Waxahatchee - Fire

Katie Crutchfield is a singer and songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama. She’s been making music under the name Waxahatchee since 2010. Her fifth album, Saint Cloud, came out this past March. Pitchfork named it Best New Music, and The Guardian called it the best album of the year so far. In this episode, Katie breaks down how she made the song “Fire." This episode was originally published July 29, 2020. For more, visit songexploder.net/waxahatchee http://songexploder.net/waxahatchee.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. You might have heard me say that Song Exploder is part of Radiotopia from PRX, and I wanted to explain what that means and how it connects to you. PRX is a public media nonprofit, so they're focused on supporting work that serves the public interest. And they started Radiotopia as a way to empower independent podcast makers like me. Here on Song Exploder, we try to book artists from a really wide range of music and backgrounds and ideas, and we spend a long time editing together each episode. I think that's what

• 0:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  makes the show special, but it's not a great formula if you're trying to maximize profit. But I've been able to keep this show going despite that because of the support of Radiotopia and listeners like you. Radiotopia sells ads for the show, but those come and go, and nothing is as reliable as the listeners who believe in what we're doing. So if you care about this show, and if you care about supporting independent media, please visit radiotopia.fm/donate. You can chip in any amount that works for you. It all makes a difference. Again, it's radiotopia.fm/donate. Thank you so much. There's a new podcast called Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers. In every legendary

• 1:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  music career, there's a moment right before it all changes. And in every episode of this podcast, Nile Rodgers talks to a legendary musician about the choices, the events, and the relationships that shaped their career before the moment that everything changed for them. Every story is unique and opens a window into the lives of some of the biggest names in music. And Nile is the perfect person to lead these conversations, because for over 50 years, he's played guitar with artists like Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk, and Beyoncé. In the first season of the podcast, some of Nile's guests include John Legend, Miguel, and more. New episodes are coming out every other Tuesday. Listen

• 2:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  to Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn Ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/songexploder. That's LinkedIn.com/songexploder. Terms and conditions apply. The Grammy nominations came out a couple of weeks ago, and I was really happy to see that Waxahachie's album Tiger's Blood, which I've listened to a bunch this year, was nominated

• 2:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  for Best Americana Album. It's her first Grammy nomination, and the news made me want to go back and listen to the episode that I recorded with her back in the summer of 2020. That was about the song "Fire" from her previous album. So here it is, and I'll be back with a new episode next week.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Writer's block is something I experience with every record in one way, shape, or form. I have the feeling of the universe allotted a certain number of songs, and I hit my quota, and now I'm never going to write another good song again. But usually, the darkest moments of writer's block, right? When it really gets hard and you're really borderline panicking over it, that's usually when you push through, in my experience. It's like I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, kept doing the next thing, and before I knew it, I wrote "Fire." And it really felt like, okay, I got this. It's gonna be okay.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  I'm Katie Crutchfield from Waxahatchee.

• 3:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Katie Crutchfield is a singer and songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama. She's been making music under the name Waxahatchee since 2010. Her fifth album, St. Cloud, came out this past March. Pitchfork named it Best New Music, and The Guardian called it the best album of the year so far. In this episode, Katie breaks down how she made the song "Fire."

• 4:35Speaker 01

  As I was preparing to write this song, I was traveling. I had been spending a lot of time here in Kansas, which is where I live. It was winter and I was sort of hammering away at writing the record. And then I went on a trip with my partner, Kevin, to Birmingham, Alabama, which is where I'm from. We were visiting my family and as we were leaving, I got this melody in my head. Na, na, na, na, na. And it was just sort of the most awkward timing because it was as I was saying goodbye to my family, as I was about to get into a car for a very long journey with Kevin, and I just kind of couldn't find an easy way to hold on to it. Like usually I would just record that in my phone and then forget about it

