Waxahatchee - Fire

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

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And it stars Dakota Johnson and Adria Arhona.

It premiered at Cannes, where it got rave reviews, and it's distributed by Neon.

And for me, that's huge because I trust Neon the way that I trust my favorite record labels.

I will definitely check out anything that they put their name on.

So I'm looking forward to seeing this.

Splitsville is already playing now in select theaters, and it'll be playing everywhere on September 5th.

The Grammy nominations came out a couple of weeks ago, and I was really happy to see that Wax Ahatchee's album Tiger's Blood, which I've listened to a bunch this year, was nominated for Best Americana album.

It's her first Grammy nomination, and the news made me want to go back and listen to the episode that I recorded with her back in the summer of 2020.

That was about the song Fire from her previous album.

So here it is, and I'll be back with a new episode next week.

Writer's block is something I experience with every record in one way, shape, or form.

I have the feeling of the universe allotted a certain number of songs, and I hit my quota, and now I'm never going to write another good song again.

But usually, the darkest moments of writer's block, right?

When it really gets hard and you're really kind of borderline panicking over it, that's usually when you push through in my experience.

It's like I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, kept doing the next thing, and before I knew it, I wrote fire and it really felt like, okay, I got this.

It's gonna be okay.

I'm Katie Crutchfield from Wax Ahatchee.

Katie Crutchfield is a singer and songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama.

She's been making music under the name Wax Ahatchee since 2010.

Her fifth album, St.

Cloud, came out this past March.

Pitchfork named it Best New Music, and The Guardian called it the best album of the year so far.

In this episode, Katie breaks down how she made the song fire.

For some of us,

it ain't enough,

it ain't enough.

As I was preparing to write the song, I was traveling.

I had been spending a lot of time here in Kansas, which is where I live.

It was winter, and I was sort of hammering away at writing the record.

And then I went on a trip with my partner, Kevin, to Birmingham, Alabama, which is where I'm from.

We were visiting my family, and as we were leaving, I got this melody in my head.

And it was just sort of the most awkward timing because it was as I was saying goodbye to my family, as I was about to get into a car for a very long journey with Kevin.

And I just kind of couldn't find an easy way to hold on to it.

Like usually I would just record that in my phone and then forget about it until I had some time to actually sit with it.

But I was too distracted with what was happening right in front of me.

So I started the drive and I just repeated the melody just sort of over and over.

And I kind of would lose it for a second and then it would come back.

And by the time we got to Memphis, that's when I started to really put lyrics to it.

And then the moment that I got home, I recorded the very first demo of the whole song.

I gravitated toward electric piano.

With every album, I usually have an instrument of choice that sort of is the thing that's inspiring me.

And guitar, I'm hyper-aware of the chord progressions that I like tend to go to.

And with piano, I just know so little.

It takes me a minute to even figure out: is this a C chord?

You know, it's like my knowledge of it is like pretty limited.

So I can let go of some of the hang-ups that I have just because I don't really know what I'm doing.

So I can kind of just stick to what sounds exciting melodically to me rather than get in my head about chord progressions and things like that.

The first line that came to me was, That's what I wanted.

That's what I wanted.

It's not as if we cried ever colleague frame.

West Memphis is on fire in the light of day.

I wrote that as we were driving over the Mississippi River over a bridge from Tennessee to Arkansas to West Memphis, and the sun was kind of going down and the light was reflecting.

It was so bright.

I was just trying to find a way to like poetically talk about that and like also talk about what I wanted in that larger moment.

You know, I had been going through a a lot of dark stuff.

I had just gotten sober, and I had chosen to take a lot of time off from music.

And

I think I was having a little bit of an identity crisis and then having these big panicky writer's block feelings.

So I wanted to find a way to poetically say

I

can love myself through this darkness that's happening.

I take it for granted.

If I could love you unconditionally, unconditionally,

I

could iron out the edges of the darkest sky for some of us.

It ain't enough.

It ain't enough.

I was thinking a lot at the time about unconditional love and really kind of thinking of that as like the ultimate position to take.

The softness around loving anybody unconditionally, loving yourself unconditionally.

I was thinking a lot about that as like something that I wanted to be able to achieve in like all my relationships, to just

not let it have terms, to just

accept people and accept myself.

So I had like a loose idea, but I knew I needed help.

I knew I needed like other people to come in and help me figure out what the next phase of the song was going to be.

I sent this song to Brad, Brad Cook, who is the producer of the record, who is really like my main collaborator on the whole thing.

When you're in a project where you're, you know, it's really just like a solo project, it's so important to have a sounding board, to have a collaborator, a person who you can bounce ideas off of or talk to about your songs.

You know, from the beginning, Brad really really shared my excitement about the song.

And then I pretty quickly sent it to the guys who I knew were going to be the band on the record.

Nick Kinsey, who's a great drummer, and Bobby Columbo and Bill Lennox, who were both in the band Bonnie Dune, an amazing band in their own right.

There was one time where the band was in Durham and everybody was together and we were all demoing and most of the songs I'd written for the record were really straightforward and it really felt like, okay, we're all just going to set up in a room as a band and like knock all these songs out.

But you know, anytime we got to fire, we'd all just kind of look at each other and be like, let's just skip this song, we'll come back to it.

And then we just ended up doing that until it was time to go into the studio.

I think we were all scared to overthink it, and we were scared to like make it go through a million processes.

