Logan Brill joined the Destination Country team for a Happy Half Hour to chat about her forthcoming release with Emily Hackett, life in quarantine and more. Check out the session below.
Don’t forget to get your tickets for Logan’s DC Sessions on StageIt this week, here.
Hi Logan, how are you?
I’m great, how are you guys?
Great! It feels like a very long time ago since we last saw you here in the UK on the CMT Next Women of Country tour with Cassadee Pope. You’ve been over quite a few times now, so what is it about the UK that keeps you coming back?
So many things, I think playing shows over there, I see familiar faces come back and the crowds are just super receptive to original music and hearing the stories behind the songs. I really feel like that is invaluable as an artist. The first time I came over there, I did not expect for things to be received in the way they were.
It’s been five years since you released ‘Shuteye’ which is absolutely crazy. What challenges have you been facing, particularly recently? Have you found it very difficult to get into that creative space?
I think, for me, I’ve gone through phases of being really creative and then phases of not really wanting to dive into anything. I know it’s been really challenging for everyone to be stuck at home. I genuinely have not been stuck at home for this long in years, so I’ve just been adjusting to all this down time and feeling the pressure of ‘I should be productive, I should be writing new music right now.’ So, dealing with a lot of the personal struggles of family being far away and all the things that people are dealing with right now. I think at the beginning I was really creative and in the flow and feeling inspired, just with all the things going on. I think as an artist it’s my job to observe and respond to what’s happening in the world. Also, there have been times where I’m like – this is the first time I’m home and I can hang out in my backyard and plant plants and spend time with my sister and her husband. A mix really, but it’s definitely a challenge to look ahead to what the industry might look like and what music might look like moving forward, because I think it’s going to be a little different for a while.
How has moving to Nashville changed you as a writer as an artist, and if you could sit down with anyone from Nashville to write with, that you haven’t yet, who would you choose?
I think for me, moving to Nashville was a challenge, a huge challenge. I think a lot of artists who are moving to Nashville face this, where you’re from you might be a big fish in a small pond – you’re a great writer and you’ve written a lot of great songs. For the most part, before I moved to Nashville I was writing alone and playing songs for my mom, that was pretty much it. So, moving to Nashville and starting to get into writers’ rooms with artists who were exceptional at their craft and so much better than me, it was a bit of a shock at first. I think most writers go through that when they move to Nashville, because it’s inspiring but also really intimidating. I think for the first few years, I was getting my footing of how to be a better writer and how to write the truth and make it really relatable to people – that was hard to do, but has made me such a better writer than I would have ever been if I hadn’t moved to Nashville. I’m a better writer because of Nashville for sure. As far as someone I’d like to sit in a room with, I think one that comes up a lot that has really changed the game with Nashville writers is Lori McKenna. She has had a hand on a lot of my favourite songs and I love her records, she’s really built a cool story. She’s a major influence on Nashville, even though she’s not based there. I’d love to get in a room with her, so fingers crossed that happens for me at some point.
We’re so excited about your new single ‘The Space’ with Emily Hackett, tell me a little bit about that track and how you two ended up working together on it?
So this goes back to the challenges of trying to create in this weird environment of being isolated from people, usually writing looks like meeting up in a studio or someone’s writing room and being all together in person and being able to create in person. It was a huge challenge to suddenly be like ok how do we write a song and collaborate and then how do we record the song when none of us can be together, using the limited resources that we have? I don’t really have a studio setup so it’s working out how to be creative. Emily and I had a lot of conversations about that, we had scheduled a write with my producer Jason Lenning, before quarantine started, it was on the calendar. We couldn’t get together in person so we got on Zoom, I brought in an idea that I’d been working on about all the stillness that I’m finding myself in and all the space that I have in my life that I did not have before. It’s about how many questions that’s brought up for me when suddenly your social life and your career are all gone to a certain extent, you’re left thinking about what your life now looks like and what this means for me and building from there. The idea resonated with Emily and Jason and we wrote the song on Zoom and then recorded the song remotely, we each recorded our own parts and we made a little video. We put it together and we hope it brings people some comfort in this weird time, we’re all in it together.
