About Allie Levanway
Born and raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I’ve been writing and singing songs since I was a teenager. I moved to Nashville to study Religion in the Arts at Belmont University in 2005 and began releasing music under the moniker Alva Leigh. Somewhere in there, I married my husband Will and we moved to London to pursue our wild dreams (his, a PhD in theology and mine, a career in music). We started attending our parish church down the road, and I fell in love with the embodied, sensory experience of traditional Anglican worship. A far cry from how I was raised, for sure.
Will eventually went to seminary in Oxford, and I formed a band called Lewis & Leigh that took me all over Europe & the UK. We made 3 EPs, and an album that won best UK Americana album in 2017. I capped it all off with Lewis & Leigh’s final performance, 37 weeks pregnant, at the Royal Albert Hall. It was an exhilarating ride.
Motherhood signaled a shift in me. Will & I came back to London for his curacy, and I turned inward. I quietly released a solo EP called self/less at the beginning of lockdown, a month before my second daughter was born. After all of our plans fell through, we had to move back to the States in a pandemic rush after nearly 8 years in the UK with a toddler and a 9-week-old baby. After some shuffling around, we moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and have been here since 2020. (We love it.)
After a few difficult personal years, music and faith became a balm to my grief. Working on Lady Chapel continues to be such a labor of joy, and I am really excited to share it. There’s something special about a group of people singing simple, unadorned melodies to God. I consider it a holdover from all those worship songs in my evangelical upbringing. So Lady Chapel brings those threads together. Ancient religion, folk music.
This newsletter is a way for me to tell you about new songs, but I also hope it can evolve into something more: essays, collaborations, community, sacred music resources, or events. I don’t know! It’s so exciting, and I’m very happy it’s finally happening. Thanks for being here.
Want to know more? Read my sort of statement of faith here.
