Do512 Family Featured Babymakers, Claire and Lauren from MILK {Moms I’d Like to Know}, chatted with former member of the band Asleep at the Wheel, Elizabeth McQueen. McQueen has recently gone solo and she took some time to catch up with the ladies from MILK about her latest album, her upcoming show and what it’s like being a musician and a mom. You can win two tickets to her upcoming show by leaving a comment on MILK’s original post explaining why you need a music-filled night out!
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- Photography by Todd V. Wolfson
It’s been two years since we last chatted with the lovely songstress, Elizabeth McQueen. At the time she was living the rock mom lifestyle, touring with Grammy-nominated band, Asleep at the Wheel, and taking her two young daughters on the road. Back then, she told us the adventure would end when her oldest daughter started kindergarten. That time has come, along with exciting new opportunities for her solo career. She describes the fear and fun of leaving a good gig to follow her own beat.
What have you been up to as a musician? What have you been up to as a mom? Has it really been two years? That seems so crazy, because in my mind y’all came to my house just the other day. But that seems to be the way of things these days. It seems like time speeds up exponentially with each child we add!
Musically, I’ve been traveling with Asleep at the Wheel for the last two years, playing shows all over the country and Europe. We’ve taken the kids with us to almost every state in the lower 48. And last year we took the kids and my parents to Europe on a tour. It’s been pretty amazing. An epic family vacation and lots of music all at the same time.
But that era of my life just came to a close. After eight and a half years with the band I played my last show as a member of Asleep at the Wheel on New Years’ Eve. It’s a very strange feeling to think that from here on out I won’t be in the same band as my husband, Dave Sanger; that we won’t be taking our kids with us on the road and that I won’t be playing Western Swing for a living.
On a solo level though, my main focus has been working on the “Laziest Remix” EP with my friends from St. Louis, Brothers Lazaroff. Almost exactly two years ago, we decided to see what would happen when they took a couple of songs from my 2010 release “The Laziest Girl in Town” and imbued them with their influences — noise rock, hip-hop and R&B. We’d been talking about melding our sounds for a couple of years, and then for fun we decided we would try it. What came out of that was so compelling to us that we decided to make a full project out of it. We mounted a successful Kickstarter campaign in October 2012, and are finally releasing the six-song EP on January 7th.
It’s been amazing collaborating with some of my best friends in the world. We went from catching up with one another once every couple of months, to talking every day, bouncing ideas of one another, and creating what I think is great music. And it has really opened me up to musical possibilities that I hadn’t previously felt comfortable with.
