Tag: Tift Merritt

In the late summer of 2022, Courtney Hartman realized that the songs she had written for a new album were not the songs she needed to release. “I had found out I was pregnant a few months earlier, [and already] had a batch of material I was working on for a new record. I felt this quiet urging to set all of that aside and give my attention to what was happening in our life and in my body,” she says.

She discarded everything and began writing her third album, With You, a personal journey through motherhood set to music.

“What was happening in our life” refers to a tumultuous string of events that saw Hartman and her husband, John, through the best and worst of times. Best because the couple were expecting their first child, rebuilding their house in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Hartman was on tour; worst because her husband fell off a ladder, could not work for months, lost two jobs, she was dropped by her booking agent, and they totaled their car.

The cumulative effect left the couple in need emotionally, physically, and financially. They soon found themselves uplifted by their community – their immediate one and her music community at large. The experience left Hartman deeply grateful and dedicated to giving back even more than she received.

In September of that year, Hartman began writing “in earnest” the songs that became With You. She and her husband welcomed their daughter in February 2023 – more best of times followed by worst of times as Hartman struggled with postpartum depression.

“At the end of [2023] I had all this material and realized I wanted to invite in other voices and stories and perspectives, specifically those of other mothers,” she says.

Once again, she drew on her community, calling on a fellowship of songwriter mothers – Sarah Siskind, Dawn Landes, Ana Egge, Tift Merritt, Kristin Andreassen, and Emily Frantz Marlin of Watchhouse – to help take her deeply personal new songs to an even higher level.

“I spent another few months, December [2023] to February [2024], writing mostly over Zoom, finishing the material with those other writers,” she says. With You was recorded in June and July 2024, at The Hive studio in Eau Claire, with Hartman producing and Brian Joseph as co-producer and engineer.

As one might expect from Hartman, there are plenty of guitars on the album – her Lawrence Smart Archtop, Bourgeois Parlor,
PreWar (modeled after a Gibson J-45), Bischoff Dreadnought, Martin 00,
and a Telecaster – but if you’re looking for the lightning flatpicking work that makes her a bluegrass force to reckon with, you’ll be best served on YouTube. With You tells a story that calls for understated guitars as a palette for its songs.

“Things weren’t all bright and shiny in that season,” she says, “but the impetus to write and pay attention helped me pay attention to some of those lighter moments. Not all the songs on With You are about everything being light, because that’s just not how it is. But there was this extra attention to some of those details that do help buoy your spirit when things are a little more challenging.”

Completing the journey is With You’s striking cover art. The work of Hartman’s close friend Claire Lindwall captures the music’s delicate intimacy. “Claire is primarily a watercolor artist and illustrator,” says Hartman. “A special part of creating an album, for me, is giving the music to someone who then translates it into a visual piece of art. Every time, it’s surprising and expansive in a new way.”

Lindwall cast her own hand and that of her daughter’s, and positioned the casts so that one holds the other. “We experimented with drawings around it, then having just a splash of watercolor behind the piece,” says Hartman. “That’s all it needed.”

With this album now making its full debut, how do you feel about sharing so much vulnerability?

Courtney Hartman: The processing has happened in phases. I think it started just by saying yes to writing the material. There was an accepting of, “I’m writing about this thing that feels more vulnerable and more naked than anything I’ve written about before.” Bringing those songs to other writers, to collaborators, there was another level of vulnerability there.

A year ago I brought all of this material to my greater community and asked for support, because at that point I needed help putting the album out. Now, to give it to the rest of my community and listeners in the world, there’s a level of vulnerability, but I feel mostly excited. It feels like, “We made it.”

You’ve explained in other interviews that you had to use funding meant for the songs that came before these in order to get back on your feet. Needing financial assistance is also a vulnerable place and one that often brings publicly imposed shame and guilt. How did you process it?

You’re bringing up something that my husband and I have been talking about a lot, just with the news cycle and trying to get an understanding of what we can do for folks in our community. And having had small tastes of that in our life, because I know what we’ve experienced is so small compared to what so many people live through and are currently living through.

An important [word] that you touched on is shame – the shame of needing help; of not feeling like you can do it on your own or you can stand on your own two feet; of needing help for basic things like groceries. I think maybe accepting help and accepting care expands our capacity to feel compassion and to be able to then care for others.

In a podcast for Acoustic Guitar, you used the phrase “the intimacy of sound.” Could you talk more about what that means in the songwriting and guitar playing?

What I hear when you reflect that phrase back to me is the sound of the skin of your finger on the guitar string, or the sound of hands against a percussive instrument. When we went into the studio, I told the friends that were with me there on the first day, “Just as a guiding directive, whenever we imagine a sound that we want to create, let’s see if we can find something natural to create it with.”

Everyone took it in their own way, some on their instruments. Sean Carey was heavily involved on the record and he took that more literally in a lot of the percussion work. He found a nest outside when he was wandering around and that became the percussion on a track. Or even just the sound of skin on skin being a sound that we used as well; bringing in and magnifying some of these quieter sounds and allowing that to be a part of the soundscape [was part of the intimacy of sound].

