DREAM OF AMERICA, the latest album from Alabama-born, Hannah Aldridge, found her leaving her comfort zone and taking inspiration from unforeseen sources. While many of her peers’ thought processes and writing were driven by personal soul-searching during the pandemic, Hannah’s inspiration came from an entirely different place. She had already exhausted many more private issues on her previous records, so why revisit them? Her debut album, RAZOR WIRE, tackled the demons that haunted her at that time and GOLD RUSH, which followed three years later, was tinged with a degree of self-doubt and depression. Instead, the catalyst for DREAM OF AMERICA came from the movies, podcasts, and books that she devoured during the lockdown, coupled with an irregular, dream-inducing sleep pattern. Hannah gave us the background to the album, her chosen career, and an insight into her childhood in our recent interview.
When we spoke back in 2018, you commented, somewhat tongue in cheek, that some days when you get to a venue, you have plotted a whole new career but by the time you play the show you are re-energised and want to keep going. Has it got any easier in the intervening years?
Well, since then we've gone through a pandemic, signed a record deal, and released a record or two, so things have certainly changed. One thing I've learned about the music industry as I go on - I solidify this thought in my head more and more - there are periods that are almost critical when I feel like I want to quit because of circumstances. I think: ‘Oh, this is the last record I'm going to ever do’ or ‘This is the last tour I'm going to do.’ And then you find another reason to keep doing it. I've learned that this is part of the process for me, feeling that way. There have been several times that I thought I was never going to do it again. Certainly during COVID-19, I felt that way about it, but you slowly get back on the saddle, as we say, because you realise what the reality would be like without that life as a musician. If you really are dedicated you can't quit even if you want to and even if you do quit, you're going to sit at home for a month or two and then go: ‘I think I'm going to go back on the road.’ If you don't feel that way, then you shouldn't really be doing it. But things, I have to say, have not gotten easier. I just did one of the hardest tours I've ever done in my whole life this summer. I was in Europe for seven weeks and the shows were absolutely incredible. However, everything behind the scenes was a total disaster, a nightmare.
In what way?
Every single flight was a disaster, either cancelled or delayed. My guitar got destroyed on one of my flights, my bag got lost on the first flight. It's that part of it that is difficult, coinciding with the fact that travel has gotten very expensive and the money for shows has not gotten better. But it is a labour of love and I wouldn't do anything else in the world. I certainly wish it was easier sometimes and I think it will get easier. I do think things are going to level out again.
How has signing to the Icons Creating Art label helped you?
They do all the heavy lifting regarding distribution and publicity and all that kind of stuff. I absolutely love them and I have been so lucky to just magically run into them because they are such a perfect match for me. They're a metal label and a part of a bigger metal label out of Stockholm and they're completely into dark rock kind of stuff. So, they've been absolutely a perfect match for me.
Do you still manage yourself and book your own shows and tours?
I still book nine out of ten shows that are on my schedule. I book them myself and if I don’t book them myself, I micromanage the booking agent to the point that they're probably ready to kill me. I think that even if I was signed to a massive booking agency that did all my booking it would drive me nuts. I think it would give me major anxiety not knowing where I was going. I would have a really hard time hopping on a tour bus and just go with the flow. I like to do it myself because it gives me a sense of control over my career and my schedule. For example, I've got some shows in Ireland that I'm putting together for fun in the first week of December. It’s on the tail end of my album release tour in the UK in November. I just haven't been in Ireland in a while and if I wasn't in a position where I was able to do that, then I wouldn't have as much control over what I choose to do with my schedule.
Your new album DREAM OF AMERICA is a departure from the more personal themes of your previous work.
The whole record was written, produced, and created during COVID-19, which was a time when I literally felt so uninspired. I felt like I did not have anything to say or anything to write. There were a handful of people that were able to be very poignant during that time and I was not one of them. I had nothing to say about anything because we were all going through the same experience. It's hard to write about what everybody else is experiencing and making art about the same thing. I didn't really mean to do this project until it had snowballed to the point where it was actually a record. I started writing about the books and podcasts and movies that I was consuming. The song Dorero, for example, is based on a podcast called Root of Evil. And the song, The Fall, was based on a podcast called S Town.
DREAM OF AMERICA as opposed to AMERICAN DREAMS?
Yes, exactly, it's a spin on that. It's like the idea of something not being exactly what you thought it was going to be and it also came from that whole sort of lucid dreaming feeling that I had during COVID, where I was in and out of sleep. I really have enjoyed putting out something weird and dark, and it's been a bit of a conversation piece. It's interesting even for me to listen to as I'm like ‘Do I love it or not?’
That song you just mentioned, The Fall, is my favourite track on the album. It also has an Irish dimension as it’s a duet with Ben Glover, who is also credited as co-writer.
