Sisters in Song: An Introduction to Eloise Rixey, Monica James, Ella Choi, Ella Molsee, Rocky LeRoe, and special guests

The Sisters in Song poster, designed by Annie McNamara

On Sunday, March 29, Sisters in Song, presented by River & Row Management, will be taking over the Exit/In. All performers are Belmont University students and alum, and I had the honor of talking to them. Here’s what to expect when you show up this weekend!

First and foremost, a unifying sense of community. You’re never going to be bored; all the girls complement each other in terms of music, personality, and of course, homophones (they compliment each other too.) "Sisters in Song" could not describe them better.

Allow me to introduce them!

Eloise Rixey

Eloise Rixey, photo by Zeni Barrett.

Eloise Rixey is straight out an indie-downtown-girl-cottagecore Pinterest board. 

Hailing from St. Augustine, Florida, Eloise’s artistry prior to college was heavily influenced by participation in festivals such as the Gamble Rogers Folk Festival, “There's all these huge headline artists, but at night, we're all around the campfire, and they all want to hear what you have to say… ‘Let me play with you, let me do this.’… Everybody just wants to be in it.” This sense of community drives Eloise into a desire to cultivate it further. As a musician deaf on one side of her head, she wants to open herself to the community of deaf musicians.

Speaking toward her recent work, “A lot of what's going on in the world makes me feel kind of hopeless… I've really been inspired by John Prine… and Joni Mitchell, and Joan Baez… [they’re] incredible at writing for change… without [only] saying, ‘This is happening, and I don't like it.’” In an acoustic version of an original song posted on Instagram reels addressing the current ICE raids, Eloise sings, “Tiny minds with big, big guns, they’re firing like it’s all good fun, these ice-cold winds”.

Going into Sisters in Song, her intention is to give her older work a resting place as she launches into a new place in her career. Special guest Jael Woolfolk, who was friends with Eloise before being her bandmate, describes her as positive and supportive. I would add “grounded”. Eloise explains, “The best kind of advice I've gotten… is to live each day like you already have [your dream].” She already has her dream, in a way, by being a singer/songwriter learning about the music industry in college. Thus, she’s excited to pace herself and enjoy the journey. The next stops on her journey include this year's Gamble Rogers Folk Festival, new releases, more collaboration, and hopes of playing around the country over the summer.

Read more about Eloise here.

Monica James

Monica James, photo by Taryn Cunningham.

Americana singer/songwriter Monica James just wants to have fun. Cue “My Fun” by Suki Waterhouse, a song Monica jokes is “fundamentally about me”.

The first artist signed to River & Row Management, Monica had been performing in the Midwest for years before moving to Nashville last year. Taking advantage of the newfound creative world in “Music City”, Monica recently started working with a band and is learning artistry through a whole new lens, “I've had to learn how my songs translate to a full band context.” This has helped her expand past genre boxes (“Americana” is simply a general descriptor of her work), considering everyone in her band is musically experimental. Monica takes her explorational inspiration from Joni Mitchell and Brandi Carlile. Of the former, she particularly notes, “Joni [has] always done what she wanted to do, even if it didn't sell or was not commercial.”

Monica describes her set in Sisters in Song as upbeat. She equates the journey through her setlist to a day spent in Pentwater, Michigan. In this beach town, there are numerous settings for activities – from the forest to festive shops to the beach – and they all have different energies but share the same general vibe of an uppity beach town.

Special guest fiddler Lilly Martin (who you may know from her viral “trapgrass” fiddle solo) says of the song she will be joining Monica onstage for, “It’s such a tragic song in the best way… It’s [stripped instrumentally] so there’s a lot of space to work with. [Monica] and everyone in her band are so talented.”

Read more about Monica here.

Ella Choi

Ella Choi after winning Showcase, photo by other winner, Ella Gibson.

Describing herself as a folk singer/songwriter, Ella Choi’s genre wouldn’t exist without community, which is a pillar of sisterhood.

