Waxahatchee
The first time Katie Crutchfield headlined the Ryman in 2022, it was a “huge deal.”
“I grew up in the South, I grew up in Alabama, so playing the Ryman was the biggest bucket-list venue that I had,” she tells the Scene via Zoom. Her whole extended family came out for the show, and the night was a sort of homecoming for an artist raised on country music. On May 1, Crutchfield will return to the Mother Church in support of Tigers Blood, her sixth LP as Waxahatchee. She anticipates that this go-round will be “a little more relaxed.”
I associate Waxahatchee playing in Nashville with a brisk fall night in 2015 at Exit/In, where she played a sparse and serious set of tracks from her early, critically acclaimed indie-rock records like Ivy Tripp and Cerulean Salt. Cradled by the DIY punk scene in Philly, she spent the Aughts lighting up small venues like Exit/In, and as her music got more recognition, she made appearances on bigger and bigger stages, including at Pitchfork Fest. For that show on the Rock Block, she rocked baby bangs and a fuzzy, electric sound.
With her 2020 LP Saint Cloud, an acoustic guitar appeared. Like moths to a flame, new fans latched onto the vulnerability and softness of Saint Cloud’s Americana sound. You can partially attribute that to Brad Cook, who produced both Saint Cloud and Tigers Blood. Cook had previously produced records for Crutchfield’s longtime partner, folk-forward songsmith Kevin Morby.
“It sounds cheesy,” Crutchfield says, “but Brad helped me see myself a little more clearly.”
What she sounds like now is much more country than one would anticipate from her 2015 show. Yet her cover of Lucinda Williams’ “I Lost It” in her set that night showed that the new sound wasn’t too deep under the surface.
“When I was younger, I was not thinking about my roots musically,” says Crutchfield. “I threw all kinds of stuff at the wall just to experiment.”
Her time in the Northeast led her to reject her upbringing on country music and be even “a little bit embarrassed” by her intimate familiarity with it. That changed with Saint Cloud and resonates throughout Tigers Blood, which is full of sonic and visual references to the South. She makes metaphors out of the crape myrtle, the flowering shrub that some Southerners let grow as tall as a tree, imbuing everyday flora with meaning: “You come alive in the heat / You ain’t crossing state lines / Stood up like a crape myrtle / Can’t be killed or denied.”
Her love for Louisiana native Williams’ music helped her embrace her musical upbringing. “[Williams] extracts magic from the South — and there’s a lot of magic to be extracted,” Crutchfield says, “and kind of weaves that in while never fully committing to being full-blown country.”
Like Williams, Crutchfield has not fully bought into the genre of country music, but by embracing its sounds and her connection to them, she’s evolved a beautiful new sound. The threads between her early punk records and the music she makes now are easily traceable. Her inimitable voice and lyrics are the focal point on every song. You can follow the evolution in her lyrics as well. While she used to write from a sadder mindset, she decided to explore new territory on Tigers Blood. The lead single from the record, “Right Back to It,” which features gut-wrenching harmonies from Asheville it-boy MJ Lenderman, is one of the best duets in recent memory, as she sings lovingly about a long-term relationship: “You just settle in / Like a song with no end.” Over banjos, you hear that she’s tapped into a vulnerability singular to this moment in her career.
For this tour, fans can expect a set covering 2020 to 2024: most of Saint Cloud, all of Tigers Blood, and songs by Plains, her duo with Jess Williamson.
“We’re going to be keeping it really loose every night, and trying to just play off of each other and have a new experience every night.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly indicated that Jess Williamson is a member of Waxahatchee.