Yeah, I love Ben as a person but also his voice has always really creeped me out. I was like, ‘I want to write a duet with this guy’. So, we got together and talked about that podcast, S Town, and how much both of us were really moved by it. So, it just naturally fell into place. That whole song was just something that could only have been created at that exact moment. And with Ben’s particular voice in mind, I was really glad we were able to get him in to sing on it, even though it was during lockdown.
That theme of darkness and mysticism is all over the album.
There was a lot of unsettling dark literature around me during that time as well because I finished my film scoring degree, and I had a minor in Gothic literature. I was reading a lot of Faulkner and stuff like that and a lot of that imagery came from there. It is a very sort of lucid dream kind of record because my sleep schedule was completely upside down and I felt very aimless at that time. I think the record is very reflective of that mindset. It was one of those things that could have only happened and only been produced during that specific time and scenario. That’s what I love about that record. That whole experience was unexpected for me. It was a weird and unique time for me, and I don't know if I could ever recreate something like that again.
You also had to overcome recording the album remotely.
The whole record was recorded with all of us in separate spaces. I still haven't even seen some of them, so it was it was a really weird situation because of that. Everybody had to just do whatever felt right for them creatively because we couldn't sit in a studio together. I just sent the tracks to them and they sent something back, what they felt was the right thing to put on there. So, that made it a really unique experience, as there was no guidance at all for me or the producers as to what anybody should do. I would just send acoustic tracks to Lachlan Bryan and Damian Cafarella, who produced the album, and a couple of days later they would send me back a whole track. I loved that whole vibe, it was interesting.
Tell me about the origin of some of the other tracks.
Beautiful Oblivion was written about suicide. It was written with a guy that I co-write with, and we both talked about the concept of feeling suicidal. And then Unbeliever was a song that was written about my personal experience. The Great Divide was literally written in my bedroom about being divided from people that I loved and were separated from at that time.
The song Unbeliever is the one particularly personal song on the album. I presume it reflects your growing up in a fundamentally Christian environment?
Yeah, it is the only song that was written before COVID-19. Actually, I wrote that song in Australia with the two producers, Lachlan and Damien. We were just writing a song that started out very tongue-in-cheek. Lachlan and I both have a very dark and dry sense of humour and both of us relate to the idea of not being believers, and being unbelievers. I started thinking about that word and how my whole life I've been taught to be a believer, and what that really required. You have to unbelieve some of the things that you've been taught whenever you're young, and that can be anything from religion to Santa Claus. So, we tried to relate that song to being a chronic unbeliever but also finding the positive side of that.
How difficult was it for you growing up in that environment, given that you obviously had doubts at an early age?
I went to Church of Christ schools and that requires that you go to church every day at the school and your whole curriculum is based around that. That belief system, school, and everyone around you and their families were not just Christian, but Church of Christ. That denomination meant people wanting me to be involved in youth groups and go to Christian summer camps, the whole thing. There was no room for doubt in any of that. I didn't have a choice to go to a public school or anything like that. I try to be careful when I talk about this not to totally throw my parents under the bus, but that being said, I do things very differently with my son. I've never said a word to him about religion or God, because the truth is, I don't have a clue what the truth is, and I can't tell him that he has to believe in something. So, I'm going to let him figure that out. And if he were to say: ‘I’ve been studying Buddhism and that resonates with me,’ that's totally fine with me, every bit the same as people’s choices in sexual orientation.
That pressure to conform had no doubt also been enforced on your parents.
My parents were doing the best that they could in their defence. It was very much about appearances and people being judgmental. I felt that my whole extended family and all of our friends and their families would be judgmental if we didn't conform. I think it was more like a peer pressure kind of thing. My grandfather was a Church of Christ preacher on my mom's side, and all my dad's family were Church of Christ. I just think it was one of those things that they felt that they had to do for their family.
You obviously rebelled at some stage.
Yeah, at some point it was very clear and very obvious that I was not like the rest of the kids in my friend groups or the kids at my small Church of Christ schools. I was very arty, I questioned everything, I was always one of those people. I was very, from day one, not on board with it and that was definitely difficult. In a way, I'm really lucky that I had my son when I was nineteen years old. I was lucky in two ways because I think my parents and my family at that point, stopped pushing me to fit into a mould because they were like: ‘We'll just let her go to hell.’ I think it really helped me gain perspective on my life and what things you should, in my opinion, teach your kids and what you should not.
On the live front, you are due to perform with your band on September 17th at The 5 Spot leading into Americana Fest, prior to heading off on tour again.
Yes, I love doing that show. I always try to put something together right before Americana Fest because so many people are coming into town that haven't been able to see me play in other places and it's such a fun night. I’m really excited about it actually - it should be really good fun. I don't really participate in the Americana Fest, I don't feel like I need to be a part of that, although I love a lot of musicians that are involved in it.
Interview by Declan Culliton Photography by Amanda Chapman