Waxahatchee on Songwriting, Sobriety, and her Saturn Return

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Back in January, Katie Crutchfield released Right Back To It, her first new Waxahatchee single in four years. For fans of the project – both those who’ve been in it for the long haul, ever since she sang about reflecting in the bathtub on her sparse debut album American Weekend, as well as listeners who’ve been more recently charmed by her 2020 breakout Saint Cloud – it felt like being greeted by an old friend. The warm, southern lilt of Crutchfield’s voice has a way of sounding completely familiar even when it’s telling you something new. 

The song was an introduction into the world of Waxahatchee’s upcoming sixth album Tigers Blood, released on 22nd March. More indie-rock influenced than its little-bit-country predecessor Saint Cloud, the record sees Crutchfield settling into her 30s, into the sobriety she adopted while writing her last LP, and, by her own admission, into herself. On many of its tracks, she’s joined by the musician MJ Lindemann, continuing her rich personal history of collaboration (her last full-length release was in 2022, as part of Plains, alongside Jess Williamson), and exploring a new dimension of the Waxahatchee sound, which sits somewhere between Saint Cloud’s brightness, and the rawer edge of past albums like Out In The Storm.  

Ahead of the release, I sat down with Crutchfield during her recent trip to London, to discuss Tigers Blood, as well as touring with Sheryl Crow, self-critical songwriting, and whether there’s really anything to the astrological concept of the Saturn Return.

What is it like to be here promoting the sixth Waxahatchee album? As someone from a DIY punk background, was making music something that you thought would work long term, or did you ever really even think of it that way? 

I always knew, I’m gonna always write songs and make records and go on my little tours. But because I came from a DIY background, I played like the tiniest, most intimate, low-pressure shows for so long. I think because I have that background, I feel so comfortable with whatever happens. I’ve done it all, I can do it all again, and I have this really good foundation of just, “It’s all for love of the game.” [Laughs]. So it was inevitable that I would be promoting a sixth album, and the fact that I made it this far makes sense to me because I’ve just been doing it so long, just one foot in front of the other. 

You started writing songs when you were 14, and I know your sister also plays music [Katie and her sister Allison played in the band PS Eliot from 2007-2012, and they reunited for a tour in 2016. Allison also sometimes plays in Waxahatchee]. Was music a big part of your upbringing? 

My sister and I grew up dancing. We were like musical theatre, performing arts kids. We were always in choir, and we danced from the time we were two from the time we were teenagers, like ballet. And my mom is a culture person. She’s a cinephile, she’s really into old movies, and she loves music and raised us on The Beatles, and Fleetwood Mac, and all these great 60s, 70s bands, but no one in my immediate family plays music. 

When Allison and I decided we wanted to start a band when we were 13 or 14, it was super out of left field. We had no one to show us, and there was no YouTube yet. I wasn’t interested in lessons, I had taken piano lessons, and I hated it. I felt like it would suck the fun out of it. So I was self taught on the guitar, and the first song I ever learned to play was Malibu by Hole. I just wanted to be able to play chords and sing. 

In 2020, you released your fifth album Saint Cloud, and it felt like a huge breakthrough moment. It felt like your music was being discussed on a new scale. Were there any occasions around touring and promoting it that you felt like you were traversing new frontiers with your music?

I really look at it that way. The record came out right as the lockdown happened. Typically when an album comes out, you jump right into touring, and with that record, the album came out and it started to get all this attention, but then people just sat with it for like a year and a half before I ever played a show. By the time I did tour it, the fans had spent so much time with it, and it had grown quite a bit too. 

But I certainly feel like I traversed new ground. I feel like I gained a bigger audience, Saint Cloud reached way more people, but on the creative side as well, I feel like I’m getting closer – whatever the deep “Thing” is I’ve gotten significantly closer. 

I think that’s all you can really hope for. I’ve been a writer for 15 years and I’m still not at “The Thing” but sometimes I’ll just write a sentence, and I’ll feel like I’m moving towards it.

