Interview with Sweet Lizzy Project: ‘It’s my story, really, but I took it back to the 70’s when that music was illegal’

Havana transplants to Nashville, Sweet Lizzy Project, will bring our their third album Pirate Radio on 7 October, a bilingual album inspired by their origins in Cuba and the country’s oppressive history.

The rock band comprises Lisset Diaz, who also plays acoustic guitar, her partner Miguel Comas (lead guitar, producer, and background vocals), Wilfredo Gatell (keyboards and background vocals), Angel Luis Millet (drums) and Alejandro Gonzalez (bass). Diaz met Comas when she was studying biochemistry and molecular biology at the university in Havana; he loved the idea of producing her songs and starting a collaboration. ‘I thought I’d record my songs so that my grandkids later would think I was a cool grandma (laughs). I thought “Oh god, I could do this more often”. And then Miguel was like “Let’s make an album” and I was like “Noooooooo!” We recorded that first album, The Beginning, in this REALLY tiny apartment of his and it was nominated for CubaDisco (Cuba’s answer to the Grammys), we couldn’t believe that! People thought I was a proper musician but I was still in my fourth year at uni. After I graduated, I taught science at the uni. It was my thing before music was my thing. My students knew. Sometimes they’d ask if I was playing anywhere that night and I’d say “Yes, I’m playing at X but by the way, you just failed that test” (laughs). We put a band together and The Beginning turned into Heaven, our first official record as a band.’

Pirate Radio is a concept album tracing Cuba’s often violent communist history, seen through the eyes of the protagonist, a 17 year old boy in Havana. They will release both an English and Spanish version of the 11 track album, which opens with ‘One good story’ or ‘No pudo ser’ (‘It Couldn’t Be’). ‘The boy wants to play music, rock ‘n’ roll,’ she said. ‘It’s my story, really, but I took it back to the 70’s when that music was illegal. Every song tells a part of his journey, leading up to the last song ‘Shake The Walls’. We knew what each song would be about before we wrote it. As a Cuban, it’s part of your frustration that you’re wasting your life there. It’s the one thing people know, it’s like Stockholm Syndrome, it’s so strange.’

‘You feel the censorship in Cuba even when you don’t‘

The album title – and title track – is a reference to the popularity of pirate radio stations in the 60’s and 70’s in Cuba, when rock music by the likes of The Beatles was banned. ‘Pirate radio stations were the only way people could listen to Elvis Presley or The Beatles,’ she said. ‘You could go to jail for having one of their records. You feel the censorship in Cuba even when you don’t, if you know what I mean? You don’t know any better. The internet was illegal for a long time when I was a kid, they didn’t want you listening to real news elsewhere. It’s like having an invisible enemy that you’re fighting all the time.’ The track is gloriously defiant, with a very hooky bass riff. It’s rocky, with a punky, high-octane kick. As she sings in the chorus: “You can’t stop the sound coming through my speakers. You can’t shut the mouth of the true believers. Last song plays, you can tell me no but you can’t turn off my pirate radio.”

It is Diaz’s ability to mould her voice around the song that gives their songs such a unique edge. She can do punky and gritty but also channels her rich and distinctive contralto voice in a way that is reminiscent of Natalie Merchant on some tracks. On songs such as ‘Bloodline’, – or ‘Mi Historia’ as it is called in Spanish – Cuba’s violent history and its influence are acknowledged. As the band puts it: ‘Lacking physical weapons, the people of Cuba have been silenced for decades, but must now use their words to fight against the repression they are experiencing. We used the word ‘Bloodline’ to refer to the Cuban people as one family, as a legacy that needs to be protected and honoured by the newer generations.’

