#144 Francesca Valle
She knew and her parents knew that this is who she was, music was her thing and they were going to help her stay focused which has been a huge blessing in her life. After being diagnosed with ADHD she was angry and her grandmother got behind her, got her the electric guitar she had always wanted and encouraged her that no one can ever define who you are except yourself. In this episode we discuss co-writing, all areas of music and development and whether we really can change who we are, or not? As a coach and songwriter to the core, Francesca and Rae Leigh discuss her life long journey and how she is working tirelessly to support others in the industry.
With a background and formal education in opera and "the classics", Francesca is equally comfortable on stage at The House of Blues as she is at Disney Hall. Teaching, coaching writing and using takelessons.com to work with people from all over the world she is making waves in the world of music that most of us would never know. Working with a choir that started to support people homeless and living on the streets Francesca work with them weekly bringing hope love and community to a space where it can be rare. The Choir just this year auditioned on America's Got Talent and Terry Alan Crews the host of the show was so moved by their performance and original song that Francesca helped them with that he hit the Golden Buzzer. A moving moment to see that there really is power in numbers.
See the Americas Got Talent full audition here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tAyPwL-JCI
Connect with Francesca:
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Transcript
Rae Leigh: Welcome to a Songwriter Tryst with that Francesca Valle. How are you?
Francesca Valle: I'm very, very well middle of my lovely, beautiful San Diego day,
Rae Leigh: Nice. We were talking about the weather, but we'll get straight past that. And I want to come and ask you to share a little bit about who you are and where you come from.
Francesca Valle: I'm native born. If that's a term that even makes sense, I was born in Los Angeles, and raised in Los Angeles, which Might sound cooler than it is. It sounds kind of boring to me. And I relocated to San Diego more than 10 years ago, less than 15. And now I write, I write actually all over.
I travel all over the place, but I'm sort of, hunkered down here for the time being. And I run. Currently run a songwriting workshop for a very I guess, successful right now choir called voices of our city choir that was on America's got talent in the spring and they they're a [00:01:00] homeless choir that writes their own music.
And so I lead the song writing for them a weekly sort of, really amazing, very intriguing gig. And then I teach privately I teach songwriting as well, and I co-write with people all over the country, little bit all over the world, I guess, but mostly all over the country and have been doing so for a couple of decades now.
Rae Leigh: Yeah, Sarah, you're a veteran songwriter and you clearly love helping people. How did it even start for you? When did you write your first song?
Francesca Valle: I feel like songwriters so often make up this answer. It's such a songwriter thing to do, right? They're like, what beautiful story can I make it? I wrote my first song when I was four years old and they remember it vividly taking the artist taking that artist step into their own lives and their memoirs.
I can't remember when I didn't write songs, so I have no idea when the first one I wrote was I still to this day, write ridiculous childlike songs everywhere I go. My fiance's favorite one right now is a song called I've got cheese.
Rae Leigh: I've cut cheese.
Francesca Valle: kind of a double meaning there.
But you know, everything from ridiculous songs about cheese to you know, heart wrenching sorts of things now these days.
But I think when I was a kid, it was, it was mostly songs. Like I've got cheese and songs about my dogs and
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: fun, things like that. But I think I started in my mothers, you know, Jeep Wrangler, red Jeep Wrangler when I was too young to reach the floor with my feet.
Rae Leigh: Huh. And
Francesca Valle: remember.
Rae Leigh: you just remember. being in the car and just started making up songs
Francesca Valle: I have, yeah, I have very vivid memories of my mother.
It's like a natural teacher and especially to little kids, it's sort of a fascinating, amazing thing to really watch and I've stolen all of her tricks through the years. And I just have these very, very vivid memories of driving up to San Francisco. Mom liked to drive that Jeep everywhere. And we would, we would drive up to San Francisco.
We drove up to Canada, I think once in it. And my mom, you know, she can sing in tune sort of, in a like cartoon character, like way. But it's all sort of, it's just, you know, an expression to her and she's not hung up on like how beautiful it is. So it's as a child, a very liberating. Thing to be around, you know?
And so we would make up songs all the time. My mom used to sing me this, we used to, I'm cracking up thinking about it. I haven't thought about it in years, but I remember being in LA Jolla, bear in mind, we were in LA. So this was a trip, right? So we were in LA Jolla. And I remember my mother giving me a bath and singing high knees in the morning, high knees in the evening knees in the summer time
Rae Leigh: Okay.
Francesca Valle: to this day, like every one.
So that will like just start ringing in my head in my ear.
Rae Leigh: That's your lullaby like from when you were a kid yet?
Francesca Valle: And I know that that's some song that's like sugar in the morning or something, something from, you know, almost a hundred years ago that she rewrote on the fly and it's, it's stuck with me, so.
Rae Leigh: So she showed you the art of recreation and plus I guess being inspired by other songs at the same time.
Francesca Valle: Right. My mom's kind of the queen of that's sort of the same thing in my whole family. They're all, everyone's an
artist. So in my family, you don't get away with not being a creator. You know, we're sort of treated like you're put on this planet to create, to find a way to do it. And yeah, I think that mom encouraged the singing thing because they were all sort of visual artists.
And so when she could see I was into writing songs and writing language, she just got me into creative [00:05:00] writing as quickly as she could. And she wrote too. So it was pretty cool when I started practicing writing probably,
I mean, creative writing about the same time I just learned to write.
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. It's just sort of something you just naturally did and obviously is part of the family and that, that is so different from my story. And anyone, I think who has a family from the industrial age where we would actually, you know, told that we were born to work in a factory.
Francesca Valle: No.
Rae Leigh: you know, and the arts was obviously not that important, but So, so I, I love that story.
I love it. When I see parents who encourage their children to be able to seek. And I try to do that to my kids, but it's, for me, just not the normal, it wasn't the family that in a world that I grew up in. And so I love hearing that that that happened with you, but was there a point in your education and growing up where you kind of realized this was something that you were going to do?
Like it wasn't just a, you know, when I grow up, I'm going to be a fireman or an astronaut.
Like it was like a, this is my career and how can I make this work?
Francesca Valle: Well, I definitely had the plans to be other things and I'd come home and I would actually tell my mother this, I have a few conversations still in my head. One time I came home, I think I was like in the seventh grade and I told my mom, I want to be an oceanographer. And my mother, God bless her. She's she was so on point, she just looked at me and was like, why?
And I was like, because Mr. Murphy, you know, I'm inspired by some adult. And so I kinda regurgitate whatever those thoughts are. And my mom just very clearly and lovingly said to me, but honey, you got to be in science. What do you get an a in those are the things that you want to.
Rae Leigh: right?
Francesca Valle: every time I'd come home and I'd come up with this new idea, you know, I, I remember wanting to, I was, I played [00:07:00] volleyball and I came home one year and I was like, I think a freshman in high school.
And I wanted to try out for the basketball team. And my mother was just, she was so unenthusiastic about it. She didn't tell me don't do it. But she was like, but you already played volleyball. And I was like, yes. And now I wanna, I want to try out for basketball with my friends and my mom's like, I don't you think that's going to distract from your music.
Rae Leigh: Wow.
Francesca Valle: music for 10 years. Why are you going to take something up? That's brand new? I was my, my, my family knew. They knew. They decided that I was going to be a musician, which is interesting. Cause they're not musicians, they're all artists, but it was, they knew I was good at it. And I just kind of, my mom and grandparents were always telling me, you have to find a way to monetize that.
