Podcast - Ep. 12: Beth Bombara Interview

Music at the Intersection will take place Sept. 10-12, utilizing six St. Louis venues: The Fox Theatre, The Big Top, The Sheldon Concert Hall and Jazz St. Louis.

The festival’s lineup is loaded with some of the area's most impressive artists, including Americana singer/songwriter Beth Bombara, whose set is scheduled for 7 p.m. CST at The Sheldon.

It will be a sharp contrast from what her concerts looked like in 2020. Bombara spent her quarantine performing 52-straight weeks of Facebook Live concerts.

“So, I did the first one just kind of out of – I don't want to say necessity, but … nobody knew what was going on,” she recalled. “I remember sitting in my kitchen and thinking, man, I was supposed to play a show tonight, now I'm not. What can I even do?”

Despite playing shows as big as LouFest 2017, Bombara was initially apprehensive about playing a virtual concert.

“It's a little more intimidating, ‘cause I'm not getting that immediate feedback, and I'd never done it before, so that's what I was feeling at the beginning of livestreaming,” she said

Currently, she’s working on a similar project, but this time, she’s writing a song a week, and listeners can follow along via Patreon. The process has allowed her to rethink her approach to songwriting.

“I’m finding I’m kind of staring at random lyrical places sometimes and just kind of seeing where that evolves, rather than ‘I’m gonna write a song about this one thing and this is the theme,’” she said.

Patreon subscribers can gain access to those songs and “a whole backlog of things I’ve put out there in the past year and a half,” including demo recordings and other unreleased material.

“But another thing I'm trying to focus on is doing private concerts online just for the patrons, so whether that [is], like, Zoom or a private YouTube link, and it's just kind of a fun way to interact with patrons.”

The strongest songs written from her Patreon project will help to comprise her next release.

Bombara’s most recent album thus far, “Evergreen,” was released in 2019, and the record – her seventh proper solo outing – is available now on vinyl, CD and digital formats.