Basic Folk: Lilly Hiatt

Singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt has an interesting way of working melodies and a down-to-earth way of telling stories about her life and about how she sees the world. All of her albums have cool, crunchy guitar parts that take folk songwriting to a rockin’ level. On her new album, Forever, her diverse influences are woven into songs that touch on everything from relationships to anxiety and mental health to good old-fashioned rock and roll.

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In our Basic Folk conversation, we talked about the lessons that Lilly learned growing up the daughter of legendary songwriter John Hiatt and what it meant to her to see her dad go through the ups and downs of the music business while having the humility and self-belief to keep going. She also talks about how she thinks about herself as a performer – and how that’s changed since the pandemic. Before the pandemic Hiatt had a couple of really big records (Trinity Lane, 2017 and Walking Proof, 2020) that gained a lot of hype and attention. Once coronavirus hit, she had to sit in the house and ask the big questions like a lot of us did. She sat with the loneliness, alienation, and uncertainty.

You can hear in our interview just how much mutual respect and admiration we have for each other and how much belief we have in one another, not only as songwriters, but as women and as people who are in recovery. Very LYLAS vibes, lots of laughs.


Photo Credit: Jody Domingue

WATCH: Mumford & Sons, “Forever (Garage Version)”

Artist: Mumford & Sons
Hometown: London, England
Song: “Forever (Garage Version)”
Release Date: May 8, 2020

Editor’s Note: The demo recording heard in this video was performed almost completely live and rediscovered while going through some of the band’s recording archives during the coronavirus lockdown.

In Their Words: “Back in 2013, off the back of touring Sigh No More and Babel we decided we needed to take a bit of a break from the road, catch our breath and regroup. The first time we really hung out to make music together was after a couple months living our lives, and it was in the back garden of a friend’s house deep in Brooklyn. That friend was Aaron Dessner from The National and he had a built a studio in the garage in his garden. Between catching up, eating burritos, and having a couple of drinks, we messed around a bit with some new song ideas. This was one of those moments.

“Many of the songs that began in that garden ended up on Wilder Mind, whereas the later version of this song we saved for Delta. We just thought it’d be fun to share the journey that these songs go on sometimes. Hope everyone is staying safe x” — Mumford & Sons


Photo credit: Gavin Batty