As night fell on a warm Friday in May, a group of teenagers convened to practice at an at-home recording space inside an upscale Oak Park home. The teens gathered to prepare for a show their band, Lottie and The Drama, had booked the following week.
For vocalist Charlotte “Lottie” Houlihan, it was the start of something she hopes can be an igniter for a future she’s been longing for.
Lottie, 16, and her six bandmates performed their first show together last week at Robert’s Westside, a live music venue in Forest Park. She and the band covered about a dozen songs during the hour-long performance. Lottie is using the money she made to fund a trip to New York. Last month, she was accepted into a two-week songwriter workshop at New York University led by Phil Galdston, a Grammy nominated songwriter.
From June 15 through the 26, about 50 participants will engage in in-depth presentations and explorations of a wide variety of essential skills for working songwriters that’ll cost Lottie over $3,000. Houlihan is also accepting donations through the end of June.
She’s expected to graduate from Trinity High School in River Forest in 2027. From there, she wants to attend NYU full time, her dream school since she was in seventh grade after being introduced to it by the 2018 film “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
She wants to double major in psychology and songwriting. After college, she wants to be a therapist for kids with neurodivergent needs, but still wants to perform and write music for the rest of her life and NYU will be the perfect place for her to achieve that, she said.
“Chaos is my favorite thing in the whole world,” Houlihan said. “I hate being organized and I feel like a lot of musicians are that way. That school just really spoke to me because it doesn’t have a campus. You’re dropped in whatever you want to do. You’re in the city, you can choose a life for yourself.”
While in New York, she looks forward to networking with people and hopefully meeting future collaborators, she said.
“It’s all things that will benefit my journey as a music artist, and I think that that’s really nice.”
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The Acceptance
While sneaking away on her electronic device in the middle of class, Houlihan searched for summer music programs online and the NYU program was the first to appear, she said.
“I guess my AI Google Gemini knew exactly what I needed,” she joked.
She’d missed the April 1 application deadline, but chose to submit anyway. A few weeks later, an acceptance email into the program caused her to jump for joy and shed tears in the middle of art class.
“I thought they weren’t even going to read my application, so it was very surprising because I thought it was over and ended,” she said.
Her classmates and art teacher looked in confusion before Houlihan announced that she was accepted into the program, she said.
Her parents had no idea that she was even applying to the program, so the news, in its entirety, was a surprise to them.
“She’s always been one of those kids who kind of takes matters into her own hands,” said Paddy Houlihan, Lottie’s father.
He’s an independent filmmaker and runs a podcast with his twin brother called Houli’s Hooley. As a father, he was thrilled for his daughter. But as an artist, he questioned the cost.
“I didn’t want to break her heart or anything, but I said I’m a struggling producer, an artist myself, and, so, I don’t know if I have the funds to finance this right now,” he said.
The answer, he said, was to “put a show together and try to rally the community around you and take your fans and let your fans get you there.”
Paddy Houlihan said he’s known Robert’s Westside founder Donnie Biggins since childhood and asked him to pull some strings and allow the band to perform.
Lottie and The Drama
Last Wednesday, Lottie and The Drama performed about a dozen songs from artists that spanned decades, including “Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon, “Machu Picchu” by The Strokes and the original song “The Dream,” from the 5-song-EP “Memory Box” that Lottie released last fall.
Friends and family of the band gathered inside the dimly lit music venue and danced as their loved ones rocked the stage for their inaugural performance.
The band formed in March, Lottie said, and her dad was shocked at how quickly they got the music together after witnessing the performance.
“They have really big futures ahead of them,” Paddy Houlihan said. “This was awesome.”
Lottie was expecting a larger turnout, but she was not disappointed. The love she received from those in attendance was enough to create both an intimate show that allowed her to connect with the crowd, she said.
Proud mom Haleigh Houlihan danced and smiled throughout the show, and gave the same energy back to the performers as they gave to her.
“It was better than expected, if even possible,” Haleigh Houlihan said.
Lottie, who’s been enrolled at the School of Rock Oak Park for nearly two years assembled the crew of young musicians from connections she made there.
School of Rock Oak Park music director Michael Brooks said after hearing her sing for the first time he realized she had a “pretty amazing voice.”
Over time, she only got better, Brooks said, and she joined the School of Rock’s show team, a “pretty rare” accomplishment. Out of about 400 students, only 16 are part of the show team, which performs in public. “They’re kind of like a face for the school in the community,” Brooks said.
He said Lottie stood out in ways that aren’t directly connected to the way she hits a note.
“It’s not just her voice and her singing and her natural talent,” Brooks said. “It’s really just as much about her personality and how well she gets along with others and just her spirit and motivation.”
Her bond with her bandmates were evident during both their rehearsal and during their first performance.
Drummer Isaac Keneklis, 15, a student at Oak Park and River Forest High School, wants to be a studio engineer in the future, but wanted to join the band to gain musical experience.
“We’re so lucky to be able to do this,” Keneklis said.
Guitarist Vera Gallup, 14, wasn’t even a week removed from graduating eighth grade when she took the stage.
As they rehearsed, the band pondered over their understanding of the world, the complexities of religion and where people go after death while chowing down slices of Domino’s pizza.
It Runs in the Family
The roots of art stem back decades in the Houlihan family. Her father is an independent filmmaker and her grandfather, Cliff Johnson
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, was a singer in the power pop band Off Broadway.Her grandmother Mary Carney starred in the soap opera “Ryan’s Hope,” and her grandfather Mike Houlihan founded Hibernian Media, a nonprofit he now runs with Paddy Houlihan.
Johnson introduced Lottie to music by teaching her to play piano and the guitar. Though he died in 2022, his influence is still prevalent in her life, she said, and feels a spiritual connection to him.
“Every time I’m on stage, I have a responsibility almost,” she said. “I have to connect with the audience and give them a gift and give them something to experience every time I’m on the stage and give them something to carry with them.
“I know that my grandpa did that and having seen him perform before and having that connection to him, it feels like something I need to do as well.”
For her mom, Haleigh Houlihan, witnessing the bridge she formed between her father and daughter was “a sight to see.”
“You can tell that Charlotte is in her element when she’s up there,” she said.
Lottie’s hustle was ingrained in her, her father said, and wasn’t something she was taught, but something she observed through watching her family. She funded her own EP that was released last fall through her summer job as a lifeguard, her dad said.
This career path isn’t something that was pushed on her. He would have told her to become an electrician, he joked.
“This is not a rich parents funded thing, by any means. This is not the Taylor Swift story. This is a little different,” he said.”This is a kid who’s gritty and kind of figured out herself through extreme drive. As a parent, as much as I admire it, it’s also maddening to have a child that just does not take ‘no’ for an answer. But I know that this is going to propel her further in her career.”