On September 15th, Folk-influenced Indie artist Trevor Hall will release his new album, Trevor Hall and the Great In-Between via his label, 3 Rivers. It marks the first time that Hall has wholly recorded and Produced one of his own albums alone, and it also stems from a time where Hall developed a new home, and a new studio, as a base for his work. As the album title suggests, Hall grapples with indefinite but significant states, the intersections of various emotions, to capture moods and ideas that otherwise might be something we flee from or fail to accurately assess. Giving room to those emotions and upheavals leads to very interesting sonic and lyric work from Hall on this album.
Singles from the album have included “hello my son” inspired by the birth of Hall’s child, “shake it out”, which gets down to the roots of creative energy and challenges us to get on board, “all of my lessons” whose video shows us Hall’s new recording space, “train song” which casts a wide net over Hall’s life so far as a musician, and even “losing you”, a love song about eternal things. In all of them you’ll find Hall experimenting with new sounds, particularly synths, and occasionally with unconventional beats, to bring home the beauty and the honest conversations that can arise in welcoming new experiences. I spoke with Trevor Hall about his personal journey into this new songwriting and recording.
We spoke about your previous album, In and Through The Body, but a lot has happened in your life since then, including having your first child, and the world going through big shifts.
Yes, a lot of things have happened. My wife Emory got pregnant during covid, during quarantine, which was kind of a blessing because it allowed us to really be in our own energy and not be obligated by any plans. It allowed us to meditate on this huge change that we were about to undergo as a family, welcoming this new life into the world. It was quite nice to be isolated for that. We started looking for a home to build the next chapter of our family and ended up finding this spot out in the farmlands of Boulder.
The house has this barn in the back that the previous owner had always used for an artistic purpose, which was cool. I think the original owner taught glassblowing and ceramics, and it had also been used for working on old cars. It had a creative energy to it, and when we got in there, we converted it into a studio, and that’s where this whole new record was recorded, and a lot of it was conceived. The actual space of the barn and the home has played a major part in the creation of this next album. It’s been wild.
We actually see the barn and studio in some of the photos and videos for this album, don’t we?
Yes, we really wanted to bring people into the space as best we can. We’re pretty introverted as people, but we wanted people to feel the magic of the barn and make people feel the place the songs originated and the chapter that we’re in. That’s been really fun. We did a music video for “all of my lessons” in the barn and we’ve done teaser shots.
Actually, at first it seemed very foreign to us to build the energy of a home because, as people, we’ve always been traveling for shows or for work. Both my wife and I are pretty much “go with the wind” type people, so to put our energy into a home has been a beautiful thing.
Was there any sense in which that transition was scary at first? I found it hard getting a real home as someone who’s moved around a lot, too.
Oh, yes, as you can imagine. Having a child, too, is one of those experiences that everyone can tell you about, but there’s no use because when it comes, it completely shatters your whole previous world and life. Some people mourn that, and I think there’s a great change that happens within oneself. Your previous self kind of dies and you are kind of reborn with the birth of the child. Feeling that is a whole range of emotions.
That has a lot to do with the name of the record, “the great in between.” It’s feeling everything all at once and at the same time, it feels like nothing at all. In the human experience, we’re always clinging to one side of the pendulum, whether it’s happiness, or sadness, or confused, or turbulent. It can be tormenting, in a way. But the space in between those things is something that we don’t really pay attention to. That’s something that this project explores, and this album explores. It’s about accepting and honoring every emotion, and also exploring that in-between space where we can see things without feeling as tormented by the dance. It’s a space I’m still discovering in my life and in my music.
That’s a wonderful image to express it because I think the extremes in our life do toss us back and forth, and we are less likely to notice when we feel contentment or balance. It’s not as etched in our minds. Are these songs a bit like that? It seems like each of them is kind of about capturing an emotion or reflection from that in-between state before it’s lost.
Speaking of feeling a whole host of emotions, there’s a certain energy that happens that could be caught or grabbed out of the in-between state. It’s almost in thin air, as people say. There’s a certain magic that I feel is heard or expressed when that creative energy is coming through. In the past, I’ve always recorded demos or voice memos and I’ve brought them to a studio, or to a producer to bring them to life, in a way.
