On Tour
Liz Longley
Singer/Songwriter
The next Liz Longley concert is scheduled for Sunday, May 18, 2025 at Olivette Community and Farm in Asheville, NC, United States. See all 15 upcoming concerts
Upcoming Concerts for Liz Longley
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- May18May 18, 2025Olivette Community and FarmAsheville
- May27May 27, 2025Pioneer Theatre - ManteoManteo
- May29May 29, 2025Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Nags Head OceanfrontKill Devil Hills
- May31May 31, 2025Two Rivers MansionNashville
- Jun05Jun 05, 2025The Roslyn, Tapestry Collection by HiltonRoslyn
- Jun06Jun 06, 2025CONNartistsSouthbury
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About Liz Longley
Hometown
Downingtown, PA, United States
Genre
Singer/Songwriter
Nashville-based singer and songwriter Liz Longley built a self-managed career that began with self-financing her own recordings, then took her through deals with two labels and back after deciding that maintaining complete control over her career was the only way to navigate the 21st century music business. While she built a regional reputation in New England for her earliest recordings such as 2007's Take You Down and 2010's Hot Loose Wire on her Luckelizz label, Sugar Hill released her critically acclaimed self-titled 2015 outing (funded through a Kickstarter campaign) and its follow-up Weightless a year just before the label was folded into Rounder. Longley's music melds folk, rock, Americana, and hooky alt-pop in songs that register with listeners as poignant. The film, and television industry apparently agreed and have made use of both commissioned and catalog material.
Longley grew up in Chester County, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She began singing and playing piano at a very young age; she marks the turning point in her life at age nine, after performing an original song for the students in her elementary school, where she received an enthusiastic reception.
Longley began recording a demo album and performing in clubs, competitions, and local festivals while attending Downingtown West High School. Her song "Naked Trees" reached the number one spot on GarageBand.com and held it for several weeks.
Upon graduation, she won a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston and studied voice. She continued writing and recording. Somewhere in the Middle, her self-released debut album, was recorded while she was still a student. She also took first place in the Rocky Mountain Folk Fest Songwriter Showcase, and was co-winner of the Mountain Stage New Song Contest.
Graduating from Berklee in 2010, Longley won three songwriting competitions: the BMI John Lennon Songwriting Scholarship Competition, the International Acoustic Music Awards, and the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest. She also recorded her sophomore effort, Hot Loose Wire, which featured two of her award-winning songs as well as a cover of Van Morrison's "Moondance"; it was picked up by Sirius XM programming executives for regular rotation.
Longley's reputation spread fast, she moved between Boston and New York and opened shows for a wide range of artists including Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole, Nanci Griffith, and Amos Lee. Further, she began accepting writing commissions for television and cinema. She placed songs on the ABC series NY Med and her "This Is Not the End" was showcased in the grand finale of the series Army Wives.
In 2011, Longley relocated to Nashville and began collaborating with some of Music City's notable songwriting talent. She co-wrote with Amy Stroup, Phillip LaRue, Peter Groenwald, and Blake Stratton. The recorded fruit of those sessions was the six-track Inside This Song EP in late 2012.
After extensive touring and writing over the next year and a half, Longley began a Kickstarter campaign to finance her next album. Her initial goal was $35,000; she raised $55,000. She signed with Sugar Hill in 2014 and began recording at Ocean Way Studios with producer Gus Berry (Jaquire King, Charlie Worsham) and engineer Gary Paczosa, as well as a slew of first-class session players. "Bad Habit," the album's first single, was released to digital media and did exceptionally well. The self-titled album was released in March of 2015, followed by her first national headlining tour.
Longley re-entered the studio in the winter of 2016 and emerged with the full-length Weightless in August. The pre-release cut "Swing" made several streaming charts. The album also contained a re-recorded version of the track "Rescue My Heart," that was used in ABC's Switched at Birth and MTV's Scream: The TV Series.
After a bout of touring across the country and in Canada, Longley re-entered the studio with producer Paul Moak in 2018. Proud of what they accomplished, she turned the album into Concord/Rounder who kept it for a time before telling her that, while it was a fine album, it wasn't something they were comfortable releasing. Undaunted, Longley began a Kickstarter campaign in September of 2019 to raise $45,000 in order to buy the album back from Concord. She raised more than three times that. In April of 2020, she issued Funeral for My Past through the Tone Tree Music label.
~ Thom Jurek
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