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Soon after we chatted, he was nominated in the Best New Artist category at the Grammys.
Your song Stick Season was an unexpected breakthrough success and a real change of pace from your earlier material.
The process was no longer enjoyable to me.
Those songs were just for me.
I really wouldnt play them for anybody else; it was just a way to keep music my own.
Some days Ill be so dissatisfied when Im working by myself that I wont even start anything.
I interview all kinds of folks who love that sort of system.
It works for some people.
It doesnt work for others.I think it worked for me for a while but then it stopped.
Also, in L.A., everyone starts at like 2 p.m. And youre working from like two to eight.
Im like,Lets start at nine and work until three or four.
Thats as much creativity as I have.
I was writing a song about that.
I put the verse onto TikTok and then was kind of like,This isnt very good.
Maybe I should delete this.But I ate a weed gummy and fell asleep before I could delete it.
I woke up the next morning, and it had a ton of views.
I was just posting little snippets and things.
And I had a huge following huge for me since 2017.
But I woke up and the song had some legitimate momentum.
And suddenly we had half of a song that people were really loving.
It made me question what I was doing overall.
It made me reconsider.
It makes a trade-off.
You are trying to reach as many people as possible with a concept that is relatable.
Its supposed to be more immediate.
And if that means space and nuance, thats what happens.
Whereas with pop music, the goal is to do it as quickly and as immediately as possible.
Thats not to say its a bad thing, it just requires drastically different approaches.
This album sits at the crossroads between the two.
Theres a lot of specific imagery.
Saying autumn or winter feels wrong.
When people think of Vermont, they think of trees and beautiful foliage or snow in the wintertime.
Theres a lot more going on there.
People say there are six seasons.
Theres winter, mud season, spring, summer, fall, stick season, and back to winter.
I think it helps people who dont live there understand what its like.
And it helps people who live there represent whats happening in the moment.
I sawOlivia Rodrigo did a cover of Stick Season on BBC.
The two of you have written alternative realities of the same concept in Drivers License and Stick Season.
The feeling of using the road as a metaphor for a past relationship.
They both play on a feeling of being left behind.
I have to drive 25 minutes to the gas station or to get groceries and drive 25 minutes back.
If I want to go hang out with my friends, Im driving from Stratford to New Hampshire.
So much of my time is spent in the cars that it really informs my life experience.
You coined a great term in one of your songs, Northern Attitude.Yeah.
And Ive always felt that to be very true.
People will help you out, but theyll be pissed off.
Theyre brusque, but theyre all kind, deep down.
You made this record that has really connected with folks but seems positioned as more Americana folk.
I drew a lot from other artists, for sure.
Totally different from where I grew up, but I felt like I was there.
She does it in such a way that you almost have a feeling of voyeurism.
I want to be a local here.
Those albums made me feel that way, and I wanted to draw on that feeling for my record.
There was Lumineers, Marcus Mumford, Fleet Foxes.
I think that theres some unfinished business there.
I always loved that music so much.
It made me feel happy.
There was enough depth that I could feel like I was hearing something important within it.
I think we got a lot of car commercial music that was derivative of that.
Especially when it wenthardukulele.
Not in the historical usage of the ukulele, but in strumming corporate ukulele.Oh, yeah.
That was too much.
I wont speak for the thousands of runoff bands.
Hopefully, whats moved forward is the storytelling, and lyrics that speak to some more modern problems.
And with Olivia Rodrigo, big emotional heart-on-sleeve ballads were kind of making its return.
There were a lot of factors that made it the right place, right time.
