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Team Green World

"Happy to Be Here"

    Imagine writing and recording your first music album by age 13.  How about graduating high school two years early, moving to Nashville to join your band, touring the country while making the Top 20 Jazz chart in the World at age16?
    When most teenagers’ biggest goal is earning their driver’s license,  Courtney Yovick is making a living as singer/songwriter.  She has been noted by Billboard Discoveries, Reverb Nation  and I am Entertainment Magazine.  Locally she has performed for TedX, Hatch Festival, The Sundance Film Festival, Live on the Divide among many others.  She has played performed two sold-out shows at the world-famous Bluebird Café in Nashville.  She has won numerous awards for her song writing, which she shares as a junior educator for Team Greenworld.  On top of all of that, she plays and tours with Genesis Green and CJ Watson in their band Asteria Lux.
    She recently took a break between recording session with Asteria Lux to talk about her success and future and what it was like to follow her dreams in Bozeman.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
CY  I am seventeen years old, and graduated high school in the spring of 2013. I have a wonderful mom and dad, and a nine year old sister.  My mom was a teacher, my dad’s an engineer, and neither of them are musical at all, but my sister is, and I’m currently her piano and guitar instructor.

Most of my friends in Bozeman, I met through music and theater.  At this point, a lot of my friendships are completely long distance, as most of the people I’m close to graduated at the same time as me and went off to school across the country.  

What things do you enjoy and do when you have free time.
CY I love to read and write stories, and I’m always eager to learn about new things, whether it’s photography or physics or obscure history or politics or astronomy.  I’m a big fan of Doctor Who, and recently have gotten interested in video games.
I love Asian cuisine, especially sushi.  My favorite animal is a meadowlark.  Favorite color is blue.

What you would change if you could?  
CY  About myself?  I wish I had better self-esteem and more confidence to voice my opinions, and I would want to be more outgoing.  About the world?  That’s tough, because there’s so many things that could be better.  I’d love to change the way people view education and learning in general, and find a way to improve our educational system to be less about test scores and government funding and more about the success of individuals.

What is your average daily schedule? 
CY It changes from day to day.  Mostly, it consists of practice, writing (by myself or co-writing), more practice, teaching music lessons, doing marketing/promotion or working on my band’s website, and band rehearsals.  Throw in a few gigs here and there, and that’s basically my schedule.

How did you get started writing songs and performing?  
CY  I started performing when I started taking lessons with Jake and Jeni Fleming.  They had student recitals twice a year, and I always sang a song and performed at least one piece each on piano and guitar.  Jake started me on songwriting when I was seven years old, and I wrote my first few songs with him.

How did you get this far?  Are there any special people who have had a major impact on your desire to make music. 
CY I owe so, so much to Jake Fleming and Jeni Fleming.  I grew up learning from them, watching them perform, and spending a lot of time working with them over the past twelve years of my life.  I saw their passion for music and knew that I wanted the same thing.  CJ Watson, my mentor and band mate in Nashville, has also had a significant impact on me as a songwriter.  I could name a thousand more names:  my incredibly supportive family, my middle/high school music teachers Nancy Ojala, Sallee Nelson, and Kelly Berdahl, Renee Westlake (Supervisor of Fine Arts in the Bozeman school district), my other music mentors Krista Barnett, Craig Hall, Adam Greenberg… I’m afraid to go any farther out of fear that I’ll miss someone.  The entire community in Bozeman has been so encouraging of me in my journey.

What music do you listen to, just to listen to? 
CY I listen to as much as I can, I have music playing all the time.  Right now, I love Arctic Monkeys, Sara Bareilles, Ben Howard, Ed Sheeran, Norah Jones, and Mumford and Sons.  I also listen to a lot of classic rock, so Supertramp, Journey, Pink Floyd, Springsteen, ELO, the Cars, etc.  I also have a collection of vinyl’s, lots of classic rock and jazz records.  

Favorite band?  
CY  The Eagles.  I was raised on their music and they’ve been my favorite band for a long time.  I actually just saw them live in Seattle last year, they’re incredible.  

Favorite singer to listen to?  
CY  Kimbra.  Her album Vows is fantastic, and she sounds amazing live.

Favorite singer to watch? 

CY That’s tough.  I guess I’d say John Mayer.  I’ve seen him twice in concert and I’m blown away by his guitar playing and his funny stage mannerisms.  He’s so cool and inspiring.

Favorite songwriter? 
CY  Billy Joel.  Always Billy Joel.

Favorite venue listen to music?  
CY In Bozeman?  Ron at Wild Joe’s always books great music.

Favorite venue to play at?
CY My living room!  No performance sounds nearly as good out as it does in the living room.  But to give you a real answer, one of my favorite places I’ve performed is at Peach Street Studios.  There’s a great group of people who work there, and the place just has such good vibes.

Best album art?
CY  I’ve got a couple favorites.  Rumours, by Fleetwood Mac, that’s a great photo for an even greater album.  Pink Floyd has had some awesome ones, Wish You Were Here, Division Bell, and of course, there’s nothing more iconic than Dark Side.  One of my all time favorite album covers, as far as art goes, is Bon Iver’s self-titled album.

