By Julia Duggan
Senior Staff Writer
A green guitar and a microphone is all you need. It might help to have a favorite spot where you live where you feel most comfortable recording and just making music. This is what one rising song writer does after being featured on WSTR, the College’s radio station.
Julia Landi is a sophomore english major and one of the Assistant Directors for WTSR. Landi has a passion for music and guitar.
“I wish I got to work with her more this past year,” said Bess Jones, a junior biology major and chemistry and deaf studies double minor. Jones is the other Assistant Director of WTSR. “She is an awesome person to work with, really responsible and hard working, but she is also a really fun person to work with. Working with her for music staff was always really great, she knows so much about different music and different artists.”
Landi is known in the WTSR community for having a passion for writing songs as well as just listening to music.
“I have listened to Julia’s songs!” Olivia Boute said, a sophomore applied mathematics major. “Currently we have three of her songs in the station which are occasionally aired. The three songs are ‘Collision,’ ‘Drive’ and ‘Performer/waitress.’ They were first aired on World College Radio Day which was on October 2, 2020.”
Landi was first introduced to WTSR when she officially stated she would be attending the College but had not started her first semester yet. As soon as she was introduced to WTSR Landi knew she had to join.
“50% of my personality is playing guitar, but yeah I play with acoustic and electric and I also like writing songs,” Landi said.
In a radio interview that was done by WTSR when Landi’s music was featured, she said her inspiration comes from dreams and storytelling. She starts by playing chords on her guitar, and when she finds combinations that she likes, she writes them down and then finds the lyrics to go along.
“I think dream-related imagery is a cool and fun thing to work with just in writing in general,” Landi said in the interview conducted by WTSR. “So I just started from there and just figured out what I could tell with that starting image of seeing someone in a dream.”
Originally when Landi applied to the College, she started off as an engineering major. She explained that she enjoyed the STEM program her high school had, but when she started taking classes on it in college, she realized she liked writing much more than being in a lab.
“I really like writing,” Landi said. “I have when I was little and I realized like when I got to college, there is a lot more you can do with humanities besides teaching,” Landi said.
Landi credits her english major as part of her inspiration for writing songs. She thinks it is partly due to having a strong background in telling stories that it highly influences her music.
“(Landi) is someone who is very easy to work with and puts a lot of effort into her work,” Boute said. “One of the last big projects that we worked on was creating new guidelines for reviewing and automating the new music that came into the station. This seemed challenging at first because everything is now remote because of Covid, but we worked together over Zoom and Google and completed the project relatively quickly.”
While writing songs is only a hobby, Landi does hope to someday play on stage with a band or maybe release an album. In the meantime she will continue to play her guitar and will continue to enjoy herself.
“Julia is hardworking, kind, and overall just a great person to work with and be around,” Boute said.