And that's literally, those were words I was being told at like 13, 14 years old, you have to find a way to monetize that. That's what you're good at. That's what you love. That's what you want to do. And whenever I was like, oh, I want to do something else. It'd be like, do [00:08:00] you, I think not, I think you want to do this.
So
Rae Leigh: bit manipulative.
Francesca Valle: it's, you know, I tell that story to folks
from time to time and they're like, really that's it
was like that. And I'm like, I have zero regrets. Thanks mom.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: for knowing me better than I knew my little self,
Rae Leigh: That's good.
Yeah. Cause it's so, it's so common that I heard from people that they loved music as a kid, but then they kind of, wanting to try sport or try something else and then they stop music and then they come back to music as adults. And they're like, I wish I had stayed with it.
So I mean, you know,
that is good to hear that you had someone
to kind of keep you grounded and not lose track of where you
were.
Francesca Valle: I read a biography on Mr. Rogers recently. And there's a lot of credit given to his grandmother and her support. And there's a really cool story of where she bought him a grand piano and I did quit for a minute. I quit. I think I quit guitar for two or three years guitar and singing and songwriting, all the things that I was [00:09:00] doing.
I quit music
Rae Leigh: Hm.
Francesca Valle: for a couple of years, mostly just cause I was an unhappy teenager. And I came home from high school one day and I had been diagnosed with ADHD and at the time it felt so devastating. You know, I felt like, like I was being told, I was in some way crazy. And I was super depressed and locked myself in a bedroom and fairly desponded and one day, maybe four or five days after.
This diagnosis had come up and I really hadn't talked to anyone in my family much. I walked through, I came home to my grandparents' house and I walked through the living room that I walked through every single day. And I went into my bedroom and kind of, you know, coarsely slammed the door behind me in disappointment of the world.
And my grandmother knocked on the door and it was very sweet and was like, baby, you went through the living room so quickly. I don't think you saw it. And I was like you know, [00:10:00] disinterested in what was going on. And I just kind of blew her off. And she was like, I'd really like it if you came back out, come back out.
And so I did, and you have to understand that I had wanted to play electric guitar since I can remember life. And my mom bought me a classical guitar. That was the first instrument I owned.
Rae Leigh: Like an island
string.
Francesca Valle: Yes. And she used to tell me all the time, when you master the classical guitar, I'll buy you an electric guitar.
Good thing that she didn't hold to that because I still have yet to master that. I don't even really know what that means. But it was a little source of consternation because I would beg and she would say no, and it went on for years and then I quit playing music and it kinda got dropped. And so, I go into the living room and my grandmother has bought me this beautiful electric guitar rig.
It was a black Les Paul, and she bought the she bought the guitar and she bought the amplifier and she bought all of it. And there was a little note on it. Oh my God, [00:11:00] don't cry.
Don't cry for, I need to tell the
Rae Leigh: Deep breaths.
Francesca Valle: She left a note on it that said, no one defines who you are except yourself.
And. I remember looking at my grandmother and being like, put, what about mom? She'll make, she'll make you return it. And she was like, don't forget who your mother's mother is. You know, she's, she's not, she's not gonna make me return it. This is yours. And I just couldn't believe it. And mom didn't make me return it.
And my grandmother was just my advocate through that process, like Mr. Rogers, grandmother. And I honestly just think
Rae Leigh: Mm.
Francesca Valle: everyone needs a grandma,
Rae Leigh: Oh,
Francesca Valle: know, so that when they forget who they are or how special they are, someone's there knocking at their door going. This is
your thing. Don't forget who you are.
Rae Leigh: Now I miss my grandma. Thank you. That's a beautiful story. And I love the note to say that no one else can [00:12:00] define you, but you it's. It's so true. Like there are so many diagnoses that get thrown around and like I've got three little children and like, they're trying to diagnose four year olds, you know, now, and it's just, it is hard when you think of a diagnosis being an incurable disease or something, you know, but it's just really a label to help potentially you and other people understand what's going on for you.
And ADHD is such an unknown thing, you know, I think it's becoming more and more accepted that everyone's on the spectrum somewhere.
Francesca Valle: Right.
Rae Leigh: And yeah, it doesn't define you. Like I had dyslexia, I got, I repeated school. I was never supposed to be academic or even do very well. And I don't come from an
academic family, but tell me I can't do something and I'll show you.
I
can,
You know,
Francesca Valle: I think that sometimes things like dyslexia can,
be an
[00:13:00] advantage. Things like songwriting and in creation because they, it sort of opens up the imagination, you know? There's some crazy statistics when you, when you look at like creatives and the amount of creatives that suffer from some form of dyslexia you know, any, anything that it makes it difficult, more difficult for you to read words on the written page is, is dyslexia.
And, you know, I feel like I do exercises every day to mix up the words on the page to really just broad my imagination and put different things together. And I've actually been diagnosed as dyslexic as well. And I think that, you know, you practice you. One of the things I think we make the mistake of is when we feel that way.
In some way in deficit of something that we sort of give up on it, instead of recognizing that we can, you know, make larger deposits into that bank and right. And really just practice it. And, you know, I think that that's [00:14:00] part of where my real love for
words comes from is, you know, having to have spent so much time observing words in a sort of a story context where my eyes just are not reading them the way that they were intended or presented and having to sort of sort through that.
And it just sort of, it's like a puzzle to my brain, you know?
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Yeah, totally get that. That's exactly how I feel. And you know, when someone, like, if someone says you can't do something, it's your choice as to whether you accept that or not. And for me, I didn't accept it and it wasn't that I was just like, you know, oh, they say that I have dyslexia. You know, I'm never going to be able to do English or anything to do with words.
Won't be a thing for me. I was like, well, okay, it's a challenge for me. It just means I have to work harder. You know? And I did, I had to work. I had to, I did every single English literature and specialist course that I could find because I knew I needed a certain mark. I wanted to be a doctor and no one thought it could be a doctor.[00:15:00]
And and I got the marks that I needed and I just, I definitely found at university and in high school I had, I had to put in more effort than everyone else in the things that I
was hard and challenging for me. But that didn't mean I couldn't do it. I just had to work harder. Do you know what I mean It's
just
Francesca Valle: I, yeah, I
totally agree. And I feel like, you know, at the risk of
creating a
cliche, Though, you know, in
songwriting cliches are the bomb because it makes it a little bit hookier right. But forgive the cliche. I do think though that, that it does build character. Right. You know, they're having hardship, a lack of hardship who wants to hear someone write songs about their privileged life,
Rae Leigh: no one.
Francesca Valle: right?
Like
Rae Leigh: And yet they still do.
Francesca Valle: write, you know, you've gotta, like, you've got to
either, you have to have some struggle or you have to appropriate
someone else's and, you know, I'm grateful that I don't feel the need to appropriate somebody else's because I got enough to talk about, you know? So I think that when I hear [00:16:00] stories like that, I just, I, I don't ever want to minimize them because it is so much work and it can be very heart wrenching at times.
And I think that, to be honest, I don't think that that goes away. I just think that people that have. So-called like learning disabilities and I don't even think it's just learning disabilities. I just think it's brains people that have brains that work differently than, you know, what they think is normal.
Rae Leigh: Yeah. And there's just no such
thing. Is there
Francesca Valle: right. I mean, the best advice I ever got from a therapist was the only place you should look for normal is on your washing machine.
