Tell Me Más: Meet Puerto Rican Indie Artist Neysa Blay

When indie rock musician Neysa Blay sat down to begin writing songs for her new album, “Nada es Suficiente,” she discovered herself in an uncommon predicament. She’d been sober for practically a decade at that time, placing appreciable distance between her turbulent previous and the extra placid current. “I’m really good at writing when there’s chaos and noise in my head, and when things are kind of bumpy,” she says. But now she’d overcome so a lot of her inside demons. “How do I learn how to write from a good place?”

The LP, which drops in May, bridges the hole between her innate rebellious spirit and the extra conscientious Blay that has emerged over the previous few years. Previous singles, such because the softer “Te Gusta/Me Gusta” and no-nonsense “Quise Que Fueras Tú,” toggle between susceptible and headstrong; she may be tough, however her coronary heart is undoubtedly open. Her latest observe, “Úsame,” channels Eighties hair steel in its sound and visuals. But to get to the place she is now, the budding rock star needed to survive a tough street.

Raised within the beach-friendly city of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, Blay’s adolescence was marked by an inside tug-of-war between the love she has for her hometown and the constraints it imposed not simply on her profession, however on her as an individual. As an overtly homosexual girl who acknowledged her orientation very early on, she felt hampered by the societal mores of her environment.

“That created a lot of angst because I didn’t understand why. I felt like a part of me had to pretend. The town all of a sudden would become too small for me,” she shares. As time handed and he or she grew into her teenage years, the colours of Cabo Rojo started to tackle a distinct shade. “I remember [being] young, free, happy, fulfilled, and then I started growing up. [And a] sense of doom started falling in,” Blay provides.

Her solely respite then was music, which she started to discover between the ages of 8 and 10 after seeing college students who had been taking music courses out of an workplace house her father rented to a neighborhood music academy. From there she started to take guitar and singing classes, which did not shock her mother and father who seen throughout her youthful years that she had a knack for track.

“[They] would play a lot of boleros, and I would love that music,” she recollects. “They’d hear me singing along and they’d be like: ‘There’s so much passion there. There’s so much emotion. You’re not a 40-year-old chasing a married man.'”

As she grew older, the encroaching stress of how she was anticipated to stay her life was starting to push her in direction of unstable areas. As with many individuals who go down the identical path, Blay discovered herself trying to find methods to abate the anxieties that had been overwhelming her. This led to what would change into a years-long stretch of substance abuse that may practically derail her relationship along with her household, with companions, and her profession goals.

For practically seven years, Blay spiraled by a life nearly solely dominated by excessive drug and alcohol use. She moved to San Juan, the place she discovered herself in circles that immediately and not directly inspired her way of life. She would try and lean into her music however discovered herself unable to.

“Because of my addiction, I wasn’t functional, so I couldn’t do gigs. I wouldn’t show up. I would miss a lot of opportunities,” she says. She admits to crafting unreasonable concepts about tips on how to change into a working artist — concepts spurred by the results of her vices. “I had a very distorted idea of what [pursuing music] would look like. I thought I could be singing while pumping gas and somebody would discover me. I had a very romanticized fantasy vision of how you do this.”

Eventually, she hit what she refers to as her “ultimate emotional bottom”.

“I was very broken. I lost everything. I couldn’t keep a job . . . My parents had just kicked me out of the house, and they had stopped any financial help,” she says, including how she had additionally simply gone by a breakup as properly.

That Christmas she was invited over to her dad or mum’s house, the place she was given an possibility: enroll in a wilderness remedy program and attempt to overcome her addictions. Wilderness remedy is a remedy possibility for folks combating behavioral issues, substance abuse, and different psychological well being points that require sufferers to spend time outdoor with friends. As Blay tells it, she felt “beat” at this level in her life, and accepted, deciding she had nothing else to lose. “That was a Thursday. Saturday, I was flying out.”

She acknowledges what stage of the habit cycle she was in presently, and the way tough it was for her family members to get her there. “Dealing with an addict, it’s like you can’t save them, you can’t rescue them. But when the time is appropriate, you got to let them hit that bottom,” she displays. “If you take a person that’s unwilling into treatment, [the help is] going to go in this way and out this way. You don’t want to get better, and you kind of have to want it for yourself.”

Looking again, Blay credit wilderness remedy with saving her life. As against rehab, which she says can typically be “cushy,” wilderness remedy is an out of doors program of intense actions for folks affected by behavioral issues and substance abuse that embody mountain climbing, tenting, and extra, with the objective of “enhancing personal and interpersonal growth.”

“They broke me and then built me back up,” she confesses. “When you go in they don’t tell you when you leave, which is different from treatment because when you go to treatment, you’re like, ‘I’m going to do 30 days,’ and you’re already one foot in, one foot out . . . Here [there’s] no future information. I don’t know when I’m getting out. I don’t know what we’re doing today. I don’t know where we’re hiking today. And that really helped release a sense of control of my life.”

