Lakewood singer-songwriter Bethany Joy’s ‘Slow Burn’ into self-discovery

For much of her musical life, Lakewood’s Bethany Svoboda tried to fit into a genre. She could sound like almost anyone, which made her a strong collaborator but left her unsure of who she was as an artist.

Sarah Lazard

Her new album, “Slow Burn,” captures what happened when she stopped chasing a genre and started listening inward.

The journey toward finding her own voice and identity began quietly, years before she ever stepped into a studio.

Svoboda began piano lessons at the age of five. Her mother was a musician and piano teacher, and the two often sang harmonies together in church.

She trained in piano for nine years before quitting at age 12, later picking up the guitar in her early 20s. She mainly learned by practicing alone, studying her favorite artists and singing at open mics around Kent.

While this phase was a valuable learning experience, she struggled to find her artistic identity.

“I would watch mostly the women I would look up to, and I would look at them and say, ‘Oh well they're definitely this genre and they're really good at that,’” she said. “I always felt like, ‘What am I?’ I never felt like I fit something obvious, and I was always insecure about that.”

Connecting with other artists

She began performing in the local scene through a series of collaborations.

First, she formed a duo with a friend, then she started Svoboda Band, a rootsy trio with upright bass, guitar and cajón.

She later joined popular indie-folk band, The Speedbumps, and continued singing with songwriter Dan Socha, who became one of her closest creative partners.

She met Socha at the Venice in Kent, a venue she still considers her musical “starting point.”

But even as she immersed herself in other people’s projects, she felt something shifting internally. It was a pull toward something more personal and self-defined.

That exploration eventually led Socha and Svoboda to form Thieves of Joy, an alternative collaboration that released its debut EP in 2020.

“That was sort of my attempt at finding myself in a creative way,” she said. “We were kind of going a more alternative, like Radiohead-ish route, like mixed with singer-songwriter.”

After that musical project fizzled out, Svoboda was once again left to determine and shape the voice she wanted to hone as a musician.

“I decided after that, I'm gonna be Bethany Joy,” she said. “It's not gonna be a band name, it's gonna be me.”

She said she had a vision and didn’t want to compromise to fit someone else’s sound or brand.

“Those experiences shaped me and led me to decide, ‘Just do you,’” she said.

Kayla Todd

Expanding her creative vision

With that clarity came a new chapter.

In 2022, she released her first solo album, “Planet,” a surprising departure from the somber folk songs she was used to writing.

“I was really good at writing sad songs. And I'd gotten feedback from people: ‘I cry when I listen to you,’” she said. “I'm like, ‘I don't want to make people cry, I want to make them dance. I want to make them move.’”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she began taking guitar lessons, learning jazz chords, expanding her sense of harmony and exploring the guitar neck beyond what she calls “cowboy chords.”

The lessons unlocked a new palette of sounds.

“I wrote a lot during that time, 2020, 2021. A lot of those songs are the songs that are on ‘Planet,’” she said.

The album allowed her to close the chapter of penning gloomy, slow songs and embrace jazzy, funky sounds.

“That album, I'm so proud of it. I think it turned out really well,” Svoboda said.

But the pride came with pressure.

“I've been nervous about trying to make something after that,” she said.

When she started writing again, she found herself stuck. How do you follow an album that feels like a breakthrough?

She planned studio time with Cleveland producer Tuck Mindrum, but as those dates approached, she said she was terrified.

Over the next year and a half, she wrote songs at her own pace, letting each one arrive naturally, sometimes weeks or months apart.

“​​One day I found this chord progression, and I was playing it over and over, and I started singing to it. And then I was like, ‘OK, there it is,’” she said.

That song became the title track, “Slow Burn.”

“This song in itself is sort of this microcosm of kind of what I want the whole album to be,” she said. “It starts kind of slow, and it builds. It's just this explosion. And then it softly brings you back down. And that's sort of the arc of the album in itself.”

Many of the album’s most profound moments arrived quickly. “The Cliff,” for instance, emerged the day after the presidential election.

"I woke up kinda hungover, really sad … and that song came in like an hour,” she said. “I recorded it in one take."

Another track, “Happiness,” arrived during a painful pause in a relationship.

It poured out in a couple of hours, she said.

Other songs dig into her inner-child work, a theme that threads through the album.

She talks often about the tension between her adult self — the version afraid of judgment — and her younger self, the “little girl” who made art to heal.

“Slow Burn,” she said, became a way of listening to that younger voice again.

One of the album’s most personal pieces, “Renegades,” came from a recurring dream about packing up her childhood bedroom while she was living alone in her old family home during a difficult time.

After two intense dreams, one about death and one about birth, the recurring dream stopped.

She described it as a “portal moment.”

The music video blends new footage with digitized home movies she shot between the ages of 10 and 12.

One friend featured in those old tapes later died of an overdose, adding emotional weight to revisiting them.

The project became a form of closure and an attempt to reclaim her childhood on her own terms.

Letting go of genre

Through all of it, she says she’s rewiring the way she thinks about her voice and her place in music.

“I have found it to be a strength, to be versatile, whereas before I saw that as a weakness,” she said. “I don't fit into a box. I'm not easily branded. Now I'm so grateful for my versatility, because I can do all these different things.”

These days she describes her sound as “indie rock meets jazz and soul,” though this new album leans more into her roots as a singer-songwriter.

Outside her solo work, Joy is part of BADJR Bad Junior (Badger), a loose supergroup with Anthony Papaleo, Dan Socha, Josie McGee and Ray Flanagan.

There’s no strategy behind it, no release plan, no social media push. She said it’s simply friends bringing original songs, harmonizing instinctively and keeping things as close to “living room vibes” as possible.

The group first came together for a live session at Suma Recording Studio in Painesville and continued because it felt good.

She performs frequently around Northeast Ohio and said the community has been essential, offering encouragement during the moments she doubted herself and space to experiment when she needed to rebuild.

Now that “Slow Burn” is finished, she said she still feels the pull of comparison.

“I'm looking at it as a step in a long journey. I'm gonna keep making music. I'm gonna keep recording,” she said.