Waxahatchee Eve Barlow Unpick Her Self-Destruction Crutchfield, Aka Celebrated in the Los Angeles Home of of Home Los Angeles the In
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WAXAHATCHEE The problem was me In the Los Angeles home of her twin sister, Katie Crutchfield, aka celebrated singer-songwriter Waxahatchee, describes to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Eve Barlow how she had to unpick her self-destruction What Katie did next: “I was fighting my before unlocking her natural tendencies,” says Crutchfield. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX maximum creative potential. Photography: RachaelJANUARY Wright2019 63 WAXAHATCHEE n a theatre in Downtown LA, Australian The next morning in Eagle Rock, Crutchfield comes barefoot in the Getting the twang of it: Crutchfield onstage at singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett invites street to welcome Q into a house. Her twin Allison, who formerly Huichica Walla Walla Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee, fronted Philadelphia band Swearin’, lives here. Together, the sisters Festival, Washington, onstage. It’s Valentine’s Day. Barnett is have performed in many bands. The multi-storey, light-drenched September 2019. hosting a show with friends, including home features guitars mounted to walls and rock paraphernalia, Father John Misty and Sharon Van Etten. including a frame of three band names – Ramones, Descendents, Crutchfield comes out in a black dress, picks Fugazi. The twins live far apart but they’re forever tied by this punk up an acoustic guitar and starts singing aesthetic. Katie’s home in Kansas City is decorated similarly. Can’t Do Much. It’s a countryfied promise A year ago to the day, Q met Crutchfield in that house, which she to love that leaps out from her new record shares with boyfriend Kevin Morby. That February morning was 20 Saint Cloud – her fifth under the moniker. degrees colder and, as Morby played out in the snow, having his She delivers it like she’s been singing folk portrait taken, Crutchfield hung back in the kitchen. She was about since the ’60s. It was Barnett’s favourite to fly out that night to her last tour. She’d asked her team to clear from their time as touring companions. whatever remained from her books. She wanted to work on new Continuing down this path, the band then music. Mostly she was forcing herself to slow down and decompress. leads Crutchfield into a cover of Abandoned “You came to Kansas right before I hit my stride,” she recalls, by Lucinda Williams. “These blues are sitting in the back garden in a sun dress and lapping up the warmth. something new, they came around when I lost you/And it looks like “I was trying to write but I was banging my head against the wall.” I got stuck with an empty hand.” For Crutchfield, three years without a full-length release is an eternity. Crutchfield wears heartbreak like an old hat. Last time around she “It was hyper-conscious,” she says of the decision to get off the road wielded a raging rock record. Out In The Storm (2017) lived in the eye and concentrate on her songwriting instead. She was run ragged at the of an awful break-up, aiming to delete a toxic ex from her mind. It was end of touring Out In The Storm. “It was a claustrophobic album. Iwritten from a place of pain, the ire burning her throat. Crutchfield is Doing that every night started to get physically hard. ” prolific and determined, previously moving between DIY scenes in The plight of the touring musician is restlessness. “You can’t slow Brooklyn and Philadelphia. She used to make music for sweaty dives down,” Crutchfield affirms with a nod. “I knew I had to. I didn’t have with low ceilings. But as she performs Williams’s song onstage, the a choice.” In the past she’d used touring to try and stave off the black anger falls away, the room gets airier, the roof higher. There’s still a dog of depression, but realised running away was only delaying fight in her but it’s one for a better future, not against a troubled past. inevitable growing pains. “I was addicted to the speed of all of it,” she says of a juggernaut she’s now been on with Fired up: “Getting Waxahatchee for a decade. “Once I got over the hump sober meant I’ve it was exactly what I needed to clear my head.” figured out who my The clarity she’s afforded immediately rings out in people are.” lead single Fire. It’s about the peace that comes from giving up the chase. “I am wiser “I felt like a and slow and attuned,” she sings. Once Crutchfield leaned into victim to the respite and