NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest winner Gaelynn Lea goes all in as solo artist

A lot can change in a year.
In early 2016, singer and violinist Gaelynn Lea was giving music lessons and performing in her native Duluth, Minnesota, both as a solo artist and with Low’s Alan Sparhawk as the Murder of Crows.
At the urging of two of her students and a college friend, Lea entered NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest, which called for musicians to submit videos of themselves performing an original song at a desk of their choosing.
Lea’s video, which a friend filmed on her phone, finds the musician in her office, her violin case and a mini Orange amp on the desk next to her and a looping pedal at her feet. For her contest entry, Lea performed a song called “Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun,” a poetic folk tune about love.
“Our love’s a complex vintage wine/All rotted leaves and lemon rind/I’d spit you out but now you’re mine,” she sings.
A little over a month later, after they reviewed nearly 6,100 entries, the judges of the Tiny Desk Contest, including “All Songs Considered” hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton and the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, announced Lea as the winner, with Hilton saying “Gaelynn Lea had the most arresting voice and overall sound I heard in this competition.”
The win came with a Tiny Desk concert in the NPR office – Lea’s concert has more than a million views – and a short tour with NPR Music and Lagunitas Brewing Co.
Now a year later, Lea is going all in. She and her husband sold their house and bought a van, and her husband recently left his job to tour with Lea full time, including a stop at the Bartlett on Saturday.
“It’s a shift for us, but it’s been really fun,” Lea said. “We’re going to try to find a schedule that works, keep going as long as we can.”
Lea hopes to eventually bring her band, musicians Al Church and Dave Mehling, on the road with her, but for now it makes financial sense to travel as a solo artist.
Helping Lea fill out her sound in the meantime is her looping pedal, a gift she reluctantly accepted from Sparhawk during a Murder of Crows practice a couple years ago but has since embraced.
“He said ‘Someday you’ll do shows by yourself,’ which I didn’t really believe,” Lea said. “But he was right. Solo violin doesn’t really work with a singer-songwriter. It could, but this really does fill out the sound a lot in a way that makes it possible to do solo sets.”
Transitioning to a solo artist after years of performing with others, and working with a looping pedal, was scary for Lea. To get over that fear and master the spot-on timing needed when working with a looping pedal, she forced herself to book a weekly gig at a local pizza shop, performing for two hours every week for a year.
At the end of the year, she recorded her first solo album, “All the Roads that Lead Us Home.”
Lea’s music has a base of traditional Celtic and American fiddle, with her looping pedal adding modernity. She is lyrically influenced by the folk music she grew up listening to, including Simon and Garfunkel.
As Lea travels, she is confronted with venues that don’t accommodate her osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bones disease. Without a ramp to reach tall stages, unless her wheelchair can be lifted onto the stage, Lea performs in front of the stage.
She pushes for businesses to consider the concept of universal design, which makes things easier for everyone, not just those with disabilities. Accessible bathrooms, seating for those who can’t stand for an entire show and American Sign Language interpreters are a few items on Lea’s wish list.
Some venues have made an effort to at least have a ramp for Lea, but she said most that she’s performed in in the last few months have stages she can’t use.
“This is my first year though so I’m really hoping that the more I do it, and the more I talk about it, that it will keep changing,” she said.
If things keep going the way they have been, Lea will have plenty more opportunities to speak up. She’s working on songs for an album she hopes to release next year, and she’d eventually like to write a book about disability awareness.
“It’s been a really fun year, but I’m excited to see what else the future holds,” she said.