The Last Music Podcast
The Last Music Podcast
The Last Music Podcast: Hannah White ~ Sweet Revolution
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Like many emerging artists, Hannah White has self-released several albums. But since "Car Crash" won the coveted Song of the Year Award at the Americana UK Awards earlier this year, things have gone up a gear.
Her newest album, SWEET REVOLUTION, is out November 3rd, Worldwide, in digital, CD and LP formats.
Malcolm Mills sits down with Hannah, on the heels of her Norway appearances in this short podcast to talk about the album.
You can find the album for pre-order or pre-save here: Sweet Revolution (lnk.to)
Brought to you by The Last Music Company, an old school haven for fine music in this mad world.
Come visit us at https://www.lastmusic.co.uk to see what we're up to.
It's September 2023 here in London, and this is Malcolm Mills with another podcast from The Last Music Company. You just heard of Snatch of Car Crash there by Hannah White. Like so many other emerging artists these days, Hannah has already self-released a few albums at this point in her career. But since Car Crash won the coverage Song of the Year for her at the Americana Music Awards, things have gone up again for sure. On the 3rd of November this year, Hannah's album Sweet Revolution is being released worldwide. It's on vinyl, compact disc and all streaming services, which is why we're here today banging the drum for it. Because Hannah is just back from some shows in Norway. The coffee pot has been emptied into our mugs, and we're ready to find out how she got to this point in her career. So off we go. Welcome Hannah.
SPEAKER_00Hello.
SPEAKER_01Ha ha. Good to see you. So let's start with this one. When did you first start expressing yourself by writing songs?
SPEAKER_00Well, I always I always think that songs kind of happen to me rather than like I actually went about writing them because I feel like I've always written songs and I've I my some of my earliest memories are just kind of songs. Um and before I knew that's what I was doing, and before I ever labelled it as that, but you know, melodies and words would kind of come. Um so yeah, that's that's a childhood thing. Um the you know, from that to calling myself a songwriter is a massive long kind of psychological journey. But yeah, that's yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so what your age were you do you think when you first committed something to paper?
SPEAKER_00Well that's probably about like eight or nine, like the first songs I remember. I mean, I'm still I can still remember some of the songs. I can, yeah, eight or nine years old, and I'd just write about, you know, my life or you know, things around me, or nature, or you know, the you know things I'd heard about. Um, yeah, just the and even even when I was studying at school, I remember like trying to learn things. The best way I knew how to learn something would be to make a song out of it. Um so even my studies I'd be like, okay, you know, make making melodies, making rhymes, yeah. No, I definitely didn't have any musical idea, um, and I did write poems, I remember writing poems, but songs is something different, and I think like that thing of words and music coming together, that's just it's just something that would kind of arrive, um, and it still does like happen in that way. Um, obviously now I've like I use instruments or whatever, and I sit down with an instrument and and then it happens, but yeah, so I I think so writing songs is a separate thing to writing words and writing poems or stories or even.
SPEAKER_01Right, so presumably around age eight, if you weren't playing an instrument, you were probably just singing your the thoughts and I mean I had a piano at home and I'd like whack that and like whack it as still kind of do that.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, but and yeah, so it just kind of helped me shape some stuff, but yeah, then it was definitely yeah, it's just kind of yeah, come together arriving on its own.
SPEAKER_01Right, and how did you actually first learn to play any other instruments then?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I was born in Sidcup, which is um a South London suburb, um, and we had we were a family on on benefits on welfare, um, and that borough would give us um give families like ours free music lessons. Um, and my dad was a bit of a you know, for someone who was like a total handful, um, and he'd like led a criminal life and a very un unorthodox kind of yeah, um, he'd had a difficult past, but he was a total music snob, in fact, a total culture snob, like literature, music, food, wine, whatever it is. Um, and so really early on he wanted his children to learn languages and to and to learn music, and he, yeah, he he would he made me, I've got a twin sister, he made us both do piano lessons, um, and it kind of stuck with me. Um, yeah, so we had a I had a free lesson every week. Um and that's yeah, that was learning classical, what he wanted us to learn. Um, but yeah, I kind of used some of that basic knowledge for my song. Or I never really wanted to practice, I never really wanted to learn the instruments properly, I just wanted to write songs, and that was kind of instinctive. It was just if I was alone with a piano, I'd that's what I'd be doing.
