Future musician Anne DiGiovanni (who now professionally goes under deegie)’s childhood was fertile ground for her career. “I grew up with parents who loved music and always had the radio on,” deegie tells Post-Burnout.

“My mom played a lot of musical theatre, like, her old records around the house, and I grew up going to Catholic church, so I always sang the songs there and got into doing church music, later on.

“But, yeah, I was just exposed a lot, by my parents, to their favourites. Kind of the classics from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and then started piano lessons and got into being a musician from there when I was six.”

But her path to becoming a professional wasn’t a direct one. As she explains, “I wanted to do music all my life, and, coming into college, it became apparent that, ‘OK, you have to really want to do it on a much more serious level,’ and my voice, I actually had some problems with vocal nodules in high school, so I decided to take the safer route and get just a regular humanities degree. From there, I got a little bit swept up in, ‘OK, how am I going to make money and be stable?’, and law school was the path that unfolded.”

Appropriately, deegie’s law career was influenced by her relationship with music. “I actually got sued in my sophomore year of college for downloading music, by the Recording Industry [Association of America],” she says.

“It was quite a lottery to win; it was only, like, 400 students across the nation at that point that got sued, so very bad luck! [Laughs] And that kind of opened my eyes to the possibility of entertainment law, copyright law, and music being something I could get involved with as a professional and have a stable income and that kind of upwardly mobile career.”

From there, deegie worked at law firms and entertainment companies but didn’t really feel her passion was being fulfilled. At the time, she was involved with the indie pop band Only Bricks. “That was a project that was more of a duo between me and my husband [Joseph Lewczak], who’s still my musical partner in deegie, but now I’m the solo, frontwoman of deegie,” deegie says.

Initially beginning as a fun hobby, Only Bricks steadily grew from a cover band to incorporating originals to a more serious side hustle for the pair. About two years ago, they moved from New York to Los Angeles to realise their aspirations. After getting married, they wanted to release music and play live. Eventually, Only Bricks dissolved and deegie was born in the ashes.

Early in the new project, a decision was made to cater for a pop-punk sound. “I came to it a little bit sideways,” says deegie of her relationship with the genre. “I was not an emo kid going to shows. [Laughs] I was more of a poser. I listened to whatever was in the mainstream, being played at parties in college, and also, I would say the guys that I was dating, whatever they would burn for me onto a CD and whatever they were into and were excited to say, ‘Check this out.’

“[…] The bands that I really got into were The Ataris, New Found Glory, Something Corporate, and then, later – it was actually later than college – but I got really superinto Marianas Trench, which I love.”

Wanting a specific and consistent sound for their new project, “We decided to go all in on pop punk,” deegie explains. “I think one of the things with Only Bricks that made it harder to get to the right people that would like what we were doing was that everything that we did was very eclectic.

“It was a mix of bedroom pop and hyperpop and pop punk, and there was a little bit of everything and no concentrated amount of one thing, and, with algorithms now, it’s just kind of impossible to draw someone to your page and have them want to stay if they’re not seeing a consistency.

“So, we knew we wanted something consistent for deegie, and we have both loved pop-punk since its inception, and that’s music that I came up on when I was in college and coming of age, so, yeah, it just seemed like every time we would play a cover song, just for fun, I would have all this joy come across my face and just be so excited to be playing these songs.”

In August, deegie released her debut album, titled EXES. An uncompromisingly bold, brave, vulnerable and honest record, EXES explores deegie’s past relationships in full detail, with each song written about a particular ex, as a means of mapping out how these relationships made her the person that she is today.

“It was really what was hot to the touch,” deegie says of crafting this concept. “I found my old journals around the time that we were transitioning to deegie, and I started reading back through them and realising, ‘Oh, I was obsessed with these men that I was dating and there’s so much here! There’s all these different stories, we could really write a lot about them,’ and quickly came up with the idea for a song for each.

“A friend suggested putting their names in the titles, which I just loved for the accountability of it. It’s kind of the anti-Taylor Swift, where you’re always wondering and guessing who the song is about. It’s like, ‘No, I’m just going to tell you. I’m not famous. I have nothing to lose here. They’re first names, they’ll be fine, and they should be accountable.’

“It just felt like the most authentic thing that I had in front of me that seemed relatable, and once I got sucked into the former, past world of mine, I just kind of kept going down the rabbit hole. [Laughs]”

EXES was a therapeutic record for deegie to make, as it afforded her the opportunity to reflect on her life and process it. She says, “It really was like therapy, and it really has been life-changing in terms of looking back at my patterns and my propensity to want to be in a relationship, to want to stay in a relationship even when it’s not working and I’m not being served, my propensity to need validation from another person and to only place my worth in someone else, my tendency to escape into fantasy and obsession, and I’m kind of an OCD, anxious thinker, so that has played into my romantic life.

“So, just seeing it all laid out, and going through all those sessions of talking about these experiences, it’s pretty undeniable. So, it’s been just a big zoom-out moment. I also turned 40 in the spring, as we were finishing recording the record, so it was kind of glaring me in the face, and it’s been a lot to process and to start to piece together how I want to learn and grow from it. I’m doing a lot of personal work on myself to heal all that and to try to keep my worth in me instead of putting it outside myself.”

deegie’s debut album, EXES, is available on all streaming platforms now and the album is running as a musical, titled EXES: The Musical, in Los Angeles from October 26^th. Tickets for the musical, deegie’s music, live dates, and social media accounts can be found on her website.

Tune into POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews… tonight at 21:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full, where we expand on everything discussed in this article, as well as talk about what deegie’s husband learnt about her while making this record, the resurgence of pop punk, making punk a safe and open environment, and much more. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.