We got the chance to speak with musician, songwriter, and multimedia artist, Jessica Leia, about her long-form video and music project, “Me and My Song,” which is set to release its 4th season this June.
The multi-part series is designed to give her music a permanent home outside the limitations of live performance. After years of cycling through band members, struggling to introduce new material, and contending with audience expectations for upbeat familiarity, Leia chose to step away from traditional performance models. “Me and My Song” allows her to focus on the songs themselves which are contemplative, moody, existential, humorous, and human. Each song is presented through a four-part arc: its origin story, a raw solo performance, behind-the-scenes studio recording, and a final produced version paired with a music video. The result is not just an album, but an invitation for audiences to witness how a song comes into being.
Jessica’s musical work is rooted in lived experience and a commitment to authenticity. Born and raised in Concord, California, she grew up in a working-class household defined by both grit and quiet possibility. Concord offered enough scale and familiarity to explore her passions which would later echo throughout her music.
She has spent over two decades teaching piano while simultaneously writing hundreds of original songs, however her start as a songwriter goes as far back into her childhood. A prolific songwriter, her songs are drawn from her own life, the lives of others, and the vast emotional terrain of being human. For Jessica, music is a way to convert thoughts like grief, joy, insight, and mystery into something others can experience directly.
Her influences range widely, though she holds particular reverence for songwriters like Carole King and Don Henley for their seamless integration of melody, rhythm, and lyric. Beyond music, she finds philosopher Alan Watts, whose spoken-word teachings influenced her understanding of self, reality, and consciousness.
Check out our Q&A with Jessica:
What first got you into music?
Jessica: Hey there! Actually, I can’t really say that I was ever not into music. Music has always just been there, as far back as I can remember remembering. There is a photo of me somewhere as a baby being held by a family member in front of a miniature toy piano, so I was already fascinated with the instrument from the very start. It was mostly plastic, only a couple feet wide and a couple feet tall. But it made music sounds and I loved that thing from the start. One day I stepped into the back yard to find it had been completely destroyed: keys everywhere, the frame shattered, piano guts all over the place. I was about 4 or 5 and I was devastated about its destruction. Fortunately, a pretty close family friend was getting rid of her upright piano and had noticed that I obsessed over playing it (as well as a keyboard she had), every time we’d go over to her house to visit. So my folks let me adopt that piano. It was an old player piano that never actually worked as a player piano (and was never actually in tune lol), but I loved it and spent a lot of my young life exploring the sounds it made – even if they were out of tune sounds.
What inspires your music and songwriting?
Jessica: Folks always wonder this and the only thing I can ever really say is that life does. I am always singing to myself about what is happening. A lot of the time it’s really silly, but sometimes, it’s song material. What actually decides what becomes song material and what little musical ideas simply come and go? Probably just circumstance. There have been times in my life where I have had more time available, so when song ideas came, silly or otherwise, I could immediately attend to them. This is no longer the case and has not been for years and years, so although ideas constantly come, the writing of the music doesn’t happen as often as I would like for it to. Maybe once I retire from trying to get people to listen to the music already written and recorded, I’ll actually be able to write all the songs waiting for their time in the sun! Lol
You’re about to release Season 4 in June, how did “Me & My Song” come about?
Jessica: Really, the idea of “Me and My Song” came about in stages. If you really want to know, I would say it started roughly 7 or 8 years before I even started the show, when I decided I was going to record every song I’d ever written. As time continued on and as I went through many different attempts and approaches at having “success” in the music industry, I concluded that I did, still, ultimately want to record every song I’d ever written. But I also decided that I wanted to present those songs in an interesting way to the world. There were already plenty of folks recording tunes and throwing them out there onto the innerwebs, after all. I wanted to do it differently. Then came “Me and My Song”. The format of “Me and My Song” came to me over time also. But basically, everything in the video series is an attempt to create entertainment that has a little bit of something for everyone. I made those calls based on what people always seemed to ask about and to be curious about when they would see/hear me perform live.
Where did the idea come from to create “Me & My Song” as a series like this with multiple seasons rather than performing live?
Jessica: Well, I have performed live a lot. I performed a lot and for a long time. I actually still do perform live periodically. In fact, originally, a live performance was written into the format of “Me and My Song” but it became too impossible to pull that off in the series, so I cut that particular segment out after Season 1.
But I pulled out of the regular performance world basically because it exhausted me, made me broke and left with me with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. If anyone wants to watch the very first episode of “Me and My Song”, I essentially tell this whole story there. Basically, it got to a point where I realized I was either going to waste the rest of my life burning up all of my resources – including my life itself – doing what I was doing, with nothing to show for it, or I could shift gears and actually record all of the music I had been writing. This was much more appealing to me, as the music is really the thing I care about – not performing it. Of course, it’s one of those ironic things where, if the music is going to exist in the world, it has to be performed in one way or another, so there you go.