I made Saint Cloud when I was 30. I don’t know if you believe in astrology, but I swear that my Saturn Return was a big part of that record for me. People brought that up to me, even music journalists when they interviewed me, they’d say, “Kendrick Lamar made DAMN right after his Saturn Return” and stuff like that. It’s such a big shift, and it brings a lot of creatives closer to “The Thing”. 

Do you think that’s why Saint Cloud felt so important? Because it symbolises a creative maturation alongside a personal one?

My 20s were really hard. If I’m really honest about it, that was a really hard decade for me for a lot of reasons, a big one being that I struggled with substances and then I got sober. When I look back, I know a lot of people my age that look back on their 20s and say, “God that was amazing.” And I don’t have that. One theory I have is that I’m a bit of an old soul. But my 30s have been amazing – I know myself so much more, and I have confidence.

Saint Cloud was the album where you really addressed sobriety as a concept. How did you approach it on Tigers Blood? 

When you’re promoting something it’s so much easier if there’s a narrative to attach to it. With Saint Cloud it was a comfort zone for me to be like “This is my sobriety record.” But I’m not one to over-illustrate a point in my songs, so people could let the songs land on them however, and they weren’t necessarily obviously about sobriety. This time, sobriety is one concurrent fact in my life that informs so much. And those times when I wasn’t sober, those still inform what I’m writing about too. 

It’s important to me to keep talking about it for no other reason than I know that when I was really struggling to get sober and stay sober, knowing that other people were, especially people I loved or looked up to, was so huge for me. So I always try and make sure I’m weaving that into everything because it really is such a big part of my life. I’ve settled into it. 

What was the process of writing and recording Tigers Blood like? 

I just really collect melodies. They come to me when I’m out in the world. I’ll literally be at lunch and something will come to me and I’ll have to excuse myself, like: “I’m just gonna go and hum this in the bathroom, and then I’ll be right back.” When I start getting a big picture, cohesive sense of what the whole thing will be like, then I’ll keep bankers’ hours, and just to 9-5, sit in my office and just see. I’ll pull up a melody and sit with a guitar or piano, and just put the lyrics in. 

I was really in the zone with it and had some momentum on tour in 2023, so for the first time I was seriously writing on tour. We were opening for Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell, I was like, “This is the best summer job. We play at like 6PM, for like 30 minutes, and then I get to watch Sheryl Crow and go to bed early.” There was a lot of space and time in those shows. 

In terms of your lyrics, it has always seemed to me that you are one of those artists who is sharpest when you’re talking about yourself. Is songwriting how you have always sort of cleared the emotional pipes? 

The first big piece of press I ever did was in 2012, with Jon Caramanica from the New York Times. Allison and I. It was crazy, that really changed everything. One of the first things he said to us was “Allison, you naturally operate as a songwriter turning the gun outward to the world. Katie, you turn the gun inward.” And I’d never thought of it that way, but it blew my mind, I still think about it all the time. I think my comfort zone is to be self-critical, and there are a few moments in my songwriting history where I’m critical of other people. And on this record I think there’s a real healthy mix. I wanted this one to point outward but to feel like it was measured. And so that was a real exercise on this one. 

I still find it really cathartic to write songs, it’s like writing a letter to someone that you never send. But with a song it’s like, “They might hear it, they might not. They might know it’s about them or they might not.” But it’s a good way to work out some feelings, and I feel like when I finish a song about something it does help me move the dial forward on processing whatever the situation is. 

Tigers Blood is your first record in four years. How are you feeling about it coming out into the world? 

I’m excited! Everyone I’ve spoken to so far has been so nice. Sometimes when you make a record and you’re listening to it a lot, you’re listening for mistakes, like “Where did I fuck up?” you know? But this one, I’ve been able to put it down. I’m just really proud of it. No notes.

All images by Molly Matalon