Artist Spotlight: Meet Eva Nolia Vae
How did you come up with the idea?
Having started late in music I lived through a lot of frustration of not having anything to show for while I learned instruments and what it meant to be a musician. The phrase „These empty hands have grown far too heavy" came to me on the day before I wrote “Empty Hands.” It felt like the perfect description of my frustration at the time, this nagging feeling of wanting to know and find myself as an artist, the shame of not having anything to show for myself. I wrote “Empty Hands” at 4 o’clock in the morning. It was on a particularly hard day during a time of depression in which I had lost all sense of who I was or wanted to be. I improvised the song in one take only playing piano, starting with the phrase I had come up the day before. After those 2 and a half minutes I called it a day and tried to get some sleep. When we produced the track I didn't change anything on the vocals or the lyrics nor the melody because I wanted to stay truthful to the moment it came about. It was a moment of honesty, of admitting how I felt. Though honesty can seem like an act of valour, it can sometimes also be a last resort in a state of hopelessness.
Was there any challenge that you encountered while making "Empty Hands?"
The only challenge I encountered was that for the first three months after writing it, I couldn't listen to the demo because it would always bring back this dark time in my life and tears to my eyes. At the same time that was also an indication to me that there was something there that had meaning and that I wanted to share. It was actually the first song I was sure of it being a release one day. That’s also why I wanted to release it as my first single. It’s the intro to my discography because it will always feel to me like everything I had to overcome to get to a point of releasing something.
What impact do you hope "Empty Hands" will have on your audience?
As with any other song I will ever release I hope for the listener to feel something. Music is such a personal and subjective experience and can bring about an endless variety of moments to live through. But I think that if it evokes feeling within you and lets you experience yourself while you listen to it, it's fulfilled its purpose.
Was there a pivotal moment in your life when you decided to follow your path as a musician?
The story of how I came to be a musician is quite unconventional and a bit long. But essentially it started with me working in production design for a movie when I was 23. The job had me driving 3-4 hours every day. I have always loved to sing in the car, so I started to sing again. Before it was really only a passion of mine as a teenager and mostly pursued alone in my parent’s bathroom. I got a little better in singing driving so much during the 6 weeks of the project. I wasn't sure if working in film was the right career for me and so I got to daydreaming about a life in music. I would picture myself in a band, writing music, singing and performing. Just the thought of it would make me so happy. But I was already 23 and didn't play any instruments or even knew any musicians or anything about becoming one. So it seemed pretty unrealistic and more like a stupid idea born out of too much time driving. When I got home I couldn’t shake the vision though and kept thinking about a life in music. A year later I had given up working in film and traveled through South America with a friend. On one of the first days of that trip I shaved my hair off on a beach and decided to become a musician when I got back. So that’s what I did 10 weeks later back in Berlin.
Can you share a memorable experience from a collaboration that enriched your music?
To have such amazing musicians play on my EP and bring their own feeling and style to the songs certainly enriched it a lot. I am very grateful that I met them and that they were up for playing on my tracks. Having made music by myself for most of my music journey so far, it was the best feeling to have other musicians come in and add to it. Even just being in the studio and getting to work on my music with my producer Sam Hatchwell was a very unlikely dream coming true. I will never forget this time.
