Meija Questions the Existential and Inspiring Moments of Reality in His Debut Album 'Do Ya?'
Conveying an invigorating wavelength through his sonic landscape, Los Angeles-based producer and musician Jamie Sierota captures the obscure and curious fragments of reality in his debut album Do Ya? Released on March 3rd, the album is the product of Sierota’s desire to expand his craft with a longer project. Dabbling in the storylines of relationships and introspection, the album traverses through a perception of self and our connection with the world around us. Under the moniker Meija, Sieorta invites us to question our immediate surroundings through bright acoustics and layered production.
Do Ya? is a vivid representation of Sierota’s development of his solo project Meija over the past few years. In regards to the album he states that “I felt like it was the album I always wanted to make as a kid. I went and put a lot of my heart into it.”
In a conversation with Unpublished Magazine, Sierota dove into the inspirations behind Do Ya?, ranging from walking along dormant volcanoes to reflecting on the consumption of music during the pandemic. Finding his happy place at home in the studio, Sierota is excited about the future of Meija.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today – how’s your day? How’s 2023 been treating you so far?
[MEIJA]: The year's been good so far. Today in particular is great. It's been raining a bunch, but it's a nice sunny day before it rains again here in LA. But yeah, this year has been great. It's been going by fast, my album came out March 3rd. So, the new year came and then all of the sudden, March was here the next thing I knew.
[UNPUBLISHED]: So you released your first EP about four years ago in 2019 and now your debut album Do Ya? Is out. Can you tell us about what you’ve learned as an artist in the past few years?
[MEIJA]: It's been a really great process for me to put out this music because when I was putting out that first EP, there weren't really a lot of expectations of what the project needed to be. I was working with a bunch of other artists as a producer and then I had all these songs and ideas that felt like they just didn't really work for other artist's projects. So, that's kind of where the whole Meija idea came from. So, I just started putting out the music and pretty quickly, it started to find its own audience and built its own little world around it. It's been really cool to keep putting out music with a fan base now that's been growing and has been wanting more music. And musically too, it's been really cool that for this album, I felt creatively like I was in the space where I wanted to tackle a bigger project, where I've just done EPs before. You know, through COVID times and being locked in my house and listening to a bunch of records, I was listening to all these vinyls. I came out of that wanting to do that myself and that's sort of where this desire to make a whole album came from. I was just consuming music that way a lot more than I was before and I decided I want to try it for my project.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How has the response been to Do Ya?
[MEIJA]: It's been really cool. We've done this thing where we put out a lot of singles to get people acquainted with the music and really tried to build up a thing before the album actually came out. So, it's been a really interesting process to see how people slowly have had the album given out to them. But, then also now consuming as a whole project because it was recorded from start to finish, it was made to be this way from the very beginning. People were really excited about getting to take it in as a whole project. It's the first body of work that I've done that's been ten songs. I have had EPs, which are pretty easy to consume pretty quickly. So, it's been really cool for artists to put out the music that way. I have songs on the record that I maybe wouldn't have put out as a single before. Inevitably the way music is put out now, they were put out as singles. But, because I was tackling a whole album, I explored some places that I maybe wouldn't have gone to if I was just doing four or five songs.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How was the release party for the album?
[MEIJA]: The party was great. We brought the artwork for the album which was a physical painting. So, it's a pretty big piece that we got to bring in and display. We also brought this wall that was from a music video that I got to take back with me too. So, we loaded up a truck and brought that to the venue and we played a couple songs and had a bunch of wine and had some tote bags that we were giving away for free. It’s a really great thing, a lot of friends and fans got to come and just hang out. Really casual; but, it felt like the way to welcome in a new period of life.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you tell us about some of the inspirations behind the album? What are some overarching themes and feelings you were hoping to evoke?