Sonically, they may sound better, but that initial magic of catching the song out of that initial space can get lost when you rerecord it. For this album, because the barn was transformed into a studio, and because I did this record on my own, I hope that energy was felt when hearing these songs. It became a great place of exploration, of trying new things. It was stretching out, not knowing if things were right or wrong, but going with it.
I felt the fear of doing it on my own, and so many different emotions, but I knew that at this stage of my journey, it was necessary for me to feel that uncomfortableness. I didn’t have anyone to help bring the songs to life or approve of them, so to speak. I carried that. In the past, I might have run away from those feelings, but instead this was a time of the great in-between, of feeling all those things and not pushing them away. That’s something I’m working on in my daily life and all my relationships, too.
Some of that in-between feeling is pretty strongly present on “train song,” one of your recent releases.
TH: Yes, that one was written a little later and kind of slid its way onto the record. It was written with my wife, my wife’s mom, and sister, when we were hanging out one day. We had taken our son on the train, and he’s deeply obsessed with trains and trucks. In April, we went on tour as a family, and we took a train to our first show. It was me, and my wife, and the dog, and a child, the child’s stuff, and touring gear. It was a train from Connecticut to DC.
It seemed like a chapter of my life, since I’ve been doing this for so long, and touring for 20 years now. There’s been so many moments where we questioned, “How are we still doing this?” Then, I was sitting on the train, and looking at my wife, my son, and my dog, and thinking, “How are we doing this? This is a miracle.” The song kind of plays off of that journey of the train, but also asks the question, “How do we keep keeping on?” It’s this will to live, this perseverance, this will to continue that the song celebrates. It’s a really cool song and I’m happy with it.
It has a very interesting sound and feeling to it. It is an affirmation to it, but it’s not a naïve one. It’s a realization of how much energy and experience has gone by on that path.
Yes, the song is like a celebration but there’s also a fatigue to it as well. There’s also the acknowledgment of all the songs and all the shows, and everything that we’ve done so far in our lives.
I like the fact that there’s a harmonica in there, and it occurred to me later that harmonicas are kind of associated with trains in a way.
That’s funny that you said that. That’s kind of why I brought it in. I’ve been bringing a harmonica in a lot more on stage, and in the studio. It’s an instrument that was one of the first that I played, with my dad on the drums. It’s an easy instrument for a kid to connect with. I brought it in here because it does resemble the sound of the train and the engine. It also has a vagabond type of vibe to it. It’s one of the traveler’s instruments, you could say.
It seems like the song “shake it out” has a pretty strong energy and message to it, too, in the face of uncertainties.
If you compare the two songs, you can see how different they are sonically. “shake it out” was more of an experimental track, trying new things, and bringing in different sounds that have been inspiring to me. It started with the last record, but with this record I have really gotten into synthesizers and how they inspire me in a different way. That song is a joyful celebration of that creative energy and power, and getting it to flow.
It’s the same words sung over a couple of different times, but the “town” referred to is kind of like the energy, that spontaneous, creative energy that’s inside us all. And the idea of “shake it out” is kind of the activation of that. It’s really realizing that the energy is kind of a divine thing that I call to, and even worship and revere in a way. That’s why the end of the line says, “new holy water.” That’s what we, as artists, bathe ourselves in every day, whether you’re a writer, musician, painter, builder, or whatever it may be. That is the thing that gives us life and cleanses us and allows us to move through things. It’s our mode of being. That song is another celebration of that energy. It was a fun one!
I think some people have reacted, thinking, “Whoah, what is that sound?!” [Laughs] Because it’s different from what I normally go after, but that’s been kind of the process of this record. It’s a stretching out and seeing what happens.
I love the interaction between the beat and the vocal line in that song, and how they are not just mirroring each other.
That’s interesting because that song did start with the beat. It started with a sample that I had and it kind of moved to a wild arpeggio of that synthesizer and built around that. As it was coming to life, and I was making it, I was almost dancing and jumping around, trying to get it moving. The drums were the first element that set it off.
The phrasing of the lyrics is unusual because it’s like there’s a speaker introducing another person to the situation of the town, almost a welcoming committee.
[Laughs] Yes! I also think there’s a little bit of something cool to it, which I don’t usually allow myself to do, saying “This is how we get down. This is how we are most vibing!”
