Release Parties

 

GRACE LEER

'Album Release Party'

Wednesday September 21, 2022

'27 Live' @ L27 Rooftop Lounge at Westin Nashville in Nashville, TN

With fall quickly approaching, though you wouldn’t know it as summer’s last official calendar day brought 100-degree temperatures to Music City, the incredible 27 Live summer music series rolled to its close after an amazing season that highlighted several of country music’s hottest emerging acts: Drew Green, Alana Springsteen, Lily Rose, Chayce Beckham, Kylie Morgan, and many more!

High atop the Westin Hotel’s 27th floor Skydeck, the music series transformed the cabana styled pool area and its swanky L27 rooftop lounge into the place to be for local connoisseurs of great live music, covering the incredible infinity pool with a stage that allowed for an atmosphere that goes unmatched as the water rippled underneath the steel platforms as blue lights illuminated the waters to give them an ocean like feel. 

For the final installment of the music series, Grace Leer returned to the stage she played earlier this summer to throw one heck of a release party to celebrate her brand-new, 7-song, self-titled project.

There was excitement radiating throughout the venue as industry reps, her best friends and family, and her diehard fans all gathered and buzzed about the bar area an hour before the show’s start time,  sipping on drinks that were appropriately renamed for this night after Grace’s songs.

With balloons outlining the entrance to the main floor, you felt as if you were walking straight into a birthday party, which is something that Leer spoke with us about before the show when she said that she was looking at the whole celebration like a birthday party and was actually a little nervous about whether people would show up for it, before gratefully telling how excited she was that so many had.

Tom Lord of Red Light Management took the stage as the sun began to set over the Music City skyline behind him to introduce Grace:

“I had the opportunity to meet her right after she was on American Idol, and really be blessed by her being in my life because the person I found in her was a very driven and very talented young artist. She has spent the last couple years writing and recording a project, the EP that we released last week, and that is something to be extremely proud of.”

Wearing a black leather outfit fringed out with black and white strands hanging down from her arms, Leer hit the stage with “Brought A Girl” and immediately was met with screams from the crowd as they bopped along with the throwback feel of the melody while Grace patrolled center stage, dancing and swiveling her hips in front of her 5-piece backing band and setting the ready to party crowd in motion as the fiddle sawed and drums and bass pounded out the catchy rhythm.

“There’s so many people to thank, not only for tonight happening, but for this whole journey that it’s been,” began Leer as she then praised the songwriters who gifted her with the outside cuts on album, while the fiddle cried over the softer intro of “The One,” allowing Leer’s vocals to then tug on heartstrings through the verses of the album’s focus track as she drove to the punch of the chorus, elevating incredible lines about being the girl who was “the one” before the one that the guy would make his forever.

“This is so much fun,” Leer gushed with a smile across her face. “If you’ve seen the drink menu here tonight, each song title has a drink named for it and “After One” has an old fashion. We had a lot of fun recorded this music video and writing this song. It’s just that song, it’s about a toxic relationship; the one that you keep coming back to. You think you moved on from it and you think you’re fine, but then you have that one drink and you just are back in that spiral, in that place, with that person you shouldn’t be with,” she introduced as heads in the crowd began to nod with the moody groove as Leer leaned into the power of her voice to raise her incredible range and hit all the right touches of the regret fueled lyrics, eliciting another huge response from the crowd as the final notes were played.

“We had an idea of putting a cover on this EP, and we went around and around. There were a lot of 90’s country songs being sent back and forth, but we decided on this one,” shared Leer. “We had a lot of fun creating it in the studio and keeping its character but bringing it back in a way that felt like me and felt modern,” she finished as she delivered her incredible cover of Dwight Yoakam’s “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” giving a female voice to the familiarity of the male fronted song, giving it an entirely different dynamic that makes it her own. 

Grabbing her acoustic guitar for the first time of the night, Leer then asked the crowd:

“I know I just released an EP, but the way us songwriters and artists work are that we never stop writing; we never stop creating…and so I’m wondering if it’s okay if I play a few new ones for you that aren’t on the EP?” bringing out screams from the crowd in approval as she transformed the stage into a traditional songwriter night type of vibe for a few tunes, telling the story behind “Guys That Leave”:

“I know the EP’s a lot of heartbreak, and you guys know that I write what’s going on in my life. I met this guy that kind of started changing things for me and I started writing all these lovey songs, but this one is because I was feeling really grateful for all those different relationships and all those guys that broke my heart, so I decided to write them a thank you note,” she openly told as the toe-tapping rhythm carried a bounce that allowed the guitars to shred at appropriate times as Leer utilized her voice to inject the song with pure, unbridled feel-good, truly grateful for the road that was paved with heartbreaks, burdens, and struggles to get to the feeling she’s experiencing today.

“If anybody here is kind of in a new relationship…or maybe on a first date and you just have this feeling of this feels really good… I’m not used to this. That’s what this song is about,” Grace blushingly said as the guitar slowly started to play through the intro of “Feels Like a Love Song,” and pushed into the mid-tempo build allowing the feel of the instrumentation to capture the whole this is confusing, but I like it vibe that Grace sang about through the verses before knocking it up a notch in the chorus to perfectly accent the having positive butterfly’s feeling as the crowd began to clap along.

After changing out of her white boots and into the jet-black ones that inspired “Kept the Boots,” Leer delivered the final of her ultra-catchy new songs with a sassiness as she told the story of a past bad relationship, but slyly shifted all the focus of it to the one positive, good thing that did come out of it…her new Lucchese’s.

“This is another true story,” Grace confessed. “I was seeing this guy and I thought it was going really well but then he ghosted me out of nowhere and if anyone’s ever felt that; you’re left with a lot of questions and uncertainty. You just kind of start going over in your brain, did I do something to make it end? That whole weekend, I spent drinking a lot of red wine and talking to my friends about it, and my mom, and everyone just kept saying the same thing…Grace, it’s just not meant to be,” she told of the inspiration behind the slower paced song of the same name as she once again captivated the audience with pure emotion in her vocals as she tugged on heartstrings and pulled them deeply into each word she sung.

“Thank you so much for being here,” Leer very humbly and gratefully said. “This year has been so crazy, but one of my biggest goals I had when we started releasing music at the top of this year was to go out on tour; I even wrote that in my diary! So to be invited out by Logan Mize to tour with him was just incredible,” she said with a can’t believe it actually happened tilt to her voice as she delivered “Nothing With You,” a duet shared by Leer and Mize on the EP that saw cell phones popping into the air to capture her performance of it as everyone sang along; the obvious signs of a song being a centerpiece and a fan favorite.

After running through a thank you list to everyone in the village that surrounds her music career, Leer lit the place up as she closed with her tribute to those country artists that paved the way ahead of her with “Ones Before Me” as the crowd danced, screamed, and raised glasses high into the air as they sang along with each line of the song while Leer slow stepped in rhythm from the back to the front of the stage, smiling as the crowd soaked in every note of the final moments of the party!

Having only seen Grace Leer perform acoustically prior to this night, this full band show offered a full spectrum view into who she is as an all-around artist, songwriter, and entertainer. However, what Leer accomplished through sharing three new songs in the middle of this set, was a monumentally bold showcase of her know-how as she is already craftily creating a buzz that’s looking forward and setting her next exciting chapter in motion while you’re still singing along with what’s just arrived on her awesome debut EP.

FULL SET LIST

1) Brought A Girl

2) The One

3) After One

4) A Thousand Miles from Nowhere

5) Guys That Leave

6) Feels Like a Love Song

7) Kept the Boots

8) Meant to Be

9) Nothing With You

10) Ones Before Me

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