Mary Bragg has never shied away from the truth, but on her new album, Violets as Camouflage, she’s reached a new level of intimacy with it. Beyond taking a clear shift toward more emotional transparency in her songwriting, she produced the country-schooled, heartland-rock-kissed record herself. Though both the writing and production are significant accomplishments, the singer-songwriter came to the project well prepared with experiences and a self-awareness that’s made the act of creation seem intentional, even when it involves embracing the unknown.
The full-length, out Friday, is the Georgia native’s fourth since she started playing music around 2005 in New York City, where she lived for 10 years before moving to Nashville. On Violets, Bragg worked with a cast of friends and co-creators who have shaped her personal development as much as they shaped the record itself.
“Since Nashville is such a small city, you have great proximity to moments that end up being enriching in ways that New York, just because of logistics, doesn’t have,” Bragg tells the Scene via phone. “The community that happens here is a completely underestimated, underrated perk of this town. They really want you to make it. If you do the thing, and you work hard, and you show up and do your best at making good art, then people here really want to help you see that thing through.”
The list of collaborators on Violets as Camouflage runs long, and includes co-writers like Bill DeMain, Robby Hecht and Caroline Spence. Among many others, multi-instrumentalists Lydia Luce and Kristin Weber joined in with Rich Hinman, Jimmy Sullivan and Jordan Perlson, who are members of Bragg’s longtime backing band.
“It’s so joyful to make music with people that you’ve known for a long time,” Bragg says. “The array of writers helps make it feel more human to me.”
The songs on the record were written immediately after the release of Bragg’s 2017 album Lucky Strike. The response to that album made her eager to begin the next project, and she looked to the people already around her at the time.
“We’re all kind of losing our minds here a little bit,” says Bragg. “There is a kind of wild, uncontrollable element of living a creative lifestyle. The people who I love having in my life are the people who understand that and want to see it continue to grow.”
The comfort she derived from these relationships, combined with the positive feedback and connections she made with fans in the wake of Lucky Strike, propelled her to be even more honest and vulnerable moving forward.
“I used to write songs that were not honest,” Bragg says. “They did not make people cry. [Laughs] They did not incite in people big gasps and laughter and relief. It’s all about empathy, really. I want music to continue to help people’s pain feel less isolated.”
Bragg spins threads from years of experiences into a magnificent form of Southern storytelling. These new tracks are deeply personal, but not in a diaristic sense. They are refined and draw from a stockpile of understanding that took years to accumulate.
“When you’re Southern and you’re a girl, you’re expected to act a certain way and speak a certain way and hold your tongue a certain way,” says Bragg. “For a long time I did just that. Now I’m not afraid to talk and write things that might be a little taboo. Probably some of that is just my own interpretation of how I thought I was being raised. It’s just like New York — you think that one thing is happening, but really, it’s this hodge-podge of lenses that all come together that become your worldview.”
Once she got over fears that held her back from writing truthfully, she tackled another hurdle: engineering and producing the record herself. Bragg took to her home studio in March 2018 and completed the album within a couple of months. The hardest part, she says, was beginning.
“It’s just this intrinsic fear or hesitation that you kind of subscribe to for no good reason,” Bragg says. “All you have to do to start doing something is start doing it. That’s it. That’s the great secret.”
The making of Violets as Camouflage taught Bragg that it’s OK not to have all the answers. She’s comfortable in her own skin, unafraid to put her skills as an engineer to the test or broach difficult subjects in her narratives.
“We’re only human, and our minds will forever use our defense mechanisms to protect our safety,” Bragg says. “But, man, that’s where the good stuff is, it turns out — when you give yourself the opportunity to do something that you didn’t think you had the capacity to do. We’re all just throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks.”
