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[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:09] Robert Bannon: Well, welcome to The Roundtable, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon. You're listening to us on Broadway World over here on the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart, Spotify, wherever artists are talking about art. Okay, don't judge people. I did not see The Devil Wears Prada 2 yet. Yet. Okay? I was the end of the school year. I teach. But I heard the soundtrack. Okay. And I know our next guest is singing and writing. And you know where I am right now? I'm in Detroit, Michigan. Hello, Michigan. Uh-oh. Mira is from, I don't know. I'm not from here. So I don't know what y'all do with the hand. Y'all say like, I live over here and here and here and I'm over here. Well, she's a superstar that you need to know. You need to stream her music. Her EP is coming out. We're going to talk all about it. Welcome to The Roundtable. Thanks for being here.

[0:54] Mira Housey: Thanks for having me.

[0:59] Robert Bannon: Okay. So where in the hand are you from?

[1:01] Mira Housey: So I'm right here. So Metro Detroit area. Metro. And I live right on seven mile in, in the city. So when you come home, Coney Dog's on me. So we have this incredible, incredible project that you have coming out and you have had quite the year, ma'am.

[1:13] Mira Housey: Thank you. Thank you. It's been a whirlwind. I'm very excited.

[1:20] Robert Bannon: How do you feel? When did you first discover you could sing?

[1:26] Mira Housey: I would say it was pretty early. I started as a classical pianist and I was doing that from the age of three on and I was doing competitions and the whole thing starting at seven. So piano was really my main thing. And then I started songwriting in high school. I would write what I call me songs, which were basically just diary entries that I turned into songs. And that was how the singing just kind of naturally started.

[1:54] Robert Bannon: Was there a moment when you realized that you wanted this to be your career? Cause it's one thing to say, I take piano lessons. I sing at school. I sing at the school play or in the concert, and then it's, I'm going to take the step to make this my profession and I'm going to make a living. I'm going to make it a go. When did you decide that that was the step you were going to take?

[2:13] Mira Housey: Since I was a kid and it wasn't like a conscious, oh, I'm going to turn this into a business. It was more just, this is the thing I do. And this is the thing I'm going to do forever. And then as I got older, the steps for taking that became more clear, but yeah, I kind of always knew.

[2:36] Robert Bannon: I love how your career has been, because what I like about your history is that there's one thing about everyone sees what's on stage. They see you on stage. You just came back from tour in Europe and all around the world. They're going to listen to the EP, which is incredible. We're going to talk about in a minute, but when you went to school, you didn't go blue at university of Michigan. You did not study vocals. You didn't study piano. You studied engineering, like people who study music, business, music engineering. There's so much more to it than just your God-given talent. There's a business and a whole other aspect of it. Why'd you go into that as your major?

[3:06] Mira Housey: So originally I was going to do piano performance, but I switched into the production and engineering because I thought it was a more viable long-term. Like I could see that it would, everything leads back to that and it would give me more options. And if I could learn how to produce and how to create my songs from scratch myself, then I could apply that anywhere to any medium, whether it be film scoring or writing for other artists or yeah. And then the business side, I supplemented just so I could get more of an understanding on, you know, the administrative stuff behind the scenes.

[4:00] Robert Bannon: Absolutely. Well, if you go to Spotify right now and you see the hundred plus thousand monthly listeners and the thousands and thousands of people who follow you on TikTok and on social media, millions, your first single and the career has been really fun to watch your debut single. Hold the applause was a huge hit charted on iTunes. And what's it like when you put out a song, your debut single, and you see it resonate, you see it start to chart. You see people start to sing along and make videos to your work.

[4:24] Mira Housey: It doesn't feel real, to be honest. It still seems like this separate far away thing. And I don't think it really clicked until tour started and people were singing lyrics along with me and screaming in the front row and recognizing me. That was a surreal moment for sure. And then I was like, oh my gosh, these songs are bigger than me now. And I love that. They're yours now.