‘The responsibility of telling someone else’s story, you don’t want to get it wrong’

Diaz is delighted with how the album turned out, not least because they made it during the pandemic: ‘It’s the best album we’ve ever made,’ she said, sounding genuinely thrilled. ‘I couldn’t be prouder or happier. It’s the first album that we’ve worked on completely on our own. We spent three years making Technicolor, we changed our country and our lives. It came out in February 2020, the timing was terrible, it was right before the pandemic. We couldn’t tour. We had to do something, so we started working on Pirate Radio. We didn’t have any money but I thought “Let’s go back to our roots”. It’s the first time that I’m not writing about being in love or a break-up. We decided we wanted to talk about the suffering going on in my country for 60 years. It couldn’t get more personal to me. The responsibility of telling someone else’s story, you don’t want to get it wrong. I’m creating music, I want the story to resonate with everyone, to make it universal.’

Their journey to Nashville came about due to producer and fellow Cuban musician Raul Malo, who came to Havana to film a documentary about the music industry there – ‘Havana Time Machine’ – for US TV station PBS: ‘He has a band, The Mavericks, we got to meet him,’ she said. ‘He loved that we were making music in such weird conditions (laughs), he felt a connection with his roots and said he’d love to have us on his record label (Mono Mundo). We thought how can we take him to this tiny apartment, we were so embarrassed, but he loved that we could make music there and he helped us to move to Nashville (where Malo is also based) five years ago.’

Interestingly, one of the hardest parts of the album for Diaz was recording the songs in Spanish: ‘My influences were always English speaking,’ she said. ‘Nobody in my family is a scientist or a musician. My grandmother is so happy that I wrote some songs in Spanish (laughs). Most of the songs were written in English first and we got to work with some brilliant singer-songwriters in Nashville. We had our first writing session in the pandemic over a Zoom call. I was really nervous, I thought, can I explain everything that I’m feeling to a stranger? But it was the most amazing experience, they understood what I was saying.’

‘When I’m writing a song, I repeat the same thing over and over, the melody or a lyric gets stuck in your head’

Listening to their recent single ‘Shake The Walls’ – or ‘Fue Un Error’ (‘It Was A Mistake’) as they have called it in Spanish – I mention that I have noticed that while the song retains the same melody in both languages, each version tells a very different story, lyrically. One version is not a translation of the other, a pattern which emerges across their other bilingual tracks as well: ‘When I’m writing a song, I repeat the same thing over and over, the melody or a lyric gets stuck in your head, you get pretty sick of it at some point,’ she said laughing. ‘You keep listening to it over and over again. After hearing it in English, nothing sounded right in Spanish and vice versa and I realised that the songs couldn’t be a translation at all. The metrics are different in the two languages, the sounds, the rolling the ‘r’s’ in Spanish, the syllables, everything.’

‘Shake The Walls is a deliberately open-ended song: ‘It’s about hope, I’m not sure if the boy made it back to Cuba after he left and if he was welcomed or not,’ she said. ‘It’s a very special song. It’s very different to the title track, which seems violent, raging against the machine. There’s a line in ‘Shake the Wall’: “Es peligroso no soñar” (“It’s dangerous not to dream”) because it is dangerous not to dream, to think you can’t do other things.’

Nashville has been a revelation in more ways than one, especially given Cuba’s communist history: ‘You don’t have music stores in Cuba, a place to buy your strings or an amp for your guitar,’ she said. ‘You have to wait for someone to leave the country to buy it for you or try to get one secondhand. Here in Nashville, we have all the resources. It was the first time we were mixing our roots with the way we like to work; we were able to work completely independently – we turned a wood shop into a recording studio and Miguel recorded, mixed and mastered the album like we used to do it in Cuba but using the gear and the resources that were not available back then. There were a lot of first times for this album.’

‘I wanted people who have no idea about Cuba – the people who don’t even know where it is – to have something’

I mention that I visited Havana a long time ago and that I was struck by both its dilapidated beauty and how few resources people had, buying their food each week with ration books: ‘I grew up seeing ration books,’ she said. ‘The country is so broken. Those old American cars that you see there everywhere? They break all the time, you’re late and stuck in the middle of nowhere. They smell like gasoline (laughs), it’s a terrible experience! I wanted people who have no idea about Cuba – the people who don’t even know where it is – to have something. If you’re angry, scared or in love, there’s something for you.’

