When you get lemons make lemonade. When the COVID lockdown and a breakup give you the blues, write songs.
Las Vegas singer-songwriter Walt Haleigh took that advice to his broken heart and went on a songwriting blitz during the pandemic.
As the lockdown curtain dropped in early 2020, a Los Angeles music producer challenged Haleigh to write 100 songs during the pandemic.
“He's like, ‘Hey, write 100 songs, just see what happens,’” Haleigh said. “So I just started writing and writing and writing and writing and writing.
“It started just flowing out of me easier and easier as the songs came, like, the first 20 took me, I don't know, few weeks,” he recalled, “but then I was writing every day and it became just a daily practice.”
Haleigh wrote about his life: being a prisoner in your own home and the heartache of going through a breakup.
“There are a few different love songs,” Haleigh told State of Nevada, “about longing and the feeling of wanting to get away but feeling trapped or feeling that you can't stop your thoughts.”
Haleigh collected his favorite new songs — with titles like “Get Off My Mind” and “Not Afraid Anymore — into an album and he looks forward to performing them in front of his fans.
“I'm going to try to set up some shows here, just some solo shows, (and) also travel out to L.A., I still love L.A.,” he said. “I'm going to try to split my time between the two and just play as much as I can.”
Walt Haleigh, singer-songwriter
