When violinist Lindsey Stirling came to Santa Barbara in 2012, she drew upon her just-released first album to give an energetic performance in the intimate confines of SOhO.
When she returns on Saturday, Aug. 15, she’ll be performing at the biggest venue in town — the Santa Barbara Bowl — and it promises to be another amazing experience for her fans.
Between these visits, Lindsey’s videos have been viewed hundreds of millions of times on YouTube, and she released her acclaimed second album, Shatter Me.
To get an idea of her fusion of violin and dubstep, along with cool dance moves thrown in for good measure, check out her most popular video.
Lindsey talked to Noozhawk about what we can look forward to at the upcoming show, and her musical journey so far. The full interview is available here, and tickets to the show are available here.
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Jeff Moehlis: Hi Lindsey. How are you?
Lindsey Stirling: I’m great! I’m at a big YouTube conference. It’s like a big convention for YouTubers. It’s quite crazy.
JM: Well, I know you’re a big YouTuber, so that’s appropriate. I caught part of your show a few years ago at SOhO in Santa Barbara, and really enjoyed it. Did you enjoy your previous visit to our town?
LS: Oh yes, definitely. I absolutely love touring. I love seeing different places, and meeting my fans. So yeah, absolutely. And it’s really fun to be able to come back. Every time I like to come with a completely new show. It always has to be something that I feel is much better than what I brought the last time. I think if you come to the show, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what’s there.
JM: Can you give us a little preview of what we can look forward to?
LS: This tour, I still have my band. I have four female dancers… I’m so proud to call them my dancers. They are absolutely incredible. The choreography is intertwined through some numbers with projection, kind of creating a 3D effect that is really new. I’m pretty sure that my fans will enjoy seeing that kind of effect in my show. It makes it really fun every night. I know the parts that are magical elements for the crowd. I’ll see the kids point at the stuff that’s happening on the screen, you know, pulling their dad’s sleeve. Teenagers are taking pictures. It’s really fun, and it makes the show new for me every night. I look forward to the moments when people are going to have that “Ahh!” reaction. It’s fun. It’s my favorite show that I’ve ever done.
JM: It turns out that I used to play violin a long time ago. I find it very hard to imagine dancing and playing at the same time. What inspired you to combine those?
LS: You know, I wanted to be an entertainer, and not just a performer. I was actually doing some talent competitions in Arizona. I was trying to earn some money for college, and there were these pageants called the Junior Miss Pageants. It was for teenage girls, and it was a scholarship program. There was a talent portion, and some girls were dancing to jazz routines, and there were other violinists. I thought, “Gosh, I want to stand out from these other violinists, but I also want to be fun. I want to have fun, and I want the audience to cheer.” So I came up with this idea of movement and violin. It was amazing in my first performance of it. I’d never felt such an electric feeling before. I thought, I have to figure out how to do this for my life.
JM: You have two albums out now. How did your approach to the albums differ? For the second album you were already quite successful. Did that influence how you approached it?
LS: Mentally it did. I was so scared doing my second album because when I wrote the first one, no one cared. I was just experimenting. I had a couple of fans. I was kind of writing it song by song, as I went. But with the second album, it felt like there was this daunting expectation, and also everybody talks about the sophomore slump, that your second album is the worst album. So it was really hard to pick myself up and go, “No, it’s not going to be my slump. It’s going to be even better than my last album.”
So my approach to it, I kept having to remind myself that this isn’t about everybody else. Yes, it’s for my fans, but it’s also for myself. You know, I continually had to remind myself that, everything from speaking to a life coach to get encouragement… I continuously did things to keep my mental state as healthy as I could, trying to fight self-doubt in a very active way rather than just kind of ignoring it. Whatever it took, I was willing to do to try to keep myself in a positive place, and that way I was able to write rather than fear.
JM: What are your plans for the near future? Is another album in the works?
LS: I’m about to start. We finish this tour in late August, and then I’m going to start writing a new album. You know, again, I’m terrified, and I’m excited — the whole thing. I’m going to start it in the fall, and I’m not even sure what direction I’m going to take. There’s so many different ideas I have and whatnot, and I’m excited to figure it out.
JM: I read that you’re working on an autobiography. When is that coming out?
LS: That comes out Jan. 12. I’ve been working on it for about two and a half years with my sister. Yeah, it’s a memoir. It tells my story and experiences, both the highs and the lows that have shaped me as who I am.
JM: Did you find that there were any surprises as you were reflecting on your journey?
LS: You know, one of the biggest surprises was… Every story in the book I wanted to lean towards a theme, to have a purpose. Some of them were just plain funny, but at the end of each chapter I wanted to wrap it up, not being too sentimental or too cheesy, but kind of what the chapter meant as a part of my life. It was amazing that I’ve learned the same exact lessons over and over and over again in my life. It’s just crazy. I think that’s how life works. You learn a lesson a little bit deeper every time. But I’m like, “Dang, I’m learning the same lessons now that I was facing when I was 16.” When you look at your life in a front to back way, you do realize there are themes.
— Jeff Moehlis is a Noozhawk contributing writer and a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara. Upcoming show recommendations, advice from musicians, interviews and more are available on his web site, music-illuminati.com. The opinions expressed are his own.