[4:47] Robert Bannon: Here we go. Well, I love it. The EP is called Mirror. It is out right now. You could be streaming, you can be listening to it. It's a story of falling in love with life again. You wrote it, you recorded it and you produced it. So what inspired you? Why this story? What was going on when you took the pencil to the paper and wrote it?

[5:02] Mira Housey: I had just moved to New York and I was starting a fresh life essentially is what it felt like. I had gotten out of a long term relationship. I had been living in L.A. for a few years and New York was always the plan. But I was trying to figure out what I wanted my life to look like because, you know, no relationship, different city, different playing ground, essentially. And I knew I wanted to write this project and I knew the sonic world that it was going to be in. But I wanted to just stop taking it, stop applying rules in general. So I was like, it's just going to be piano. Vocals will be the core of it. And then the production sauce that I'm good at will come naturally. And then in terms of releasing it, I just decided to release it as I was writing it because I wanted it to be as authentic to the story of what was actually happening. So I'd write the song, upload it for release like the next day and then let it just go from there.

[6:54] Robert Bannon: You didn't even give yourself, you're like, you know, you know when people say they shop and they buy something expensive, you should wait 24, 48 hours and think, do you need it? You didn't even give yourself that 48 hours. You felt it in your artistic soul. You put it out there. Do you write from that personal place? Is a lot of your songs, a diary entry, a love letter?

[6:59] Mira Housey: They are. Is it vulnerable? Is it hard to sing it when it's something that's happened in the past?

[7:04] Mira Housey: For sure. It's definitely vulnerable, but it doesn't feel scary to me because being at my piano and writing my songs and producing, that's my turf. That's my home base. So it feels normal. It feels like a safe little bubble that I've created for me to just express whatever's going on and then let it take on a life of its own after.

[7:54] Robert Bannon: Well, Spotify put it on its new music Fridays. It was on the cover of Fresh Vines and Fresh Pie and you had a billboard. Talk about, firstly, people don't move to New York. I grew up in New York for 42 years. I never, not even anyone I know has a billboard in Times Square. That's an entry. Welcome to New York City. Here's Times Square. What does that feel like?

[8:01] Mira Housey: I couldn't believe it when I got the email from my distributor. So what had happened was as I was releasing a song a month, rolling out the EP, they kept picking up more and more and eventually when, I think it was either Sleeping in My Makeup or Butterflies, I think it was Butterflies, when it was around the time that Butterflies came out, my distributor emailed and said, Spotify wants to do a Fresh Vines feature with you since all of your songs have been doing well on their playlists. So yeah, they put it up and it was amazing. I went and saw it with my family. My dad, my parents flew in to come see it. My siblings, everyone wanted to go experience that moment with me. It was very special.

I did not in a million years. And it's funny too because actually I had emailed my distributor months prior and I was asking them, hey, I know artists sometimes do these billboard features with Spotify. How does that work? And he said, you know, when the songs start catching and the time is right, they'll reach out. And then a month later he goes, well, I spoke too soon. It looks like it's happening now. So that was funny to see.

[8:38] Robert Bannon: Look, Spotify people, I have 72 monthly listeners and I want to know, where's my billboard? At least on a good month, I've got 72. Where is my billboard? Where is my, congratulations. That is incredible. So you just came off the road and you're about to be on, you were in the US, you did a bunch of dates here and then you went to Europe and you just finished like literally less than a week ago with Izzy Escobar and the Sunny in London tour. What was tour life like? What is a show like with you?

[9:05] Mira Housey: Oh my gosh. So with the tour, I also play piano in Izzy's band. So I was actually playing two shows a night, my opening set and then Izzy's set, which is actually, it's so fun because I'm mentally switching gears obviously very quickly. You know, when I'm going on stage and I'm performing my set, I'm locked into my world for that 30, 45 minutes. And then I come off stage, I've got like a 10 minute break to do an outfit change and a little mental reset. And then I'm completely absorbing myself into Izzy's world. And I do that for all the artists I write and produce with. I just become part of their world and immerse myself in it. And it feels very natural to do. But it's interesting when I'm switching off so quickly like that every night. And then the adrenaline rise and fall and rise and fall again. But tour has been so fun. Izzy is such a talent and everyone we've been with on the road has been amazing. Tom, Pat, everybody.

