St. Louis’s Lizzie Weber comes back home to make music and fulfill her dreams.
By: Teresa Nowakowski
Five years ago, musician Lizzie Weber went to The Pageant theater to see Ben Folds. During the set, he asked audience members to write down a wish or a dream on a piece of paper and throw it toward the stage. Lizzie wrote “I hope I can open for you one day.” Last April, that’s exactly what she did.
“Talk about manifesting your dreams,” Lizzie says. “It was an absolutely surreal moment to get that invitation, and also a testament to hard work.”
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Soon, there will be another full-circle moment. Next spring Lizzie will release her second full-length album, Fidalgo, featuring a unique blend of indie-folk interwoven with elements of pop, jazz, Americana, and classical. She loves making music in her hometown of St. Louis, where her family still lives and where she finished and released her first album, the self-titled Lizzie Weber, in 2014.
“I’m really happy that my path led me back to St. Louis, where I was able to cut that record and begin my journey,” she says.
Lizzie originally planned to pursue acting, and moved to Los Angeles in at age 20. It didn’t take long for her to become frustrated with the constant competition in the entertainment industry. “I was kind of fed up with feeling like I had to leave my creative fate in somebody else’s hands,” she says.
Inspired by women who dominated the radiowaves in the ’90s, like Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette, she gravitated toward songwriting, a hobby that allowed her to be creative whenever she wanted without having to seek permission from an agent or f ilmmaker. She supplemented her acting career by working in a yoga studio and began to play for the ending pose of classes. Intrigued patrons began to ask where they could buy her music.
“As much as I loved theater and being an actor, I loved being on stage at the piano or with my guitar even more, because I felt so at home,” she says. “I felt so alive in those moments, and so from then on, I decided I’m going to pursue this with all my heart.”
Lizzie returned for awhile to St. Louis to finish her journalism degree at Washington University and to release her debut album. That album won her positive feedback from the city’s music scene.
“I was absolutely thrilled to see the local scene here in St. Louis truly supporting it and lifting it up in a way that was so encouraging to me,” Lizzie says.
Ever since, she has followed her passion, which took her to the Pacific Northwest for several years until her husband, a former Navy pilot, got a job in St. Louis that brought them back home.
Leaving the band she had established in the state of Washington and returning to St. Louis during a pandemic was isolating, but she has found ways to reconnect with her music community. She sees every move and challenge as an important part of her path.
“Doing this new album over the course of two years through a pandemic was really difficult. But I’m proud that I was able to persevere.”
To keep up with Lizzie’s concert schedule and sign up for her mailing list, visit LizzieWeber.com.
This article was originally published in the October 2022 edition of Missouri Life magazine.
