Even if you haven’t heard Lily Honigberg’s name before, there’s no doubt you’ve heard her strings. The Los Angeles-based fiddle player and violinist has collaborated with some of the biggest mainstream music names, using her keen, improvisational ear to bridge the gap between traditional Irish folk music and pop. Brought up in a family of professional musicians, Honigberg received her Master’s in contemporary improvisation from the New England Conservatory, and now lends her expertise to artists such as FINNEAS, 070 Shake, Denzel Curry and Juicy J.

Perhaps Honigberg’s biggest breakout yet was being the feature fiddle player on budding country artist Shaboozey’s colossal 2024 hit “Tipsy (A Bar Song).” As Shaboozey, real name Collins Obinna Chibueze, joyfully shouts the reprise—”Everybody at the bar gettin’ tipsy”—Honigberg’s gentle, cascading strings gives the track a bluegrass dimension, adding to it’s cozy hometown Americana spirit that over 1 billion streamers resonated with. Honigberg is a connoisseur of on-the-spot recording, able to absorb a collaborator’s energy and create something that synthesizes both of their energies into a complete piece of music. It’s her harmonious nature that has allowed her to work on any project–from a country hit, to a rap song, and even to the film score of 2023’s Dungeons and Dragons. 

The Fresh Finds recently got the chance to exchange emails with Honigberg, who is currently on an international tour supporting the country artist Dasha. Read below to see our chat about her musical upbringing, working with producers and getting inspiration from her successful novelist aunt. 

Interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Both of your parents were musical, with your father being a cellist and your mother a piano teacher and baroque music series director. How did growing up in an environment surrounded by music inspire you to take it on as a career?

Growing up in a household full of music resulted in me never questioning this career path and outcome of becoming a professional musician. I was never asking myself questions like “What if I fail” or “What if I can’t make a living doing this” or “What does it look like to be freelance vs. in a steady orchestral job” because my parents did it everyday and were successful. And I also didn’t have a family who was constantly questioning if I would “make it”, as they say, which is definitely something I took for granted until I got older and learned that a bunch of my friends grew up with skeptical parents in terms of going for music as a profession. And I get it, especially being freelance! It’s such an unpredictable and sometimes chaotic lifestyle (especially touring as much as I do right now), and I’ve been extremely fortunate in the trajectory of my career thus far. 

Also, hearing my parents play together and getting to play piano trios with them from teenagehood onwards was and is one of the most magical experiences I’ve had in music because we get to sit there playing the notes of Debussy or Mendelssohn together, and then my mom can tell me not to leave my shoes in the front hallway and my Dad and I can go to the deli in our neighborhood and talk about sports and crack jokes!

You learned to play fiddle by sitting in a pub in West Ireland for a month, through “osmosis.” Can you explain that process, how watching and listening helped you to become a fiddle player?

The music of Ireland called to me since I was four years old and my parents got an Eileen Ivers’ CD for our CD player at home. I started playing classical violin around that time, and never thought there was a world in which I could also learn fiddle. They felt like two separate instruments to me. 

As I got older, I became more intrigued by movie soundtracks, and decided to go to Ireland after my freshman year of college. My host family were musicians, and taught me tunes during the day, and then we would go to the pub at night to try them out. I remember being fascinated by the ornamentation and nuances that the Irish players had in both their left and right hands, and would often record the sessions with my phone to try to dissect as much as I could later on. I also spent a lot of time transcribing the recordings of Martin Hayes, the fiddler from Clare who really inspired me to take the leap and go over to Ireland after I heard his Tiny Desk concert with Dennis Cahill. I love how simple some melodies can be, but how deep they are at the same time, and how much freedom and personal style you have as a player to embellish the melodies and make them your own on the spot by improvising around and within them. Martin is my very favorite at doing this. 

Does your family have roots in Ireland or Scotland? If so, do you find that playing music on the fiddle connects you with your culture on a deeper level?

Far back we do in Ireland! My grandfather was Norwegian; I definitely feel connected to my Scandinavian roots when I play tunes from Sweden and Norway. I know my mom loves fiddle music, so much so that after she went on a painting trip to Ireland in 2006, she rented a fiddle and started taking lessons, and she is a pianist ! She is actually quite good at fiddle (mom if you’re reading this, let’s play tunes this summer!

How did the opportunity come along for you to play fiddle on “A Bar Song (Tipsy?)” How does it feel to know you contributed a fiddle part to such a breakout hit, spreading the sound of the genre to millions globally?

“Tipsy” changed my life. I am so grateful to have gotten the call to play on this landmark of a song. A buddy who plays cello in L.A., Oliver Walton, recommended me to Boozey’s producer, Sean Cook, who was looking for a fiddler and called me in February 2024 to come in and record the fiddle for “Tipsy.” I remember him sending me the demo and hearing it for the first time…it was so catchy and fun, but I don’t think anyone knew what the song was going to do.

