While one friend calls Olivia Greer “the sweetest native New Yorker you’ll ever meet,” sweet is not the operative word when she hits the stage. A bundle of sexy, passionate energy, she keeps one foot firmly in singer-songwriter and rock and roll traditions rooted by idols Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen, while another foot flirts with an older world – the more theatrical tradition of the singer as interpreter: Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand. She says, “I’d like to be the very lucky child of Joni and Bruce, but maybe raised for a few formative years by Auntie Bette.”
Raised in a house full of music and art – Mom’s a former dancer, Dad writes plays in his spare time – Olivia remembers belting along to the soundtrack of the musical Annie. “I was tiny – no more than three. I had an old record player, and I’d blast it, and sing along and make up dances. My favorite song was Hard-Knock Life. My mom would hear me singing it at the top of my lungs and she worried she’d damaged me somehow.” Annie was followed by John Denver, James Taylor, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez – family favorites. “I don’t remember being aware of real contemporary music until Nirvana. That was when I sort of woke up and went, oh – maybe my friends know stuff too!”
Energetic and persistent, Olivia says she’s always been in a hurry. “I’ve always looked to the next step. In middle school, I couldn’t wait for high school; in high school I tried to convince them to let me graduate early; in college…well, you get the idea.” She did in fact leave college early – finishing up long-distance – while she pursued an acting career in New York. That experience led her to writing. “It was such a frustrating, creatively dead time for me. I was going from audition to audition, begging for jobs I didn’t even want. My artistic self seemed dependent on other people, and I couldn’t live with that. Writing songs was an outlet, and very quickly became a life for me.”
With her first song under her belt not even three years ago, Olivia has made the leap to producing her own material with this new project – a single featuring two songs that will be the base for a longer record to be released in summer 2006. Olivia credits band members Eric Halvorson (drums), Joel Newton (guitar), Tom Pietrycha (bass) and studio collaborator Ben Wittman as crucial members of a strong team. “We laugh so hard,” she says, “but we also work our butts off and I’ve learned so much from each of them. I feel like they’ve been my grad school professors in a way.”
So, as she grows in leaps and bounds, great things seem to be ahead for Olivia Greer, and she’s determined to celebrate them all as they come. As she sings on her new single Leave the Water, “I’m sailing…look at me now…I’ve flown.” Indeed.