I officially document the experience of the recording, share the stories behind the tunes and of course present the performances of the songs, themselves in “Me and My Song”. So even though it still exhausts me and makes me broke, at the end of the day also, I definitely have something to show for it lol .. Each season of the video series is a year. Each month in that year is an episode. Each episode in each month presents a song. So, at the end of the season, voila, you have 12 recorded songs – an album!
“Me & My Song” is very much an independent project, how do you manage to do it all yourself?
Jessica: Easy, I just don’t have a life lol …. In a nut shell, if I set out to do something, I really go for it. Otherwise, I figure; what’s the point? Of course, I had no idea that taking on a project like this on my own would require so much grit and tenacity and sacrifice. But I cut anchors long ago, so away we go.
Really, I’m not sure how I do it, and on some days, even why I do it. It can be incredibly disheartening and overwhelming to have so much hard work to do all of the time and no one there who ever helps take a load off – work that most people never even realize that you are constantly chipping away at. And also, to be constantly hemorrhaging money just “to keep the lights on” for the project, living below the standard I could be if I just used my income from my day job like other, normal people do lol … Still, I keep at it because that is the only way it will ever get done and I feel it is important work. And I guess that really is the simplest answer to your question: I manage to do it all myself because no one else will and because I feel it needs to be done and so I just keep keeping at it.
Can you give us a hint about what to expect with season 4?
Jessica: Thanks for mentioning! The tunes from Season 4 (as is always the case in this process of making “Me and My Song”), had already been written long before production began. Some songs were written years, some even decades ago. I have, however, been wanting to make albums with themes and I was finally able to do that for Season 4. I decided to do a theme with love songs since I had so many of them available in my arsenal and also because people seem to dig them love songs so much. Consequently, all of the songs in Season 4 and on the subsequent album that will result from Season 4 (which, by the way, is called: “Ain’t Love Beautiful”), will all be about love in one way or another.
I don’t personally do romance anymore, but naturally I have throughout my life and so consequently, the majority of the songs came about during, before and/or after romantic relationships. There is a song or two on the album that refers to love in a more overall sense, but the entire theme is love, none-the-less.
Naturally, I tell the story behind how each of the songs came to be in the PART 1 segment of each episode, (a segment I call “A Song Is Born”). If anyone is really looking for some detail about the creation of the tunes and the circumstance surrounding how they came about, that will be the place to explore!
How many seasons do you plan to go?
Jessica: Thank you for asking. When I first started “Me and My Song”, I committed myself to do 5 Seasons. So, I will at least do that many. Of course, when I made that commitment to myself, I had no idea it would take 2 to 3 years to complete only 1 season of the video series. Regardless, if “Me and My Song” catches no traction, I will stop there, after Season 5 and turn my efforts and resources towards just recording the music and towards seeing if I might get any publishing deals for it. If “Me and My Song” DOES happen to get traction and, at the very least, start to pay for itself, well, I guess I’ll just keep on going. As we speak, I have enough songs written to do 10 more seasons if I wanted to and I continue to write, so really, I could rock on for a long time … assuming the world doesn’t end. Just kidding guys, the world isn’t gonna end – I have it on good authority lol …
What do you hope people take away from “Me & My Song”?
Jessica: I hope they’ll get some good laughs. I hope they’ll enjoy some good tunes. I hope they’ll feel a little lighter after they watch than they did before they watched. I hope they’ll feel welcome and warmly invited into all of the processes that take place on the show. And I hope they feel inspired to be who they are and to love who they are and, of course, to keep singing their song.
What is up next for you?
Jessica: Well, as I mentioned, I will be doing a Season 5 of “Me and My Song”. And in fact, even though Season 4 will not be arriving to the public until June of 2026, I have already begun operations on Season 5, behind the scenes. So, I will be doing everything that comes with finalizing, releasing and marketing one season of the video series, as well as, completing the initial steps towards creating the next season. Naturally, I will also be working my day job, doing the grocery shopping, changing the oil in the car, making my bed and trimming my toenails. All of that will pretty much take up most of my time lol …
But as I mentioned, if “Me and My Song” doesn’t get any traction after Season 5, I will still continue to write and record my music. And, even If I don’t continue with the entire video series after Season 5, I definitely will still continue to make music videos for the tunes. I have always had big, gigantic visions for making music videos, but never enough resources or time to make them be what I really would love for them to be – almost like musical short films. I’d have a blast f I could find a way to get some epic production on music videos. That would be such a hoot!
To learn more about Jessica Leia, check out her official website, YouTube channel, and follow her on Instagram.