SPEAKER_01Alright. Do you remember what the first song that you wrote that really stuck with you as if to think that you know this was gonna be something you were gonna be doing regularly? Was there a subject that inspired you in the first place?
SPEAKER_00I rem I remember one of the first one of my early songs that might so I never really wanted to play in front of my dad because he was so over the top and he'd be like, you know, just wanting to showcase me, and I was the shyest child and didn't I barely spoke to anyone. Um so I was extremely pathologically shy. Um so I would just try and do it in secret, and he'd have to listen to me, he'd have to kind of sit prop himself against my bedroom door with his ear against the door, and every now and again I'd open the door and find him there and be absolutely mortified. But so he heard a song that I'd written, actually, this is with a guitar, and it was about um I'd seen this stuff on the news about the land of cardboard boxes that was um all these homeless people in London and the Ohloo Station, yeah, yeah, cardboard city, yeah. Cardboard City. Yeah, and so I wrote this song called The Land of Carbelled Boxes. Well, he thought it was just a piece of genius, um, and he found he found this studio and he sent me to this studio, and it was just all I remember the guy put like trying to get me to keep time when I was like nine, and I found it really difficult and just painful. Anyway, we recorded this song, just me and the guitar, like set playing the guitar to a to a clique, singing the bloody song, and then um uh yeah, we recorded it, and then he and then he sent it off to Blue Peter, and he sent it to my school, and then my school I remember going to school one day and they said we want to do an assembly with your song, and I was absolutely mortified. They said, Do you want to sing it or do you want us to play it? And I said, I'm not sing I'm not singing it. So I sat in this assembly with hundreds of school kids and they played the tape, and I just it was just painful. And I remember going to the toilets afterwards and hearing these kids out. I was in the cubicle, and they were like, That was rubbish. I could do better than that. And I was thinking, I hate you, Dad, I hate you for making me do this. But he just thought it was like, yeah, he would send it off to radio station. He thought, you know, that this was something special, and I was just it made me withdraw more. So yeah, that was that's the trauma. And I found the tapes, and I've you know, at home he he kept it, he'd got them all copyrighted, shook them to the post office seal. I found them, cut them all up. It was just like Did you? Yeah, he had this shop, um, which was basically a a front thing for his drug business. He was basically dealing drugs and he had this satellite shop, um, but he he had speakers on the outside of the shop, so on the high street, he'd just play this song over and over, and people walking past could hear it. It was just the most over-the-top, horrendous for someone who's really shy. Yeah, just yeah. That was nice.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, oh boy, yeah. So, what sort of music do you think sort of framed the style that you were developing at the time? Who were you listening to and trying to take some inspiration from?
SPEAKER_00Well, I well, when I was growing up, we like everyone around me was listening to you know R and B and that old school hip hop, and that's just that's like a South East London, that's what everyone was listening to. Um and I but I I really liked um my the first album I bought was Carpenters, best greatest here it's Carpenters, and just the song, like I just love the songs, and then Sunny and Cher, uh Bonnie Tyler. Just I just really drawn to great songs, um but it wasn't very cool. Um but yeah, so I was I don't know, yeah. I've always been attracted to lyrics and that just that melody, and I've always liked harmonies and I loved all the backing vocals and the carpenters like this. The music I still listen to today, um, but actually most of what I listen to now is like it's just been such a late discovery, it wasn't stuff that was around me. Um so I'm still discovering stuff but look from the 70s and you know, um, which is brilliant, magical. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So how did that sort of fit with all your school chums and friends if you were uh at odds with them musically? That's a difficult thing, isn't it? So shall I should think?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean it's probably easier then than it would be now, like back pre like internet and all that, but it's I don't know, it's um and and I didn't you know I didn't really have any friends. I was a I was a weird, quiet, lonely child uh growing up, and I'd yeah, so I didn't really go out too much or so I was it was a really private, insular ex like relationship with music and with songs and with poem like lyrics, poetry. It was yeah, it was it was a very private thing and it stayed really private, and I think that's why it took me so long to kind of be public about it or call you know call myself a songwriter or just or see myself in that way. It was just something I did as my own like therapy or my own I don't know, it's just something I did.