looked inward, situation. I was she saw something new. “The problem was me,” she smiles. struggling to go Instead of writing through her feelings, she put music on the onstage, to travel back-burner. She got a therapist. – easy to do if “I tried to work on myself: be a person whose identity isn’t as a sober person for a long time. I had seen that this Orlando where Crutchfield’s father is from you’re in the tied up in my creative practice.” had to happen.” Her rock bottom, she says, “was (“I needed a town that could feel like any city wrong state of It helped her to detach from pretty high”. That made her recovery smoother. in America.”) It’s an apt title to evoke this new external validation and to make Sobriety shifted her perspective as a traveller, perspective, too. Crutchfield is most inspired mind – and also another big commitment: changing the way she narrates her stories into her when she’s jacked on the feeling, but her best work drinking a lot.” to sobriety. songs. “When I got sober, a friend told me, ‘You’re happens when she’s ridden the wave all the way It wasn’t news to Crutchfield not gonna recognise yourself.’ After a month or two out. “To me the sweetest spot of writing is the that she had to stop drinking. “It’s so tied up in my day- I realised it’s true.” The proof came when she revisited bird’s eye view,” she says of the process. to-day life,” she says of on-the-road groundhog day. Barcelona a year later. She felt light. “I returned a new The palette of country was also colouring “It’s there, it’s free. It was so easy to talk myself into it woman,” she says, gleaming beneath the sun. Crutchfield’s thinking – Lucinda Williams, Gillian as normal, and it’s not.” Maybe it was the alcohol, Welch, Emmylou Harris. Given her career is rooted maybe it was the fatigue, but Crutchfield grew he album begins there at in the alt-underground, she didn’t have any resentful towards the grind. “I felt like a victim to the Primavera with the song collaborators who made that sound. “I couldn’t put situation. I was struggling to go onstage, to travel – easy Oxbow: “Barna in white, the equation together to equal an Americana album to do if you’re in the wrong state of mind – and also married the night.” It’s a that sounds like me.” Luck would have it that she drinking a lot.” One of her best friends, Marlee, called slow march, almost like wound up on that final tour a year ago with Detroit her on a night when she had refused to go out onstage she’s rewinding the Twin peaks: with sister Allison band Bonny Doon. On the first night, she knew memory. It waltzes into (left), New York, 2017. “We instantly. They married country references with a and perform. “She snapped me out of it. She said: were confusing to everybody.” ‘What you’re doing is an act of service. It’s bigger than the speakers like a new punk indie-rock identity. Bingo. “This is the sound!” you. You need to suck it up.’” breath; weightless and prettier than Afterwards, she travelled to Tornillo, Texas last July with Bonny The June 2018 Primavera festival in Barcelona was anything Crutchfield has released. As if Doon. “It’s the hottest place I’ve ever been.” She tracked the songs Crutchfield’s last hurrah. “I felt so physically, mentally she is looking down on her former self with producer Brad Cook, who she met at a Durham Bulls baseball and emotionally terrible,” she says of the bender. from above, assessing that night with no desire to distort its memory. game. “Kevin [Morby] always told me about this guy Brad he knew who “I woke up and I knew. I was done. I had seen myself GETTY Saint Cloud is a place; a gator-filled Floridian suburb outside said that you have to drink 100 ounces of water a day. It was like he 64 MAY 2020 T MAY 2020 65 WAXAHATCHEE was the leader of the cult of Eliot everyone in Birmingham hated us “What is life, if not hydration,” she laughs. Cook is unlike – especially the guys.” anyone else she’s ever met, she says. In tandem, Crutchfield started a constantly changing? He reflects her. “I opened up to him in local positive feminist collective. “It People evolve as they a way I’ve never opened up to someone was OUTRAGE,” she says, still amused I made music with.” She allowed him by the misogyny. “The message boards age. When I started this into her “concrete vault”– the lyrics. were crazy. That informed a lot of Beyond Cook, she allowed where we took ourselves.” Powered by project it was born something else in: the music of her collective frustration, they went to out of self-discovery: past. The reckoning that came with Brooklyn.