Ivy creeps no longer
Ivy Rossiter – once “terrified” to go on stage.
“I was so passionate about music that there was never any option to do anything else. But I couldn’t get up and perform a song,” explains Rossiter. She grew up in Auckland and played the (compulsory) recorder, along with keyboard and classical guitar at high school.
After school she spent a year working at summer camps in Canada before coming home to Auckland to begin a BA in philosophy. Finding she didn’t have enough time for music and firm in the belief that it was time to confront her performance anxiety head on, she pulled out after her first year and instead enrolled in Auckland University’s popular music programme. The next three years were spent slowly and painfully overcoming stage fright through concentrated writing and performing.
“At the beginning you know that what you’re making is not that good. I always had terrible anxiety about getting up in front of other people and knowing that my songs weren’t perfect,” says Rossiter, “You have to get through that until you find that what you’re making is satisfying.”
Practice only goes so far to ward off mistakes, she says, “You’re still going to forget the lyrics sometimes.”
Despite panic attacks before performance days and “frequent variations on the theme of having a serious breakdown,” Rossiter made it through music school. She now works in music publishing and performs in the duo Luckless, originally her solo project. She began by recording herself singing and playing guitar against a drum machine on a four track tape recorder but when she got “tired and lonely” with only the static sound of the drum machine for company, she enlisted the help of Will Wood, an Auckland-based drummer and vocalist who liked her music.
The pair plays melancholic songs distorted with electric guitar, sometimes loud, rhythmic and driving, at other times quieter, more reflective and floaty, though always “very lyrics- based,” according to Rossiter. Her songs are not stories, but are “moods” built upon little phrases and ideas that she often finds from books and uses as inspiration.
Luckless is currently touring the country with solo artist Bond Street Bridge before the release of their first album in March 2012. The album was recorded at Roundhead Studios in Auckland and they’re just putting the finishing touches on the mixes.
Ivy Rossiter still gets very nervous before she goes on stage. She’s learnt to work through her stress by taking a few minutes to herself to sit outside, to breathe and clear her mind. At the end of the day, she says, there’s no connection between your confidence and the quality of your music and many well-established musicians struggle with the same thing every day.
“Some of the best performers I know throw up regularly before they go on stage. I don’t have a choice but to get through it. The idea of being a bedroom musician never appealed to me.”
Luckless with Bond Street Bridge, Happy, November 25.
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