INTERVIEW: Caitlyn Smith on New Album – High

Singer-songwriter Caitlyn Smith will release her new album – High – on Friday, following her much-lauded performance at C2C Festival. Here, we interview Caitlyn about the album, her evolution as an artist, self-production and more. Pre-order/pre-save the album here. 

Hello, how are you? You must be so excited, it’s the final stretch before the album release, I know it must always kind of feel exciting but nerve-wracking.

It feels like I’m at the top of the roller coaster like, ‘Oh my God, here we go’.

This is the first time that you’ve self produced a whole project, which gives it another layer. Obviously, you’ve always written songs and crafted your artistry but this is completely your voice in a way.

Yeah, for sure, it adds this extra layer of vulnerability that I didn’t know existed. I’ve always been curious and interested in the production element, but it somehow mystified me throughout the years. As lockdown happened, I was holed up in Minnesota writing songs for this album on Zoom. I started thinking on this tiny idea of ‘what if, what if I would take the chance to produce the record, what would it sound like to make a record?’ There’s all of the other voices out of the way. My first feeling was, ‘oh, that sounds terrifying’.

I heard this incredible quote, and I wish I’d screenshot it, but the sentiment is around choosing to be the fool, choosing to take the jump is such an incredible place to be – through that risk, you allow yourself the ability to grow. You open yourself up to change. This process has been scary, exciting, uncomfortable, it’s pushed me into this role of leadership with a record and ownership in my music that I didn’t know I could have as an artist and on the other side, I feel really, really empowered,

You should feel proud as well, because when this hit my inbox, I listened to it and was completely floored by it. I mean, there’s so much in there that goes into you self-producing it. I know you’ve always struggled with the idea of genre itself, because your music is such a melting pot – you’ve got the groovy stuff on ‘Good As Us’ but getting in your feelings on ‘Maybe In Another Life.’ So, how did you choose the songs for this project? It feels so rich, every song is very purposeful, and you don’t have a filler song on there – that doesn’t happen accidentally.

Yeah, totally. Well, I had a couple of philosophies when pulling the songs together for the record. This is my third album with Monument and I feel that as the years have gone on, I’ve been writing more for myself, because I spent so many years writing for other people, it’s become clearer and clearer what it is, I want to say as an artist. On one hand, I was thinking a lot about my live show and what journey of feelings I want to bring people on. The first song for the album I wrote was ‘High,’ which Miley Cyrus went on to cut, but I still really loved the song. I wanted to put my version out there, but I also have this song called ‘Low’ and there was this thing happening where the songs are really the highs and the lows that I’ve experienced in my life, and especially in the last few years. I wanted to take people on a journey of the highs and the lows as well. I probably wrote over 100 songs for the record, so it’s hard to narrow it down. These are the songs that really floated.

It was so interesting listening to Miley’s cut of ‘High’ and then yours, because both of you have such different unique tones in your vocals that it brings out different elements. Can you talk about being in the writing room that day, because you both bring out such different emotions with both your vocals?

Because of technology and the way that life is, I’ve actually never been in the room with Miley, which is crazy. I started the song with Jenn Decilveo in Nashville in a writing room and, and there was this kind of spiritual, gospel element that was happening in the chorus. We took that song and sent it to our publishers, and it just went around the ping pong of the music business and it ended up in the hands up Mark Ronson. He said, ‘This is gonna be perfect for Miley’ and he sent it to Miley, she loved it. So, she went through and changed some things on her version to make it her own, change some melodies, things like that. She really grabbed the song and made it her own – what you hear is her version, which I think is just brilliant. I’m obsessed with her voice and the emotion that she put into the song. I heard the song produced a different way and I wanted to put that version in the world that’s a little more let gospel-y.

Your vocal excels on it. One of the songs that jumped out to me on the record was ‘Maybe In Another Life,’ that I kept hearing people rave about at C2C. Can you talk a bit about that track?

