space for other people’s opinions. I cared a little more about that with Sondheim because Sondheim is so near and dear to people, and there’s a preconceived notion. But with this, it’s all my own. I love it more than anything I’ve ever made, so it’s kind of vacuum sealed regarding other people’s opinions.
My lyrics aren’t always straightforward. They are more abstract most of the time. It’s more about how a song makes you feel. People don’t remember what is said to them; they remember how it makes them feel. I know my music isn’t for everyone because it’s a little more existential and esoteric, but the feeling part and the vulnerability part are what’s at the forefront for me.
What’s next for you? What does your life look like in the near future?
I’m putting together more shows. I’m really excited for that all to come together in a more concrete way so we can put out more dates. But at the same time, I don’t know. I’m working on writing a musical, and that’s coming along. I’m putting out this album, who knows where that will go? I’m honestly in the vein of float. I’m trust-falling to whatever comes my way.
I’ve been saying this for a while now: go where the lights are green instead of waiting at a stoplight because you want to get to the other side of the street. You could be waiting on the other side of the street for a long time. I’m just going where the green lights are and just trusting that’s where I need to be. I’m a little less concretely goal-oriented right now. My goals are a lot bigger and more wishy washy than these specific goalposts along the way.
When it comes to musical theater, it’s to expand the sonic landscape and sound of musical theater, and when it comes to my music, its to inspire authenticity and introspection, and joy.
Where can people find you online?
I’m on Instagram and TikTok @eleriward. Also on YouTube. All of the videos I’ve made for the songs I’ve released this far are fully DIY, I filmed them on my iPhone with resourced materials and things, and that’s all on YouTube. My album is officially going to be for preorder on vinyl, so I’m excited for that. Otherwise, I’ll just be out in the ether.
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.