You can listen to Christina Acton’s full interview with Keeper E. here:
Halifax musician Keeper E. (né Adelle Elwood) has had her hands full with graduating from Mount Allison University in the midst of a global pandemic, keeping up with songwriting, and getting signed to a record label!
When asked about staying motivated during quarantine, Keeper E. said:
“[Motivation] was really hard for me. I was really sad all the time, and quite anxious about my future and stuff. So in that time, in the first part of the quarantining months, I was participating in this thing called the isolation journals, where you sign up for these emails and they send you a writing prompt. You can just write in any form you want but I chose to write little songs. And it was kind of hard sometimes to keep myself accountable to do it every day, but also, sometimes it was the only thing in the day that I had to look forward to. So sometimes it was really nice to have that. But anyway, so they sent me a prompt, and I would write a song that I posted on my Instagram story. It was just like a good way to finish the day usually and think about my feelings. Sometimes the prompts would help me to not think about my feelings and to think about other times in my life. So it’s really fun to do that. Also with producing music and stuff, I haven’t had this much time ever in my life, basically because I’ve always been in school or working or whatever. So, it’s been really nice to just have all this time and full days just to record songs. But you know, sometimes that didn’t really happen because of intense sadness.”
Keeper E. has written short daily songs before, and she keeps coming up with beautiful these melodies, but how does she do it? Where does her inspiration come from?
“I find the prompts are just so helpful, because it just brings back memories or like brings up feelings. . . it just helps my imagination a lot. Like it’s usually pretty easy unless, well, there’s always days where I write a three line song and then I’m like ‘Okay, that’s enough for today.’ But sometimes once I start the first line, I’m just like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s going here we go,’ and then I can just write and write for a long time. But yeah fun prompts are super helpful. I can’t always just sit down and write a song unprompted unless I’m really in my emotions.”
“I mainly wrote like one or two songs in high school, but mostly I was really scared to do it. In high school I also would be too nervous to sing a song I wrote for anyone, even if I could write one. So it mostly started in first or second year [of university], when I wrote my first real songs, and then I really liked doing it and it felt like it came pretty naturally to me. It was also really helpful for me to process emotions and you know, university like, there’s a lot happening and a lot of changes in your life. So, it’s good to have some way to think about them and write them down [instead of] writing like a whole novel.”
Coming up on September 5th, Keeper E. will be participating in the Halifax Urban Folk Festival where she will be speaking about songwriting! You can find more information about the Halifax Urban Folk Festival on their website and Facebook page:
https://www.halifaxurbanfolkfestival.com/
You can also follow Keeper E. on her Instagram and Facebook page:
https://www.instagram.com/songsbykeeper/