Her favourite song on the album is ‘Slip Away’, or ‘Desaparece’ (‘Disappear’) in Spanish: ‘It never changes, it’s always my favourite. I don’t know why when I normally get sick of the songs (laughs). It was my favourite song even before I had lyrics for it. Miguel started playing this thing and I thought “Oh my god, it has to be a song”. We didn’t touch it for months and then one day I said “Do you remember what you were playing that day?” and we went through our notes to find it. I always cry when I listen to it or play it live because it reminds me of Cuba and all of the Cubans who have died escaping the country or have become “visitors” like me. It’s when my 17 year old character – my imaginary friend (laughs) – has to leave Cuba. The song says: “I don’t want to be a prisoner, I’d rather be a visitor.”

Recent history has also infused the album: ‘November 2020 was a very unsettling month for us,’ Diaz said. ‘The dissident San Isidro Movement had started a hunger strike in Havana as a protest against the Cuban regime’s oppression. I had never seen anything like that. I wasn’t even aware of the existence of such a consolidated dissident group on the island. It was very touching and enlightening for me to realize that there were brave Cubans on the Island fighting for basic rights. On top of that, one of the protesters had been my immunology professor when I studied biochemistry at the University of Havana. This made it even more personal for me. In that context, I remember when Miguel first talked about a new album called Pirate Radio. He came up with the perfect way of putting our next project where our hearts and our minds were at the moment. We wouldn’t only be voicing solidarity but it would also be a way to unburden ourselves by putting into songs the personal thoughts that we were never allowed to say out loud.’

She admits that reconciling her science and music lives can be hard: ‘Sometimes, it has been a burden,’ she said. ‘I felt I didn’t belong anywhere, not at the uni or playing music. All day in the lab is super interesting but there was a whole world out there that I didn’t get to see.’

‘I’d wake up and start learning a new song for that night’

Last year, they released a covers album, SQS Vol.1, in which they cover Pearl Jam’s ‘Black’. It’s a brilliant cover, edgy, beautiful and haunting, and her vocals on it also remind me of Natalie Merchant: ‘I loooooove Pearl Jam,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘We started a sort of TV show in the pandemic on our YouTube channel and Facebook page called ‘Sweet Quarantine Sessions’. The band was living together in Nashville, we’d go live every night. During the pandemic, I didn’t think we’d make it all living together (laughs), so we had to do something! People had no idea who we were here. We’d been touring in a minivan before the pandemic then we got stuck here. It was a blessing in the end, we could see each other every day when many bands couldn’t. We covered over 300 songs for the show over 82 episodes. I’d wake up and start learning a new song for that night. We were asking people what they wanted to hear, we wanted to help in some way. If they wanted an 80’s song, I’d sing a Whitney Houston song. We did soooo many songs!’

Incredibly, given the power and range of her voice, Diaz isn’t professionally trained: ‘I started singing when I was a little kid. I didn’t have any instruments at home, no-one in my family was a musician. They were like “The kid can sing, now go school and do something real” (laughs). I grew up in a very poor neighbourhood. It’s funny, to be a scientist took me years, I had to study really hard. With the singing, it was cool for once in my life to have something smooth. I feel you have to fit in a category for marketing reasons. I didn’t have that but I’m a biochemist, so I can say whatever I want (laughs). I thought: “I’m enjoying this, why wouldn’t I do this?”’

However, breaking into the music industry in Cuba was incredibly difficult: ‘In Cuba, you have to go through an audition with the authorities before you can play music in public,’ she said. ‘If you don’t have their approval, you can’t play anywhere. The system is so complicated, especially if you don’t come from a musical education and don’t have a certificate, like me. There’s no way to get in. We did in the end but there was a lot of red tape, we were banned for a while. It was not easy but the band was gaining popularity, so they kind of had to let us move forward. It’s mostly old, conservative people doing the auditions. I didn’t know what the mold was supposed to be, they didn’t like that. They’re like “Why don’t you sing more boleros?,” she said, rolling her eyes. (Boleros are love songs which originated in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century as part of the trova tradition.)