SPEAKER_01So when did you first perform in public with any of this stuff that you've gone from starting to write from the age of eight or nine through your teenage years putting more and more stuff down?
SPEAKER_00What what and when was your first public performance and why did you get dragged in there because well do you know what happened? I was so my I've so I've got two kids, they've got both have got two different dads. I was with my my second, my daughter's my second child and my daughter's father, and we'd been together not that long, a couple of years, and um I was just closed doors in the bedroom with a guitar playing a song I'd written. He didn't know that I I wrote songs or played music, and he kind of walked in and found me, um, which was a horrifying experience. I felt like I'd been caught having an affair, um, and he was like, You you do this? Like, oh my god, that sounded really nice. What is that? And I was just totally flustered, um, caught in the act, and he said he was like, No, we're gonna, we're gonna you need to go out and do this. And I was my instinct was absolutely not, absolutely not. But he had a friend who was running an open mic, someone at his um work. So he's like, Don't worry, Molly Pete Pete runs an open mic, we'll go and we'll go down to that. And so I kind of went along, absolutely shaking, by the way, and my voice shaking, my hands shaking, played my three songs. Um, but yeah, and everything kind of led on from that, really, because it was just it not on purpose. There was someone who was at the open mic who was working in a pub, and they'd just had a they'd had a uh gig night that had been cancelled, the per the band that was supposed to play. Anyway, so they came over and went, we need someone to play on like next Saturday. Can you do it? We've got eight quid, come and you know, do this gig. And it's like a couple of hours, and I just found myself saying yes. Um, yeah, even though I was not confident at all, and I thought, oh no, I've got to go home and learn all these songs. How many songs can I learn with four chords? Um, it turns out there were loads, but anyway, yeah, did that, and yeah, just so one thing led to another, led to another. Um, but I totally got pushed into it, and it did take me a long time to stop crying after I performed. I think I just maybe always felt that there were the stakes were high, like it meant it meant a lot to me. I don't know. I don't know why I was so emotional about it. It took it's I don't know why, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01But that was always you as a performer on your own. So when did you start performing with other people or collaborating with other people?
SPEAKER_00Um well other people was was down to Kieran probably because um so Kieran who is my husband and my guitarist, and but um he so uh at that op that very first open mic, um which was in sort of southwest, wherever we are, London, um he there was uh Kieran had been running events, like he'd set up a promotions company and was running events and he was looking for someone to do a gig um at one of his nights, and he the guy who ran the open mic, Kieran said, uh, oh do you know anyone who can play? This guy said, Oh, there's a girl who played at my open mic, blah blah blah. Anyway, so Kieran got in touch, I'd never met him, and he was just like, Can you come? Can you come and play this night? So I said yes, and um that was traumatic and awful, but anyway, he's it kind of went on from there, and he said, I'd been recording some songs, and he he was like, Oh, we can I can work with you, we can promote it, we can set up a band, I can pull a band together for you. Um, yeah, he kind of did all the work and he did. He pulled a band together, drummer, brass section, like everything, the fourth thing. Um, and we started playing together. I mean, we weren't together then at all, um, for another many years, but we yeah, we would meet up and play gigs, and sometimes he'd be on guitar, sometimes he'd be playing drums, African drum. Um, yeah, and that's yeah, we I I think that's a start of us, well, me finding a bit of a musical community, like, oh, there are people around who play music. That never I've never had that, I've never known anyone else who played music, so yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's interesting. So let's go back to the songwriting then. So what is it sort of tried to say what comes first, the the music or the words, or is there any kind of formula for it, or does it just do you know what?
