Sunday Conversation: Lisa Loeb On Collaborating, Philanthropy, ‘Stay’ And Much More

Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb will play a show at Hollywood’s Bourbon Room this Wednesday, August 24. The show is special for Loeb for a couple of reasons. First, she’ll be sharing the stage with a friend, actor/musician Steven Glickman. Second, as she points out, due to COVID, she hasn’t played a proper L.A. show in some time.

It is part of a very busy year for Loeb. “I’ve got concerts coming up, I got two kids going back to school right now, but yeah, I’m just making a record, have a daily radio show, continuing with my eyewear line, which is always evolving with new styles, and I’m doing interviews,” she says. “And I also have a new podcast out. You can look on my website to find everything. You’ll see all the different things on my socials or on my website.”

Lisa LoebLisa Loeb

I spoke with Loeb about all of those different things, from her radio show and making new music, as well as collaborating, her philanthropy work and much more.

Steve Baltin: You say you actually work with a pet rescue. Obviously, you’re involved in so many different things at this point and philanthropy is a big one.

Lisa Loeb: Yeah, but it’s really through my daughter. My daughter loves cats. So we went to just visit a pet shelter that we knew the woman who runs it. She was in the music business when I met her a million years ago. And so she started this pet rescue, I don’t even know the exact history of it. But anyway, my daughter, we started just visiting and we realized that they had a spot for younger kids to be able to volunteer there. So my daughter started volunteering. And then during COVID, they weren’t mixing families to volunteer. So instead of having her work by herself, I would go with her. And also you get drawn in by the different pet stories and the stories you make up in your head about the pet. And you want to make sure that they’re all getting attention. And not only do we help to clean cages and help with that kind of thing, but we also work with just sitting and holding and petting the cats. And especially the ones that were stray cats, they need to get a little bit used to people. So we play with them and also just help them get more comfortable.

Baltin: Do you find that all of this stuff, whether it’s philanthropy or the children’s books you write, infuses your music?

Loeb: Yeah, it’s nice, too, because a lot of the charitable work I do and the work I do for others often comes as an entertainer. I’ll play at a benefit, I’ll promote somebody else’s fundraising, I’ll do something that’s more on the PR side of it, or an entertainment side of it as it applies to an event somebody’s doing. But it is nice to be able to just actually be doing the thing. It’s not necessarily about the PR, it’s literally about cleaning litter boxes and holding cats and trying to help with the nuts and bolts. Lately I’ve been working with my representatives, who I’ve been working with forever, to make sure that I connect with people in advance to really get more of a sense of what different organizations are doing. Because often when I show up, especially when I was traveling more before COVID, I would show up in someone’s community and realize I didn’t know enough about that community and the people who are putting the projects together. Often, a lot of really great fundraisers are sort of more of a mom and pop situation or a synagogue that’s putting something together or a school or a group of people in a city. It’s really the community and they’ve been working on that project for years or to put together an event. I like to actually get a sense of who the people are, why the organization was started. If we can, if there’s a hospital that’s benefiting, can we visit the hospital? Like not just pop in and play a concert to help them raise money and leave. It’s a really amazing way to connect with people and to get to know people’s stories which is so meaningful.

Baltin: Are you finding that when you do go and play these shows, then they’re more meaningful for you?

Loeb: Yeah, they’re more meaningful for me. In theory, I understand that all of these things are really meaningful. That’s why I say yes to them in the first place. But I understand that everyone who’s putting on these concerts, it’s someone’s mother, it’s someone’s brother or someone’s sister, it’s someone’s cousin. It’s something that they’ve been working on. It’s something that’s important to them and to their community. And as somebody who belongs to a lot of different communities in my own day to day life, I understand what that means on the other end of it. So if I work with someone from the outside of those communities, for any reason, when they get a true sense of who’s there and what are they doing, it’s a really amazing way to connect with people. That’s one of the things I like best about my job. I love writing and I love creating, and I love performing and entertaining people, but I also really love that human connection. And I get to do that all over the world.

Baltin: Are there one or two organizations or things that you did that with really kind of surprised you the most in a pleasant way?

Loeb: Oh, there’s so many. There’s a camp called Camp Woodcraft, out here in California and they help underserved communities and kids go to summer camp, which is really in line with what my own Camp Lisa Foundation does by sending kids to camp. I love summer camp because I feel like it’s a place where kids can safely learn about themselves, unity. It gives you so much in your life. I was a camper growing up, like a summer camp camper. But anyway they are celebrating a big anniversary coming up (hundredth). I helped the campers and the people who ran the camp write a song for their camp, ’cause they didn’t have a camp song. So we had a lot of Zoom meetings. I interviewed the kids and the grownups who worked there and who went there and who go there about their favorite activities, what they love about the camp, the camp values and all of that. And with another music friend of mine, Dan McKenzie, we wrote and produced a song with them. Like they’ve started using as their camp song, and they’ll be using it more next year. And some of the kids came in and actually sang on the recording we made, which will be available. I got to use my skills and my experience as a songwriter.

Baltin: What are some of the skills you learned while at camp?