• 5:20Speaker 01

  until I had some time to actually sit with it. But I was too distracted with what was happening right in front of me. So I started the drive and I just repeated the melody just sort of over and over. And I kind of would lose it for a second and then it would come back. And by the time we got to Memphis, that's when I started to really put lyrics to it. And then the moment that I got home, I recorded the very first demo of the whole song. I gravitated toward electric piano.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  With every album, I usually have an instrument of choice that sort of is the thing that's inspiring me. And guitar, I'm hyper aware of the chord progressions that I like tend to go to. And with piano, I just know so little. Like it takes me a minute to even figure out, is this a C chord? You know, it's like my knowledge of it is like pretty limited. So I can like let go of some of the hangups that I have just because I don't really know what I'm doing. So I can kind of just stick to what sounds exciting melodically to me, rather than get in my head about chord progressions and things like that. The first line that came to me was "That's what I wanted." That's what I wanted.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  I wrote that as we were driving over the Mississippi River, over a bridge from Tennessee to Arkansas, to West Memphis. And the sun was kind of going down and the light was reflecting. It was so bright. I was just trying to find a way to like, poetically, talk about that and like, also talk about what I wanted in that larger moment. You know, I'd been going through a lot of dark stuff. I had just gotten sober and I had chosen to take a lot of time off from music. And I think I was having a little bit of an identity crisis. And then, having these big panicky, writer's block feelings. So, I wanted to find a way to poetically say, "I can love myself through this darkness that's happening."

• 8:02Speaker 01

  I was thinking a lot at the time about unconditional love and really kind of thinking of that as like, the ultimate position to take. The softness around loving anybody unconditionally, loving yourself unconditionally. I was thinking a lot about that as like, something that I wanted to be able to achieve in like, all my relationships. To just not let it have terms. To just accept people and accept myself.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  So I had like a loose idea, but I knew I needed help. I knew I needed like other people to come in and help me figure out what the next phase of the song was gonna be. I sent this song to Brad, Brad Cook, who is the producer of the record, who is really like my main collaborator on the whole thing. When you're in a project where you're, you know, it's really just like a solo project, it's so important to have a sounding board, to have a collaborator, a person who you can bounce ideas off of or talk to about your songs. You know, from the beginning, Brad really shared my excitement about the song and then I pretty quickly sent it to the guys who I knew were gonna be the band on the record.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Nick Kinsey, who's a great drummer, and Bobby Colombo and Bill Lennox, who are both in the band Bonnie Dune, an amazing band in their own right. There was one time where the band was in Durham and everybody was together and we were all demoing and most of the songs I'd written for the record were really straightforward and it really felt like, okay, we're all just gonna set up in a room as a band and like knock all these songs out. But, you know, anytime we got to fire, we'd all just kinda look at each other and be like, let's just skip this one, we'll come back to it. And then we just ended up doing that until it was time to go into the studio. I think we were all scared to overthink it and we were scared to like make it go through a million processes. We all kinda knew like this one is gonna be different.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  It was like there was this unspoken agreement between all of us that, let's tuck this one away and then when we get in the studio, we'll just see if some kind of magic happens. We made the record at Sonic Ranch in West Texas. It is a amazing studio that is a like 4,000 acre pecan ranch and there's like a compound of recording studios on the property. And I went back and rerecorded my electric piano. And then we started with the beat.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  So I had just anticipated like this is gonna be a drum machine song and the rest of the record is gonna have analog drums. So I don't know how it happened, but Brad was like, "Let's get Nick in there and let's work on the drum sound to make it sound a little bit more like a dryer kind of like manufactured beat." We just recorded like a really basic sort of track, just doing four on the floor and then the snare. Then he added the toms. The beat sort of grows and evolves. And we were just all so excited about the drum sound. We're like, "This is actually so much better than a drum machine because it really does

• 11:24Speaker 01

  feel like a performance, like there's a warmth to it." I believe what came next were the guitars, and that was what was the most surprising about the song. I didn't really even think about guitars on the song. I kind of didn't really see it. And then Bobby just kind of pulled out this part. He started doing that along with Nick and I was like, "Oh my goodness." And then Bill wrote this beautiful sort of complimentary lick on the song right after Bobby.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  That's just totally pulled out of thin air and was not at all part of the plan and yet now I'm obsessed with it.

• 12:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  More with Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee after this.

• 12:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Thanks to Stio for sponsoring Song Exploder. I took a trip to Iceland this summer, and because it was the summer, I didn't really think about dressing for the cold. Even though I was hiking and I was planning on seeing some glaciers, I thought, it's August. But then I got there and I realized I made a huge mistake. Now, though, I have a Stio Hometown Hooded Jacket, and I just wished I'd gotten it before my trip. All of Stio's clothes are designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by locals who live, work, and ski in below-freezing temperatures. I'm headed back out into the cold this winter, but now I'll have my insulated hooded Stio jacket. Ski season's almost here, so gear up now, the way the locals do.

