Two years ago, Eleanor Laserna survived a stroke, recovered from heart surgery, and decided it was time to pursue the music she’d loved since childhood. What started as a way to heal and find her footing has become a new chapter in her life, with a little help from the San Diego music community and TMC.
She felt her way through “Something Is Better Than Nothing” and wrote it in a single night. Less than three weeks later, it was recorded, mixed, mastered, and released. By the end of its first week, it was her biggest release yet. “It wanted to come into this world,” she said. At TMC, it actually had somewhere to land. “It’s like you got an idea, let’s make it happen.”
As she put it, it wasn’t “stop, wait a couple months, save some money, wait until a studio becomes available.” It was also the first song she got to fully produce and arrange herself, with an engineer in her corner who got what she was going for. “He gave such great feedback,” she said. “I loved all his suggestions and we included all of it.”
Eleanor, who performs as Lazérna, is relatively new to the SD music scene. She’d always been drawn to music, starting at her family piano at 9 years old, but never pursued it professionally. After pivoting from a career in data analysis, she began playing covers at open mics, then her own songs, her own gigs. Playing helped her regain strength in her left hand, but also power within herself. “The music community has been so healing for me in so many different ways,” she said.
She’s a singer-songwriter whose gigs are usually simply her and a guitar, “spilling my soul,” and vocally, she’s a belter. “I’m a powerhouse vocalist,” she said. That’s great on a stage and tricky in a studio, where engineers tend to lower the gain to the point that she can’t hear herself in her headphones. TMC’s engineer took the time to work with Eleanor to adjust things by hand until it worked for her. “I don’t know exactly what he does, but he does it and I can actually hear myself for once.”
A big part of what TMC gave her is room to try things. “It’s a space that’s safe enough to experiment,” she said. “And mistakes can be expensive, but not if they’re at the more affordable prices at TMC.”
They recorded “Something Is Better Than Nothing” in about four and a half hours, and Kevin had the mix back to her in two days. In its first week out, it passed 1,000 streams, the first of her songs to hit that in week one.
Would it have happened without TMC? “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “TMC is just like, ready? Let’s go, let’s do it.”
A few weeks later, she came back to film a live session of the song at TMC. It’s now the video she sends to people booking shows. “You can’t get that anywhere else,” she said. “Not at this price or quality, and not that fast turnaround time.”
And the support didn’t stop at one song. She calls TMC “a one-stop shop,” a place where “you can see the cycle of a song through.” That includes Songwriter’s Circle, our free workshop led by Patricio Pickslay from Pacific Records, where she got specific actionable feedback she couldn’t find at open mics. Her songs are personal, and feedback used to scare her. Here, “it lands just right.”
She keeps learning from the musicians she’s met here, too, going to peers’ shows and watching how they work a stage. “The learning doesn’t stop at the walls of TMC,” she said. Next, she wants to continue working with the audio engineers on bringing the raw energy from her live shows into a recording.
Eleanor’s story is yet another example of TMC’s mission in action. When an artist has a song ready to go, they shouldn’t have to wait months and save up to record it. Affordable studio time, a quick turnaround, and people in your corner… that’s what gets a song out into the world while the feeling is still alive, letting its impact ripple through San Diego and beyond.
And Eleanor’s already thinking about passing it on. “I just want to pay it forward, you know, one day when I make it big,” she said. “Give back to the community that gave to me.”
Your gift today helps artists like Lazérna find their footing, build their skills, and get their music out into the world. Will you donate now to help emerging artists discover what’s possible? Click here to donate.
