Dissonance is thrilled to welcome Luke LeBlanc as the 17th board member in our seven-year history. Luke is a folk-rock singer-songwriter who also works in finance as a billing analyst and is the owner of Access Tutoring, providing professional, caring and affordable tutoring for students of all ages.
We first met Luke at our 2022 Ghost Notes Fall Block Party. He stopped by to check out the music and vibe, and was promptly handed a guitar which led to an impromptu solo set early in the evening. It was fantastic, A month later, he contributed an insightful blog post for our website, entitled Thoughts on Thinking.
We are excited and grateful that Luke has now joined the Dissonance board as a leader and ambassador for our mission to promote health and wellness in and through the arts, and we’re happy to introduce you to him in this Q&A.
How did you hear about Dissonance, and what attracted you to the mission?
I learned about Dissonance by scrolling through Instagram (something I probably do a bit too much) and seeing Charlie Parr’s Sessions taping. I was tickled pink to see a non-profit based in my home city producing a video series that highlights artists, their music, and most importantly, the feelings behind their music. I think that we’re beginning to see a long-overdue cultural shift in people being more willing to talk about and process their emotions, whether that be publicly in podcasts, intimately with friends, or privately in therapy. When people do that, it leads others to do the same, and getting things off our chests tends to leave us collectively a bit more happy, productive, and empathetic. Dissonance provides me with an avenue to join an enthusiastic team in continuing this trend.
How do you connect personally to the Dissonance mission?
While I can’t speak for all singer-songwriters, I can say that I’ve personally had the tendency to experience the “extra strength” version of emotions, be it joy, worry, or conflict. This leads to a dissonance, so to speak. On the one hand, there are many times I wish I could just experience “worry-lite,” and move on with my day, but on the other, being able to sensitively tune my antenna into the spectrum of thoughts and emotions flowing through the river of my mind allows me to catch those feelings and process them into songs that inspire me enough to make albums out of them.
Photo by Sarah Bel Kloetzke
This sort of trade-off has historically led to the myth that artists need to have “problems” from which they can mine inspiration and create. Dissonance is working hard to prove this mythology wrong by creating and supporting spaces that support the empathic and intuitive perspective that creatives give to the world, while fighting unhealthy coping mechanisms that old patterns have led us to believe they must experience at the same time.
How do you stay well?
I tend to cycle through different methods, but lately I’ve been trying to put the phone down every so often. Our phones give us access to a plethora of helpful tools and information, but they are extremely addicting. I’ve noticed that even small periods of intentionally untethering myself from it brings a sense of calm, whether it’s for an hour to intentionally relax and watch a show, or 10 minutes so I can start my mornings in a more calm and intentional way than reading an onslaught of memes and news headlines might allow.
I also try to be with others when I can. Getting dinner with a friend, catching up with family over the phone, or even collaborating with a colleague serves as a restart to my mind, providing a chance to gain outside perspective on (or a health distraction from) the challenges or blindspots I might be experiencing.
One of my most reliable ways of staying well is looking at things with a sense of humor as much as (reasonably) possible. Laughing at the absurdity of a petty argument or the ironic lesson I gleaned from a trying experience can lower the temperature and bring on feelings of ease when they’re needed most.
It’s one thing to connect to a mission; it’s another to volunteer your time. What motivates you to be involved in that way?
While volunteering is selfless by nature, there’s always so much in it for the volunteer too, in terms of learning from colleagues, curating events and resources for others and getting to attend them, and feeling part of a collective beneficial cause bigger than oneself. They say love is a verb, so I’m thankful for opportunities to stay active within a creative community that I truly admire.
What can you share about your latest and upcoming music projects?
I released an album in October 2022 entitled Fugue State that centers around the sense of unease we’ve experienced the last few years. Often defined as a temporary state where a person loses awareness of their identity as a defense against psychological stress, a “fugue state” is something I think we’ve been experiencing as a society lately. From deep cultural divide, to a once in a century pandemic, to overdue social reckoning in the world and at home in the U.S., we’ve lost a bit of our identity and direction and are desperately trying to find it again. I see the album not as an avenue to provide solutions, but as a place to start processing our feelings about it first. Processing these feelings is a necessary step before we can discover solutions to rebuild in a sustainable way.
Besides that, a few months ago I brought the band down to Erik Koskinen’s studio in Cleveland, MN, to record a new album. I don’t know when it’s coming out yet, but I can say that recording it was the most fun I’ve ever had in the recording studio. I hope that means we did something right.
Learn more about Luke and his music on his website, and catch up with him on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
Photo by Sarah Bel Kloetzke