Lindsey Stirling is a violinist, dancer and composer that takes playing the violin to a whole new level. Her performances are very creative, upbeat and energetic. I had the chance to talk with Lindsey about her upcoming tour with Evanescence.

Lindsey tells me that, “I’m getting to chill with Amy Lee which is crazy. Kinda dream come true for me. On top of that, we get to do this whole orchestra style, which is something I’ve never done before, so it’s gonna be really, really special and unique and just an experience for anyone who comes. There is a new orchestra every day which is a crazy thought. Every night, we’ll be up there with different musicians so we’re gonna keep it fresh and keep the adrenaline going no matter if it’s the first of last show, which it’ll be kinda cool. It’ll keep us always on our toes and yeah, that’s gonna be fun!”

Lindsey tells me that she got started by putting up a YouTube video and America’s Got Talent reached out and asked her to audition which Lindsey says, “I did and that ended up not being the best experience. It was really hard for my first time really putting myself out there with this new style of music and dancing but then to be so brutally critiqued in front of millions of viewers on live TV was so humiliating. I had never faced rejection like that because I never put myself out there really in a way like that before. And after the experience of being kicked off the show and told no and told that I’d never succeed, although it was humiliating, it also kinda lit this little fire underneath me when I was like oh, I wanna prove you wrong. I wanna prove that I can do this, like that I can succeed and I’m not a failure. In a way, it almost kinda lit this fire under me and really inspired me and shortly thereafter that I discovered that YouTube was a place where you could actually build a career, you could build a channel, you have people subscribe to you, and you could have fans on there. I was blown away. That’s when I actually started my YouTube channel for real and really started using it and making regular content. This is what exploded my career, was just doing these videos and realizing that I didn’t have to wait for the big professionals and the judges in the world and the record labels. All these people had told me no, no, no. I realized wow, I don’t have to wait for them to tell me I’m ready and for them to approve of me. Here’s a place where anyone can decide. The gal sitting on her couch at home or the person in their office at work with a spare minute, they’re the one that decide whether they like it or not. It’s direct to the people. That was the coolest thing to realize that the gatekeepers didn’t have to approve of me. It was almost a democracy of entertainment where the people chose.”

Playing a violin takes talent, dancing takes talent, then you add playing violin while dancing and what you have is an extremely talented Lindsey Stirling. I asked Lindsey how hard was it to learn both and incorporate them together and she said, “I can learn choreography pretty fast, it still takes me a minute before it’s comfortable. I have to learn it in a very specific way and really learn it, otherwise I cannot do both at the same time. The process comes pretty fast now. When I first started it though, it seemed impossible. I remember trying to just do the simple choreography, like stepping on the beat and putting my hips to the side, let your hips roll. Oh my gosh, it would take me so long to just learn that. Every step had to be the same rhythm as a note that I was playing with my arm on the violin or my hands. They had to be all in the same timing so I’m very limited with what I can do and it’s amazing that something that was easy at first, like this is never gonna work. For some reason, I just kept being like no, I can do this. It took me over a month to learn one set of choreography to a minute and a half song. A 90 second song, a month is a lot of practice every day. Now, I learn a full tour of choreography and new music in a matter of a couple weeks. It’s just amazing that where it’s come, but it’s just been a ton of hard work to learn to combine two parts of my brain and make it seamless.”

Lindsey is an inspiration to a lot of people and says, “I like to inspire whoever needs to be inspired, whether it’s women feeling like they’re living in a man’s world and they’re trying to make it and trying to get the same respect as a man or whether it’s a young kid that’s in school and feels like they’re being bullied and wants to just be caredd about by others. I love to share a message of hope and a message that it’s okay to be different. It’s okay to feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle. If that’s where you’re at right now and you feel like you’re at the bottom of an uphill battle, take that climb. If you feel like you’ve been abandoned and you’re been left for dead in the wilderness by whatever circumstance in life, that’s what make a survivor. I love to share these messages of just hope. Wherever you’re at right now, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna stay there in life. Figure out where you wanna be. See it. Believe that you can get there and then work your tail off to become that. That’s kinda the message I love to share. Heck, when people say that you can’t do it and that you’re not enough, that can give you an amazing amount of motivation to be like, Oh, I am going to prove you wrong. Honestly, the no from America’s Got Talent gave me so much grit to say I’m gonna prove these people wrong and I’m not gonna lie. It felt really great when all these record labels that I had been to originally said no, no, no. You’re too different. We don’t know what to do with you. You’ll never succeed. What you do is just outside the box. All of a sudden, once I started becoming successful, who was showing up backstage at all my shows? All those record labels. All these A & R people that were trying to court me and trying to get me to sign with them and it was a great feeling to say you know what? I appreciate you coming, but I actually don’t need you anymore. I did it myself. All the hard work, I did. Yep, no thanks! I’m an independent artist to this day, and I couldn’t be happier. Turn those no’s into yes’s. See what you wanna be, believe it, and you can get there!”

Lindsey will be touring with Evanescence this summer and says, “Amy and I’ve been aware of each other for years and I’ve been a fan of hers for years, since I was a teenager. We had reached out about a collaboration in the past, and I think that’s when Amy became aware of my music. She had just had a baby and couldn’t do it, but I had written a song specifically for Amy to sing years ago. It wasn’t the right timing. She reached out to me when her album was coming out for High Low and asked if I could play a song on one of her songs, and I was so excited. This is like, what? No way. Okay. Totally, yes, 100 thousand percent. I recorded the song, we didn’t even meet through the process. We e-mailed and talked on the phone about it and it was kinda cool, because once the song came out, the fan reaction was so overwhelming. They were so excited. Everybody’s like oh my gosh, I can’t believe two of my favorites have collaborated and yada. It almost lead seamlessly into oh, why don’t we go on tour together? Our fans seem really excited. The reaction for the tour, everything has just been amazing. We will be doing some collaborative moments, one of which will be High Low. I’m very excited that not only we have similar music styles and performance styles, but just as people at our core, we have similar values and that makes me happy to know the atmosphere on the tour is very important to me and we both kinda run a same ship. We’re not crazy partiers. We’re out there to enjoy but also to be happy and to have good working environment for everyone involved and so I’m excited to see that that’s gonna be able to be kept for both camps.”

So don’t miss what I would anticipate as a show stopping performance. Lindsey will be playing with Evanescence at the MidFlorida Credit Union Ampthitheatre in Tampa, FL on August 17th.