ISAAC LEVI
( Everyday Inspirations ) - Monday 5th February 2024
Words by Isaac Osbon. Photography by Isaac Jay Solanki.
Coincidentally, this Everyday Inspirations article about a musician called Isaac was actually written by an Isaac and photographed by an Isaac too. As the talented singer songwriter Isaac Levi pointed out in our interview, with all of the names being spelt the same, we should be in for a good chat.
So, Isaac Levi is a twenty-five-year-old up and coming music artist with a passion and love for meaningful acoustic music; something that’s been propelling him deeper into the music scene more and more each day. Isaac grew up playing in bands within a small town called Ellesmere in Shropshire before moving to London where he began making his own music and busking - I’m sure you can see why all of us at Slanky® find him inspiring. Through the form of busking, which I’m sure most members of the public would perceive to be one of the most daunting things someone could do, Isaac has got stuck into the music industry. Busking has a broad range of reactions, from big crowds enjoying and singing along to more challenging crowds that can really knock an artist's confidence. However, whatever crowd it is, Isaac Levi perseveres and wants to put his hours in to be able to show his love for music. As he said in our interview, “Big crowds are lovely, as an artist, that’s what I want but on the days it’s quieter even if it makes one person happy I'm happy”. With his new single “Chemistry” having just been released, we felt as though his inspirational story so far should be heard.
Firstly, just how do you do it? Busking in front of strangers, I couldn’t think of a more daunting thing to do.
“It's definitely a strange one but you get used to it pretty quickly. My girlfriend sent me a picture the other day of the first time I ever busked and I was like that's so weird. It got me thinking about when I started doing it because I was terrified. When I started a couple of years ago, I had this funny little amp that was way too quiet for the street that I was on. I probably made like £12 but I was absolutely buzzing. I used to be in a band but when the band stopped, I felt like I lost my purpose a little bit, so to start busking and playing music live again felt amazing but to do it to the public really helped my confidence grow again. The reason why I started busking was because I saw other people doing it, which made me want to do it as well, but I thought to myself, surely it can’t pay the bills. However, I found out from a mate of mine in Leeds that you could make a living out of it! Even with two jobs, I was struggling to pay my rent, so I thought I’d give it a shot. My main thing when I moved to London was that I'm not coming here to work full time in a restaurant again, because the rent is so expensive down there. I knew that it was gonna be really expensive and I wanted to do something with music, which I love, so obviously, I started busking. The terrifying part of singing to strangers passes quickly, and once you accept and get past the nobody cares stage. You start to focus on only the people that want to watch, and you realise that there is an art within busking.”
Take us back to the beginning, how and when did you first get into music and why did you decide to start making and releasing it?
“I've been doing this for 9 years now, I actually grew up playing in bands. I started when I was 16 and I'm 25 now, growing up through school, I was a bit of an outlier because I was football-orientated but I also loved music. When I was really young, I saw people like my sisters ex-boyfriend play guitar and I’d idolise him - he taught me a few chords and then I was just away with it. I fell in love with playing music even though all I knew was a few chords. It sounds really corny but it just spoke to me in a way that I hadn’t found yet and still haven’t to this day. I started learning chords and singing when I was 11 and then took it up again when I was 16 with a band called Titanic City of all things - not quite as catchy as The 1975 haha. I feel like playing in a band humbles you because you sometime find yourself playing to an empty room but your band mates keep in you in check.
Even whilst I was in the band, I would write songs on my own and there’s really no feeling quite like it - when you're halfway through writing something and the magic feels like it's flowing over you. I'd write songs that were quite personal and deep but the band wouldn’t want to play them, at the time, the genre we stuck to was pop-punk so it obviously didn’t fit. I really felt like I found myself in the band and when it ended, I got through some heartbreaks and was ready to give music a go on my own.”
What's inspired your current sound, how did you go from a pop-punk band to acoustic?
“When I was really young, maybe around 14 or 15, I was really into people like Ed Sheeran and Lewis Watson, who were obviously massive at the time. I was low-key obsessed with them and they inspired the younger me with their singer-songwriter talent. As I got older and as you go through the angsty thing, that's when all the bands came in like Nirvana. Eventually, I started making sad songs about girls and heartbreak - even though it’s a bit sad to admit, I fell in love with it, the acoustic music just spoke to me.
Also, my parents influenced me for sure with their love for music like Bruce Springsteen and Counting Crows - the music I grew up on has also subconsciously influenced my sound. My parents also have an upright piano in the house, I never got lessons on it but I guess it kind of worked out in the end - that massively changed everything for me because I just felt like you could convey so much more emotion on a piano than you can on a guitar. It sounds so much more emotive and for me I feel like I’m more vulnerable on the piano which allows people to connect more.”
Lastly, talk to us about your individual drive, where does it all come from?
“Well, perhaps it’s not very music-star-like but I do literally live hand to mouth at times like it's a bit of a joke. I'll make enough money to pay my rent but that's it. If I want anything, like if I want to go out one night and have some beers, I know that I have to busk for a certain amount of time to do so. On the other hand though, I’m also really obsessed with the idea of luck, so to get out there as much as possible means I’m more likely I'll get noticed - your moment can come at any time.
The drive to go out and busk also comes from wanting to have the skills to work a crowd, I want to gain the confidence to engage with people and speak to anyone. I'm very confident that if you can speak to people in the street and get them to care, then you can do it a lot easier at pretty much any venue. I’ve been busking now for about 2 years and what continues to drive me is the support from the public. It’s the small things like getting sent a video from a follower who saw me singing in the street. To me, that’s special because even on the days where I think it could have gone better, I feel as though I’ve connected with someone.
The drive to actually keep writing my own songs in the first place makes me think back to something Ed Sheeran once said “writing songs and playing live is like turning on a tap in an old house; first you’ll get all of the mud and dirty water but the more you get it out, the quicker the good water starts flowing.” I think about that a lot, it helps me keep pushing, to keep writing more and playing live - the more music I make, the more likely I am to create a song that clicks.