[MEIJA]: So, the album's called Do Ya?, which I really love the idea of calling the album a question. Do Ya? kind of invites this idea of questioning the things that we think we know or the things we need or even who we think we are sometimes. I think that it's a really healthy thing to do as a person to kind of like readdress, and re-look at your life and think about what are the things I'm doing? Why am I doing them? That was really a common theme through a lot of the songs through the album with "Do Ya?" specifically being the title track. But that was an idea that I really wanted to carry through whether the songs were talking about love, were talking about depression or talking about trying to figure out where to go in life. It was all with this idea of stepping back, looking at your life, realizing you can't control a lot of things, and really focusing on the small moments and taking advantage of the things you can.
[UNPUBLISHED]: If someone were to listen to your music for the first time, what song would you recommend they hear first?
[MEIJA]: That's always hard as an artist because you're like, "oh, just listen to the whole thing." But also, that's the way things go, sometimes it's not always the case. I mean, "Do Ya?" is a really fun track. It being the title track, I feel like it puts together a lot of these ideas that are talked about through the whole album. So, I feel like that's a really cool place to start. But really, I feel really proud of all the songs in the album. If someone randomly found any of them, I think it's still a good representation of where the project is at as a whole.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What does your creative process look like? Is there a specific track that took you out of your creative comfort zone?
[MEIJA]: I'm definitely a person who needs to mix things up creatively, constantly. I get really excited by trying new things and I think creatively, I've always been that way. That's why I love collaborating with other artists as a producer because it's bringing in someone else's perspective. For this project, I kind of wanted to do it differently where I brought in a bunch of musicians, which I don't always do because I technically can play a lot of things. But, I think for this project, I really just wanted to make it a really communal thing where I just had a bunch of friends come in and play. So, that was a really big change in the way I did this record because a lot of it was a live track here in my studio with just a bunch of friends. So, it's kind of getting back to basics of jamming out, like what I did when I was first playing music.
Also there's a song on there – "Time for Us," which is actually the first time I ever did a song fully acapella. I'm a guitar player, so I'm usually always writing with chords. And for this song, I wrote this when I was shooting another video for my last project. We did a location at this dormant volcano north of Palm Springs, it was like a mile long hike coming back to our car. And it's super windy, so you can't really talk to anybody either, you just kind of had to zone out and take in this crazy landscape. So, I had this idea I was thinking about at the time, thinking of a long term relationship and just on that hike, I wrote this whole song lyrically and had all these little voice memos of me getting it because I didn't have a guitar with me. That was the first time that I did that, it pushed me to write in a different way. Then going to finish it, it was really interesting because I always started with the chords. I had to then find chords and things to play around the song that was already written, which was an experience I never had and I wrote a song that I wouldn't have come across if I just played an instrument.
[UNPUBLISHED]: That’s awesome, sometimes changing your scenery can be one of the most inspirational things.
[MEIJA]: I'm a big believer in stepping away from things. When I feel creatively stuck, I'll try and push but if it's not there, it's not there. And a lot of times when I'll go on a walk with my dog or I'm just doing something completely different, it'll click. And I think we just have to distract ourselves to get out of that space and then usually it comes.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did the title track come first or the album name for Do Ya?
[MEIJA]: So I'd written "Do Ya?" and I wasn't necessarily thinking that it was going to be the title track. It was one of the last songs I wrote for the album. I had recorded the whole project before I decided what I wanted to call it. And then you do the thing where you're trying to think of what you call it. It's my first album so it felt higher stakes. I didn't want to do something that felt pretentious. Which sometimes, that can be a thing when you're trying to think of something that feels impactful. I started this idea where I didn't want it to be like a statement. I don't want to feel like I'm telling someone something. And "Do Ya?" is the only one that's like a question. And that theme sort of encompassed the whole project. And again, I didn't want to feel like I'm saying this is how it is. I'm just kind of questioning like, "do you know how it is?"
[UNPUBLISHED]: With this project, you released a handful of music videos in collaboration with Redamo Rosa. What did your collaborative process look like when trying to bring your songs to life in the visual form?
