Holly Maxam shares her music online
By Angie Landsverk
Holly Maxham loves music.
One of her earliest memories is of her mother printing lyrics and chords.
“I would take them and just sing them,” Maxham said.
She was around a first-grade student at the time.
“I was about 12 when I started writing my own songs on pages,” Maxham said.
When she was 13, her neighbors gave her an old keyboard.
That took her interest to another level.
“I had an instrument I could play with my lyrics. I could start composing,” Maxham said.
The daughter of Scott and Joyce, Maxham is a junior at Waupaca High School.
Her mother plays guitar and sings.
Maxham’s maternal grandfather was a self taught musician whom she never met.
Her late paternal grandfather was a newsman and video editor for a PBS station in Duluth.
Maxham inherited his laptop and uses it when working on her music.
A few years ago, she started putting her songs on her Instagram page and YouTube channel.
Today, she may be found under her artist’s name, “Holly Maxam,” on such music streaming sites and apps as iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, YouTube and more.
Maxham writes, sings and produces her music.
To find her music online, search for her artist’s name of “Holly Maxam.”
Beginnings
Maxham and her family were living in Washington state at the time.
Self taught on the keyboard, she joined choir in seventh grade.
“I think that’s where I really discovered how much I enjoyed performing,” Maxham said.
That school year, she got on stage for a school-sponsored talent show.
“I didn’t know how I was going to do. I had never performed solo before,” Maxham said. “It was a little nerve wracking, but I won second place.”
She won first place the next year.
That was the same year Maxham started uploading some of her songs.
From there, she started using an app to make her own studio versions.
“That is when I started layering, putting in more vocals and instruments to create more professional sounding music,” Maxham said.
During her sophomore year at WHS, her friends started telling her she should put her music on Spotify and iTunes.
“I didn’t know how to do that. I looked it up. I needed a record label or distributor to have them distributed on platforms,” she said. “I looked at distributors. Spotify recommended a few, so I looked at those.”
Distro Kid was at the top of the list.
“You get to keep 100% of what you make, so that’s what I signed up for,” Maxham said.
She uploaded her first song last spring.
It is called “Young.”
She received a lot of positive feedback, inspiring her to write more songs.
“The words kind of tumble out of my mind, and I write them down on paper,” she said. “The production takes more time. I will sit in my room about five hours working on it.”
She says her style is Indie, but also a new genre called bedroom pop.
“It’s artists who write meaningful songs in their bedrooms and record it,” she said.
Maxham is interested in finding instrumentalists to work with and would love to play in coffee shops.
“My goal would be to be known locally,” she said.
Maxham says the process is different for each song.
Sometimes she starts with lyrics and other times with chords on her keyboard.
It is her creative outlet.
She has started earning money from it, and is excited to meet others who are also recording music in this way.
“My dream job would definitely be songwriting and singing,” Maxham said.