Ella’s latest accomplishment was winning Belmont University's Writer’s Showcase alongside roommate Ella Gibson. Everyone in this particular showcase was female, and they all knew each other prior to the show, be it through internships, the songwriting program, or by being Ella’s RA. She reminisces on the exciting day, “It was just so much fun to get to hang out with that group of girls… [it was wonderful to play] songs backstage and hear their music.” She feels a similar way about the girls in Sisters in Song and is elated for the show.

One of the songs she plans to sing, “Blind Man”, discusses the US political scene. It was one of the songs she played at Writer's Showcase that helped her win. The US is a complicated place to speak your mind recently, which brings her some doubts when playing the song, but she explains, “It's truthful. It's how I feel. It's not a crazy statement to make that people should be moral.” The song will be released soon, as will a recent song she posted with Phoebe Merrill that did well on Instagram.

Special guest Kelly Jean Carter says of working with Ella on the song they’ll be playing together, titled “You’ll Miss Me”, “[She] is so easy to work with… I was telling Ella about a lady from my home church who hitchhiked up to Woodstock in 1969. That story made her think of a license plate she saw once that read ‘Miss Me Maine.’ From there, we wrote the first chorus to our song, and the rest followed soon after!” Lilly Martin will also be featured in Ella’s set, playing the fiddle.

Ella Molsee

Ella Molsee, photo by Linnea Dobay.

“We have to be in real life together”, indie folk-rock singer/songwriter Ella Molsee says of humans.

Inspired by Phoebe Bridgers, Adrianne Lenker and Lizzy McAlpine, Ella got through her teen years seeking solace in music. A formative experience for her was that of Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher Tour at Washington state’s Marymoor Park in her senior year of high school, “I was maybe four rows from the front… [I loved] the way she commanded the stage, and how she was so herself… [I was] crying because I loved her music so much… And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to do this. I need to be up there and singing songs.’”

Ella’s own live performances are important to her after years of observing how the media’s perception of music has been warped by the deceivingly inauthentic online world. She describes social media saying, “It's a great bridge, but you have to walk across the bridge and get to real life.” Her steps across this bridge have been rewarding as she anticipates her upcoming EP Unsaid Truths, out April 17, “I started writing [it] my first semester at Belmont, so it's been a long time coming. We've been working on it diligently, and I'm just really excited to get to share it with people [and] for [my songs] to be able to [connect people] now that they're out in the world.”

She hopes to bring this feeling to the Exit/In. Describing her set, she says, “[It’s] a little bit of Bob Dylan goes electric at Newport Folk Festival.” This precedes tour in April, in which she will be playing bass and other instruments with Belmont University alum Jake Smith of Smitty. They will be touring through the Southeast as the opening act for Benji Norman.

Rocky LeRoe

Rocky LeRoe, photo by Lara Blizzard.

“If you're gonna put me as a closer, I'm gonna bring the house down,” rock singer/songwriter Rocky LeRoe says of her set at Sisters in Song.

Releasing her debut album Tambourine last April and residing in Nashville after graduating from Belmont University in December, Rocky is “trying to keep the spirit of the 70s alive in a country city in an indie world”. Her debut album catalogs her first four years of adulthood, consisting of “moving out of the Midwest and chasing a dream, a love interest, and battling with self-worth, while trying to find peace through all of the change”.

Such peace is found through concerts. “It's so hard to really feel full, [valid, and seen,] and music is such a clear path for people to find themselves in somebody else's words,” Rocky explains. The feeling applies to both the artist and the fan. Rocky speaks of her performance in Belmont’s Rock Showcase this past autumn, “The opportunity to be… a very professional artist thrown into the clockwork of the industry [in such a way]… felt so real. I got to perform in front of 1200 people and get real feedback from industry professionals. It gave my band the opportunity to do our thing [officially].” Rocky recalls having felt starstruck watching Showcases in her earlier years at Belmont. Many Belmont students could say the same about how they felt watching her. It’s safe to say that Rocky will have you leaving Sisters in Song excited about the world. 

You can purchase tickets to Sisters in Song on March 29 at the Exit/In here.