[10:09] Robert Bannon: So we're going to hope for more live dates, more tour dates, more tricks up your sleeve about seeing you around the country.

[10:11] Mira Housey: Definitely. I also want to start including the fans more. I started my career doing three word song challenges where I would create a song on the spot using a random prompt from a stranger. And I want to start incorporating that into my live set, especially now that I've gotten a chance to meet with the fans at the merch table or when they stay behind to talk to us. Or sometimes they'll come early, like hours early, just to say hi. And that's always really special. So I want to give something more to them than just that one show.

[10:44] Robert Bannon: When you look at people, when people are there early or you go on social media and people send you a message and they say that a song that you wrote resonated with them, your experience made them feel seen or made them get through a hard time or a breakup or feel more grown or happy or whatever the song makes them feel. Does it make the struggle and the work and the long hours and the life on the road, it has to make it feel worthwhile to be able to touch somebody else?

[11:14] Mira Housey: It is the reason I do it, like genuinely. I feel like a lot of people say that, but they don't know what that really means until they experience it. But I actually struggled a long time with whether or not I should do medicine versus music because I wanted to do something that would tangibly help people. And my dad, who also does medicine, had said something really amazing to me. He said, I give people the ability to live and you give people the will to. And both are equally as important. And I will never forget that. That is my why. That's my reason for doing everything. And I got a message from a girl back when, so after Hold the Applause came out, I put out this piano piece called Unfolding.

And that was actually my biggest viral video I ever had was just this piano piece where I show how I played it two, how I played it four, how I played it six. And the song becomes more and more complicated until the end when it goes back to just being simple again. But it's simple and I'm playing it with emotion this time as opposed to just banging on the keys like I was at two. And I kind of tie it all together. And I had this girl message me saying that she plays the song on loop going through her chemo treatment because it makes her feel better. And that, that took me out. That was it. I was like, if I just touch one person, it will have all been worth it. And I think about her to this day. And I've gotten many messages like that since, but I'll never forget that first one.

[13:04] Robert Bannon: And we're going to put the link, the link to that video below because I think you need to check it out. Plus the link to the EP and all of the work that Mira is doing and follow her on social media as well. Not only do I have 72 Spotify listeners, I also can play at least four chords on the piano. One of them is a G seven and I'm proud of that court.

[13:15] Mira Housey: See, see that face. That's impressed. That's impressed.

[13:22] Robert Bannon: I'm pressed. 72 is still a great, even just one, one person. That's all it takes. You know, you're going to make me hang up and look it up. And if it's below 72, I'm going to be like, come back. Where's my grandparents press play. Please play my song. I love your, your very sweet. And that is true. Everybody out here, it's just the number. Everybody touching one person is all that matters. You are very charitable as well in the sense that you do a lot of things to work for organizations that you're passionate about, like little angel service dogs or St. Joe St. Jude's is like the one of my heart. Why is art and, and, and charity and, and giving back tied together? Why do you think they live in the same space?

[14:03] Mira Housey: Because music is a way for people to feel less alone. It's a, it's a therapy tool. It's therapeutic and it's beautiful and it's art. And I think having that understanding of a community and of not being alone and of prioritizing your own mental health and your happiness in this world is medicine. And I think I want to include versions of that that surround my music outside of just the music, because I think they're the same thing. And I don't think you can really do one without doing the other, right? They're a package deal, you know, like I'm, I'm in this to serve people and to help people and to build community, which means anything that serves people and helps them and builds community would fall under my purpose here. So it kind of feels natural.

