DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
Singer-songwriter Angela Autumn grew up in the Appalachian foothills in Western Pennsylvania. Singing in church and spending a lot of time alone in the woods, she learned to play the banjo as a young adult. And that sound is still at the heart of her music, but it doesn't stay there by itself. A psychedelic electric guitar might come crashing in, or a wall of reverb, or her voice might change from a high delicate sound to something low and rough.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I DON'T THINK ABOUT YOU AT ALL")
ANGELA AUTUMN: (Singing) To be honest, I don't think about you. I don't think about you at all. If I'm being honest, I can't keep a promise, and to be honest, I don't think I about you at all.
ELLIOTT: These days, Autumn lives in the Nashville area. But when she wanted to write her new album, she kept heading outside - into the Tennessee Woods, to a warehouse in Chattanooga and to a treehouse near Asheville in the dead of winter. We started our conversation by talking about why she heads into the woods and other remote places to write, and her answer took us back to her childhood.
AUTUMN: I used to go out to the Alleghenies with my dad, and one of the characteristics that that area, that region shares with kind of, like, Appalachia areas - the rhododendron bushes. And they're so beautiful.
ELLIOTT: Right.
AUTUMN: And there are just these little creeks kind of - I just pictured the meandering creek up in those, like, highlands in the fog.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I DON'T THINK ABOUT YOU AT ALL")
AUTUMN: (Singing) Don't think about you at all.
A lot of it was written in Nashville, but I think the mental journey, the emotional journey, the interior journey is, like, anchored in a lot of those mountainous, like, high desert places like Chattanooga or Oregon. So definitely place and journey is a big part of the record.
ELLIOTT: There's another interesting tension here. It's your voice, right? You can sound, like, very delicate. You've called it your fairy voice, right?
AUTUMN: (Laughter).
ELLIOTT: Is that what you...
AUTUMN: Yes.
ELLIOTT: ...Call it? You use it to sing lyrics that are pretty dark.
AUTUMN: Yeah, I do. That's one of the things I don't really understand. But as an instrumentalist, it's just so fun. It's so freeing to be able to write on an instrument and to allow whatever voice needs to come through to kind of come through for the songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JESUS HEIST")
AUTUMN: (Singing) Just the other day, I saw a rainbow far off play.
I think that is also something that could be characteristic of Bluegrass music in general and murder ballads. And, you know, that whole tradition is, like, where I draw a lot of my heavy influence from, so exploring those darker themes. But I think at different times in my career, I felt I couldn't speak about them. And so I wanted to get it out of me in this time and on this particular album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JESUS HEIST")
AUTUMN: (Singing) I'm sorry man. Because I had to leave it all behind. I'm not so sure about your kind.
ELLIOTT: I want to talk a little bit more about the natural element of when you were writing this record, particularly the song "Mountain Stream." Tell me about the experience of writing that and how you experienced nature to create that song.
AUTUMN: Well, with traveling, I like to see a lot of different landscapes and then kind of keep that in a - like, an index in my mind. And so, whenever I'm writing, I'm always visualizing a picture or a painting.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOUNTAIN STREAM")
AUTUMN: (Singing) I'll go with the dead way down where the water's deep.
With "Mountain Stream," that was a very clear image. And I think that the speaker in the song is also a very specific person.
ELLIOTT: Who?
AUTUMN: I think it's an Earth spirit who lives in the creeks and lives in the streams and greets us when we enter nature so that we can have experiences there. I really don't feel that "Mountain Stream" was me. I feel like it was something speaking through me when I wrote it.
ELLIOTT: It's a lovely song.
AUTUMN: Thank you. I really like it, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOUNTAIN STREAM")
AUTUMN: (Singing) All I need is the mountain.
I'm happy that "Mountain Stream" made it onto the record because I do think it's powerful. It brings banjo, and it also brings, you know, rock, and I just really love this song.
ELLIOTT: Has making this record changed what you put your faith in?
AUTUMN: Yes (laughter). Yes, definitely, definitely. I trust myself more, my instincts, and - not my actual faith, not in a spiritual sense at all, but I've had a lot of time to reflect on the incubation period around this record, and it really was three years ago. And this whole experience of putting out the record, releasing my music and playing it for other people has really been like coming into the light again and having a full-circle moment with myself.
ELLIOTT: And finally, I want to ask you about the last song on the album, "My Alchemy."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY ALCHEMY")
AUTUMN: (Singing) I'm waiting on the side, and then I'm back again, walking on the blind, and then I'm back again.
ELLIOTT: Is there a story behind the song?
AUTUMN: With "My Alchemy," I was staying - I was couch surfing. I was at a friend's place in Nashville and cooking and just kind of holed up, honestly, and thinking about my life and what everyone else might be feeling and going through. And then kind of a lot of these songs ended up being mantras that would, like, lead me into becoming a more whole and, like, self-realized person.
So at the time, I didn't really know what "My Alchemy" meant. I just knew that I was cooking, and I was doing mundane tasks and also experiencing some pretty profound spiritual things. And I think "My Alchemy" is about turning your experience into something to give to the world. And I really wanted to do that, but I just didn't know how. And as time went on, I ended up creating the album, "Believer."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BELIEVER")
AUTUMN: (Singing) I got to be a believer. I got to...
ELLIOTT: That's Angela Autumn. Her new album, "Believer," is out now. Angela Autumn, thanks so much for the conversation.
AUTUMN: Thank you so much, Debbie. It's been a pleasure, and thank you for listening to my album, and just have the best day.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANGELA AUTUMN SONG, "BELIEVER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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