Songwriter Series: Lily Talmers + Sydney Leigh

Lily Talmers is a Michigan-born, Brooklyn-based artist and band leader of a new age of Americana. Highlighted by NPR as having “a graceful, delicate voice reminiscent of Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker or Lomelda's Hannah Read,” her lyricism draws from heady 60's folk revivalists as Leonard Cohen and Judee Sill. Her melodies are coated in intimacy, refined wit, and a distinctly midwestern affect, providing along the way a  unique journey into Lily's strange intervallic insides, which are informed not just by the Americana cannons, but by  Greek, Lusophone, and classical music. Her songs are recorded live in one continuous take, often with a full band in tow, and tend to unbind genre. You can find her bopping between her home state of Michigan and New York, playing solo and with various ensembles she organizes around her music. Her latest record It Is Cyclical, Missing You arrived in January of 2025.

Sydney Leigh Carlson is a 22-year-old singer-songwriter in the classic lineage of the art form – featuring acoustic guitar compositions filled with confessional and insightful lyrics of her times, plus personal stories of pain, loss, love and growth sung with a lilting grace of pain and promise. Inspired by Joni Mitchell, Warren Zevon, Phoebe Bridges and Julian Baker, Leigh’s songs explore the human experience and speak of hidden truths and passionate expressions, yet she is also a playful storyteller, using equal measures of humor and irony in her work. Her voice, a whimsical elasticity of sweetness, belies her age and the depth of her songs, and it is in that delicate balance of sultry timbre and emotive phrasing that her music flourishes