New Me, Who’s This?
A Star is Born?
Hi friends,
If you missed the "state of the union" stream a couple weeks ago, then this may come as shocking news...
I'm retiring the Lex Land name and changing my primary stage name to something else...
Wait, what?!
This will probably seem strange, drastic, or even stupid to some, but it has been carefully considered. I think this will mostly just be really big for me and not so much for anyone else, but I figure I should explain this decision (and try my best to make that explanation as concise as possible):
1) I've been writing and performing as "Lex Land," a stage name derived from my legal name, since I was 17. I was young, knew very little about who I was, what I wanted to be, and how I wanted to present myself. I did not know how to communicate or fight for the very little I did know, so the early narrative and steering of my career was decided for me. Although this was done with the best of intentions by capable individuals, it never felt quite right to me.
2) Over time, the Lex Land moniker saw me through many different seasons of life, accomplishments, and experiences, but on the internet, there are only about three that ever come up. Those three things are not accurate representations of who I ever really was as a person and artist, are even less so now, and I'm tired of carrying them around. I very much want the "clean slate" of fresh data/SEO and the ever-so-slight-anonymity of "newness."
3) Related to #2... because of the small successes of my first releases (the most recent of which came out 12 years ago), the music discovery algorithms on spotify, etc are not delivering my actual recent music to relevant audiences I don't think. While I believe artists should have the ability to fearlessly grow and shift directions and keep their history, I don't feel this has worked out favorably for me.
4) In addition to the general professional ease of starting over from scratch with the knowledge I've gleaned from the last 15+ years in the biz, I simply want a fresh start on an emotional/psychological level. I have a clearer vision for who I am and how I want to serve others. The Lex Land of, say, 2004-2012 was a very different person, and it would be difficult to stand on stage and lament (in song) outdated dreams and perceived wrongs with the perspective and experience I have now. So, frankly, many of those songs are dead to me anyway. Those that I still like can be permanently migrated to the catalogues of my other two projects very easily. I felt it was time to give my more recent works the breath of life and attention they deserve. I want to follow my bliss, and pursue my love of traditional music unencumbered by the angst and blunders of my youth.
Fortunately, my vision for the future of my primary project has been warmly received by those with whom I've shared this so far, and I've been spending the last several weeks making the transition.
Besides the strange timeline-jump feeling of seeing some older release artwork with the new name (and how incredibly awkward it will be for me to navigate IRL), not much will change. The name of the current project will just be different, and the pop/acoustic/rock? albums from 2008-2012 will serve as the entire catalogue for Lex Land.
Allow Me to Introduce: Holly Frost
I know, not super exciting to just change a name from one thing seemingly arbitrarily to another, but because 99% of the time I perform live by myself, to me the clear direction had to be something that sounded like a woman's name.
This name had to meet other conditions: be easy to say/hear, easy to spell correctly, not be in current use by another musician/influencer/creator, have a friendly vibe, and, if at all possible, sound "vintage-y" while pertaining to something that I actually care about. This is the only time I'm going to change the name of this project, so for it to be truly meaningful, it was crucial that it have some personal significance.
Thus, Holly Frost was born. Derived from two family names on my paternal side, "Holland," and "Frost," it connects me to my ancestry as well as the only thing I care deeply about that feels timeless and bigger than just me: Christmas. No, not in the religious literal sense of the birth of Christ... but the warmth of the presence of friends/family, the excitement of joy and celebration, the renewal of a year and a fresh start, the annual check-in of gratitude, and the opportunity we are afforded to be fully present in the moment. Christmas (and the whole grouping of Q4 holidays) means all that and more to me. Considering it was also the day I was born, this felt right.
The part of me that wants to be light, that wants to make people laugh and have fun, that wants to help people learn to love and accept themselves, and find the good in others: that is what I want Holly Frost to represent, and by becoming, help nurture in myself.
Basically I want to be a musical, slightly younger, and hip Mrs. Claus. Is that too much to ask? 😜
What’s Next?
As previously mentioned, I'm in the process of transitioning the more recent Lex Land releases (everything after and including A Valentine EP) to attribute them to Holly Frost. (This can supposedly be done but processing of these things takes time, so we'll see.)
