When Jameson Elder and Hanna Rae met in Nashville in 2013, they were both fresh-faced singer-songwriters learning to navigate the musical landscape. Like many young Nashville artists, they met up several times to write. A mutual love of music led to a love of a different sort, and the pair were married in 2016. Both pursued their individual careers. Hanna released two folk-pop EPs including 2018’s Without Letting Go (think Ingrid Michaelson meets Brandi Carlile), while Jameson released an EP and his debut full-length album, Prodigals & Thieves, with more of an Americana-rock sound (somewhere between Tom Petty and Dawes).
They always intended to record music together. Hanna recalls that, “For years, people would come up to us after a show and ask when we were planning on releasing music together. We’d just laugh and say, ‘Oh, one of these days.’ We talked about it a lot, but we just never fully dove in. There is a weird tension to co-creating with the person you love. It’s different because you don’t get to just set aside whatever conversation you had that morning. We had to learn how to create together.”
Despite being an incredibly difficult year, 2020 proved fruitful ground for the duo to finally go all in. They wrote and produced their debut EP, Nowhere Else To Go, due out October 29th, almost entirely in their Nashville home while the nation was in lockdown. Songs on the EP range from the deep sorrow of “Coming Undone,” written the week that lockdown hit, to “Safe With You,” a lively folk-rock song that highlights the joy of having someone to walk with you through uncertain circumstances. With influences ranging from Drew and Ellie Holcomb to The Lone Bellow, Hanna and Jameson found a way to meet right in the middle of their individual sounds.
Today Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of the new single “Nowhere Else To Go.” The song finds the duo embracing a big indie rock-meets-Americana sound that is airy and triumphant. Their harmonies are the real star of the show here, gliding over the music and constantly building into big rock and roll moments that give the song an arena-ready sound. Their is an electrifying catchiness to the music, and it’s easy to picture the duo backed by a big band playing this tune on a huge festival stage.
Listen to the new tune and read our quick chat with the duo below…
What prompted you to write this song? What was the inspiration behind it?
Hanna: I started writing “Nowhere Else to Go” in April of 2021. We’d just crossed the one-year mark of the pandemic, and the weight of that year just felt really heavy. I think this was just me trying to put some of those feelings on paper
How did this song come together on the writing front? Talk us through the songwriting process.
Jameson: I heard Hanna writing it from the other room (the benefits of being married to your songwriting partner!) and came over to listen. Hanna tends to write the majority of a song in 30 minutes or less, so I have to be quick if I want to be a part of it! She had everything written but the bridge, but she thought the song needed a chorus. I remember telling her that she didn’t need a chorus, that “hold on tight my dear, it’s uphill from here, there’s nowhere else to go” served really well as a repeated refrain, it’s kind of Dylan-esque. We wrote the bridge together. The bridge introduces a new character, a shoulder to cry on for the main voice in the song. I really love this moment in the record.
When you recorded this song, what kind of vibe were you going for? Did it end up sounding like you expected it to or did it come out different from what you thought it would be?
Jameson: Ha! I don’t think we’ve ever argued over a song more in our careers. This was a tough one. We started out with completely different visions. After we recorded drums, we put the song away for two or three weeks and then came back to it. I spent a weekend messing with parts and ideas before Hanna even heard anything. Once she recorded her lead vocal, everything made sense, and we knew exactly what the song needed. It’s become my favorite track on the EP.
What made you want to name the EP after this song’s title? Is this song a key track on the record? How so?
Hanna: A couple of reasons… We like the title of that song, it kind of encompasses the theme of the record. The second and more metaphorical reasoning is that this EP might not have happened outside of the pandemic. We had talked about recording together for a long time, but it just never happened. It really was because we had “nowhere else to go” that we were able to essentially force ourselves into making this record.
Photo credit: Alaina Broyles
