We interview Lilly Hiatt to talk all about her new record Walking Proof and the story behind it.
Hey, how are you doing?
Not so bad, how about you?
Good – even with everything going on right now, you must be excited to unveil your new record tomorrow?
I’m so excited about tomorrow, I’m not sure what to expect but I think it’ll be a good day.
It’s nice to bring some sort of light into the world at a time like this!
Yeah, it feels like some sort of contribution hopefully.
There’ve been a huge amount of amazingly talented people involved in this project from your father to Amanda Shires – it really feels like a labour of love – how much did it mean to you to have them be a part of the project?
It means so much and I feel like it just opened up the music in a way that I would never have been able to do on my own so it was fun to let other people in.
I feel like you’ve had such a transition from Trinity Lane to this album, you’ve obviously been touring so much and there’s all that energy from life on the road, but you’ve talked about needing to catch up on your experiences on the road in this album. Can you talk about that?
Yeah, we just went so many places on the Trinity Lane tour, we were all over. We were in Amsterdam, we were in the UK, we went to Belgium, we went to Wisconsin and California. I spent a lot of time with my band and had a lot of profound experiences with people and I needed to sort through them.
You’ve also talked about being sober now and having a new sense of observation, did that help when going in to write this record?
Yes, I mean the thing with that, all my records were written after I quit drinking, the first – Let Down – some of those were written eight years ago. It was something I just put on the table a few years ago, it did help but it was not a new thing.
One of my favourite tracks on the record is the opener ‘Rae,’ which you wrote for your sister. It must be emotional sharing those songs that you’ve written about people so close to you?
Yeah totally and I almost feel a little guilty, admitting that song is for her, because I didn’t really have permission or anything but that’s how writing works. I mean it’s nice to put that song out there, and we’ve been through a lot and she’s a very powerful person in my life and needed to be sung about.
Obviously you two grew up in such a musical household, was music always something you wanted to do – because it can go either way?
Totally. I have friends that are musicians and have kids that don’t want to touch an instrument, because they want to be different. Then I have friends that have kids that want it. I guess it depends, we’re all individuals here, just because you care about something doesn’t mean they have to. I think I have that gene in me that needs to play music.
Have you taken any lessons from your father over the years and watching him play music?
Yes definitely. I have learned many things from him. The line he always gives to me is ‘put the music first and everything else will fall into place,’ meaning write good songs. I’ve always done that too and it’s starting to work out for me.
‘Never Play Guitar,’ I feel like that’s the song that every musician wishes they had written. Can you talk about the writing process behind that one?
Actually I’m glad that that song is coming up, because I put it later on on the record and I hoped that people would actually hear it. Of all the songs on the record, that was the first one that I wrote and I wrote it, maybe about a year before a lot of the other ones were written, when I was on a little break from tour. We were about to go out on the road with the Drive-By Truckers, I had a week in January at home and I was feeling like I wanted to write so much stuff but I couldn’t because I had so much going on – at every moment, I felt like someone was wanting to contact me, or talk to me – and just trying to find ten minutes to shut out the world. I sat on top of my washing machine and wrote that song, staring out the window like ‘I am writing right now,’ and watch what happens.
Has your songwriting process changed a lot then over the years that story seems very instantaneous, but a lot of people will leave aside time to write or they’ll book in co-writes, but do you find your best music comes much more organically than that?
Yeah, it just comes from getting a little moment to process whatever has been going on around me, and my perception of that in the moment. I guess I do appreciate a little bit of pressure, like when I knew I was going to be recording a record I definitely turned the heat up for myself and was like ‘hey, you’d better write.’ I was writing every day like it was a mission, but I also knew that I had a lot in the bank.
Are there any songs from the record that you’re particularly excited to see released into the world and to see the response from people?
Yeah you’re absolutely right, that’s part of the fun letting people interpret them on their own. I can’t wait for them all to get their own life out there, but I’m so curious. ‘Some Kind of Drug,’ I would love to see how that gets to people’s psyche and what they get from that. I think it has a lot of different meanings. I’ve already seen a guy tweet about it and I was like ‘that’s not what I meant at all’ and I didn’t say that but ‘hey that’s cool.’ That one I feel is really open to interpretation in a way that could be exciting to see it get a new life from that.
Completely. And in terms of going into the studio to record this project, was that something that came together when you were in the studio or were they songs that you’d had already over the years and collected them together, or was it in the moment over a few weeks of writing?
There are three or four songs on that record that I had written either on the road, or on a little break from the road on the Trinity Lane era, and the rest kind of just happened when I talked to Lincoln Parish and decided that we were going to work on the record together. We knew it was going to be a few months before I went into the studio and he said ‘just start sending me some demos’ and I felt really inspired in that moment and just started sending some songs to him. I wrote a lot of songs in about a month or two’s time and a lot of them ended up on the record.
In terms of your plans for the rest of the year, I guess they’re all completely up in the air because of everything that’s happened.So I guess it’s just a question of ‘Watch This Space’?
You know I was thinking, we make so much of our living out on the road as artists, but I feel like the actual record will make a comeback through all of this pandemonium right now, maybe people will actually pay attention to records again rather than just singles or streams. That would be cool but time will tell. I have been trying to think in a more expansive way than I’m used to, where it’s like ‘hey, you can’t go and limit yourself to a certain belief’ because you’ve never experienced otherwise.
Final Few
What record would you bring to a desert island? I would probably take ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’ the Lucinda Williams album.
What record are you listening to on repeat at the moment? I’m listening to the Sam Doores self-titled album.
Would you rather give up songwriting or performing? Ooh that’s a very hard question, almost impossible to answer, but if I had to give up one I think it would have to be performing.
What’s your most memorable gig? We had a show at the Basement East a few years ago, it was kind of our Trinity Lane – it wasn’t a release because it had been out for months before we got a hometown show but it was our Nashville homecoming show. It was so cool, I had some friends there and a friend playing with me and the energy of that night was so positive and I love the Basement East. I know it got demolished by the freaking tornado but it will get rebuilt. That will be in my heart forever.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done in quarantine so far? (laughs) Ooh that’s a good question, I did a bunch of line dancing videos the other day, I practised it for about an hour and a half and then I recorded myself and posted it online. I do it all the time. (laughs)
Complete the sentence…
Music is… everything.
Lilly Hiatt is… all over the place.