We all kind of knew, like, this one is going to be different.

It was like there was this unspoken agreement between all of us that let's tuck this one away.

And then when we get in the studio, we'll just see if some kind of magic happens.

We made the record at Sonic Ranch in West Texas.

It is a amazing studio that is a like 4,000 acre pecan ranch and there's like a compound of recording studios on the property.

And I went back and re-recorded my electric piano.

And then we started with the beat.

So I had just anticipated like this is going to be a drum machine song, and the rest of the record is going to have analog drums.

So I don't know how it happened, but Brad was like, let's get Nick in there and let's work on the drum sound to make it sound a little bit more like a drier kind of like manufactured beat.

We just recorded like a really basic sort of track, just doing four on the floor, and then the snare.

Then he added the toms.

The beat sort of grows and evolves.

And we were just all so excited about the drum sound.

We're like, this is actually

so much better than a drum machine because it really does feel like a performance.

Like there's a warmth to it.

I believe what came next were the guitars.

And that was what was the most surprising about this song.

I didn't really even think about guitars on the song.

I kind of didn't really see it.

And then Bobby just kind of pulled out this part.

He started doing that along with Nick, and I was like, oh my goodness.

And then Bill wrote this beautiful, sort of complimentary lick on the song right after Bobby.

That's just totally pulled out of thin air and was not at all part of the plan.

And yet now I'm obsessed with it.

More with Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchie after this.

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I was feeling kind of sick going into Sonic Ranch.

I came to record straight from Barcelona and I had this fear of like, I'm going to get on that long flight and I'm just going to get sick right as I'm going into the studio to make my record.

And of course I did.

So I was feeling really nervous about the vocals.

I kind of warned everyone, which is just like a fatal flaw.

I was like, guys, I'm going to take this slow.

Okay.

I'm going to do like one line at a time.

Then we're going to need to stop.

And I'm going to like take a sip of my tea and we're going to like have a breath.

And then I'm going to do the next line.

And everybody was like, yeah, whatever you need.

It's all good.

Like, you don't have to stress.

And then I did that.

And it sounded so wrong and so forced and too performative.

And I was really frustrated.

And then Brad was like, just go in there and like lay down one more scratch vocal.

Like just do the whole thing from top to bottom.

And then we'll just move on and we'll come back to vocals.

Don't worry about it.

And I was like, okay, so I went in the booth and then I did that and I walked out and everyone was like, that's it.

That's the vocal take because it just had like an ease to it.

I take it for granted.

If I could love you unconditionally,

I

could iron out the edges of the darkest sky for some of us.

It ain't enough.

It ain't enough.

I really feel like this part of the song is really for me.

I was like, I want to write a love song that's sort of about this turbulent relationship, but I want the relationship to be sort of between

me at my best versus me at my worst.

And sort of those two voices negotiating with each other and trying to come together as like one.

And when I turn back around, will you drain me back out?

Will you let me believe that I broke through?

Tomorrow could feel like a hundred years later.

I'm wiser and slow and too.

As sort of folky as it had become with the analog instruments, we still wanted it to feel poppy and synthy.

So we sort of put some layers,

different synth and organ sounds to sort of blend.

Just like extra atmosphere to build the vibe of the song.

The whole song at the end, when I finished recording it, I realized pretty quickly that it did kind of do everything I had set out for it to do.

I don't know, stepping into that power of like, I'm gonna write this song that's gonna be about this kind of tormented relationship that I have with myself and actively kind of piecing that together.

Honestly, I feel like this idea of unconditional love as something that I could have and hold for myself, at least that being a goal, was kind of a new thing for me.

Yeah, I'm sure that in hindsight, when I look back on things in my life, I will certainly see that as just a step in the right direction, I guess.

Even just with the sounds, even when you take the lyrics out of it, just the mood of the song is that like warm, loving, uplifting energy.

Like it's supposed to make people feel good and happy and excited.

And I felt like this is,

yeah, weirdly exactly what it was supposed to be.

And now, here's Fire by Wax Ahatchie in its entirety.

That's what I wanted.

Not as if we cry a river calling rain.

West Memphis is on fire in the light of day.

Give me something,

it ain't enough.

It ain't enough.

I take it for granted.

If I could love you unconditionally,

I

could iron out out the edges of the darkest sky

for some of us.

It ain't enough,

it ain't enough.

When I take off driving past places painted,

put on a good show for you.

And when I turn back around,

will you drain me back out?

Will you let me believe that I broke through?

Tomorrow could feel like a hundred years later.

I'm wiser and slow and true.

And I am down on my knees.

I'm a bird in the trees.

I can learn to see with the partial view.

I can learn to be easy as I'm moving close to you.

And that's what I wanted.

It's not as if we cry river calling ray.

West Memphis is on fire in the light of your day.

Give me something

It ain't enough,

it ain't enough.

I take it for granted.

If I could love you unconditionally,

I

could iron out the edges of the darkest sky.

For some of us,

it ain't enough.

It ain't enough.

Visit songexploder.net to learn more about Wax Ahatchee.

You'll also find links to buy or stream the song, and you can watch the music video there.

Song Exploder is made by me, Rishike Shirwe, with producer Christian Koons, production assistant Olivia Wood, and illustrator Carlos Lerma.

Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of independent creative podcasts.

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My name is Rishikesh Hirway.

Thanks for listening.

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