If you could play with or write for any artist, whom would it be?
CY  I’d love to collaborate with Sara Bareilles or Kimbra.  They both have such unique writing styles and incredible musical talent.

Musical inspirations?  people, songs, places, etc.  
CY  Norah Jones and Billy Joel are my biggest inspirations, writing-wise.  If I could ever write something as brilliant as “She’s Always A Woman,” I would be completely content with my life.  I find a lot of inspiration in jazz standards as well.

What was your first performance? 
CY  I sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at a recital when I was five.

You released an album in 2012 - Waiting to be Told.  where did the idea come from

CY  The album was the product of spending time in Nashville and working with my producer and mentor, CJ Watson.  We wrote most of the songs on the album together, or with other people that he introduced me to, and we had enough good material that it seemed silly not to put it all together into a record.

What made you decided that you could do write and put out an album at such a young age?
CY I don’t know that there was ever really a decision involved.  It was just a question of “you have a lot of really great songs, do you want to make an album?”  And the answer was yes.  I was just doing the thing I loved and it turned into a great project.

Which of your songs mean the most to you?  
CY A lot of the songs that mean a lot to me were written after the album was finished (all the recording was done by the time I was thirteen, it was then held for a potential sync deal with a film and released late).  The title track, Waiting to be Told, is one that means a lot to me.  It was written around the time that I was trying to figure out if this was a career that I wanted to pursue, and I was at a place in my social life and educational career where I was having to make a lot of big decisions and I was conflicted.  So personally, yeah, that one means a lot to me.  
As for songs that are not on the album:  More recently, I’ve written a song with CJ Watson called “You Love the Rain,” which is on our band’s brand new EP.  It was inspired by a beautiful Sufi poem, and the lyric is something that I am so, so proud of.  That’s one that very close to my heart.

Are there and songs in particular that you think people should listen harder to?  
CY I would love for people to listen hard to all of them!  If I had to pick a few off the album, though, I’d probably choose “Enigma,” “Waiting to Be Told,” and “Something’s Gonna Change.”  Also, the bonus track is kind of cool to listen to, it’s a Shakespeare poem set to music.

What has been the response to your album?  
CY  The response has been fantastic.  I’ve gotten great feedback from all sorts of demographics, which is really cool.  I love knowing that some people actually have my CD in their car to listen to when they’re driving, or have my music come on shuffle on their iPod.

Has this changed things for you?  

CY  Definitely!  This was the starting point for my whole career, and basically the thing that convinced me that I should be doing music for a living.  

Videos - I know of 2, Bluebird Cafe and Happy to be Here.  Tell me about those.  How did you make them? 

CY   The performance from the Bluebird was filmed by my father.  That was my second of four shows there.  For Happy to be Here, we actually hired an awesome filmmaker/photographer team from Nashville, Andrew Rozario and Jesse Parker (Parker/Rozario Productions), to fly up to Bozeman to make the video.  We actually filmed a second video for Waiting to be Told with them.

There are some familiar Bozeman faces in Happy to be Here. It looks like everyone was having a great time.  Are these friends?  classmates?  
CY  They are friends and classmates of mine!  It was a blast to hang out and make a cool video with a bunch of my close friends.  I hope they all had as much fun as I did.

What keeps you committed to making music? 
CY   I stay committed to the music because I love it, and it loves me back.  Good things seem to happen when I make music, so I take that as a sign that I’m doing what I should be doing.

Where do you plan to go with your talent, you’re ultimate goal/dream?  Do you have it all mapped out, or are you taking things as they come?  
CY  I am absolutely taking things as they come.  I’ve been presented with some incredible opportunities just by being in the right place at the right time.  My ultimate goal is to someday become a teacher and inspire other people as deeply as my mentors have inspired me, but I’m going to stick with performing as long as I can!  It’s an adventure.

How long have you been in Nashville?  What’s it like? 
CY  It’s definitely waaaaay different than Bozeman.  I’ve been working here for five years, and living here for about 10 months.  I’m still not quite used to the way the city works!  Driving is crazy, I get lost a lot, and as good as the music scene is here, it’s hard to find work because literally everyone is a musician.  I’ve been lucky that I’ve met a lot of the right people and have found quite a bit of success already.  

How often do you make it back to Bozeman?  
CY  Last year, I was splitting my time mostly about 60/40 in Bozeman and Nashville respectively.  Now, I’m in Nashville for three-month periods, and then I come home for a week or two to see my family and friends.

Are you planning to play here soon? 
CY  Nothing booked yet, but I’m certainly looking for gigs when I come back at the end of March!  

Any last thoughts or things people should know about you?  
CY  An interesting thing about me:  I was advanced two years ahead of my age group in school, so I graduated high school at 16.

Any advice to the young musicians just getting started?  
CY  Play, and play a lot.  Say yes when an opportunity presents itself to you.  Play with musicians who are better than you, even if it’s terrifying, because it will make you improve faster than you’ll believe.  Listen to music, anything you can get your hands on, because that’s the best way to learn about how it works.  Training your ear is just as important as training your fingers or your vocal cords or your eyes to read music.  Study it, immerse yourself in it.  Work hard, but most importantly, never stop loving it.  Music requires a lot of time and a lot of labor, but it’s awesome and important and you can do incredible things with it if you so choose.