The Way It Goes: A Conversation with Hawthorn

The women of Hawthorn were recently up in Vermont and took a spin by the old homestead to film a few things, drink some tea and talk about music and life. We set up some mics and as the mid afternoon haze on a chilly winter day set into our upstairs they performed this beautiful song for my lens. I have been humming it in my head, often unknowingly, ever since. Some songs just have that weight that sits with you long after their audible presence in time fades. It wasn’t until I spoke with Taylor and Heather about the song that it really hit me. The words cut a bit deeper. The meaning of the song and the impact it had on me and both of them was more evident.

Watch. Listen. Feel. And then read up on my conversation with them about the song.

 

 

RLR: Tell us a little bit about this particular song and why you wanted to release the session this month for Sexual Assault Awareness month?

‘The Way It Goes’ is a song I (Taylor) wrote as a contribution to last fall’s ‘Me Too’ movement, which has significantly impacted our society’s current conversation about sexual assault and gender-based violence. We chose to share the song now as an offering of solidarity and solace to those listeners that hear it and nod their heads ‘yes, this is true, this affirms my story,’ and also as inspiration to those who hear it and are perhaps unfamiliar, yet willing to reflect, learn, and join in dismantling the systems that made this song a reality–to tear apart the way it goes.

‘The Way It Goes’ isn’t about one incident, but rather how a set of experiences have framed and shaped my existence. The line “Watch the winters come and go” points to how, because I was raped at the beginning of a winter, that season is always harder for me now. “Hauling through the bitter cold / through the stormy ocean’s roll” is about the frequent danger of living as a woman in this country where a person is assaulted every 98 seconds and 9 out of 10 rape victims are female (https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem). “One more silence, one more broken child” is about how trauma is passed through generations–I carry the hurt of older family members as well as my own. “Here you were and here I am / There you are and here I stand” is shaped from words a past lover wrote; I rearranged them to reflect how much I’ve grown as a result of being driven to understand gender, sexuality, and power in more nuanced and empowered ways, and how grateful I am for the thinkers, healers, and activists that develop and share this information in the face of oppression.

RLR: Both of you are such strong artists and women in my eyes. How important is it for the two of you to use that strength in your voices to sing and write about values and themes that aren’t always the most comfortable to brace in today’s society? And also, have you found that difficult to do in the past or has it been something that has come naturally to you and always been important?

Thank you! A lot of that strength is rooted in both our artistic process and friendship, which are deeply personal and reflective. We challenge each other to grow so much, and we’re constantly in dialogue about that growth. As individuals and as a band, we don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, and the same holds true for how we engage with listeners. That’s always been the core of our work together.

I do want to speak to the fact that, on a lot of “uncomfortable” social topics, there’s an expectation that those who are oppressed must be able to speak eloquently about the whole issue in order for their individual experiences to be validated. So on a topic like sexual assault, because there’s this thing where we discredit “less articulate” or so-called “grey area” stories, we miss a lot of the voices that are speaking up…and then there’s all the voices that choose not to speak at all, for whatever reason. When we perform ‘The Way It Goes’, we say beforehand that the song is for everyone with a #MeToo story, regardless of whether they posted it online.

We also think a lot about times where it’s more important to show up than speak up: for example, we’re less interested in writing songs about Black Lives Matter and taking up space in that conversation than we are about supporting so many of the amazing artists of color in the Boston scene—things like going to shows, contributing to crowdfunding campaigns, sharing content on our own platforms, etc. As artists we want to remember that the spotlight doesn’t always need to be ours.

RLR: You have been in the studio working on a new record, when can we expect that out?

We’re having such a good time working on it that we haven’t set a release date yet! But keep an eye on things as the year goes on.

RLR: How did you tackle the songs for this record (and will The Way It Goes be on it?)

About half the songs we wrote before the idea for the record materialized, and the rest came after. We’ll share more about the concept as we get closer to release, but the premise is a journey through the lifetime of a character we created that’s an amalgamation of ourselves and our female relatives, both real and imagined. So the songs very naturally emerged as different points in this character’s life: a few times we said, “we need a song for this period in her life, let’s write that,” but most we just let ourselves write and it was clear where in the life they fit when we sat down and looked at all of them.

RLR: What is your songwriting style between the two of you? How does it typically play out, do you find that most tunes Hawthorn comes up with are very collaborative or is there still a sense of “this is a Heather song, this is a Taylor song”?

It depends on the song! Sometimes we bring them to each other fully formed, sometimes we start with one person’s idea and develop it together. We’ve gotten good at asking each other, “How much do you want my input on this?” and, “Do you want to make this together or do you want me to support you — and if so, how?” Some songs belong more to one of us, and some are totally shared. When we started writing together, Heather tended to be a lot better at having a collaborative dialogue about her ideas, so a lot of our co-writes started in her brain. I tended to finish more songs on my own–you can see that in the credits on our first two records. And it’s awesome to continue to work together because Heather has started pushing herself to complete more songs on her own, and I’m really working on being more comfortable with putting ideas on the table and being vulnerable with them. The new record reflects this growth–it’s pretty evenly split between Heather, Taylor, and co-write songs.

RLR: So, what comes next for Hawthorn?

We hit the road this Thursday for our first Southern tour: we’ll be traveling down the east coast and then around North Carolina, where Heather used to live, and ending with a hometown show at Atwoods on May 9th. It’ll be our first tour with our bassist Alex, and we’ll be joined by Izzy Heltai, one of our favorite local songwriters. We’re so excited to visit new and old haunts, to connect with friends and family and grow our community!