Interview: Olivia Lane Strips Down for Acoustic Album, ‘Heart Unlocked’

Independent artists are used to running their careers on their own -- and on their own terms. However, as Olivia Lane notes simply, "you kind of have to figure out your own way of getting your music out there." But she doesn't seem to have an issue with that; in fact, she seems to be having a lot of fun doing it.

On Monday (Aug. 31), Lane began to reveal Heart Unlocked, her first full-length album and a completely acoustic -- and completely free -- project. The record is 14 tracks -- 12 new songs, plus stripped-down versions of the previously released "Steal Me Away" and her current single, "You Part 2" -- but she'll only be releasing one per week.

"So many things [in the music business] are changing every day," Lane tells The Boot of her impetus for doing this album. "... It comes down to, creatively, I think it would be really cool to put these songs out where they're in this rare form."

All of the tracks "had their different journeys," Lane explains: One of them, "Hard to Get," is a rough recording from the day the song was written, with a new vocal track, while another tune, "Lightning," was completely produced, so instruments were stripped away to create a simpler finished product. The goal, Lane says, is to "get people interested" in her music before releasing the fully produced versions.

From the beginning of her career, Lane has had the same producer: Ilya Toshinskiy, whom Lane's manager introduced her to and who has worked with everyone from Luke Bryan to Dolly Parton. Lane wanted a producer with whom she could fully collaborate -- "someone who writes with me, who gets who I am ... because that's when the best art is made," she explains -- and she calls Toshinsky "freaking amazing."

"[He has] just been there so intimately from Day 1, and I couldn't be happier," she says. "He's just such a cool guy."

The two have developed a co-producing relationship of sorts: Lane says that, on her latest tracks, she and Toshinsky have "been going back and forth creatively," and that she's enjoying being able to give a new level of input into her music.

"It's a really cool process seeing him start to trust me a lot and ask for my opinions musically," Lane says of Toshinsky, "[because] I have my vision for who I am and where we're going and what my artistry's going to be."

That vision includes the use of some very traditionally "country" instruments: The mandolin and banjo are prominent in her songs, and at Toshinsky's suggestion, Lane actually learned to play the mandolin herself. She's considering how to integrate the harmonica she got for Christmas into her live show, and she also might learn the "ganjo" (a guitar/banjo hybrid).

"That's important to me," Lane says of her traditional country sensibilities.

Lane's mother is a regional Texas singer, and country music was often played at home during her childhood. However, it took Lane until college to decide that country music was where she belonged.

"I was just a general music lover, and I didn't really think about where I fit until college," Lane recalls. At college in Los Angeles, she took screenwriting and acting classes, but once she took songwriting and, in that class, studied all genres of music and songwriters, "it all clicked."

"I'm a story person ...," Lane says. "I just love stories about people, and that's what country music's foundation is on ... [but] I definitely have a pop sensibility about me because I'm a millennial, and I've been able to make my own playlists since Day 1."

Fans have gotten to hear those pop sensibilities in "You Part 2," a song that's based on "a real winner I dated in college," Lane says, adding (perhaps needlessly), "We are not together anymore."

While the other 13 tracks on Heart Unlocked won't necessarily sound exactly like "You Part 2," Lane says that the single is a good indication of her music as a whole.

"I have a fun, empowering sense of myself; I don't take myself to seriously," she admits. "I'm just having so much fun right now, and I'm really empowered in my life, so a lot of the songs reflect that."

Lane's previously released EPs, Love Thing and Steal Me Away, as well as "You Part 2," are available for download on iTunes. Check her Facebook page to get more information on her Heart Unlocked releases as they come out.

Watch Olivia Lane's "You Part 2" Music Video:

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