I feel so grateful for a song like ‘Maybe In Another Life’ as a songwriter. I’ve written hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs through the years, but the most special ones are the ones that kind of find you. It was 10 o’clock at night and I just got smacked with this melody idea, which doesn’t happen very often. I grabbed a guitar and I was like, ‘What is this’ I started a recording on my phone and that melody that you hear just poured out. I was mumbling some words and brought it to my friend Jenn Decilveo and the song just happened. We dream of days like those. This feels really powerful and beautiful. I just kind of put it in the pile of songs for the record, but really what sent it over the edge, as far as songs that I knew I needed to put on the album was that my dear friend tragically lost her husband later last year. I was going through songs and it was right around the time of his funeral and I played that song back and it hit me in a different way. I heard her voice experiencing this song, maybe in another life, this wouldn’t happen and we would still be together and I’d be your girl, I thought ‘whoa, this isn’t just a breakup song’. There are so many levels here and I thought ‘this song is big.’ I feel so very grateful that the song found us one minute of a day.

I know you talked about writing with Jenn again and you’ve written some songs with her on the album, I guess talking about your songwriting process, do you find that there’s certain people you actually gravitate more towards to write material for your own artistry and then other people you find it easy to write external cuts with?

Yeah, totally. I have got a list of my favourite co-writers – people that I’ve written with through the years, I feel like they understand me and they want to go deeper. They want to pull out some magic in me, songwriters like Jenn, Gordie Sampson, Troy Burgess, Lori McKenna, Shane McAnally. I found those people through the years who get me and I feel safe  throwing out weird lines to them and know that they’ll be able to either go there or help fix it. I have a circle of people that I bring ideas that I have for myself to.

People who understand you. I know I talked about it earlier, but I feel like your reference points feel broader than genre – you mention Van Gogh, and then Kristoffersen, champagne in Paris… and it’s that that makes your music sit outside of genre. I guess, how have you found that process of being in Nashville and being part of the songwriting community, but having your music, art and artistry set apart from that, in a way?

Oh, wow, that’s a great question. I mean, I grew up in Minnesota. A lot of folks that you hear on country radio, or that are in Nashville, Southern culture is very heavy. I think I bring a different perspective, a different culture, different vibe, to the writing room, just being from the Northern part of the country. I feel that growing up in in Minneapolis, in that city, there’s a really rich music scene that’s full of indie rock and there’s a jazz scene. Bob Dylan and Prince are from that area. I definitely grew up listening to country music and I have all of that. I bring it to the writing room, I’m not afraid to expand my lyrics to different corners of the universe. I don’t think I always need to stay in a cornfield, or always stay in a tiny bar. I find so much joy in imagining and expanding my mind to those areas as a writer.

I think that’s why as a listener, it’s such a joy to listen to the songs because there’s so much specificity, and interesting things that you put in that when you listen back you pick up on different things, which makes it a more interesting listening experience. 

Awesome, I love to hear that. Thank you. I like to call the words like that crunchy words.

The final thing I was going to ask, I know that you’ve written a theme song for the new show Monarch. I wanted to ask how that experience was?

So this is crazy. ‘The Card You Gamble’  is actually one of the only outside songs that I’ve ever recorded. So, I didn’t have a part in writing it, but my dear friends, The Love Junkies – Liz Rose, Lori McKenna, and Hillary Lindsey – the three of them wrote this song. My label is in charge of music for the show and through that they thought what about giving me a hand at the theme song, to see if its’ a good fit. When I first heard the song, I was like, ‘This is so cool’. Knowing that it’s from three of my top favourite writers in Nashville, it was really, really fun to record. It’s fun to be a part of something like that. I got to film the music video for it on set, I got to be in an episode as well pitching one of my songs to one of the characters. I mean, I’m very excited about it all and it’s just fun to do somewhere different in music like a TV show.

Well congratulations again on this project, Caitlyn, and I really appreciate your time today.

Thank you so much. It was lovely talking to you. I hope to see you really soon.