Iron Effigy is the musical alias of Smith Leithart, based in Birmingham, Alabama. His 6-song EP, Pieces of Me, was released in March 2019. I corresponded with Smith and asked some questions about his music. Read the exchange below and check out Iron Effigy on Spotify and all streaming platforms.
McIntosh: Explain your musical background. When did you discover your love of music and when did you start writing your own music?
Leithart: I grew up listening to film scores. As a kid, I’d mow the lawn listening to music from Star Wars, Gladiator, Blood Diamond, etc. My mom said I wasn’t allowed to listen to music with words, so film scores and classical music were pretty much my only options.
I had always wanted to be some sort of creative. I wanted to be a novelist, a chef (particularly of omelettes), then a composer. I had my first piano lesson in August of 2005 (when I was 8). Afterwards, instead of practicing, I sat down at the piano and made up a tune – a habit I have yet to break.
For my following birthday, my brother bought me a book of staff paper, and I began writing down my tunes. They were simple, obviously, but I was proud of them. I must have had 30 or so tunes written in that book by the time I was 10.
Around that time, I dove head-first in Ableton Live and GarageBand. At some point, my mom bought Sibelius and installed it on the computer. Being able to notate scores with a computer opened up a whole new world.
Over the next several years, through lessons with local professors and self-instruction, I became more and more confident in my musical abilities, and eventually chose to pursue a degree in Music Composition, which I completed a couple months ago.
McIntosh: Who are the biggest influences on your music?
Leithart: Austin Wintory (Journey, ABZU, Pode), Thomas Newman (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo), and James Newton Howard (Dinosaur, Blood Diamond, The Water Horse) are big influences and inspirations for me.
My singer-songwriter material has a plethora of influences: The 1975, Matt Maeson, Morning Show, Lewis Del Mar, Bear’s Den, Right Away, Great Captain! and more.
McIntosh: Explain the writing and recording process of Pieces of Me. Did you do everything yourself or work with other musicians and a producer? Are your lyrics based on real-life experiences, are they fictional, or a mixture of both?
Leithart: The lyrics for the EP were written between March and October of 2018. In mid-October, I recorded vocals with Cole Arn, who is one of my closest friends (although I don’t think he knows it). Cole has done the final mixing for most of my music and the mastering for all of it. He also released his debut album, Deconstruction, earlier this year under the name “colearn.” I owe a great deal to Cole as my mixing/mastering engineer and as a friend who I look up to in many ways.
After recording the vocals, I knew I had to sit down with the recordings and create some arrangements for each song. But I just couldn’t. I spent three months sitting on those recordings, because I didn’t want to think about the subject matter. All of that stuff is real, yes. Exaggerated, definitely – because it’s all of my thoughts for over a year finally spilling out of my brain and landing somewhere, finally becoming real.
The development of the EP progresses from synthetic to authentic – from fake to real – as I come to terms with my situation and my own self-destructive tendencies. So the lyrics at the beginning of the EP are more exaggerated than those at the end, but it all is rooted in truth.
After sitting on the recordings for far too long, I finally got to work on the arrangements. I did most of the work on my laptop. Friends from Samford University – Donny Snyder (cello) and Asher Entrekin (trumpet) – recorded some small parts. Within just a couple months, the EP was completed and I sent it off to stores to be released.
There’s so much going on in the EP – so much hidden significance, so many crucial moments – that I expect the listener will never notice. Not because the listener is unintelligent, but because it’s all so deeply integrated that it’s almost impossible to pick up on. Nearly every decision (lyrically, musically, technically, etc.) was made intentionally and with a purpose; the ones that weren’t still turned out to hold some significance that even I didn’t discover until later on.
McIntosh: Other than Iron Effigy, you’ve released instrumental compositions as W.F. Smith Leithart, including scores for indie films. Tell me more about this part of your musical life.
Leithart: I am more of a film and classical composer than anything else. The music I write under Iron Effigy is an outlet for me, and I enjoy doing it, but my instrumental music is my passion. In college, I composed for whoever was willing to play my music. At my senior recital, I had works for piano solo, choir, string quartet, various chamber ensembles, and even an euphonium solo.
I have officially scored two indie films and I wrote music for Samford University’s Christenberry Planetarium, which I released in stores last December (called Zenith). Currently, I am in the process of getting another film score released in stores. I can’t say much about it, but it will be a very short release. It was a small job, but an exciting one.
Besides that, I am just looking for work in films, video games, YouTube, what-have-you. As a recent graduate, the most important thing I can do at this point is build my portfolio. In the foreseeable future, I’ll be moving to Los Angeles to further pursue my dream of becoming a feature film composer.
McIntosh: What is your ultimate goal with Iron Effigy and what are your future plans? New recordings, performing live?
Leithart: Immediately after completing Pieces of Me, I began writing more lyrics. Between February of this year and now, I have written partial lyrics for almost 30 songs. In the last couple weeks, I have narrowed those 30 down to 14 songs that will most likely comprise my next project. The concept is forming slowly, but I am excited about where it’s going. I have no future plans as Iron Effigy other than what is right in front of me. I don’t have any intentions to perform live under the alias (largely because I am not much of a singer), but we’ll see where it all goes.
The ultimate goal of Iron Effigy is to speak honestly to whoever is willing to listen. I started to use the outlet to get my thoughts out of my brain and let them exist outside of myself, so that I didn’t have to hold them inside anymore. Many of these thoughts are scary and ugly, some are pleasant, some in between, but what all of them have in common is that I know someone else has them, too. Someone else is struggling with the same things, or is excited about the same things, or feels mediocre about the same things, but doesn’t know how to express it – or doesn’t want to.
I want to use my method of getting my thoughts outside of myself as a means to give that person the opportunity to do the same, to give them the expression they’re searching for. The goal isn’t always to give them an answer to their struggles – because I have not often found answers for mine – but to at least give them the opportunity to let all of their thoughts exist outside of themselves.
Empty out all the junk and clutter. It’s not invaluable, so you can’t shove it away and forget it forever, but it doesn’t deserve the type of space and energy you probably give it. So put it somewhere else – into music – and revisit it every once in a while to remind yourself what it teaches you.
Iron Effigy will be releasing a new version of his song “Birthday” on August 2.