Rae Leigh: Yes. I love that therapist.
Francesca Valle: You know, those, those,
the kind of the weirder you are and
the weirder you'll allow yourself to be in front of other artists, I think is one of the great advantages of being or, or, or what makes a great artist, you know, I think the more normal you try to be in things kind of the more boring it is So, you know, I'm rather proud of my [00:17:00] brain that doesn't work the way everyone else's does.
Cause it always, you know, serves me up these fantastic inventions, you
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: hand me a roll of masking tape and I can build you the world, you know?
Rae Leigh: I love your ambition. But I also, I, I love that you have that sort of acceptance of just you are who you are and there's, you know, that kind of doubt and shame around who you are just in like fear around being abnormal or different. Like all of those things are just such useless things that just hold you back from being the amazing creation person that you are.
And so I love that. I feel like you kind of have, you had to get over that, that fear and that shame and that doubt of, you know, whether you're good enough really isn't it that everyone deals with. But once you can get past. Massive walls and they're big walls and a lot of people's lives, all those feelings.
And you can just accept that you are who you are for a reason, and that's just the way things are. And you can't change who you are. You can learn, which is why we're here. [00:18:00] We're talking about teaching, but you should still embrace all the characteristics
by itself, I think.
Francesca Valle: I think you can change who you are.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: I do. I think that, you know, there's like innate isms that you lean towards, but I think everything in the world is practice.
Rae Leigh: Hmm.
Francesca Valle: I was talking to my fiance about this. Just the other day we were talking about. she was, you know, feeding my ego and telling me I was so smart.
teased her. And I was like, you know, I, I'm rather frustrated when people say, you know, you're, you're just smarter than the average bear Francesca. You got to accept that. And I'm like, no, that's you practice your intelligence, go read. You know, you, I don't think you can be anything you want to be, but I do think that desire and determination can get you a lot farther than I think most people really give it credit.
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Is it as a combination of talent and hard work? [00:19:00]
Yeah. And I think hard work is, yeah. I mean, having struggles like dyslexia and having to work harder than everyone else at such a young age, I recognize now definitely gave me a really decent work
ethic that I don't recognize in a
lot of other people, but I appreciate it when I do see it, you know?
Francesca Valle: You know. Yeah. And I think that one of the
things that would serve
creatives really well would be to understand that what we think of as hard work in our society isn't the only version of hard work that exists, you know, hard work doesn't mean I got up for and showed up for a job at eight o'clock in the morning.
I, I, that might be a version of hard work, but it's not the only hard work. It's a lot. It's, it's very difficult. I think, difficult to a degree that most people won't put themselves through it. It's hard work to show up to an instrument or to a blank page and have to turn nothing into something or to have to turn something that is very bad into something that's very good.
That takes a lot of hard work. And I think I [00:20:00] walked around for a long time, calling myself, you know, giving myself negative self-talk that was like, you know, I was not disciplined or that I was just a lazy musician or something like that. And now I look at it and I go, you know, most musicians aren't lazy, actually the opposite.
They will. So many musicians will, you know, tend bar bust their butts and then be
musicians
Rae Leigh: Yep.
Francesca Valle: as a second job, you know? So I think that hard work.
I don't know that it needs to be redefined, but I think that there's more than one definition of what hard work is. And I think that creatives, I think you have to spend time as a creator
in maybe a bit of solitude and recreation to allow the emotions and thoughts to sort of freely run through your body.
You know what I mean? That come out in art. And I think that if you [00:21:00] show up to a job, you know, nine to five, some soul-sucking job in some way that it's very difficult to tap into those creative juices. So I think you have to guard them and you have to work very hard, even harder and have maybe even more discipline as a musician to really be effective at provoking emotion in others and in yourself.
Rae Leigh: Beautiful. So tell me, cause you've done a few albums yourself and you're a teacher as we've talked about, and that's why we were here. What is it that you're doing now? And, and that you've like that you're
working towards.
Francesca Valle: Oh my gosh, so many things. Where do we start?
So
Rae Leigh: got your fingers in a few pies.
Francesca Valle: a few pies. Well, I'm helping oodles of students right now create their own albums. And some of them, their first releases and others, you know, not others are quite experienced. [00:22:00] But for myself currently I actually have been writing with, I have a business partner, marketing business partner, really great guy.
He's a bit of a guitar player and. Maybe an hour before we sat down to talk, he sent me a text message with a little guitar lick in it. And I sat down and wrote a song to it. He's, it's so cool. You know, I really do think that collaboration is one of the greatest tools to be using on a daily basis in creation.
When you're doing this, you know, seven days a week for decades on end, you know, your ideas get. One dimensional maybe a little bit, or I'm just old and stale. If you don't have something forcing, it's like living alone. I think, you know, when people live alone, they just are like set in their ways. I think when you write by yourself and you just write by yourself all the time, you sort of create a way and it's not necessarily, you know, it's like musical masturbation.
Like you get there too fast. Like you use all your tricks all at [00:23:00] once and then it's done. And I think that one of the beauties of, you know, writing with others is there sort of this Promiscuity that can exist where you can have these relationships with different songwriters. And it's this, you know, very unique form of intimacy that exists.
And it brings out this sort of, I think divine energy that is in us that, you know, wants to create. And so I'm all about, you know, send me a text message and we'll start writing songs through text messages or emails, or I don't care where you are. Just send me a thing and I'll start writing. And so we have a, I don't know what we're going to do with this.
We were just chatting about it. Cause now, you know, there's half a dozen songs and we just went out to Boston to work with our buddies at red 13. And. They're actually in Framingham, Massachusetts. I should, I should say that correctly. But we went and did some recording with them. Do you know, just, just flesh out some of these tunes and they came out so cool.
So I think that we're going to create a little studio project with it, just, you know, we we've come up with this hilarious band name sinks for [00:24:00] giants
Rae Leigh: Okay.
Francesca Valle: I'm, I'm very short woman
Rae Leigh: Oh,
okay.
Francesca Valle: we were at in Boston. I'm like these things are for giants.
You know, we've been
trying to find a name for what we're doing and I think that one's stuck.
So we'll probably be releasing. I have, you know, I have my name on a handful of recordings of them.
You know, just, they're just things to do. You know, like Dolly Parton says she would be selling albums at the back of her trunk. If nobody was buying them online or anything, I'm kind of the same way. I can't help, but write.
So I don't even know what the purpose of those things are. They're just, you know, soul enriching. And so we're gonna, we're gonna make an album out of it and probably do a little bit of promotion, but you couldn't pay me to be on tour again. So I don't, I don't want to do that.
Rae Leigh: Okay. What, what, why, what
happened on tour? Are
You just
Francesca Valle: You know, I think I just don't enjoy. I love
travel and I love absorbing cultures. And when you tour, you don't do that. When you tour, you are on a [00:25:00] bus or in a van, I would maybe tour if there was like some gigantic budget behind it, but I'm like, it would have to be like, you know, Adele budget staff.
Rae Leigh: Right. You want five star
hotels,
Francesca Valle: I want, I want the ho I want the bus
to be a hotel,
Rae Leigh: right?
Okay.