• 13:13Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Go to stio.com/songexploder for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash songexploder. Stio dot com slash songexploder. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole. This episode is sponsored by the podcast What It's Like to Be. Do you ever think about what other people's workdays look like? Satisfying some of that curiosity is the idea at the heart of bestselling author Dan Heath's podcast, which is called What It's Like to Be. In each episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession to find out what it's like to be a professional Santa Claus, or a Secret Service agent, or a long-haul

• 13:57Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 14:29Speaker 02

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• 15:01Speaker 01

  I was feeling kind of sick going into Sonic Ranch. I came to record Straight From Barcelona and I had this fear of like, I'm gonna get on that long flight and I'm just gonna get sick, right? As I'm going into the studio to make my record. And of course, I did. So I was feeling really nervous about the vocals. I kind of warned everyone, which is just like a fatal flaw. I was like, guys, I'm gonna take this slow, okay? I'm gonna do like one line at a time, then we're gonna need to stop and I'm gonna like, take a sip of my tea and we're gonna like, have a breath and then I'm gonna do the next line. And everybody was like, yeah, whatever you need. It's all good. Like, you don't have to stress. And then I did that and it sounded so wrong and so forced and too performative. And I was really frustrated.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  And then Brad was like, just go in there and like, lay down one more scratch vocal, like, just do the whole thing from top to bottom and then we'll just move on and we'll come back to vocals. Don't worry about it. And I was like, okay. So I went in the booth and then I did that and I walked out and everyone was like, that's it. That's the vocal take. Cause it just had like an ease to it. I take it for granted. If I could love you unconditionally. I could iron out the edges of the darkest sky. For some of us, it ain't enough. It ain't enough.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  I really feel like this part of the song is really for me. I was like, I want to write a love song that's sort of about this turbulent relationship, but I want the relationship to be sort of between me at my best versus me at my worst, and sort of those two voices negotiating with each other and trying to come together as like one.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  As sort of folky as it had become with the analog instruments, we still wanted it to feel poppy and synthy, so we sort of put some layers. Different synth and organ sounds to sort of blend. Just like extra atmosphere to build the vibe of the song.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  The whole song, at the end, when I finished recording it, I realized pretty quickly that it did kind of do everything I had set out for it to do. I don't know, stepping into that power of like, I'm gonna write this song that's gonna be about this kind of tormented relationship that I have with myself, and actively kind of piecing that together. Honestly, I feel like this idea of unconditional love as something that I could have and hold for myself, at least that being a goal was kind of a new thing for me. Yeah, I'm sure that in hindsight, when I look back on things in my life, I will certainly see that as a, just a step in the right direction, I guess.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Even just with the sounds, even when you take the lyrics out of it, just the mood of the song is that like warm, loving, uplifting energy. Like it's supposed to make people feel good and happy and excited. And I felt like this is, yeah, weirdly, exactly what it was supposed to be.

• 18:48Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now, here's "Fire" by Waxahatchee in its entirety.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  That's what I wanted. It's not as if we cry a river, call it rain. West Memphis is on fire in the light of day. Gimme something, it ain't enough. It ain't enough. I take it for granted. If I could love you unconditionally, I could iron out the edges of the darkest sky. For some of us, it ain't enough.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  It ain't enough.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  And I take off driving past places been tainted. I put on a good show for you. And when I turn back around, will you drain me back out? Will you let me believe that I broke through? Tomorrow could feel like a hundred years later. I'm wiser and slow and too.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  And I am down on my knees. I'm a bird in the trees. I can learn to see with the partial view. I can learn to be easy as I'm moving close to you. And that's what I wanted. It's not as if we cry. The river call it rain. Westminster's on fire in the light of day. Give me something. It ain't enough. It ain't enough. I take it for granted.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  If I could love you unconditionally, I could iron out the edges of the darkest sky. For some of us, it ain't enough. It ain't enough.

• 22:27Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit songexploder.net to learn more about Waxahatchee. You'll also find links to buy or stream the song, and you can watch the music video there. Song Exploder is made by me, Rishi Kesh Hirway, with producer Christian Koons, production assistant Olivia Wood, and illustrator Carlos Lerma. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of independent creative podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. You can also follow the show on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @songexploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 23:12Speaker 04

  Radiotopia.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  From PRX.