Liz Longley is happy. Really, truly happy. Really.
That might be hard for some to believe, especially after hearing songs the expressive artist has written about a few heartbreaking relationships during her search for everlasting love.
Maybe the Pennsylvania native, Berklee College of Music graduate and current East Nashville resident has finally found what the heart wants. While determined to keep her private life just that, the lovely folk-pop-rock singer-songwriter did offer a few details about a relationship nearly two years in the making.
Punctually keeping her 2 p.m. EDT appointment for a mid-August cellphone interview to discuss her latest project, she did sound happy. Really.
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Back with her second album in two years, Liz Longley feels "Weightless."
Even if the rough connection was coming from a plane that had just completed an overseas flight to New York's LaGuardia Airport, signaling the end of a two-week vacation in Ireland with her Irish boyfriend. She said the highlights were spending time in Northern Ireland, seeing Giant's Causeway and walking "across this bridge that looks over the ocean. It was just so stunning."
Now it was back to work, opening the Philadelphia Folk Festival the next night as long as she made her connecting flight to Washington D.C., followed by a two-hour drive to pick up her dog. Then there was dealing with a weak cellphone signal that could have added to the anxiety -- except this seasoned professional has calmly handled far dicier situations.
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"All is well, yes," offered a cheerful Longley, who also had reason to be psyched because Weightless, her second full-length album since signing in December 2014 with formidable and firmly planted roots label Sugar Hill Records, was on the verge of being released.
Before discussing the stunning record that dropped Aug. 26, Longley was willing to give up the first name of her boyfriend (Tommy), a solo singer-songwriter from Westford County in southeast Ireland whom she met at a dog park in Nashville.
"He had just moved to town," she said. "He had been there for about a week and we met and hit it off. It's been amazing ever since."
Don't expect that newfound state of bliss means those sad, sad songs will disappear, though.
Longley actually laughed at the suggestion that her follow-up album seemed as emotionally heavy as last year's self-titled record, which helped land her in my top 15 artists of 2015.
Expecting Longley to admit she feels wiped out after writing such songs as "Weightless,""Never Really Mine" and "Say Anything You Want," her viewpoint was just the opposite.
"It's never draining," she said, resuming the conversation after exiting the plane. "Even the heavy stuff is somehow ... it frees me up to sing about it. It's a process that I really love, but I was going through a fairly emotional time when I started writing this record."
Longley wrote the title track while driving through Los Angeles in the summer of 2014.
As soon as she was finished -- with the song and the relationship -- there was a sixth sense, an empowering feeling of independence that had the potential to ring true throughout the rest of the album.
"I just felt like I needed to be free," Longley added. Her buoyant, Joni Mitchell-like lilt somehow serves as a graceful, gentle diversion from the disdain she feels for the person whose sole purpose was to "take, take, take, take, take, take, take" everything while leaving her empty-handed or, even worse, emotionally vacant.
"I didn't want to be held down, held back in any way," she said. "I just longed for that feeling of weightlessness. ... I kept writing for the record not intentionally going for that theme but I think also when I wrote 'Swing' (the lush, dreamy album opener, penned a couple of months
That might be hard for some to believe, especially after hearing songs the expressive artist has written about a few heartbreaking relationships during her search for everlasting love.
Maybe the Pennsylvania native, Berklee College of Music graduate and current East Nashville resident has finally found what the heart wants. While determined to keep her private life just that, the lovely folk-pop-rock singer-songwriter did offer a few details about a relationship nearly two years in the making.
Punctually keeping her 2 p.m. EDT appointment for a mid-August cellphone interview to discuss her latest project, she did sound happy. Really.
Even if the rough connection was coming from a plane that had just completed an overseas flight to New York's LaGuardia Airport, signaling the end of a two-week vacation in Ireland with her Irish boyfriend. She said the highlights were spending time in Northern Ireland, seeing Giant's Causeway and walking "across this bridge that looks over the ocean. It was just so stunning."
Now it was back to work, opening the Philadelphia Folk Festival the next night as long as she made her connecting flight to Washington D.C., followed by a two-hour drive to pick up her dog. Then there was dealing with a weak cellphone signal that could have added to the anxiety -- except this seasoned professional has calmly handled far dicier situations.
"All is well, yes," offered a cheerful Longley, who also had reason to be psyched because Weightless, her second full-length album since signing in December 2014 with formidable and firmly planted roots label Sugar Hill Records, was on the verge of being released.Before discussing the stunning record that dropped Aug. 26, Longley was willing to give up the first name of her boyfriend (Tommy), a solo singer-songwriter from Westford County in southeast Ireland whom she met at a dog park in Nashville.
"He had just moved to town," she said. "He had been there for about a week and we met and hit it off. It's been amazing ever since."
Don't expect that newfound state of bliss means those sad, sad songs will disappear, though.
Longley actually laughed at the suggestion that her follow-up album seemed as emotionally heavy as last year's self-titled record, which helped land her in my top 15 artists of 2015.
Expecting Longley to admit she feels wiped out after writing such songs as "Weightless,""Never Really Mine" and "Say Anything You Want," her viewpoint was just the opposite.
"It's never draining," she said, resuming the conversation after exiting the plane. "Even the heavy stuff is somehow ... it frees me up to sing about it. It's a process that I really love, but I was going through a fairly emotional time when I started writing this record."
Longley wrote the title track while driving through Los Angeles in the summer of 2014.
"I had been arguing with my ex over who got what when we split up," Longley later explained in an email. "... Stupid things like the couch off of Craigslist. Writing this song helped me to realize that none of those material things matter at all."
As soon as she was finished -- with the song and the relationship -- there was a sixth sense, an empowering feeling of independence that had the potential to ring true throughout the rest of the album.
"I just felt like I needed to be free," Longley added. Her buoyant, Joni Mitchell-like lilt somehow serves as a graceful, gentle diversion from the disdain she feels for the person whose sole purpose was to "take, take, take, take, take, take, take" everything while leaving her empty-handed or, even worse, emotionally vacant.
"I didn't want to be held down, held back in any way," she said. "I just longed for that feeling of weightlessness. ... I kept writing for the record not intentionally going for that theme but I think also when I wrote 'Swing' (the lush, dreamy album opener, penned a couple of months