After three and half months, she was lastly deemed prepared to depart this system. From there, she spent one other three months at a remedy heart in Chicago, to underline the progress she had made. Eventually, the day got here when she was informed she might relocate to wherever she wished. “I’m already thinking in my head, what do you really want to do? Music. Music has always been in the background. Music has always been the priority,” she says.

She satisfied her mother and father to belief her to maneuver to Miami, regardless of it being as they referred to as it, the “cocaine capital.” Initially residing in a remedy heart adopted by a midway home, Blay quickly discovered herself in her personal condominium, with a job, going again to high school, and getting round with a scooter.

“I was pretty much learning how to be a person; how to be a normal, functioning human being. And I think it was one of the greatest experiences,” she says.

In 2017, she linked with Sam Allison, an engineer on the iconic Criteria Recording Studios, and recorded “Veneno,” her first official single. That track made its approach to skilled producer Marthin Chan, who turned a fan and produced her debut EP, “Destrúyeme.”

Songwriting and dealing on her craft whereas sober opened up a wholly new world of potentialities for Blay, who says “All of a sudden I was able to finish things, and not stop because anxiety was too crippling.”

Not too way back, she selected to maneuver again to Puerto Rico, settling again in Cabo Rojo. She jokingly referred to it as “returning to the scene of the crime.” But there have been earnest causes behind the choice as properly. Her relationship along with her mother and father had grown stronger and extra accepting since they noticed how a lot she’d grown within the final decade and even embraced her new companion as properly.

But for Blay, there was one other, deeper cause: “I wanted to tackle the sense of not belonging, to tackle the feeling of, as a lesbian, I’m not welcomed and loved in the community. I wanted to tackle all of the negatives. I wanted to take that narrative, change it, and own it,” she says. “I wanted to create new memories. I came with a mission of reclaiming Cabo Rojo for myself.” Her first gig after shifting again? Onstage at Cabo Rojo’s Pride celebration, along with her father in attendance supporting her.

Before that was a inventive sojourn to Mexico City, the place she teamed up with producer Felipe “Pipe” Ceballos and cooked up “Nada es Suficiente.” Making this album, years into sobriety, was a studying expertise. She realized the best way she accessed and channeled her feelings had modified significantly. Where she as soon as wrote from a spot of a chaotic mindset and “spitting fucking venom,” she now approached the identical situations from a contemplative, self-reflective angle.

“I think that’s been one of the biggest changes in sobriety in terms of creativity,” she says. “I’ve grown and I’m also allowing my songwriting to grow along with me to come along on this journey of being a good person.”

Juggling the duty of sustaining her sobriety whereas additionally working by the anxieties of being an impartial artist, with out the privilege of self-medicating, has led Blay to include new instruments she hopes to share with others. She’s a proponent of DBT, or dialectical behavioral methods, which permit her to face anxiousness in more healthy methods.

“There’s simple stuff like realizing when you’re anxious and how it’s manifesting, and taking ownership of it by self-soothing. Self-soothing can be taking a nice hot bath for 10 minutes. It can be some breathing exercises,” she shares. “And then there’s… radical acceptance, [which] is when you have to accept that things aren’t under your control. And I love the word radical. Because it is. It’s just, ‘Shut the fuck up. You’re not in control. You have to accept that this is the way that things are. You can either cope with it, accept them, or you can just spend the whole day trying to fight something you can’t.'”

It’s a rule that sums up her journey up to now—one which led her to emerge from darkness and now factors her on the trail towards making her longtime goals a actuality.

“With time, what I have learned is that whenever I’m feeling anxious or fearful, that’s the direction I have to run towards. Right now in my life, I see the anxiety and I’m like, ‘Buckle up, Blay says. “That’s the place we received to go.’ Like, ‘Oh, that is terrifying. I’ve a number of anxiousness.’ Okay, hold fucking going. This is the place it’s essential to be.”

POPSUGAR: First celebrity crush?

Neysa Blay: Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” 💖

POPSUGAR: Favorite mocktail?

Neysa Blay: Ginger beer, lime juice, mint leaves and soda water

POPSUGAR: Favorite beach in Puerto Rico?

Neysa Blay: Playa Buyé on a weekday at 9 a.m.

POPSUGAR: Three artists you have on repeat right now?

Neysa Blay: A very gay playlist: Charli XCX, Troye Sivan, and Slayyyter

POPSUGAR: Favorite mantra?

Neysa Blay: “If they will do it, so can I.”

POPSUGAR: Favorite guitar?

Neysa Blay: Gibson SG (played by Angus Young)

POPSUGAR: Dream collaboration?

Neysa Blay: Marilina Bertoldi