Set to embark on a nationwide tour this month, the Cambridge-based musician opens up about a new chapter in her career — one that prioritizes collaboration, comfort, and calling the shots.
She’s seated in the front section of Diesel Cafe, parked in front of the stationery and other merchandise while scribbling in her pocket-sized journal. Her denim jumpsuit and squiggly gold statement earrings mesh seamlessly with the aesthetic of the café — a spacious scene set at the intersection of hanging road signs, bright red retro diner booths, and industrial overhead light fixtures. Cambridge-based genre-bending musician Alisa Amador fits comfortably in the fabric of “Somerville’s fueling station since 1999” — a serendipitous image when considering her ever-evolving experiences with refueling her music career and spirit.
“It’s been a mad dash,” Amador responds when asked how she is doing just a few days away from the first show of her US tour. “It’s a funny rhythm to be a touring musician because every time you’re home, it’s like you’re catching up on everything that you couldn’t do while you were previously on tour… and then you’re trying to get ahead of the curve for everything you won’t be able to do while on the next tour.” Despite being situated in the center of chaos, Amador resides in the eye of a thrilling hurricane with admirable calm and poise.
This “mad dash” does not subside once the preparation ends and the performances commence. Amidst the changes in scenery, venues, and audiences encountered on the road, Amador grounds herself by dialing up loved ones and holding one-minute calls. “I used to not allow myself to do it because I was like, ‘I never have enough time, all I have is one minute at the gas station, one minute before I have to go do the soundcheck,’” she reflects. “I thought that it wasn’t fair to the people I loved to call them for that short of a time, but now I have my one minute call list of people, and I let them know in advance.”
Although all the movement of tour has the capacity to make her feel “alone and disconnected from life at home,” Amador’s three-week string of shows across the US will not only feature her guitar-centric, self-described “funky Latin folk” music. She will be accompanied by Emily Scott Robinson and Violet Bell — both Americana acts who employ distinct instrumental and vocal styles. “I would say that storytelling is at the core for all of us,” Amador remarks, “and that involves going from a very personal perspective to a kind of mind for the universally relatable story.”
Back in May 2022, Amador, Robinson, and Lizzy Ross of Violet Bell all congregated in Nashville to work on Robinson’s record, Built on Bones. The concept of the record stems from a theater company in Colorado that commissioned Robinson to write songs in three-part harmonies from the perspective of the witches in Macbeth. Once Robinson finished writing these songs and the curtains closed on the play, she realized that she was sitting on a profound, timeless body of work — one with “a story to tell about women, gender, sexuality, the question of controlling bodies, and war and peace,” as Amador succinctly summarizes it. As one could put two and two together, Amador, Robinson, and Ross play the three witches of Macbeth; a segment of their upcoming shows features a performance of Built on Bones in sequential order.
Amador recalls these witch-themed recording sessions with Robinson and Ross to have been an intensely transformative and reflective experience. In the same week that she flew down to Nashville, Amador received the news that she had won the 2022 Tiny Desk Contest for her submission of “Milonga accidental” — an ethereal Spanish track that speaks to “embracing your contradictions” over a whimsical string section. “I was going through press interviews as I was recording songs with Emily and Lizzy and the band,” she remembers. “At first [the news] was secret, like super secret, and then it went out to the entire country that I had won, all in that one week we were recording.”
The national-scale recognition did not represent the only revolutionary aspect of this development in Amador’s life. Leading up to that week, Amador had made the decision that she would begin the process of gracefully bowing out of a career in music. As she begins her reflection on this vulnerable topic by stating that she is “still very much learning how to tell [her] story,” she shifts in her red diner booth. Her blinking decelerates synchronously with her speech, heightening the intention and emphasis behind every word of her truth she utters. “An independent career in music is systematically designed to break you,” she asserts unfettered.
Amador has had to learn how to fight against “industry standards” — a term she deliberately slips between air quotes due to the fact that she does not want them to exist. She describes the most suffocating times of her career as “just trying to make enough to live while pouring [herself] into a career that kept taking, and taking, and taking, and not giving.” The poor standards of pay for independent musicians, coupled with having to grow as an artist through virtual performances at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, had subsumed her spirit to the point where healing could only come in the form of stepping away entirely.
Having received the news from NPR while dwelling in this state of mind, Amador contemplated whether or not she should accept the honor. “I was figuring out my timeline of when to quit and how to get a different job, because I’ve never really had another job,” she reveals. “Then I received this news from NPR, and it just felt like somebody in this spiritual realm was looking out for me and did not want me to stop.” Although she embraced this sign to persist through the pressures of the industry by accepting the win, Amador understood that business as usual would no longer be an option. “I knew that a lot was going to have to change — that I was going to fight way more for myself, for my health, and for my worth as an artist and as a person.”
Collaborating with Robinson and Ross has not only supported Amador through this drastic shift in her career, but has also redefined her approach to her artistry. “I had so many realizations that I could do music in a different way,” she glows. “Not alone, not isolated.”
Amador eagerly anticipates sharing her new chapter with Boston-area communities in the next few months, as she will take the stage with Emily Scott Robinson and Violet Bell on March 9th at The Sinclair. This marks her first performance at the Harvard Square venue after playing the role of audience member for years, “never really imagining that [she’d] be on that stage.” Amador has also received the nod to perform at Boston Calling this May — an honor that “still feels surreal, to see [her] name on a poster with some of the artists [she] admires most in the world.” However, Amador emphasizes the irony of receiving an invitation to perform at a festival that she could not afford to attend in her upbringing; she is working with her team on putting up shows later in the year that prioritize financial and physical accessibility.
When asked what advice she would give to up-and-coming independent artists who may resonate with the path she has charted, the question gave Amador chills. “I’m just thinking of myself years ago, wishing that I did things differently,” she admitted with a pang of regret. “The biggest thing I want artists to know is that they can say no. When all of these work opportunities come, keep listening to yourself and keep pushing yourself to be that person in the room who makes other people uncomfortable because you’re advocating for yourself.”
Purchase tickets for Alisa’s tour with Emily Scott Robinson and Violet Bell here (including their show at The Sinclair on Thursday, March 9th).
You can also catch her at Boston Calling on Friday, May 26th. Tickets can be purchased here.