It always makes me happy when people get stoked about meeting me/knowing me to feel a connection to that song, and at least several times a week I get texts/DMs from people saying “It’s on in my Uber in Denmark,” or “I’m at a bar in Arizona right now and it’s playing,” or “I’m loading out at my show in Kansas and they are playing it!” I think my favorite time this happened is when my financial advisor asked me what was new on the phone a few months ago and when I told him we were up for four Grammys for that song he couldn’t believe it was me. He was so excited and mentioned, like, three more times on the call how much he loved that song. Also, my family is really proud of me—I moved out to LA three years ago on a gut feeling with no work and no connections in the music world, and they always thought I’d be an orchestral violinist. I’m proud of where I’m at, and also very excited for what the future holds in store. 

You’ve collaborated with several other stars as well (070 Shake, Denzel Curry, FINNEAS), and you have said that each of these artists have their own languages that you love to “decode.” When preparing to play music for each of these artists, how does that decoding work? How do you translate the way they speak about strings into passages suitable for their sound?

Usually, there is no opportunity to prepare for these sessions. It will be a quick call on the day of without sending me the tracks first, like, “Hey can you come to the studio now?” or just “Bring your violin and your viola.” Both are great, but I love getting to sit with the song first when possible. If I do, I usually just listen to it on repeat for an hour or two before going into the session so all the ideas can flow in my head. Sometimes I’ll get out my violin and play along to the track beforehand to get some flavor ideas as well, but a lot of it is honestly done in the room on the spot. Historically, that would have made me uneasy (the controlling classical violinist in me is still there a little bit), but the more I do these sessions, the more I am relaxed and ready to create alongside these artists instead of worrying so much about being perfect. 

You can explore more and reach new places when you are open to making mistakes and taking risks in the moment, and I am more excited about finding what the artist resonates with rather than how perfect the path is in getting there. A lot of producers/artists will sing the vibe of what they want for me in a certain passage, whether it be a vibe, a note change or something else. A lot of times I’ll be asked to harmonize things however I’m hearing it, or show them some fiddleisms. I love demonstrating different bowings as well, asking if they prefer one or the other and hearing why. My favorite sessions are the ones in which I am pushed out of my comfort zone and I get to try things on my instrument I never would have come up with on my own.

Your new track “All The Lands,” was written both by you and your aunt, who passed down the lyrics to you. How did you weave her words into the song, and what was the experience of doing so like?

This was a very special experience for me. My Aunt Elizabeth Kostova is one of my dearest inspirations as a human being, and is quite a well-known author, recognized for her first novel, “The Historian”— a thrilling tale about Dracula that came out in 2005 and has since been translated in 40 languages and taken her all over the world on book tour. She read books like “The Lord of the Rings” and old poetry aloud to us and her children (who are like my siblings) when we were young. 

She gifted me “All the Lands” almost three years ago for my 26th birthday. I don’t think I actually read the poem until I was 28, but I’m so glad I waited for the right moment to dive into her words to create this song. I wrote the melody while recording myself improvising as I read the lyrics: a short poem about me, my sister Clara, and my cousin Yanka, all immersed in our respective worlds, with a hint of whimsy of course. I called my favorite Irish players in LA to bring the song to life: Dubliner Hannah Crowley on vocals, my dear friend Eric Rigler (the original bagpiper and whistle player on soundtracks like Titanic, Braveheart, and Outlander) on whistle, Ben Knorr on guitar and nyckelharpa, James Yoshizawa on Irish percussion, and long time collaborator and friend James Heazelwood-Dale on upright bass. Connor Schultze recorded and mixed it, with artwork by an old friend from Ireland/Boston, Vincent Crotty. 

Shelley’s Revenge,” your upcoming track, has a slightly faster, more jiggy pace than “All The Lands.” I’m curious about the evolution of a track for you – how you know if a melody will need vocals, or if it is meant to be faster or slower. Is that just something that comes naturally, since there is an aspect of improv through your collaborative process after all?

A lot of the tunes I write come from little melody ideas that pop into my head, and I’ll get out my phone and record myself improvising around those fragments until I fill in the puzzle pieces to something that I resonate with. That can sometimes take one day or one year, depending on how buried the melody is in my brain and soul. It always feels like chipping away to create an ice sculpture—the tune is in there, but I have to try a lot of different angles to excavate it. I never know if a melody will need vocals, and oftentimes I will write the lyrics first and then search for melody fragments I have either abandoned mid-creation or write something new on the spot while improvising and reading the lyrics at the same time. I am not a lead singer myself, so songwriting still feels new and like something I am going to dive into much deeper on my next project.