[15:03] Robert Bannon: We need that. We need it more than ever. We need community and to be able to come together more than ever. You, you have quite the soundtrack for television and films. If you love Kung Fu Panda or if you love, oh, it's my, it's my show. Come on, Robert, think about it. If you love Home and Away, or if you love All American, or if you love The Devil Wears Prada, see, this is why when you teach fifth grade, you go to Kung Fu Panda instead of The Devil Wears Prada. That was the randomest moment. See, so what is it like when you get a movie placement, a TV placement, or you perform on TV like The Tonight Show?

[15:44] Mira Housey: They're so different. You know, it's, my first major sync placement was All American and I didn't believe it until I was on the couch watching it on TV in front of my eyes. And even still, I was like, is this, is this real or is this just some video someone uploaded with my song? I'm like, what's going on? But it was so cool because it, I could finally see how a song I had written from a certain place was being applied in a real life story setting. And it's funny, you know, I'll listen to songs that I was obsessed with a year, two years ago, and I'm listening to them through a completely different lens based on where I'm at in my life now. And then I'm seeing how my song can do that in a film and TV setting, in whatever story is going on at that moment.

And so that song was used in a breakup scene between Coop and Patience. And it was beautiful to see that come to life in a cinematic way. And it's what sparked me to want to do it all the time. And then, yeah, Devil Wears Prada 2 and Home and Away happened. And that's just been really fun.

[17:01] Robert Bannon: It's pretty, it's pretty awesome. If you, if you've seen the movie, you know the song, you could listen to the song, you could stream the song. The movie is about to be out on Disney Plus. So you can check it out if you missed it, because you're a loser like me and didn't make it this year. It's going to be so exciting. And a lot more, you have more music, I'm sure, up your sleeves, when we're going to expect some new music and some new events and tours and concerts and some stuff coming up for the rest of this year and next year.

[17:27] Mira Housey: Yeah, I do. I'm opening for the morning of in September in New York. So that'll be really fun. It's actually already sold out. I'm very excited about and then Izzy and I are going to Austin City Limits in October. So we'll be there. And I definitely have some more things up my sleeve in terms of live performances. But that's all I can say for now.

[17:49] Robert Bannon: Okay. And then in terms of upcoming music, I'm doing the follow up project to Mirror. So I'm almost done with it. And that'll be rolling out in the fall.

[18:01] Robert Bannon: That means we have to follow you on social media to stay up to date. And then we got to put you as one of our favorite artists, wherever you stream music, make sure you add her. Or if you find a song that you love, send it to somebody you love. That's my favorite thing. I send it to my husband. I'll find a song that Mira likes and I'll say, I'm thinking about you. Put it in a playlist together and share it with somebody so you can discover new music together. I think it's a beautiful way to have something to talk about at dinner tonight.

[18:30] Mira Housey: It's such an honor. You're going to be a super giant superstar. Your music is going to touch so many people. This is only the beginning. And I can't wait till you're too famous to remember me and never come back on the show because you'll be so booked touring the world as a superstar because it's going to happen. That's what's happening. Get ready.

[18:45] Mira Housey: Very kind.

[18:47] Robert Bannon: Congratulations.

[18:48] Mira Housey: Thank you. Even the fact that I could just touch one person with my music was amazing. And the fact that I've impacted you as well, really, it really means a lot. Thank you for taking the time.

[18:59] Robert Bannon: My show's your show. I'm so excited for you. Congratulations. EP Mirror is out right now. You can listen to it wherever music is heard. And check out her on the soundtrack for The Devil Wears Prada 2 with some new people like up and comers. Maybe she'll have a big, giant career too, Mira. You never know, Mira. She could be lit.

[19:19] Mira Housey: Yeah, I think I've heard of her maybe once.

[19:21] Robert Bannon: I think maybe. I'll see you around Detroit when you come home. Thanks for being here.

[19:25] Mira Housey: Yes, I would love that.

[19:27] Robert Bannon: Much love.