Loeb: Specifically playing music. It was just a regular old sleep-away camp with all different kinds of activities and sports, but it made me understand how important music is to me. And it really kick started my role as a musician. I learned that a guitar and then singing with a guitar is a social thing. People hang around and they sing together. It’s a performing thing. We would perform at the skit nights. It’s a comedy thing. We would change the lyrics. We would write new songs that were funny. You could write songs to suit certain situations. And I just loved all of that. And it was also at the time and place you could be private and just sing and play by yourself quietly in a cabin or with another person. So it suited all of these different things, and I loved that. That was the first place I really experienced that kind of performing with a guitar.

Baltin: I know that you are performing with a friend of yours at the Bourbon Room, Steven Glickman.

Loeb: So, Steven Glickman and I met years ago. He directed me in a really funny comedy piece as an actor, playing myself, but in a piece. And we really hit it off. He just does really great interviews, and he’s got a great sense of humor. And so we just hit it off. I got to know his mom, I got to know his sister, who’s a great musician. And then we talked to each other a lot. We bounce ideas off of each other as musicians and as people who are interested also in the business of music. We talk about creative things, we talk about business things, and he recently had called me because he’s put out this great new album, a bunch of covers. It’s really interesting takes on a lot of different covers. People know him as kind of a comic actor from a Nickelodeon show called Big Time Rush. He’s known as this character from this Nickelodeon show. But he’s also an amazing singer. He had played Shrek in a Broadway musical. And so he wanted to do more in his music career. So he made this great album and he was asking me, “Hey Lisa, what kind of venues do you like to play in? Do you like to play in Los Angeles?” And I started talking to him about it, and I realized a really great place in Los Angeles is The Bourbon Room, they put on musicals. I said, “I love that venue because it’s really a listening room. It’s a place where people sit, they do have good food also, but it’s not distracting the food part, it’s just enjoyable for the audience. I’ve been an audience member there many times, and they have a really cool lounge when you walk into the space, and it’s also great because the location is really good, it’s in a part of town that people are used to going to for entertainment.” I haven’t played in L.A. in a while. And so I thought, “Yeah, that’s actually great. I think his audience would like what I do and my audience will really enjoy what he does, and then we’ll do some things together as well, ’cause we enjoy each other’s company.”

Baltin: When you get to play with someone else that you are friends with, how much more fun does it make it for you?

Loeb: It makes it really fun. There’s different types of collaboration. If it’s a true music collaboration where I’m writing songs for somebody or singing a duet with someone, like I did with Craig Robinson — he came and we worked on some songs together for a kids record I made that won a Grammy, the album, Feel What U Feel — that’s a different kind of collaboration. Or when you’re sitting in a room writing together, that’s a different kind of collaboration, and I found that to be really fruitful. There’s more momentum sometimes when there’s a collaboration, you’re able to work off of each other’s momentum in a creative space like writing songs or recording with people. This is great collaboration because our communities will get to be together and there’s a definitely overlap in our communities. I think it’ll be an enjoyable show whether you know us very much or not.

Baltin: Are there people who have become the benchmark in telling entertaining stories and performing?

Loeb: I think James Taylor is funny, he’s got a great sense of humor, and I think that happens with a lot of people. They get known for certain things, but that’s not necessarily there for everything that they have to offer. And I think that happens with me a lot too. People are like, Oh, you’re that quiet person who sings “Stay.” I’m like, “Well, actually on my record that had ‘Stay,’ it had tons of huge rock songs and beautifully orchestrated songs and songs that were acoustic and folky sounding, but there’s just so much more.” For me, I like to play the kind of show that I like to be at. A good example is Lyle Lovett. I’ve always talked a lot on stage and told a lot of stories, but I love the way his stories were a little more crafted, and he definitely led you from song to song. There were songs you may not know but they tell such great stories or the performance of him is so entertaining, or it’s so personal feeling, or the order of songs that he puts together makes you really stick with him the whole time, whether you know the music or not. He’s a big mentor for me, and I’m in touch with him regularly.

Baltin: Lyle and Chris Isaak just did a co-headlining tour. What artists for you would be the most fun to do a co-headlining tour with that you share a similar sense of humor?

Loeb: I love playing with Jill Sobule. She’s an amazing artist, and she’s got great stories. I really love the band, Cake. Or Ben Folds. Ben Folds is a good one.

Baltin: Tell me about your radio show.

Loeb: I have a daily radio show on Sirius’s 90s on 9 that I started a couple months ago. And in that show, I have a feature called Where They Are Now, so I’m interviewing a bunch of people, mostly musicians, but also actors, cultural icons, who you may have gotten familiar with first in a certain decade for me. Most of them are people who you may know from their work in the ’90s, but they’re still out there making music, doing things, touring, and I highlight what they’re doing now.I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing a lot of amazing people like Art Alexakis, I got to interview Hanson, who were great, I’m friendly with those guys anyway, but they’re great to interview. They were little kids when they got famous with their songs in the ’90, so much has happened between then and now. Ann Wilson from Heart. I interviewed the other day, and I’ve got a lot of other ones teed up for the next couple of months now that I’m home from traveling.