Listen to Ali Hoffman’s interview and live performance on XPN’s Philly Local Hour with Helen Leicht

Last week, Helen Leicht brought Ali Hoffman into the studio for an interview and live performance on XPN’s Philly Local Hour. Below, you can read a brief transcript from the full interview (which you can listen to via the XPN Media player), and listen to two of the songs Hoffman performed in the studio.

Helen Leicht: So Ali, you are from Philadelphia?

Ali Hoffman: I am, yeah. I grew up in Northern Liberties, and then around high school or middle school I moved out to the Main Line area. Then I came back to UPenn for college.

HL: So, when did you graduate and what did you take in school?

AH: I graduated in spring of ’06 with a BA in English, and I did a creative writing emphasis there which was really cool. It actually helped me get into the music industry. I took a class there that was taught by Anthony DeCurtis—who has been writing for Rolling Stone and got a Grammy for writing the liner notes for Clapton’s Crossroads—and we really hit it off. And when I told him I was planning to move to New York to pursue this whole singing thing he was like, “Yeah, I’m totally on board. And I wouldn’t say this lightly but you have to do this.”  So I was like, “Well, is there anyone I can bring coffee to? Can you hook me up with some sort of job?” His wife actually works at A&E in production. And they have been so great, they took me under their wing. I started working at A&E and then Anthony said a friend of his, Joe Rosenthal, was starting up a label and was looking for talent so he hooked me up with an audition and the rest is history. It all started at Penn.