Afternoon Originals: Jodie Lloyd

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (KFVS) - The Heartland is full of incredible musical performers, whether it’s rock, country, you name it - we have it.

On Heartland Afternoon on Monday, November 27, we sat down with SEMO student, pianist and performer Jodie Lloyd.

Lloyd also performed her original piece called “City of Angels.”

She told us where the inspiration for her songs comes from.

“Really, it’s, it’s from my life,” Lloyd said. “Just, you know, how anyone would write about what they know...A lot of times it’s just feelings that I’m feeling in the moment, things that are coming up for me through school work or through just life in general, as a 20 year old going through life for the first time.”

Lloyd also explained some of her songwriting process.

“A lot of times it’s just sitting at the piano for a couple of hours and thinking about what I’m wanting to write about,” she said. “It usually comes out of, like, inspiration from either a poem or a book, sometimes even something I’ll hear on TV and I’ll just want to write something that continues on in the vein of what that sparked for me.”

For her, it’s more than just throwing words together.

“It’s kind of like it’s a voice memo of a journal almost for me. They each have very specific moments in times of my life that I try not to make super duper personal, so that they relate to other people, but they definitely have a very exact moment of time of when they were written,” she continued.

She said “City of Angels” is about watching the people you love and you care about branching off into doing different things and wanting to connect with them.

“‘City of Angels,’ for me, is about knowing that people are looked after even if you’re not the one looking after them, which is a hard thing to learn, I think, especially for the first time, like moving away and having different friends and different social circles and not being able to check in on the ones that you love as much,” she added.

Originally from Chicago, Lloyd moved to southeast Missouri for school. She said she heard about Southeast Missouri State University through a college fair.

“...I went to the fair and there was people everywhere and they were all going to, like, very specific tables and I saw a SEMO table and I was like, something about it,” she explained. “And I went up and I talked to the guy for like 30 minutes and we just got along so well. He gave me a brochure and I kept looking at the school. I just loved it.”

She said Cape Girardeau has become her second home after two-and-a-half years living here.

As for those listening to “City of Angels” for the first time, Lloyd said she hopes it brings them peace.

“I really hope that the song inspires a sense of peace just within them of knowing that everyone goes through it and knowing that everyone is trying really hard to look after the ones that they love,” she said. “Because I think that we as people just sometimes forget that we’re, that we are looking out for each other, for the most part, and it’s such a beautiful thing to just kind of let yourself relax into the fact that you can trust other people to take care of the ones you love.”