Did you select the guitars around the songs or did some of the songs develop around your guitars?

Sometimes you think you know what a song wants before going into the studio and then you sit behind a mic and you’re like, “This isn’t serving it quite right.” And sometimes that experimentation takes a little longer than you think it will. Or sometimes you sit down with a first instinct and it’s totally right. That’s part of the reason it’s fun to have a good array of instruments in the studio.

Is the guitar as much a part of expressing your feelings as the lyrics?

It is. I think part of that comes from how long it’s been an instrument that feels like a voice to me. Songwriting came around the same time. I was about 12 when I started writing songs. Singing feels like something I still have so much exploration and learning to do.

How did working with other mothers, and their lived experiences, bring understanding to what you were going through?

What I was given [was the] shared experience and the acknowledgement of, “This is really hard. It’s really beautiful, but it’s also really challenging.”

So much of the caregiving that happens [as a mother], especially in that first year … so much of it is invisible. Maybe an aspect of that applies to all sorts of giving care – that it’s invisible other than to the one giving the care and the one receiving the care. When you feel invisible, it can also make you feel isolated and that can really feed into some of the struggles. A lot of folks have postpartum [depression] and societally we’re not set up to honor and support that season very well at all. It’s something I care a lot about, both from experiences with my family, but also as I’ve delved into work as a birth doula.

When you say, “Societally we’re not set up to honor and support that season very well at all,” what do we need to do?

We need to honor and uphold the importance of rest and nutrition and preparation. Parents are prepared for “Here’s what birth might look like,” but after that six-week checkup [traditional care usually ends]. Postpartum extends far longer than that.

A lot of [postpartum] mental health struggles won’t show up until maybe nine months or a year after a child is born. Better supporting [people postpartum] that would be the first thing I can think of. We live pretty isolated lives, as families in our insular homes, and so we’re not set up to receive support very well.

Or ask for it.

Yes, totally, [we need to be] preparing [people] to know that this is a time to accept and receive care. Preparing your heart for that is such a big piece of it, to know that we, as your village and your community, want to care for you in this time.

You’ve spoken openly about postpartum depression. What was that period of time like for you?

Moments of real happiness, but also moments of hitting my head against the wall … when I was struggling. [It was] hard to admit to myself and then to speak that [struggle] out loud to anybody. It wasn’t until afterwards that I could say, “That was hard.”

All depression is misunderstood and will often make people in your circle run away.

Let’s go back to your community, and the community of mothers, and how they lifted you.

I felt so cared for by our community in a way that was deeply humbling and in a way that somehow prepared me to do some of the caregiving that was going to be required of me. I was receiving so much love and support and meals and folks showing up. That kind of care is life-changing. It changes the way we see the world and our community around us.

My daughter was about nine months old or so when I started reaching out to other mothers, asking if they would collaborate on some songwriting. Having some tether creatively helped pull me through that season. It helped weave together the woman I was prior to having a child with the woman I was in that new space. … Sometimes it feels like … you almost can’t remember who you were before.

I was really afraid of [losing parts of myself]. I was afraid I wouldn’t create music again. There’s all these fears, irrational or not, that show up. Creating and being able to have these conversations that normalize what you’re experiencing. Having women who are [a] few years ahead of me be like, “It might be extra-challenging now, but it doesn’t stay that way forever.”

It’s almost 2026 and society still misunderstands and stigmatizes mental health, certainly PPD, and even some aspects of pre- and postpartum healthcare. Why are we uncomfortable talking about things that are so natural and important to discuss? Are we making progress or going backward?

I hope we’re making progress. It was a lot easier for me to ask, “Why don’t we talk about these things?” when I wasn’t part of the “we.” As soon as it was also part of my story to talk about and share, [I had to come] to terms with my own hesitancy. Why do I not want to talk about something as normal as pregnancy and motherhood in my songs? Why do I feel like if I put this music out, it will be discredited and potentially ignored, even though it may speak to so much of the population? …

I still don’t have an answer. Maybe it’s because there’s so many generations of women having to hide those things for fear of losing wages, or jobs, or discrimination, whatever it might be. For everybody’s sake, there’s so much we have to learn from mothers’ voices, and I hope we’re beginning to really listen.

On a podcast, The Other 22 Hours, you reflected on the period after Della Mae and the realization, at the time, that “Music was not a healing thing.” What role does music now play in your healing and mental health?

It has become healing again. Years ago, I was dealing with physical pain in my hands. That was magnified by touring all the time, being on the road so much, and the strain on my body. So I was speaking about it in a physical way. [Music] has become a lot more than just physically healing [for me]. I think this album exemplifies that.

You have worked with so many people. Who is your wish-list artist or artists?

Oh my gosh. The first person that came to mind – and maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to her record all week – I would love to play music in the same room as Brandi Carlile. She gives all of herself and it’s so good.

We had a listening party [for With You] and as I was listening to the album for the first time with a whole group of friends and collaborators, what I hear on it is my friends and heroes, which is such a joy. There are so many folks on this album that I look up to so much and who have been dream collaborators. So, in that way, a lot of it has been a dream list fulfilled.

Photo Credit: Michelle Bennett