UPDATED: Sept. 21 at 5:41 p.m.

With less than a semester until graduation, singer-songwriter Olivia Klayman is working to jumpstart her career. The senior television, radio and film and Spanish dual major plans to travel to Australia immediately after she graduates in December.

However, when she returns to her hometown of Los Angeles after her vacation, she intends to pursue a career in writing and performing music. Klayman likes to entertain people and, above all, she said she hopes she’ll always continue to write songs on the side, even if she doesn’t personally perform them.

Klayman began producing music when she was eight years old. She remembers listening to the radio growing up, and trying to reproduce the same sounds she heard. She even taught herself how to play guitar. However, she didn’t start performing in front of people until a year and a half ago, despite her musical background. She constructed a stage name: Liv Kennedy.

Although almost all of her performances have taken place within the Syracuse University community — The Daily Orange’s Beats and Eats, songwriter showcases, Funk ‘n Waffles, a wrap-up party for Jerk Magazine — Klayman has also performed at several open mic nights back home.

With the accessibility provided by streaming and the explosion of personal online marketing, Klayman is focusing on producing rather than performing this semester. She wants to write as many songs as possible so she can build her brand.

“Until I have material that is consistent with what I want the rest of my brand to be, then I would rather work on that,” Klayman said.

Klayman is working on an EP, and hopes to collaborate with plenty of other artists. Although she has a microphone, guitar and mixer all in her bedroom, she hopes to spend as much time at the on-campus studio as she can.

Klayman wants to co-write with musically-inclined students whose strengths will augment her weaknesses. She said she’s good at getting a basic chord progression down, but needs others to help her develop the bare bones into a finished track.

One friend who has been helping her is Isaac Silverman, a sophomore in the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries. The two met through a mutual friend who told Silverman that Klayman was looking for a place to record music. According to Silverman, Klayman shares ideas with him, including lyric melodies and sometimes guitar parts. He then helps to come up with chord progressions, instrumentation and song structuring.

“But she really creates the bulk of what makes her music great on her own,” Silverman said.

Klaymans’s voice is low, full of blues and folk undertones, so it comes as no surprise that Klayman draws inspiration from artists like Lana Del Rey, Amy Winehouse and Johnny Cash. However, more recently Klayman has been listening to Bibi Bourelly, an artist vocally similar to Klayman, but with hip-hop and island influences.

Klayman said that after listening to a lot of Bourelly, Kat Dahlia and even Enrique Iglesias, she was inspired to increase the tempo of her music, have natural instrumentation and introduce Latin beats into her songs. She said it would be her dream to collaborate with Sia because she thinks she could learn a lot from her in both singing and songwriting.

Klayman’s roommate, Abby Elyssa, loves being the first person to hear the songs Klayman creates.

“Because I’m from New York and she’s from L.A., she always sends me her music and most of the time I can’t even believe it’s my best friend,” Elyssa said. “I tell her all the time that she should go professional.”

But Klayman believes that going professional can interfere with the importance of songwriting. To her, creating a message is more important than being the messenger. But Klayman said if she had to choose between songwriting and singing, she would choose songwriting, because she could still have the satisfaction of knowing that her music would reach people.

Said Klayman: “What attracts me to this industry is not necessarily the fame, that kind of creeps me out. I just would like to be respected.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, Olivia Klayman’s preferred choice between songwriting and singing was misstated. Klayman said she would pursue songwriting if she had to choose one. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on September 20, 2016 at 9:35 pm

Contact: lmeyers@syr.edu