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L22 | Rolling Stone | March 2020
The Mix
time to fully get back into
whatever headspace the next
record was going to be.”
The result of that reflective
time is Crutchfield’s new
album, Saint Cloud, in which
she leans confidently into
Americana and country. “I’ve
become so obsessive about
people like Lucinda Williams,
Linda Ronstadt, and Emmy-
lou Harris,” she says. “All
these country powerhouse
women. I wanted to step into
that power a little bit.”
Saint Cloud signals a dis-
tinct shift in sound from her
previous work. “I knew [Out
in the Storm] wasn’t going
to be super sustainable for
me, because it’s so loud and
abrasive,” she says. “I needed
to have that experience, but I
also knew that I was going to
need to take a sharp turn on
the next one.”
Many of the songs on Saint
Cloud reference place names
with personal significance
for Crutchfield; the album’sAfter driving with the melody
in her head, she wrote it all
down on her phone when
they reached their destina-
tion. “It’s the only time in
my entire life I’ve written a
large portion of a song not at
an instrument or at a piece
of paper,” she says. “I didn’t
change anything.” C
RUTCHFIELD found
it difficult at times
to write lyrics in her
new sober state. “It was a lot
of banging my head against
the wall,” she says. “I had
really good melodies, but
lyrics were so hard for me. ItWAXAHATCHEEtitle comes from her father’s
Florida hometown. “It’s a lit-
tle nod to my dad,” she says.
“Because a lot of this music —
the old country music — that’s
my parents’ music.”
She wrote “Fire,” a folky
slow-burner, while she and
her partner, musician Kevin
Morby, were driving from
Birmingham to their shared
home in Kansas City, Kansas.
“You have to drive straight
over the Mississippi River,
and it’s so epic,” she says.
“Memphis is a place I grew up
going to a lot on family vaca-
tions. So it has this sweetness
and heaviness to it for me.”P. S. E l i o t : 2007-(^2016)
This excellent comp
covers the years the
Crutchfield twins spent
in Birmingham’s largely
male punk scene.
American Weekend
(^2012)
On the first LP she
made as Waxahatchee,
Crutchfield paired
acoustic guitars with
lyrics about moonshine,
bathtubs, and more.
Cerulean Salt
(^2013)
A year after her solo
debut, Crutchfield went
electric and pushed
further into grungy pop.
Ivy Tripp
(^2015)
Her first fully realized
indie-rock masterpiece,
complete with searing
riffs (“Poison”) and pop
melodies (“La Loose”).
Out in the Storm
(^2017)
Fueled by heartbreak
and backed by blazing
guitars, Crutchfield
recorded her most
turbulent album live.
Five Essential
Katie Crutchfield
Albums
was like pulling teeth. I had
all this frustrating creative
energy. I knew that I had
so much to say, and I knew
that it was there, but I just
couldn’t get it. I feel like it
was on the tip of my tongue.”
“Lilacs,” the final song she
wrote for the record, came
together at her piano in Kan-
sas City, with lyrics that surge
with unruly emotion: “I get
so angry, baby, at something
you might say/I dream about
an awful stranger, work my
way through the day.”
“It was definitely one of
those days,” Crutchfield
recalls. “I was just in a bad
mood. Through all of my
personal growth and the path
that I’ve been on, you have
these days where you slip
back into bad behavior and
patterns of thought. When I
wrote that chorus, I was like,
‘All right, we’re going to make
this a little bit of a light at the
end of the tunnel.’ ”
The song’s hopeful refrain
mentions the lilac flowers
that she’d taken from her
front yard and placed in glass
bottles of Topo Chico water
on top of the piano. “Lilacs
have a longer lifespan if they
drink soda water,” she says.
“A little tip from me to you.”
Crutchfield fell into an
easier working groove when
she began jamming with
Bobby Colombo and Bill
Lennox of Detroit indie-rock
band Bonny Doon last sum-
mer. They cut Saint Cloud at
Sonic Ranch studio in July,
over 10 days in the swelter-
ing West Texas heat. “It just
completely clicked for me,”
she says. “My astrologer had
oddly told me, ‘This one
week in July is going to be so
important for you.’ And when
I went back and looked, that’s
the week that I picked. It was
so kismet and cool.”
Today, clean since June
2018, Crutchfield feels like
she’s reverted in some ways
to her ambitious, bright-
eyed teenage self. “When I
was young, I was so Type A
and so productive — almost
annoyingly so,” she says with
a laugh. “Almost in a Leslie
Knope kind of way. I have
come back to that, and it’s
great. It’s a really personal
thing, sobriety. I feel like my-
self again.” ANGIE MARTOCCIO
SWEET HOME ALABAMA Top: Crutchfield performing as Waxahat-
chee at the Primavera Sound Festival in Portugal, 2018. Above: With
twin sister and early bandmate Allison (right) in Alabama, 2010
K
ATIE Crutch-
field recently
came across
a diary entry
from when she
was 17. “It was really sad,” she
says. “I talked about how I
wanted to quit drinking, and
that was so long ago.”
It’s 11 a.m., but Crutchfield,
who performs under the
name Waxahatchee, is still
in her pajamas, sitting in her
twin sister Allison’s backyard
in Los Angeles. Now 30 years
old, she’s been sober for a
year and a half. “I feel like
I came back to the person I
was before I started drink-
ing,” she says. “I returned to
my roots, musically.”
Crutchfield’s career began
in her hometown of Birming-
ham, Alabama, where she
and her sister formed the
feminist punk band P.S. Eliot,
in 2007. They won devoted
fans and critical
raves before disband-
ing in 2011, at which
point she took the
name Waxahatchee,
from a creek near
her childhood home.
(Allison moved on
to a new band of
her own, called
Swearin’.) Crutch-
field has since re-
leased four Waxahat-
chee albums, full of
sharp melodies and
hard-hitting intimacy,
playing for crowds
that seem to grow exponen-
tially with each tour.
“When I was a teenager, I
wasn’t making any money [on
tour],” she says. “The whole
point was to travel around the
country and play music and
meet people, and a lot of that
was drinking. It’s so prevalent
in musicians’ day-to-day life.
You’re in charge of creating
people’s fun night out.”
By the time she finished
touring 2017’s noisy Out in
the Storm, she knew it was
time for a change. “I didn’t
go to rehab or anything like
that,” she says, “but I have
a lot of sober friends, and I
have a lot of people I can talk
to. I did a lot of reading, a lot
of spiritual soul-searching, a
lot of self-help therapy. I had