‘I was playing rock ‘n’ roll music in English, that was very unusual’

And stereotypes are rife: ‘I’m getting used to all kinds of stereotypes,’ she said ruefully. ‘People have this stereotype of a Cubana being a curvy ‘mulata’ (a woman of mixed race), so they don’t believe I’m Cuban, they’re like “But you’re so pale!”. Then on top of that, I was playing rock ‘n’ roll music in English, that was very unusual. It’s not the 70’s! In Cuba, people would say “Are you Irish?” and I would say yes (laughs)! I learned English from Game of Thrones! Haha, I’m joking. Television and music helped a lot with my English but I actually went to private English lessons since I was like 7. My mom was always very interested in me learning another language. Here. we’re still the outsiders.’

She is a big fan of Cuban bolero singer from the 50’s, Benny Moré: ‘His music will live forever,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘I can sing a bolero, I’ve done that but that’s not my thing. It was hard for me to convince them that I wanted to sing other kinds of music! I love Nashville but there’s a lot of country (laughs).’ I ask her if she’s been influenced by renowned Cuban protest singers and folk musicians Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanés: ‘They were the singers of the revolution,’ she said. ‘They are both great but their political ideas are very different. If you had long hair as a man in the 70’s, they’d send you to a camp to try to “fix” you, it was considered too “gay”. They were both part of that. They both have very particular voices, I really like Pablo Milanés. When I started listening to music for real, I listened to The Cranberries a lot.’

Alanis Morissette is another big influence: ‘We didn’t have music in my house growing up, we just had a cassette with Shakira on one side and Boney M on the other, it was pretty random (laughs). I love female-led bands like Florence and the Machine and Heart the band. We got to open two shows for them and Joan Jett in 2019. As I came from an island, people were like ‘Do you know who they are?!”. Joan Jett was so nice and funny, she was all in black, super cool. I want to be her when I grow up!’ I say that I thought the same thing when I saw The Pretenders’ frontwoman Chrissie Hynde perform with Paul McCartney at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert organised last month by the Foo Fighters in London: ‘We loooooove the Foos,’ she said. ‘And yes! Miguel is a big fan. We covered The Pretenders’ song ‘2,000 Miles’ on our Christmas EP a couple of years ago (‘And So This Is Christmas’).’

‘I’m very respectful when it comes to first impressions that mark a change at a particular moment in my life’

They’ve had some endearingly funny moments over the years, including on TV, as she recounts: ‘So, I was on live television in Cuba – I think in 2016 – and I was promoting one of our shows,’ she said. ‘This was one of the very few live TV shows that we still have in Cuba, since most of our TV is not live. Also this is a show with a huge audience across the country, so it was exciting for me to be there. I had like less than five minutes to say everything I had to say, so I started talking and talking and talking as fast as I could and I kept saying that our show was “February 31st”. I was not nervous or anything I was just being an idiot (laughs). At some point, the interviewer told me that it was an impossible date for a show – or anything – and then I couldn’t help it. I found it SO FUNNY I started laughing, uncontrollably, on live TV. It took me a minute to start talking again because of the laughter. Then everyone, my friends, my family, my neighbours, EVERYONE was laughing at me and confirming their attendance to my show on February 31st!’

If she could go for a drink with anyone, she picks Shakira: ‘You know what? I discovered I was able to sing when I sang along to her cassette,’ she said. ‘I don’t listen to her as much these days but I’m very respectful when it comes to first impressions that mark a change at a particular moment in my life. Who knows if my life would be different if it had just been Boney M on that cassette (laughs)? I would say to her her “Thank you, without you, I might not be singing”. I think the album was Pies Descalzos (‘Bare Feet’), it was her first successful album outside Colombia. It made it all the way to my bedroom in Cuba. If you can be heard in Cuba, you can be successful anywhere!’

(Top photo from left to right: Wilfredo, Alejandro, Lisset, Ángel Luis and Miguel.)