Some of the Lex Land social accounts will be reappropriated for and renamed to Love Letter Music or Love Letter Records (the label name under which I've been releasing the OBDR, MH, and LL albums, singles, and EPs since 2017). That way, if anyone wants to kinda know about what I'm doing, they can without following me to a new account. There may be exceptions to this based on use-case and upload/posting history.
Twitch is the one place where I will just switch the name (so that we don't have to go through the affiliation process again). That is happening today, so that, tomorrow, when I go live (if all goes according to plan) we will be officially in the new Holly Frost era!
Our community forum/Discord Server has already been renamed to "Love Letter Music," and I'll be changing my personal profile handle to lovelettermusic on Discord, just FYI.
Who am I?
Also as previously mentioned, the IRL/relational aspects of this will be the weirdest. I know what I'm about to say might make me sound like a total tool, but it's bound to come up... you might wonder how to refer to me going forward. I think the easiest thing will be to just consider "Holly" my name, at least in all Holly Frost instances. If that's too weird for you or you're not sure, feel free to use "LL" (Lex Land/Love Letter). Of course if you see me in person at the store, Lex is fine. But if you're introducing me to a booking agent at a social mixer, for instance, please use "Holly." This will be really strange for me because I'm so used to using my name as my name, but many artists use pseudonyms so I'm sure I, and we, will get used to it eventually. I’m going to continue to sign off the Vault transmissions as “LL,” since not everything I post to The Vault will be Holly-Frost-related.
The Vault Status
The Vault will remain the same (as the creative hub for all three projects) for now, and I do intend to keep releasing 1-3 pieces of content each month. (Part of the recent slowing has been a hesitance to publicly release anything new under the Lex Land moniker knowing the name change was coming. Now that this has gotten to a point of resolution I can forge ahead.)
In the coming months I will have to change the language within The Vault to *The Love Letter Vault* (or something similar) to make it less confusing, but I've got tons of work to do before I get there. You will be made aware of any updates or changes before they happen.
My Vault-focus for the foreseeable future includes: (1) catching up on the monthly cover releases for 2023 (2) getting ahead on the monthly cover releases (3) writing and posting new original songs including your prompts on a monthly basis whenever possible (apparently I only missed April so far this year, so I'm doing better than I thought!) (4) doing some much needed maintenance/upkeep on the platform/administrative side of things.
The Lex Land website (where The Vault is hosted) will remain for now, though I will eventually need to migrate it to a lovelettermusic.com site area so there isn't a lexlandmusic.com web domain still around.
Because of all that needs to be done, and the LL>HF name change, I will not be actively trying to get new members into the Vault until all of the above is more settled. The timeline goal for that settling is by or before September, so that whatever this year's version of 7 Songs in 7 Days(/Annual Pledge Drive) is successful, or at least productive.
The immediate future + community events:
I'll be re-introducing myself as Holly Frost tomorrow to Twitch for a good-old-fashioned Crooner Coffee Hour on the newly named HollyFrostSwings channel. (No Facebook, just to clarify.)
Because I have also been redoing ALLLLL the stream/recording tech/setup while I've been working on rebranding myself, I thought it could be good for me to do a little bootcamp over the next week or so. Just to get re-acclimated to the streamer lifestyle and work out the kinks... in my mind I've been calling it "Kink Week" though was reluctant to tell you I was calling it that, you sickos 😜
If you want to come check out the new vibes and space, I hope you'll come join me for one of the near-daily "Crooner Coffee Hour" style streams on Twitch over the next several mornings. (I'm shooting for 12P-1P EST starting tomorrow, running through at least next Wednesday 6/14.)
Additionally, I'm bringing back the recurring Disney Night to the hollyfrostswings channel, starting this coming Monday 6/12 at 8p ET.
Our June One Big Dark Room livestream event is also around the corner, the night of Wednesday 6/14 at 8P ET.
The June new original song is already written, I just have to carve out a little time to record and post it. Hopefully I can get it to you by Wednesday!
Thank you for your support as I've been trying to make sense of what to do next while rolling with the changes of this ever-shifting industry and natural phases of life.
I'm super re-energized now that I've turned the tide on this and am excited for what new experiences lie ahead. Thank you for traveling with me.
❤️LL
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