Francesca Valle: right. I'm just spoiled. I'm like, I, I, I
enjoy now. I enjoy. You know, my occasional taking of the microphone and getting to the front of the stage and being the front person. But I really do enjoy the sort of anonymity of coaching people through that it's freeing, you know, to be able to travel all over the place and meet people for their recording sessions or, you know, their rehearsals.
And you just show up for a couple of hours, you do your work, and then, you know, you go enjoy the town. You don't have to, you know, be tied down to this venue for the next, you know, six to eight hours and then leave the next day. You know? So I just love, I really have really fallen [00:26:00] into total love
with being a collaborator.
I love it so
Rae Leigh: I love that. I mean, that's kind of where this whole, the name came from somewhere to trysts, which is the podcast, because yeah, like you said, it's a spiritual, intimate relationship that you have with someone that you, or multiple people that you're creating something with. And like, when you have a lover, you can create a baby, but you also create a magical moment.
And I think that's what you do when you creating something. And that's, that is really cool. And not something that Australians have done a lot of in the past. And I think I was inspired by Nashville and America and the way that you guys collaborate so beautifully You know, that really inspired me and really helped me realize that, you know, yeah.
Collaboration is the way to go, obviously,
because I can't be perfect at everything. And I don't think anyone can.
Francesca Valle: Yeah. And I think, you know, there's one of the really, I think, missed things out there these days is that, you know, you'll see a song that Beyonce puts out [00:27:00] and you'll see. Eight names on it. And there's a lot of criticism for that these days, you know, they see a picture of Freddie mercury. They're like, he's the only guy that wrote that song.
Beyonce needed eight songwriters. And it's like, that was a different time. And it's not yet. You don't have like a sentence from eight different songwriters. That's not what occurred. You probably had a handful, maybe two or three at most that wrote that song. And then those other songwriters names, those are just people that are putting their names on it to pick up an amount of credit for financial reasons.
It's like a
trade-off. And I think that sort of the general population doesn't understand that, you know, they see Beyonce and then they see eight names and it's like, do you know what it took to get that song to
Beyonce?
Like if I have a song that I write and I want to get it, to be honest, it's going to have to go through a handful of layers to get there.
And so the trade-off will be that, you know, along the way, a handful of people, you look at them and you go, you can take a songwriter's credit and.
Rae Leigh: because usually that's all you
have to
Francesca Valle: Right. It's all you've got to [00:28:00] offer. And I think that people just
it's unfortunate because I think that people that go into songwriting these days, they're misled by what that is.
You know, they see
Rae Leigh: Mm.
Francesca Valle: names and they're like these songs, you know, eight people who added that one sentence and it's like, that's not how it worked.
Rae Leigh: Yeah. That's not how it works. Yeah. But it is kind of why we're, I think we're moving into the world of singer songwriters or songwriters working with directly with artists, because that's when, you know, you're more likely to get a cut on that artist, album or their project because they have a part of a piece of it.
And I noticed when I was in the states, a lot of songwriters I worked with they, if you were an artist that didn't actually expect you to write anything, like you'd be in the room, but like now you're just the artists. You're just here to get a cut so that you record the song, we'll do the work. We do the song writing.
Whereas that's kind of not been the experience I've had with collaboration in Australia. But I did find that quite interesting that, that the dynamics is
changing and yeah, it's cool. What, what would [00:29:00] you
say your, your best advice for collaboration in co-writing would be.
Francesca Valle: Oh my God, just to do it and not
be.
terrified. It's, you know, I create one of the things I do inside my teaching studio is have a songwriting circles, you know, and I try to teach people to have like songwriting parties, writing parties, you know, this, this is not songwriting. Isn't different than, you know, other writing in that sense.
Like we should all practice. All writers should practice collaboration because even if you're writing a novel, you know, you're collaborating with a great editor or a couple of great editors. So, you know, I think that There. I was saying this earlier, there just is no supplement for practice. And I have so many friends, you know, that, that aren't in the music industry and they'll, you know, start a conversation with some corny line, like, you know, written anything lately.
And it's so funny to me cause it's like, yeah, I wrote something five minutes ago. Like this is what I breathe. Like
Rae Leigh: Yeah,
Francesca Valle: I, everything I'm doing, I'm writing all, I wrote, you know,
30 [00:30:00] songs
last week because I'm as I'm teaching it and I'm teaching others to collaborate. I am creating things that, you know, 99.9, nine, 9% of it ends up in the trashcan.
Because it's really just an exercise. But you know, just even today, you know, today's like one of my, no client just recuperative days that I was saying, I think that artists need days to kind of release. Release the tension of work so that they can create some things. It's one of those days for me.
And I hit up my business partner who, cause I was like, oh, I've got to go down to the studio to do this podcast. So what are you doing? Do you want to have dinner? You want to write a song? And he was like, yeah, we could, you know, tinker around with something. And you know, three minutes later sent me this, something he'd been tinkering around on his own.
And I think one of the best things that you can do is have friendships with other artists and not judge them as being better or worse. I think w I S I have a saying, I say that comparison is the thief of joy. [00:31:00] Right. So it's not important as to like who the better players aren't necessarily, like you can put yourself in something and make it better. I write songs with children, you know, so I don't think that you need to have some, like virtuostic guitar player sitting there writing songs with you. So I think that the best piece of advice. To force, force yourself to practice it. Every single day. I know that sounds strange, but it's like, how, why does it sound strange?
That's if you're a songwriter, you should be writing every single day. So, you know, I mean, the first thing that I tell artists that walk through my door that are trying to transition into songwriting. Cause usually that's what it is. Usually it's someone that already plays an instrument or already sings that is coming in and they want to add songwriting to it.
It's rarely the other way around it though, that does happen, but it's, it's not as common. And so the first thing that I tell them is. Right [00:32:00] means w where, what do you have finished? And they, the answer is never anything it's always, oh, I don't, I have some ideas. And you know, the first thing I say is I write me 15 songs like yesterday, write them right now, sit down and don't stop writing until you finish these 15 songs.
And, you know, 12 of them can be complete garbage, but at least you can say you wrote 15 songs. If you can't call yourself a songwriter, if you've never finished a song. Right. So, you know, the first thing I would say is just forced yourself. I remember being a little girl and watching, what was that woman's name?
Kathie Lee Gifford. Do you know who she is?
Rae Leigh: no,
Francesca Valle: there was a show, huge show in the states called Regis and Kathie Lee when I was a kid and she was on every one of those, like 10 o'clock in the morning, kind of shows that it's like, it's kind of like Ellen, I guess. But you know, she's sort of a sideline singer, like David Hasselhoff, you know how he's an actor and a singer.
Rae Leigh: Okay.
Francesca Valle: she's sort of the same thing. She's like this TV host and she wrote a million songs. [00:33:00] And I remember being like, you know,
maybe 10 or 12 and hearing her say that she wrote, she thinks she'd written a thousand songs. And I thought that was so funny. I was like, oh yeah, this TV host, she's written a thousand songs and what have they amounted to?
She's still a TV host. And I said that to my grandmother, my grandmother looked at me and was like, oh no,
honey house. How many songs have you written?
Rae Leigh: yeah,
Francesca Valle: And I was like, I don't know. And she was like, well, you should start counting.