[MEIJA]: Working with Redamo was a really amazing experience. We did like six or seven videos in total together for this project. So, we went into the trenches and really made a bunch of visuals for it. And I'm always thinking visually when I'm making my songs and music videos are always a really important part to me. I love a good music video and so many times I feel like artists and projects kind of put out videos that are just filler advertising, basically. And I didn't want to do that. If I'm going to spend the time making a video, I want to try and make something that at least feels cool. So working with Redamo was really great because we just really clicked creatively. I had all these ideas and he would have all these ideas and we'd be jumping off of each other. And I feel like he matched my creative energy visually that I have in the studio. That was really important for me too because I was self-directing a lot of videos before. And then I think with this project, I wanted to kind of find a partner to work with because I was already doing a lot by myself. It was a really great collaboration because I found somebody who matched my energy on it as a visual side. The things I would go to musically, he'd do the equivalent visually. That was a really cool marriage of two different artists, but also feels very connected.
[UNPUBLISHED]: It’s really awesome to see people dedicating themselves to their music videos.
[MEIJA]: You get to sort of explain what you were thinking. Obviously there's so much video and music right now with Tik Tok and everything too. But, it's really cool to be able to take a really specific vision and then really try and make that come to life. We did some crazy video concepts for this thing. Me and Redamo had all these ideas. So many of them weren't coming together and like the day before we'd be like, "oh shit, are we going to be able to do this?" Something would fall through just because we had crazy ideas or like the weather would be crazy. I got COVID and we almost weren't going to be able to shoot one of them because we had to drive up to the desert. So, there's so many things that came down to the wire. But then the day we shot, it came together somehow and we got the edit together, and it became a great thing.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is there a video that was particularly difficult to shoot?
[MEIJA]: Yeah, "Pull Me to Pieces" was probably the craziest video we did because we went out to Joshua Tree for that one. I was in France for a couple of weeks. So, when I came back, I had COVID right when I got back. So, I kept testing every day, as I was feeling better. I kept being positive. And then I thought, “am I gonna miss the shoot date?” Luckily, I recovered, I was better and we showed up to Joshua Tree. You know, you go to the desert and it's supposed to be hot and sunny. And the day we were there there were these crazy rain storms happening. All the stuff we had in the truck was getting all wet. We had to go throw tarps over top of it. It's the last thing you expect when you're gonna go shoot in the desert, especially in the summer. It was a weird thing. So, that was just a really crazy experience because it was raining crazy and then the next day was super hot. So, it was like two extreme weather events each day that we were shooting. So, we were pretty exhausted by the end of it and we were in the middle of nowhere for these videos. The drive back felt really good because we got everything we needed. We were shooting super late into the night. But, we got it and we were able to go home and not be in the desert anymore.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you tell me about the vision behind your cover art? What was the story that you were trying to tell?
[MEIJA]: I had this idea with the album that I wanted to have some sort of physical painting done. I had that pretty early on and so I was thinking of different artists. Honestly, I found the artist Sierra who did the artwork for me on Instagram super randomly. I just DMed her like, "Hey, have you ever done an album cover before? Would you be open to it?" She hadn't done an album cover, but she liked the music and she was like, "Yeah, it'd be fun to try." So, she graciously offered to try it out with me. It was really cool, she listened to the album a bunch and then sort of had this concept and sent me this collage of "okay, here's what I'm thinking. Let me know what you think." And it was this really cool pieced together sketch. I feel like it captured it perfectly because it was the arch and the person walking outside. You don't know who that is exactly. And it shows the back of my head looking out. So, it just felt like there was a lot of really cool, almost surrealist imagery that really captured the story and also the questioning. Again, the album's called Do Ya? So, it's a really cool thing to look out this window to everything. Like who knows what that is? But, it just feels like it captured it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I also wanted to touch on the intro track, “Not Sure How This Ends.” I think it is a little ironic that you started the album with a song that has “end” in the title. Was this intentional?
