Musician Meg Myers has been described as an intense performer with a powerful voice. The 31-year-old brings her talents to Columbus tonight as part of the opening acts for Walk The Moon at Express Live.
In the latest installment of Music Journeys, Myers tells Mike Foley about the inspiration for her new release, which comes out next month.
Go plays
The music career of Meg Myers has been going in the right direction ever since 2013, and in some ways her song Go, released a year later, also represents her youth as her family often moved from town to town. Born in Nashville in 1986, Myers spent the first five years of her life in Tennessee. The next home would be Toledo, where she began singing at the age of 9.
"I sang a few songs in recital and and one of them was Colors of the Wind - Pochontas," Myers laughed. "A really cool, deep song, and My Guy were a couple songs I sang at that age. My parents were really into Led Zeppelin and Heart and a lot of classic rock. My first concert was James Taylor. My whole family played guitar and used to sing harmonies. Life was kind of hard back then, so it was a nice therapeutic experience and a way to express myself."
Myers began playing guitar around the age of 12, and that's when the family moved to south Florida. She spent most of her teenage years there developing a rock and southern influence and even revisiting some 80s music. She eventlually moved to Los Angeles, with her breakout hits Sorry and Desire coming in 2015 as part of her first full-length release. She describes her most recent recording process as a spiritual journey. Myers wrote the record feeling a certain way about the songs, but after listening to the final touches she discovered many had different meanings. One example would be the song Numb, which she co-wrote with producer Leggy Langdon.
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"Originally we wrote Numb because we were feeling really frustrated," Myers recalled. "I was on a different label at the time, and there was a lot of pressure to write a single. When we wrote Numb, it was just messing around with them. And that's exactly what it is, it's about the label. But I did go back and listen to it and ended up making the video about something different - the pressures of being a human being and a woman and all of these things. It definitely took on a different meaning. And then Take Me To The Disco - the reason that's the title of the album is because that's actually the first song we wrote for the record. It covers all grounds."
Take Me To The Disco plays
"That song, what I thought it was about when I was writing it was looking for a way to disconnect and escape," Myers reflected. "I've always had this obsession with death, and there's a feeling of that in it. I was uncovering things in my life and going to a lot of therapy. We went back and started finishing it months later, and I realized what I was wanting to say and looking for was a deeper connection to myself and other people. It wasn't about escaping. I think that we're way too hard on ourselves about accepting where we're at and not being afraid to be vulnerable and ask for help. I kind of lived my life in survival mode - just trying to get by. But I want to enjoy my life and be in the present - whatever that is - and be open and feel a real, true connection with people. Not being scared to be vulnerable."
Myers credits therapy and music for giving her a newfound sense of empowerment and the ability to write from an even deeper level of honesty. A favorite from the new material? Tourniquet, which she also co-wrote with Langdon. Myers recently shared a brief rehearsal sample of that song.
Tourniquet plays
"We both really expressed our individual feelings in that song, and it just locked perfectly together," Myers said. "I feel like it's one of the most moving songs on the album. It still makes me cry when I hear it. I really feel that one a lot. I play bass on that one live, so that's pretty cool."
Though she's not sure where music will take her after this upcoming release and tour, it's likely to be eclectic and in her words "weird," but there's nothing wrong with weird. In her down time, she listens to classical and world music and more piano-driven tunes. Her 12-track Take Me To The Disco comes out July 20, and Myers hinted that additional songs from those recording sessions may be released in the future.