Rae Leigh: yeah,
Francesca Valle: And when you get anywhere near the number 100, we'll have that conversation. But I do think, I think that, you know, there's no supplement for just doing the work. You learn so much to the process and pulling other people in that want to do the same work, just so that you're not on your own,
Rae Leigh: Yeah, no, I love that. And I completely agree. I think you just have to do it. And [00:34:00] I had my my son, I think he was six when he did this, but he, he told me one day that he'd written 22 songs. I was like, oh, wow. Like where are they? He was like, what do you mean? I was like,
well, they're not a song if you haven't written them down, honey.
Francesca Valle: Bingo
Rae Leigh: And so, yeah, he ran away and a few days later he came back. He's like, mom, I've written four songs.
Francesca Valle: Oh,
Rae Leigh: And so, you know, it was the sweetest thing. Oh, it was so good. I was just so excited and I love it when my
kids do anything with music, you know, it's a proud mommy moment,
but.
Francesca Valle: How old is your son.
Rae Leigh: He's turning nine. So, I mean, he's getting older and yeah, I have a nine-year-old boy, a six year old girl and a boy who just turned five
this week.
So yeah. It's such a fun age. And like, when you talk
about, you know, riding
with
kids, I'm like, yeah,
I get
Francesca Valle: Right? Like it's and you know, they have, we have all of us at this point have so much more to our advantage that we can be using, you know, back even just to the Beatles. [00:35:00] No, they had four track recorders and like we carry around on our cell phones, more power than they had at Abbey road. You know? So it's it.
I think the other thing is, you know, just getting that, like these are, this is a game and, you know, I do tease friends from time to time and it's like, well, if you're gonna play video games anyway, like you should open up garage band. Because these, these things, you know, Ableton, garage, band logic, they're just, they're just, you know, video games that don't give you points.
So, you know, you create a point system like your son, I wrote four songs. He created, he create a point system for yourself that, you know, represent something because that's all points do anyway. Like I remember spending a million hours playing super Mario brothers. I can't remember what my high score was as a kid.
You know, it was just.
Rae Leigh: I love
Mario.
Francesca Valle: Right. All those songs too, man, they just
stick those ear. Worms are just
Rae Leigh: yeah,
Francesca Valle: I'm 39 years old and I sing super Mario brothers at
least once a week. But [00:36:00] anyway, I think that, you know, it's so cool to, you know, if you put your kid, your three-year-old five-year-old in front of you know, tape recorder in a Stu fancy studio, you know, 40 years ago they'd ruin, you know, thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
Now you can just hand it. They're waterproof. You're like, here you go, baby,
go do that.
You know, so if we could just get
that there, their toys,
I think that, you know, that really opens up the
world.
Rae Leigh: Oh, absolutely. I've heard him playing on garage band. Lindy's iPad, you know, coming home from school and I'm like, what, what, like, you're creating that. Like how, how, how is this possible? It's just such a new world, but yeah, I think it's just about letting them explore because there is so much more for kids to explore these days.
Tell me a bit about like, how, how does
this, the lessons in your teaching studio
work with take lessons. What's that arrangement?
Francesca Valle: well now through take lessons, [00:37:00] I really kind of, mostly take sort of my higher end clients. I have created like my own business to sort of spread out my influence a little bit more so that I can still see kids and things like that, but also just, you know, work with clients two or three days in a week and take lessons has been so amazing at helping make that happen.
Now I get to, I actually just did the math the other day because something came up on my Facebook. I started teaching online 10 years ago, just hit the 10 year mark about a month and a half ago, I think. And that's because of take lessons, you know, Stephen Cox, the guy that owns take lessons you know, he's been talking to.
Talking about online lessons for ever. And so, you know, when he first started sort of beta testing that process, I was lucky enough to be invited to beta test some of those things. [00:38:00] And at the time you know, I wouldn't say it was a new technology, but it was, it was a technology that the general population wasn't so used to using.
And so it was in its sort of remedial stages. It was not I would say that there were degrees of that that were true up until about COVID, COVID sort of forced everyone to take online lessons seriously. But w I was lucky. Thank you, Stephen Cox, wherever you are. I was lucky enough to have almost a decade of experience, you know, going into COVID where I transitioned to.
I only teach online, which even as COVID has calmed down, I've decided that's actually, I will fly out to see clients, you know, for special events and things like that. But all my teaching is online now and it, it allows me to work with more people. Right.
Rae Leigh: Deficient.
Francesca Valle: It's very, very efficient. So take lessons.
It's so cool in the sense that they, you know, they're, they advertise everywhere. You know, I've had students,
I'm not making this up. It sounds fake when [00:39:00] I say it, but it's not. I've had students in Zimbabwe, like how would, what, how does that even happen? But you know, they, they found me through take lessons and it was an amazing experience.
So I've gotten to I've even taught students in Australia, which is tricky because when you start teaching all over the world, There starts to be some time issues. So it's like, you're either like right at the beginning of their day or very, I have a handful of students in Belgium and every lesson I teach them is like nighttime for them.
Like up early in the morning, they're like, it's nine o'clock at night. But you know, it is so cool. The coolest thing I think in my career is this ability to teach all over the world and now to have the, the setup the sort of freedom to be able to travel and to do that with regularity and not miss out on the clients that, you know, I would teach normally in a week, I can just, you know, throw my laptop in my bag.
I have my, you know, [00:40:00] handful of, of things I take with me all, all over the place. And, you know, as long as I've got stable internet, I can do my job. And that's there's, I don't think that there is a better experience in life.
Rae Leigh: It's very freeing. You're taking the work
from home to a whole new level.
Francesca Valle: Yes. And I know like COVID is such a heartbreaking thing. I don't mean to trivialize it, but it really, you know, in, in my world, this shift of being, going to being able to be a completely remote
worker and having clients that, you know, don't see it as a deficit, there was a time where when you would teach online, you know, the assumption was that it would be cheaper because it would be less good.
And now it's like, oh no, actually sometimes online teaching is better. It just it's, it's just a depends on the teacher and their understanding of a format. Right. So.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: It's, it's super cool. It, it forces you to think, you know, you, you [00:41:00] get so dependent on like playing next to someone when you're writing, collaborating the same thing.
Like you get so used to like just playing right next to them and being able to sort of jam. I think that the online experience forces us to have a little more confidence and a little bit more autonomy.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: And I think that that's a super positive thing. It's really cool to be able to, you know, sit in other songwriters homes, you know, while they're across the country, they're sitting in their little songwriting space and I'm sitting in my little song writing space
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: and everyone gets to have their.
Home game, so to speak, you know, the, the advantage of being in the home space. So it's really cool. It's, it's very, I feel like it actually brought a lot more intimacy to the work because collaboration used to be like, let's go into some, I don't think good state studios don't feel sterile, but you know, it is a, it is a little bit of more of a high pressure space, I think.
And so the [00:42:00] ability to kind of go into people's homes and teach them online or to collaborate with them online and see what their set up is. And for them to see what your real home setup is, is nothing but advantageous.
Rae Leigh: yeah, no, I really liked the way you've put that in. It puts another spin on things because I do love being in a room with other creatives doing, like, doing the song, writing in that, like there's an energy that you have when you're in a room with someone. But I also, yeah, when you're at home, there's a different level of comfort that you have as well.
So, yeah, you put it, put it beautifully. I was going to ask you, like, with all the collaborating and teaching that you've done, what sort of one story, I guess that for you was like a, you know, a highlight of your
teaching career.
Francesca Valle: Well, there's two that come to mind.
Rae Leigh: Share both.
