The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.
Vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Maya Elise is the leader of Oakland’s indie folk pop band The Good Dream. She received advice from a fellow songwriter years ago that to write good music, she needs to pay attention to her surroundings in the Bay Area, particularly on BART.
Elise said their song “Better Bird” deals with self-affirmation and “a reminder to just play with that uncomfortable feeling of being socially anxious.”
“It was a really fun song to bring to my band because we kept trying to challenge ourselves with it,” said Elise. “There’s a section where we do something called hocketing where we’re kind of passing the melody back and forth like one note at a time. And it happens really quickly. It kind of sounds like birds.”
She grew up listening to folk and Americana music, and was influenced by her father and brothers, who play the guitar, mandolin and bass guitar. Elise has toured with her bandmates all over the country, and she offers house concerts in her backyard, creating a community with the audience and other musicians who have performed in her space.