St. Louisans first heard that sound on Weber's 2014 self-titled debut, which marked the arrival of a unique local songwriter of sonic delicacy and emotional power. Equally deft on piano and guitar, Lizzie Weber established her as a singer of autobiographical sketches that provide universal touchstones wrapped in ethereal modern folk. Now, she returns with an elegant new album, Fidalgo, out June 9.
Songwriting was not always Weber's artistic passion. Raised in Richmond Heights, Elizabeth Weber Schrank was a theater kid at Nerinx Hall in the early '00s. "I'm a Marker," she says, referring to Nerinx's mascot as we pass by the forsythias. "I loved it. I attribute my being an artist to going to Nerinx and the teachers there." She lights up when discussing specific musicals in which she had starring roles: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Jesus Christ Superstar (Chaminade), Fiddler on the Roof (Saint Louis University High).
Despite feeling at home in front of audiences, Weber describes herself as "a loner in some ways" who was traumatized by bullying early on. "I was a really sensitive kid," she says. "The bullying had left me feeling anxious, and I had a hard time connecting to people, and theater — that form of self-expression — was a healing experience for me."
Weber's love of the stage took her to Marquette University on a theater scholarship, but after two years, she dropped out, bolted for L.A. and started auditioning for television pilots. Before long, though, she started shifting gears. "I was turned off by the acting world," she says. "I wasn't getting [acting] work, so that's when I started figuring out my identity as a songwriter."
While working the front desk at a yoga studio, Weber started playing her dreamy acoustic-guitar-based songs during the relaxing savasana poses at the ends of classes, after which blissed-out yogis started reaching out to her.
Weber found the pivot to songwriter a natural fit. "I love the collaborative aspect of theater, and with music-making, it's really the same thing," she says as we cross into a sweep of lilacs. "Even if I'm the primary songwriter, I do it for the collaborative experiences, where you can take your ego out of the picture and let your collaborators bring in an objective emotion to a piece of music."
Once back in St. Louis, Weber recorded her debut album. It was also around this time that she, as a performer, dropped her surname Schrank in favor of her middle name Weber. "It's German for 'to weave,'" she explains. "I just like the poetic aspect of that." Soon, though, another life change uprooted her again.
In 2016, she moved with her boyfriend (now husband) Brian to Anacortes, Washington — a small community on Fidalgo Island, which gives Weber's new album its name. Brian, a Navy pilot at the time, was stationed at nearby NAS Naval base. "I was sad about leaving St. Louis because I had left my band and community that had supported me as an artist," she says while we look at the nation's largest basswood tree. "But I was excited by the music industry in Seattle, so I was driving 90 minutes to Seattle multiple times a week for little to no money, trying to replace the community I felt I had lost when I left St. Louis."
Her efforts eventually paid off with two key connections. First, she met guitarist Ben Meyer of the Seattle band the Sky Colony, who helped craft the sound in Weber's new project. "That's when I really started to get serious about putting together songs for a new album," she says. With Meyer, she would record eight songs, and while other songs would follow over the next four years as a series of singles and EPs, "those eight songs felt like they went together based on the stories they told," she says. Those stories will finally be made available to the public as Fidalgo.
The other connection was with Markéta Irglová, the Oscar- and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who gained fame as half of the Swell Season and co-star of the film Once alongside Glen Hansard. Mutual admirers, Weber and Irglová started working together and formed a close friendship, and when Weber traveled to Irglová's home in Iceland to record two of Weber's songs in 2018, "River" and "Free Floating," it was a dream come true. "She's a heroine of mine," she says. "I attribute her music to part of why I went down this path as a songwriter."
Weber often takes philosophical turns as she talks, tapping into her beliefs about the universe and manifesting results, including the forces that brought her together with Irglová. "At the end of the day, people have kindness in them," she says. "And if you just put yourself out there and be the kindness that you hope will be reciprocated, that's when good things will come."
Weber's musings extend not just to the good times. She creates music as a form of therapy for trauma, as well, a topic she goes into when asked about her tendency to write slow, languid music, often in minor keys. "My writing stems from a place of subconsciousness," she says amid the dead-nettles. "It's therapeutic in terms of dealing with depression and anxiety from a young age. When I finish a song, it's like, OK, there's some closure on that. My songs are largely autobiographical for that reason."
She believes some of the songs on Fidalgo have even proven to be prophetic, noting the suffering brought on by the pandemic or personal tragedies in her own life. After moving back to St. Louis in 2020, the pandemic put release plans for Fidalgo on hold, and then things got even more complicated. "I found out that I had COVID and then the next day I learned that I was pregnant," she says. "I lost the baby at seven weeks on January 1st."
Several months later, her father underwent emergency open-heart surgery, and it looked as though another devastating loss was imminent. "I asked myself all year why I lost the baby," she says. "And then on December 31, they told us my dad was going to live. Death and rebirth. I truly looked at that as the universe in balance."
Death on New Year's Day and life on New Year's Eve is a powerful story that Weber believes can be found in the lyrics to Fidalgo as she revisits them. "It's like listening to that deepest part of myself saying I am trying to get through to you," she says. "And if I can get through to myself, maybe I can get through to other people too. Or other people will hear that there's been love and suffering and heartbreak and perseverance, all these things we are faced with every day, and we just keep going. That's what this record is."
The good news is that her dad is still here to listen to the new album and watch the new videos, like the one she shot for the sultry single "Be Your Love," which her dad jokingly labeled as "risqué." The video features a disrobed Weber luxuriating in blue light mixed with images of her frolicking in Lafayette Park. "That's part of art-making," she explains next to the begonias. "It's a song about love, lust, sacrifice, getting through the ups and downs together. I wanted it to have a beautiful visual component."
Another standout track is "Blood Meridian," inspired by Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name, one of Weber's favorite books and one that reflects the mix of beauty and sadness often at the heart of her songs. The track also plays to Weber's strengths as a songwriter who can conjure cinematic sonics. "[The song] is what I could imagine the world of the novel sounding like," she says.
Fans will be able to hear these opulent songs live on June 8 when Weber plays an album-release show at the Dark Room at Grand Center with opening support from Joanna Serenko. More tour dates are on the way this year, and Weber recently announced big news: She will be the opening act for the Swell Season's concerts in Denver and Salt Lake City in August, part of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová's tour for the 15th anniversary of Once.
It's another milestone in Weber's upward trajectory, successes she wants to share with others.
"The power of love and spirituality and hope is everything we have," she says. "My hope is that people who are in need of their own hope will see some of themselves in these songs and will persevere."
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