Francesca Valle: I have one of my clients, Denise haunts collaborated because collaboration is the way to go collaborated on she was [00:43:00] very young, like 17 or 18 when this happened. She collaborated on a tune that she wrote for a soap opera, and she wound up winning a D daytime, Emmy as a teenager.
Right.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: And then you just see this, like on social media, she announces it tags me. I'm like, what?
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Wait, what?
Francesca Valle: So, that was pretty cool. That
I think if you would've asked me a year ago, what my highlight it
was, that would have been the one. But I think that that changed this year. I had mentioned that I work with a choir that serves the homeless in San Diego and I would say that I not his naive or the right word, maybe ignorantly might be the more appropriate word.
I ignorantly presumed teaching that when I started teaching this class, that it would be like difficult. It'd be a little bit like pulling teeth. And I, I don't know why I made such a foolish assumption. Really what happened was I sat down in a space, surrounded by folks that [00:44:00] had either lived on the street in the past, or were living on the street.
And I don't think my personality is as muted anywhere else as it is in that group of people. It's a humbling space to be in and to hear people's, I think it's such a necessary healing, therapeutic experience for our choir members that come in and. You know, songs, literally we have folks come in, had many sessions where folks have come in and done exercises with us and written with us.
And we do, I mean, full collaboration. Some of these really are scenarios where you've got a dozen people and maybe one person writes a line. And, you know, I sort of am the executive decisions of what gets put where, and we just have some of the most incredible songwriters in these groups, people who you you'll never know their names, you know, it makes you really realize how much talent musicians really are.
Often one step away from being that homeless guy on the [00:45:00] street that you just passed.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: you know, so many of those folks are musicians
and they have so much to offer and so much to say, and there's this woman Maryland that is in this ensemble. And there's, you know, a lot of personal history that she has given me, but it's suffices to say that she's had a very difficult life and she's a woman that is, if she's not 70 yet she's approaching it.
And then, you know, just imagine being that age and dealing with not having stable housing, you know, it's difficult. And Marilyn showed up to our first songwriting session and it was just so fascinating. Cause she's this older white lady that has the language of the street.
Rae Leigh: Yep.
Francesca Valle: She started singing or starts.
She like wraps. It's so cool. She starts rapping. And she sounds like, you know, she grew up in long beach because you know, it's got this edge and it's just something [00:46:00] that she's learned and identified with. And she caught my attention in this class very, very early on. And we were writing a Christmas song one day and I'd given them an exercise that I had asked them, you know, to tap into their senses.
And so we were listening, you know, writing songs about listening and tasting and the sounds of Christmas and things like that. And she wrote this beautiful line in a Christmas song and she said, listen to the sounds of the sidewalk. it caught my ear. And I was like, oh, that belongs in something better than a Christmas song.
And
a vacation pulled us all away. And when we came back in the new year, I was rushing off to class one day and I was like, I don't have anything planned for this class today and sitting in my car and I'm like, I'm just gonna, you know, come up with a little lick and I'm going to have him write around it and I'm in the car and I'm just kind of humming.
And all of a sudden my brain goes, listen to the sounds of the side wall. [00:47:00] Listen to the sand, the sidewalk. And I was like, okay, that's all I need classes fine. So I show up to class and hand them this, and just the brilliance of this class brings the song together. And they started performing it in actual choir rehearsal and then rolled down to last winter.
They had a private audition for America's got talent. And I, you know, I just do my thing. I teach this class on Saturday mornings. I'm like not really deep in the advocacy parts of it. Cause there are people that are better at it. I just do my little part, you know, and they had this audition and I didn't realize like that they actually all went up to Pasadena to do the full audition in front of, you know, Simon cowl and all of them.
And they saying sounds of sidewalk and.
That immediately, that song makes me go, oh my God, Marilyn, and this little hook and all these, all these spaces that I love, whose names you just, nobody would know otherwise. And they sing the song and Terry [00:48:00] crews, who's like one of the hosts on this show, he just was moved and he jumps up and hits the golden buzzer.
And
I just like, I, when I watched it, like I a total fan geek, I just sat there and cried I'm watching these people that, you know, it's almost like sometimes like people have forgotten who they are.
You know, they're like forgotten people sometimes. And it's the most heart wrenching thing when you realize how much talent is in that group.
And so you, I watched these, my students, you know, I watched them like melt into the ground. As you know, these, this gold confetti is falling on top of them. And they're Riyadh one. You guys, if you get a minute, go Google voices of our city choir, golden buzzer, and have yourself a good car
Rae Leigh: be looking at that after this, but I'll put the link
to it in the description of the
podcast.
Francesca Valle: such a beautiful moment. And I think
that
when it happened, I just thought to myself, everything is going to change. [00:49:00] And it made me realize that like, even just, you know, rinky dink little songwriters, like we're not brain surgeons, right? Like we're, we're, we're not, we don't think of ourselves as essential workers as they say these days.
In fact, I think any musician that survived COVID was told they weren't an essential worker for a year and a
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: So heartbreaking idea. And when you see something like that, you realize like how essential that work
is.
Rae Leigh: Oh, COVID was the death of so many creatives for, for many reasons, but
it'll also be the birth of, of places. And then there's those of us who are surviving it and go,
Nope, I'm going to do it. Keep doing it, keep doing it.
Don't care if it's not essential to you, it's essential to me. So,
Francesca Valle: Well, and you know, when you look at
things
like, you, know, Americans have a history
of, you know, slavery, a lot of people do, but we have this beautiful art that came out of it. You know, slave songs are a cornerstone of American music and
[00:50:00] some of the most beautiful music you've ever heard. And, you know, when you think about like where that came from, it came from humans, having nothing, you know, humans being in their darkest spaces and still finding ways to express themselves in an artful way.
And that's when you realize it's like songwriting is, this is more essential than most things. It might not need to be monetized all the time. But you know, the act of songwriting is really a birthright.
Rae Leigh: That's powerful. And it's an invisible art form
that can be created that no
one can ever take away from you until the day that you die, you know?
Francesca Valle: I feel like a song can survive longer than a body can you know?
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Well, and it survives in, in people,
however it survives and it's beautiful when it
does
Francesca Valle: Absolutely. And I think that, you know, when I say, I
say pretty regularly that singing is a birth rate. I think that one of the
things that [00:51:00] we need to remember, especially I'm, I'm going to single out Americans for a moment. I know that we influenced a lot of people, but especially Americans. I think that we need to remember that music making, singing all of those things, you know, we weren't given those skills to monetize them.
Like that might be a cool by-product of it, but that's not why we do it. You know, we do it to heal ourselves.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
I love that. That's why I
do it monetizing. It is just a way of being able to do it more.
Isn't
Francesca Valle: Right. It's just a way to do it more. It's a, it's a way. I mean,
it's and I think by the way, I will also say, you know, one of the best things you can do in life to monetize it is to just not stop worrying about monetizing. It, just like give it
Rae Leigh: Yeah. Just, well,
yeah.
Francesca Valle: give it away and then know, like,
know that you have all those songs in you.
Like you could recreate that song in different facets a million times, [00:52:00] and there's no replacement for you. You know, there's a replacement for us. If you work at burger king, it's really easy to replace that job, but like, how am I going to replace your individual?
Rae Leigh: That's not going to happen.
Francesca Valle: happen.
So I look at it and I go, you know, I really truly believe like every human being on the planet should have some creative space. And I don't mean coloring books, coloring books are cool, but they're, I wouldn't say that they're creative so much.
