When Nicki Bluhm moved to Nashville in 2017, her life had seen a lot of recent change. She and her former husband and bandmate Tim Bluhm had split up, she’d walked away from her longtime band the Gramblers, and she had said goodbye to her native West Coast and home base of San Francisco.
Bluhm made it through that tough transition period with To Rise You Gotta Fall, her first album since the Gramblers’ 2015 release Loved Wild Lost. The record, which is out now via Compass Records, draws heavily from ’60s-vintage pop and gospel-infused soul. It documents Bluhm’s recent struggles, and as she explains during a phone call with the Scene, it helped her find healing and understanding that were essential to moving forward.
“A lot of people have different ways of coping with change and trauma and transition,” she says. “Writing, for me, is an amazing tool to get those ruminating thoughts out of my mind and onto the page and into a song. For my mental health, it was a huge piece of recovery. It continues to be. Now it’s a different phase in singing them and sharing them, but it’s all part of the process.”
To Rise You Gotta Fall opens with “How Do I Love You,” an aching track about trying to save a relationship in jeopardy, its titular question made all the more poignant by Bluhm’s emotive vocals as the track builds into an anthem. It’s followed by “Battlechain Rose,” a Ryan Adams co-write that, with its frank depiction of heartbreak and its sonic contrast with the more hopeful-sounding opener, sets the tone for an album that traces the treacherous ups and downs encountered in the aftermath of a collapsed relationship. As Bluhm has toured in support of the album this summer, she’s felt a change in the way she connects both to the songs and to the feelings they bring forth.
“I’m a little further away from the sentiment of the songs, so I can sing them in a more empowered way and a less vulnerable way, which is working to my advantage,” she says. “I go out to the merch table every night after the show, and it’s been really cool to hear people say that they are thankful for the messages and the support. The songs are definitely personal. But there’s a reason why people write about love and heartache so often. To write the songs was cathartic for me, and hopefully playing them live and sharing them with people is going to be some kind of comfort or catharsis for the listener, too.”
Bluhm tapped producer Matt Ross-Spang to helm the project, giving him free rein to choose band members and to assist in developing the songs’ arrangements. That was another first for Bluhm, who had always looked to her ex-husband for such duties. Bluhm, Ross-Spang, and a band that included former Uncle Tupelo and Wilco drummer Ken Coomer set up shop at Memphis’ famed Sam Phillips Recording, tracking songs that Bluhm began writing at the height of her personal struggles.
“I was just wanting to do something new,” she says. “I had so many ties and so much history and baggage in California — and I love California, don’t get me wrong — but I really wanted to do something new and unattached to all of my struggles. I wanted to be around people who didn’t know me, who didn’t know my struggles, who didn’t know the people involved. The only baggage I wanted to bring in to recording was the words on the page.”
Part of leaving the baggage behind involved a permanent move to Nashville, which Bluhm decided on after visiting for a particularly fruitful writing trip. It was in Nashville that she’d eventually meet Ross-Spang, and that To Rise You Gotta Fall would truly begin to take shape.
“I found that working in Nashville with songwriters who do it every single day multiple times a day kind of took the emotion or loaded nature out of it in a way that felt really cool,” she says. “I went into one writing session with Simon Gugala and had a line of a song: ‘Why was I the last to know.’ There were so many questions in my relationship that went unanswered, and I was really searching for answers and for a way to process, and just people to talk to. I went in and we started talking, and I felt this weight lifted. When you have a great write, it’s so inspiring. When I left that writing session I felt like I’d been in a therapy session.”
Although Bluhm is currently on the road and not getting to spend much time in Nashville, she says it’s starting to feel like home — and that she doesn’t have plans to leave anytime soon.
“I’m looking forward to writing the next record and staying put in Nashville” she says. “I’m ready to settle in.”
