Prolific songwriter and singer Erika Lewis has been churning out American originals all her own for the past several years. Inspired many years ago by listening to Jolie Holland’s impromptu performances for Lewis and her housemates on a farm in the Hudson Valley, she began flexing her creative muscle by writing songs herself. In 2007, Lewis relocated to New Orleans and started a band called The Magnolia Beacon with Meschiya Lake, now a notable figure in the traditional jazz scene. The pair worked out original material and earned a living by busking on the streets of the French Quarter before crossing the Atlantic to explore what Europe had to offer.
“We based ourselves in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, busking daily on the bridge or at the Turkish market and playing in bars at night. A local artist even painted a mural of us on the building near our busking spot by the canal!” Lewis recalls fondly. “At one point we traveled to Riga, Latvia where my mother’s family is from, played on the streets, and explored the city. My grandfather spoke very little about ‘the old country,’ but when I told him we had gone there, he told me that his mother, Lena, sang on the streets with her three sisters to earn money before fleeing to the states.” Lewis made her way back to Berlin and joined a group called The Cyclown Circus. “We rode bikes from western Europe to eastern Europe busking as we went, mainly playing old jazz standards intermingled with some slapstick from the clowns,” she says.
Eventually Lewis returned to New Orleans and began busking again, which led to the formation of beloved New Orleans jazz band Tuba Skinny and featured fellow street performers and friends like Alynda Segarra of Hurray For The Riff Raff. “There was this crew of folk musicians and songwriters that settled in New Orleans post-Katrina, and she, Kiki Cavasos, Sam Doores, Riley Downing, Meschiya Lake, and others were a big inspiration to write more and start playing my own songs outside of Tuba Skinny,” Lewis explains.
In 2020, Lewis had a health scare that required a surgery that could damage her vocal nerves and effectively end her career. “My friend Lani Tourville said, ‘You have to make an album because you will regret it forever if you don't do it and you can’t sing again.’” With the help of Lani’s husband John James Tourville (The Deslondes), and a funding campaign organized by Tuba Skinny bandmate Shaye Cohn, Lewis began the journey of creating her forthcoming LP, A Walk Around The Sun.
Produced by Tourville and recorded in Nashville at Andrija Tokic’s analog paradise The Bomb Shelter, A Walk Around the Sun features 11 all-original songs. In tracks like album opener “A Thousand Miles,” “If You Were Mine,” and “First Love,” Lewis recalls the magic and endless possibility of new love, comes to terms with the loneliness of mandated isolation, and remembers the affection for and intimacy shared with her childhood best friend and realizes after drifting apart, that she was Lewis’ first love.
Other songs encompass the push and pull of love, the swirl of emotions at the end of close relationships, and the primal need for connection. In A Walk Around The Sun’s series of lyrical vignettes, Lewis deftly explores the gray areas between love and loss, joy and grief, longing and contentment. From classic country to cosmic Americana to dreamy indie-folk, Lewis continues to dip her toes more deeply into an ever-expanding pool of roots music styles. A Walk Around the Sun is a testament to her songwriting prowess and exceptional vocal ability.
Though her songwriting shines brightly, it’s never at the cost of melody or arrangement; complete with sweeping strings, pedal steel, and even the occasional fuzz of a psych-rock guitar solo, Lewis’ voice soars with emotion and texture throughout. Beautifully balanced, adroitly performed, and masterfully produced, A Walk Around the Sun brings Lewis’ solo work out from the wings to center stage, beneath a spotlight nearly impossible to ignore.