Rae Leigh: Hmm.
Francesca Valle: I do see the value in that, but I think that, you know, actually making something, even if it's not very good,
build a house, cook a meal, like make something so that you can remember that we are
creators, you know?
I think women are reminded
that they're creators because we have babies sometimes. But you know, I think
Rae Leigh: Sometimes.
Francesca Valle: right. I do think though that we're all intended to be creators, you know, there's studies out
there. Actually one of the most interesting little [00:53:00] factoids that I carry around with me is that we have found flutes. Archeologists have discovered flutes that were made out of bird bones that predate man, like we were still in evolutionary times. We hadn't created our language as we know it languages, as we know them. And we were already playing flutes out of bird bones.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: like, I mean, what are you on this planet to do?
I think making music even poorly
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: is, why we're here.
Rae Leigh: Hmm.
Francesca Valle: And I think there's a reason it's an every single religion
or
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: practice.
Rae Leigh: And culture everything. Yeah. It's a way of connecting to our
spirituality, which is, it's not something we can
physically get to, but I think music definitely gets us closer.
Francesca Valle: Yeah. I was really moved to
see I was in Ecuador two years ago, I think. And I was with my ShawMan [00:54:00] and.
You know, this is a man who speaks a bunch of native Ecuadorian languages, and he's just having these out of body experiences where you can see that he's, you know, possessed by something. And we were in the Amazon and I was, I was pretty scared.
It was, it was a fairly difficult space to be in. It was raining constantly. And I was being followed by a large cat of some sort. I don't know what it was.
Rae Leigh: Okay. Yep. Fun.
Francesca Valle: this is
Rae Leigh: Why were you there?
Francesca Valle: I was on a we'll call it a spiritual
tour. And the
shaman said to me through translation, he was said, if you ever get lost, if you're frightened and you're in the Amazon and you're lost, you have the greatest advantage or a singer and the spirit lives in songs. So, if you ever get lost in anything, anytime you get lost, you should just start singing because the divine spirits will find you.
Rae Leigh: [00:55:00] Wow.
Francesca Valle: And like still to this day, that still rings in my head. Like
Rae Leigh: Hmm.
Francesca Valle: sing a song, you know? And I, I picture those folks like in the Titanic movie, you know, as the Titanic is sinking, that played until the very end.
And I just think it's like, if you have anything, if you have nothing to offer, you can always offer a song.
Rae Leigh: Hmm. That's so beautiful. I literally like that's where some wedding sided for me, it was the moments when I was suicidal and dealing with mental health. And now it's like, I think about it. I'm like, yes, I sang in those spirits came and brought me back. You know, it's, it's a very difficult experience to try and articulate what music does and connects us to.
I think I'm still trying to work it out. You know how in, and you've articulated it so beautifully
by everything you've just
shared.
Francesca Valle: I think one of the easiest ways to find it, if anybody has trouble
Rae Leigh: [00:56:00] Hmm
Francesca Valle: a choir.
Rae Leigh: Hmm.
Francesca Valle: I think that I've never met someone that joined the choir and like actively and was involved in a choir, showed up to more than one rehearsal, you know, showed up, but it doesn't matter. Like it can be a total come all non audition choir and you experienced this incredibly divine magnetic force that permeates through the group. Okay. And it is an incredibly healing experience. So if you, if you don't feel like you, you know, have had that before with anyone else, you know, I think most people have had it on their own. I think most people you get in a car you're in a certain mood, you put music on and you know that your music sort of taps into this primal piece of us.
But I, I think that, you know, one of the things that we often fight for, you know, in moments like you were just describing is being seen [00:57:00] and connecting because it's so difficult to do in those moments.
Rae Leigh: Yeah,
Francesca Valle: I think that it's actually not hard to be seen and it's not hard to connect and acquire you just show up
Rae Leigh: yeah,
Francesca Valle: and there's, there's like a power in numbers sort of experience.
And if you're here and you're scared or you lack skills or whatever, It's okay. Cause the person right next to you as me, you know, or something like that. And
Rae Leigh: You're all in it
Francesca Valle: yeah, you'll be okay. And it'd be like, if we were, you know, going through the Outback of
Australia or your backyard, whatever
version it
is, it's like, you can just look at me and be like, dude, this is my backyard.
We're okay. It's okay. And I can sit there and be like scared and lame. But at the end of the day, like we're probably going to survive because you're going to look at me and go it's okay. Like as long as the car is full of
gas, like we're good.
Rae Leigh: Yeah, no, that's, that's a beautiful way of putting it and I love that and I could never sing in public, but I sang in church and I sang in choirs and yeah, I think when you've got [00:58:00] that comradery and that's the fear of not everything's on you, you know, you don't have a spotlight on you, then you have a bit more freedom to just be
yourself in that collective, in that group.
And it's yeah, it's
beautiful.
Francesca Valle: So liberating.
Rae Leigh: I want to ask you a question around your inspirations. So if you could write or collaborate with anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would it be and
why?
Francesca Valle: I'm going to jump right to David Bowie because I've studied his songwriting so much and it's, I, you can just tell he had so many techniques and was sort of a consummate performer all the time
Rae Leigh: Hmm,
Francesca Valle: really knew how to tell stories. And it didn't always make sense,
you know, like life doesn't always make sense.
So it's cool to me when songs don't totally make sense.
Rae Leigh: Me
too.
Francesca Valle: you know, and I really feel like you can read Bowie songs and be like,
what is he talking? This could be so many things.
Rae Leigh: I love it when people say, what does
that mean? When that, when I was singing his song and I'm like, I'll never answer it.
I was
Francesca Valle: what do
Rae Leigh: because it will mean something different. [00:59:00] Yeah. It will mean whatever you want it to mean.
Really?
Yeah.
Francesca Valle: I think I would, I would say Bowie, just because he was so, you know, and then the other, on the other hand, you're going to laugh your butt off probably at this answer, but I would say on the complete opposite end, but also not, I would say Yoko Ono because you know, so lady, I know the answer I expected, you know, Yoko Ono.
First of all, I'm just going to say lady Gaga calls, Yoko Ono, mother monster, which I think we should all pay attention to.
Yoko Ono has a freedom
that is inspiring.
doesn't care if you think she's great, she's there to deliver her art. She doesn't care if you call her a singer, she doesn't care.
She cares you, you call her an artist, I think, but she doesn't care about all the rest of it. Those are all just, you know, Other pieces of her. And I'm [01:00:00] one of my therapists she asked me, you know, Francesca, who are you, if you aren't a musician and I didn't have an answer. And I don't know if I still don't know if I do have an answer.
It's something I think about a lot.
Rae Leigh: Hm.
Francesca Valle: But I think that, you know, Yoko Ono as a performer, she has been stripped down so many times, you know, torn down so many times and she just keeps creating. And she lives in this world of like a Blavity the critics, you know what I mean?
Rae Leigh: yep.
Francesca Valle: so like, I just want her to be like my, you know, my auntie that like, you know, puts her arms around me and is like, why do you care?
What they think,
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: you know, and shows up and is like, dude, John Lennon thought I was brilliant. So that's all I need.
Rae Leigh: Yeah. I mean, that would, that
would do
it for me
Francesca Valle: Right. So I, I think, you know, it's kind of a, a [01:01:00] weird one, but I really do get a lot of inspiration
from people that recognize that they have worth outside of singing in tune, you know?