[MEIJA]: When I was going through tracklisting, I didn't have it pre determined when I recorded everything. So, I was thinking about what I wanted to start with. I definitely pretty instantly was like "Oh, that'd be pretty funny if the album started with a song called "Not Sure How This Ends."” Especially if it's an album all about questioning things. So, there's definitely some tongue in cheek element about where I thought it would be funny. Also, it's this sort of introspective, more chill, laid back song that I felt was a cool way to start off the thing. Also it has this cool like drum feel that goes right into the songs. I thought sonically, it is a cool way to start getting into a whole project. But the main thing honestly, I kind of thought it was funny if it started with that.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You’ve been pursuing music most of your life, which has allowed you to hone in on your sound for a very long time. What advice do you have for those trying to navigate their own sound?
[MEIJA]: So, I think it's good to always try and stay curious as an artist and to try different things and always know no matter what your skill level is that there's so much we don't know how to do. I think that's a really cool thing to hold on to. Even though I've been playing in bands or doing music for a minute now, there's a lot of other experience and I'm sure people have better opinions than me. And again, this is always my opinion and I think that's a good way to take that too. Everyone has a different process and one thing that works for someone else won't work for you. It's just a matter of trying things out until you find what works for you. I feel like that kind of goes for your sound, musically. You got to try different things because you might stumble across something that you wouldn't have thought of and then all of the sudden it just feels like it works and initially would feel foreign or like a weird idea. So, I think just always trying new things and just being open to working to your strengths too. I'm not like a big belting singer, I never had a really crazy range. I didn't grow up as a singer. I played guitar in bands, I never thought of myself as a vocalist. I think it's just me just trying out different things. In the end, for my vocal, I really like not trying anything. I feel like there was a period of time where I was trying to maybe sound like this or do this sort of thing. Eventually, it was like letting go, especially for vocals, just try and let it come out for it to feel very conversational. And that's something I feel works for the way I write my songs. I think for every artist, it's going to be different. It was a matter of trying things. But also, don't try and put something on because people can see through that. Also you're gonna feel best if you're doing something that feels true to yourself.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Who have you been listening to lately? Who’s been on your radar?
[MEIJA]: An artist that I found this past year, a newer artist, I think she's South African, the artist Alice Phoebe Lou, which I never heard of before. I don't even know how I found her. But, I discovered her and then she had like two albums in one year. So, I've really been loving that recently, that was a new discovery. I feel like especially with newer artists, I'm not always like I need to listen to a bunch of their records. So, that was one of the first artists in a while that I heard and was like "oh my god, I'm kind of obsessed." Her vocals are great, the production is amazing sounding. I love the sound she gets.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What does the future look like for you? Next projects, live performances?
[MEIJA]: The album is out now and I've sort of been slowly writing the next one for the past year. I've had this project done for over a year. So since then, any ideas that have come or that I've been working on, have sort of been set aside for this next project. And I'm getting pretty close to getting to the recording process for that one. So definitely, new music is coming sooner than I think some people would think, which I love. My favorite thing is to be in the studio making records. So, I want to try and keep that up as much as I can. And there's some other artists that I'm working with right now that I'm excited about the projects we're doing. We're working on doing at least an LA show pretty soon. And then trying to figure out ways to play some shows outside of LA. But, also at the same time, I feel the most at home in my studio. I toured for a bit and I think there's things about that that were really cool. Some things are really hard. And for me, I think with this project, it's just me doing it. So, I have a lot of say over what I say yes to. And I think so for the live thing, there's a lot more boxes that I have to check for me to be like "Okay, cool. I'll go out on the road and play a bunch of shows." My focus is always to make records here and then play shows. But, I love playing live. So, I'm hoping that some things work out to play this year.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Anything else you’d like to add?
[MEIJA]: I'm really excited about the album, I felt like it was the album I always wanted to make as a kid. I went and put a lot of my heart into it. While the songs are all very existential, I had the most fun making this project than I've had making anything else. It was a really cool experience where some of the songs are darker, existential. But, the process of making it was so fun. It was a bunch of friends just jamming out for a couple of weeks. So, hopefully people hear that in the music. Even while it's questioning all these things, there's a piece about that as well. And hopefully, other people can find that as well.
