Diandra Interviews Zoe Zobrist: Making Your Life & Music Your Own
For Zoe Zobrist, writing is personal and method of healing” on October 9, you can hear what she has been through on new single: All My Friends Are Dead. From our dreams to our fears, we are all just people trying to love ourselves. In some ways, Zoe’s music captures this strange dynamic between hope and healing versus a feeling of being crashed. In our interview, she discusses how her fierce, pilot grandma, Pink Floyd, her cat named Karma, and a drive to LA changed her life by making it her own.
Diandra: What makes a song feel real to you, and what do your songs, usually, display about your personality?
Zoe: One of the most important things in music, to me, is honesty. You can tell when someone really needed to write something. I write in a diary-like way because writing music is my way of trying to make sense of things. I hope that it displays that I’m open/honest and that I put my heart into everything I make.
Zoe Zobrist – Who You Gonna Be (Official Video)
Diandra: Singing to falling in love, describe your first crush and how it defined falling in love for you.
Zoe: I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. I think my first crush was in kindergarten, haha. I think the hardest thing for me to accept was the difference between who you think a person is versus who they actually are. I tend to get ahead of myself and then be disappointed. At the end of the day, you have to be secure and confident in yourself and the right people will come into your life.
Diandra: Writing to self-discovery, what is something you have discovered about yourself since becoming a professional artist?
Zoe: I’ve discovered that I wouldn’t be happy in life if I wasn’t being creative. I’ve tried to do different things based on the way society expects people to be and I got bummed out every time. I’ve learned life is short and doing what makes you feel most alive is incredibly important.
Diandra: Uncertainty is a theme in your music, what are the fears music has helped you confront?
Zoe: So many. I have PTSD from traumas I experienced growing up – if I didn’t have music I don’t know how I would have navigated all of that.
Diandra: With songs to self-worth, who are the people in your life, that you most admire, most taught you confidence? What was their advice?
Zoe: My Grandma is a huge influence in my life – she was a WASP (Woman’s Airforce Service Pilot) in WWII. During that time, it was NOT normal for women to want to fly airplanes during that, but she got on the train from Illinois to TX and made it happen. We define our self worth. Not other people. Not society.
Diandra: List your 5 favorite qualities about yourself.
Zoe: My eyes, empathy, adventurous spirit, musical ability, and resilience.
Zoe Zobrist -“Someday” (Official Video)
Diandra: List 5 of your favorite things. It can be anything.
Zoe: The ocean, riding my motorcycle, grand piano, Taylor acoustic guitar, my cat (Karma)
Diandra: How has the pandemic changed your creativity and how do you hope it changes the industry?
Zoe: As difficult as it’s been, I think, in a lot of ways, it helped me slow down. I was running myself into the ground a bit trying to make everything work. It was like a forced hard reset. Although now, I just wish we could all get back to hugging and playing shows. I hope it creates more opportunities for musicians to make money from home, because this definitely has been a massive financial hardship on everyone – the local venues & people in the entertainment business whether you’re a singer, guitar tech, choreographer.. everyone’s been feeling it.
Diandra: What is your favorite childhood memory to music?
Zoe: I have so many! (haha) One that currently comes to mind is laying on my bedroom floor in the dark with my eyes closed listening to “The Dark Side Of The Moon” vinyl for the first time.
Zoe Zobrist -“Gone” (Official Video)
Diandra: Which of your lyrics, do you feel is most poetic and present to your life right now?
Zoe: From a song that isn’t out yet : “I’ve watched my seasons change. And with it came ten years of rain, but now the sun is out I’m breathing change.”
Diandra: What is the one growth or change in your life that most surprised you? Did it inspire a song?
Zoe: In 2016, I went to LA (from my hometown in TX) for a writing session and just didn’t go home (haha). Eventually it inspired a song called “Someday” 🙂 One of my favorites I’ve released so far.