Rae Leigh: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's something we all need and we all need someone else to believe in us or encourage us and that's okay. But we also need to believe in ourselves.
Francesca Valle: Okay.
Rae Leigh: Hmm. That's beautiful. Cool. So, tell me how people can get involved with take lessons and you, and what like say I'm in
Australia or people all over the world, listen to
this podcast.
What, what, what would we do to get a listen and collaborate with
you?
Francesca Valle: Well, take lessons probably couldn't make it easier. You just go to take lessons.com. I believe actually, if you want specifically to find me, you can just Google take lessons.com and type in Francesca.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: And it will come up. They won't give you my last name, but you can type it in and you'll find it.
But take lessons has an algorithm that I'm not going to pretend to understand
Rae Leigh: I don't understand any
algorithm. That's fun.
Francesca Valle: I'm like, I don't understand. [01:02:00] I just know
every once in a while it's like you have a new client in New York and I'm like, oh, that's cool. But I think if you if you go to take lessons, you certainly can.
There's a handful of filters and questions that they will ask you. You could go directly and look for me, but there are fantastic songwriters all over. And so you can, you can tell them your location and you can meet with someone in person or you know, I do encourage people, in my opinion, it's an opinion
Rae Leigh: Yep.
Francesca Valle: sure.
But in my opinion, like the worst way you can find a teacher or a collaborator is to just look for who's the closest one.
Rae Leigh: Yeah.
Francesca Valle: A lot of people do that. So no, no no calling you out or anything. But I think that that is, is like picking a guitar because of what it looks like. Not because of what it sounds like, you know,
Rae Leigh: I'm totally guilty of that by the way, but
yeah,
Francesca Valle: not necessarily the most effective use of your dollars or your time. So, you know, just on a coaching level, just gonna say guys, I would not pick the person. That's just the [01:03:00] closest to you. Unless of course you live in New York city or Las Vegas or something. But the, you know, the best teachers in the world first of all, are not scared of technology.
So they're teaching online, you know, that's just part of the modern world. So, I would open it. To a larger search and I would definitely consider studying online, not just in person. I do think that in-person is an incredibly limiting experience. Now that we're going into this modern age of you can, you can study with anybody guys, anybody.
Rae Leigh: you can collaborate with
anyone can't you.
Francesca Valle: And you know, the truth is
Rae Leigh: works.
Francesca Valle: that. If you look at it this
way Like sort of the flavors of life are the fusions of experience. And if you're working with someone who lives, you know, 10 minutes from you, their experience is probably going to be at least, you know, partially similar to yours. If you know, you are living in Florida and you start collaborating with someone in Detroit, [01:04:00] you're going to have a very, very different musical experience and engagement.
You know, I think sometimes we don't even realize there's music that in California, you say the name, Jason morass, and everybody knows who Jason Juarez is, every single person, but you know, you go to the east coast,
Rae Leigh: Yeah,
Francesca Valle: don't know who he is, some of them do, but it's not nearly as popular. Cause he's a California staff. You know, so, I would encourage you, you know, to definitely to do it and to be, I use this word intentionally because I think, you know, so dissuaded and other places be a musical promiscuous, musically promiscuous person, like do it with everybody. There's no
Rae Leigh: yeah, no, there's no STRs in songwriting. Oh, I do that with producers and all sorts of people. Like, yeah. I love collaborating with everyone. And once you,
like, when you find someone that's great, that's great deal with them more, but
doesn't mean that you have to be like, you don't have to be monogamous with them.
Yeah.
Francesca Valle: and hopefully they
get that.
too, because most of the time, you know, musicians are all,
we all are having that.
experience. So, you know, I dissuade people. If you've got folks that are like, that's my chair, you know, they somehow get threatened when you work with other folks. I just, I don't, that's not my vibe.
Rae Leigh: Yeah. That's not me either. I don't think that's good. I think we can just learn by being in the moment and go taking the next step with the person that's in front of us and yeah, just keep working hard.
Francesca Valle: Totally.
Rae Leigh: Hmm. Well, I think I've asked you to just about everything I'm going to ask you. Is there anything else you would like to say
before we
finish up?
Francesca Valle: I'm just going to repeat something I said so that,
Rae Leigh: Okay. Go on.
Francesca Valle: this is the thing that survives the nuclear apocalypse and you don't hear anything else from me, it's on this recording,
Rae Leigh: Okay.
Francesca Valle: singing and songwriting are your birthright
and it doesn't matter how fantastic or terrible you are at it on any particular given day. So just go do it for the love of doing it and for the healing aspect of it. [01:06:00]
Rae Leigh: Perfect. Love it, but you'll need a bit of
healing. We do it ourselves.
Don't mean our in
time.
Francesca Valle: And I think we're all fighting right now. There's, you know, it's, it's, we, we can be seen, it's fascinating
thing where there's all this internet social media stuff that, you know, gives everybody a platform and you'd think that we'd all feel like we're better seen, but it's seeming it's seemingly the opposite.
Right? It kind of seems like,
I think fi I think it was Phil Collins that said, you know, it used to be about getting your foot through the door.
Rae Leigh: Hmm.
Francesca Valle: now it's like even just getting an individual through the door, because everyone's just cramming at the door, you know, in a mass
Rae Leigh: Hmm.
Francesca Valle: And so it's a different kind of thing.
And I think that, you know, people post their music and they do sorts of, you
know, traditional things to be seen. And I think that we, we don't tend to see each other as much. So, you know, the other thing is to slow down. [01:07:00] And when you think things like songwriting and singing as a birthright, it has a place outside of a studio.
Like if I met your kids today, the very first thing I would do is sit down and like sing songs and play with them.
Rae Leigh: yeah,
Francesca Valle: And that's the best part of my day. And we, we could choose as adults to connect in that same way. And we do, I'm assuming you do. I know I do. And you know, so I think that understanding that sort of sense of play and getting that we all get to play and that play shouldn't have like necessarily this comparison or goal oriented experience, it's just play, which is playing around
Rae Leigh: just being really.
Francesca Valle: right.
Rae Leigh: Yeah, because how boring would life, if we had to, you know, which is what it feels like probably at the moment, especially if you are living alone in a box and you have to interact with the world through a device, it's like we, even, if you're the most introverted person in the world, we need to have physical connection with [01:08:00] other human beings.
At some point,
you know, I mean, it's, that's one of the, like, I'm a really extroverted person and I would be out and I love to entertain. I love live gigs. And so this is where the podcast was born mainly so that I didn't drive my husband nuts being at home, talking so much, but just being able to connect with people from all over the world like yourself, you know, from my little little studio in my bedroom, in the gold coast Australia, I get to talk to other creators all over the world and just connect.
At least on this level, but I mean, it's, it's as close as I could get during lockdown moments, you know, to being out in the world and meeting people and yeah, we need that. We need to connect with people. That's what life's all about.
Francesca Valle: Yeah.
Rae Leigh: Hmm. That's good. Well, thank you so much for jumping on here. I'm going to put all of the links for you and take lessons and all the things we've talked about as well into the description of this podcast.
And there'll also be a blog put together on the website somewhere to trista.com. But just thank you so much for taking the time out of your day off to chat to me and share a little bit more about your story and what you do. And it's very inspirational. I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Francesca Valle: Well, thanks for having me.
