at Used Kids Records<\/strong><\/a> on Friday, Dec. 12. \u201cAnd I do think about that sometimes. And ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to make music, and I dreamed about releasing my own music. But to actually have physical copies, to be able to hold it, and for that to be my reality, it\u2019s just incredible. It\u2019s so gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\nThis sense of gratification might be intensified by how close it came to not happening, with Alexis having initially declined Johnson\u2019s overtures when the guitarist first approached her about making music together early in 2022. At the time, Alexis had just started a new job. And determined to put all of her energy into the gig, she temporarily shelved all of her musical pursuits.<\/p>\n
\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I ended up leaving that job \u2026 and one of [Johnson\u2019s] family members saw me at ComFest, and we were talking and I was like, \u2018Yeah, I just left my job and blah, blah, blah.\u2019 And then a couple days passed, and Austin called me and he was like, \u2018Hey \u2026 do you want to get a band together now<\/em>,\u2019\u201d Alexis said, and laughed. \u201cWe\u2019ve been writing music ever since.\u201d<\/p>\nEarly on, the band toyed with covers and gigged out as a means to build chemistry between the players, finally beginning to home in on its voice as the musicians incorporated more original songs into their set, many shaped by the classic rock, blues and soul they listened to growing up. \u201cWhen I started discovering music on my own, it was rock and roll, and it was a lot of David Bowie, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin,\u201d Alexis said. \u201cAnd that sound really formed what I wanted to be as an artist, like, I want to make music like this<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\nLive at Natalie\u2019s<\/em> delivers on this promise, combining blues rock songs (\u201cMother\u201d), funk excursions (\u201cOnly If the Music Allows\u201d), and streamlined, 1970s-style guitar jams (\u201cAphrodite,\u201d carried along on Alexis\u2019 gale-force vocals). But while the music often sounds crafted with festival stages in mind, the lyrics tend to center more intimate moments, Alexis delivering lines that read as internal monologues \u2013 she sings of living inside of her own head on \u201cGatekeeper\u201d \u2013 or conversations between intimates. \u201cYour little girl, she\u2019s all grown up,\u201d Alexis sings on \u201cMother,\u201d a line she penned as a means of addressing the woman who helped to raise her.<\/p>\n\u201cAnd that one, that\u2019s actually a very personal song, and I wrote it six years ago, when I was in my first band,\u201d said Alexis, who joined her first band, the Jimmy Hudson Band, following a stint in which she worked as a backup singer for an Elvis Presley impersonator. \u201cAnd at the time, I was having this conversation with my mom about how I wanted to be a blues singer. And she didn\u2019t like that idea too much, and she was telling me I was supposed to be a gospel singer. And I haven\u2019t forsaken that part of me; that\u2019s how I grew up, in the church, and that part of me is very much still there. But it was like, \u2018Well, this is what I want to do. I\u2019m an adult, and I love you, but you have to respect my wishes on this.\u2019 And that\u2019s why one of the lines on \u2018Mother\u2019 is \u2018I can love the Lord, and I can sing the blues. Why do I have to choose?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
While the tunes populating the live record tend to radiate intimacy, not all of them relate directly back to the singer\u2019s experiences, Alexis at times leaning into character-driven studies that allow her to step into a variety of shoes. \u201cI like to get into character, and I like to tell stories,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I feel like that\u2019s the type of power music holds, where even if I don\u2019t speak this language, it\u2019ll translate to someone else, and they can interpret it however they see fit.\u201d<\/p>\n
At times in Natalie\u2019s concert, which took place last Halloween, these lines could blur for the singer, who acknowledged that she carried the anxieties she felt coming into the evening into her performance of \u201cMy Song,\u201d which begins lost in \u201ctears of solitude\u201d and soon blossoms into a soaring rock anthem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we got to singing \u2018My Song,\u2019 there were a lot of things going through my head, and I got really emotional. \u2026 And because of that, you can hear the cracks in my voice, and you can hear me fighting back tears,\u201d said Alexis, who initially struggled with including the performance on the album. \u201cAnd the more and more I thought about it, the more I was like, \u2018You know what? Let\u2019s just go for it anyway.\u2019 And I think now maybe it\u2019s one of those songs I underestimated a bit. \u2026 Sometimes I might be singing more for someone else who needs that song. And sometimes, depending on where I\u2019m at in my life, it can be like, \u2018I needed this, too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source matternews.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Mike Markowitz When Syd Alexis first held a vinyl copy of the new Austin & the Syd Experience live album, for a brief moment she found herself whisked back to childhood and the hours she spent listening to her parents\u2019 record collections on an imposing turntable inherited from a grandparent. \u201cIt was one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2221690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[429725,429726,429727,429728],"class_list":["post-2221689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-austin-the-syd-experience","tag-columbus-music","tag-comfest","tag-natalies-grandview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Austin-the-Syd-Experience-steps-out-with-new-live.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2221689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2221691,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221689\/revisions\/2221691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2221690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2221689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2221689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2221689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}