SPEAKER_00I just think it just comes together. Um I I tend well now I mostly write with a guitar and I just I get this like itch that I want to scratch and I know that I want to write a song, um, and then I'm not quite sure what what it is yet, or but something's kind of niggling around in my head. So I sit down with a guitar and it kind of falls out at the same time, and actually the older I get and the more you know, the more I learn to listen to my instincts with it, because it's if I work too hard at it and just try and write a clever lyric or a clever melody, it's it's just not gonna I know it's not gonna sound good. The more I um kind of relaxed about it or just not pushing or forcing anything, it will just flow on its own together, it just comes out and might try a few things and all that hasn't worked, and then kind of try something else, and it yeah, but it's but it is a flow, it is something that's if if I'm working too hard, I pull away now, and I'm just like okay, I'll come up, I'll come back when it's when it's gonna come out properly. Um, yeah, so definitely at the same time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So how do you cope with that what Miles Davies used to call the the curse of creativity, you know, the constant need to express your feelings musically. You've got young children and a life to lead. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00How do you it's it's really uh it's sometimes it's uh brilliant, and a lot of the time it's really um it's like I just always say I don't have a quiet mind, it's it's never quiet. If ever I do go quiet, there's just ideas that come in my head, and sometimes that's really annoying because it means you just like you can't sleep, something's going over and over. Um it's slightly easier now. I've got like a phone and I can voice memo things because then if I've I commit it or I make a note of something, then I can sometimes it will help to quieten it. But there's all like it's there's always stuff going, and I can't really listen to things or read anything without um like loads of stuff being generated in my head, and it's that's not to say it's all good, most of it isn't, but it's just happened, it's constant, it's relentless, and sometimes it's exhausting, and yeah.
SPEAKER_01Do you are there any r repeated ideas there, or you go back to things that you've thought of before or done before and try and improve on it? How do you deal with repetition and or or is everything a brand new idea, do you think?
SPEAKER_00Um I mean I wouldn't say everything's brand new. Is there anything repeated? Um maybe I don't tend to go back to things, even if I and I do listen to things and think, oh god, that could have been so much better. Or I should have, I don't know, I don't think I should have. I just once it's done, it's kind of closed. Book close, move on. I think because I'm the way I am, I'm just always generating new things, so I don't tend to revisit. Um that's not to say that probably lots of things that I write don't sound quite similar or I don't know, but um in my head when I'm doing something, it's it's not a revisit, it's something new.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well that's it that brings me on to something else because these days, with the likes of Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music, when record companies are submitting songs to be released via those platforms, and indeed pretty much everything else, you have to categorize the music, put it into work in genres. And these days there's sub-genres and there's so many divisions of music where the the retailers are trying to drive people to something specific, it does make it very difficult to to be for performers and writers to avoid being put into a box of anything. So listening to the wide variety of styles that you've obviously drawn over the years, do you see yourself as being particularly strong in any one category, or is there something in particular that you say defines your style?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I find that really hard because and yeah, I find it really, really hard. And I actually pretty much everything I've released got every like reviews have always commented on how I genre hop. Um but I don't mean to and it's not deliberate. It's just when you write a song, you write a song, it just happens, and it's not you're not right into a formula, it's not like oh I'm a country or folk or whatever it is. You don't well, I don't think that's what happens, so it could be anything or all of those things, or maybe even within the song it kind of moves around, and it's so it's really difficult to um you know, when people ask me what sort of music do you do, I just find that question really hard to answer, and I get that you know you have to have labels and you have to be able to um you know have the words to say represent what you're doing, but I find it really difficult because I do I know that I change, but I don't I still I am really deeply influenced by Amer American music, Roots American music, and I think it's just because it's so from the heart and it's storytelling and it's and I love harmonies and all the stuff that they do so naturally and prolifically, and it's kind of less in like British pop or you know other types of music, but um, but yeah, just um I'm just influenced by anything that's good, I think.
SPEAKER_01Well it's interesting the the the term Americana has sort of um become a popular category in in the last 10 or 15 years, but it it didn't exist before that as a as a as a as a category where you walk through a record shop and look for the Americana section. And these days I think it's very easy to just shove everything down that hole. But I think for from listening to your music, it definitely appeals to that whole new audience that's out there, and um I think that's why you've caught the attention of people in that area of operation. Um, yeah, as I said in my introduction, you've self-released a few albums now, but the two most recent ones have certainly caught the attention of a wider audience. So let's talk about the Nordic connections because that album was nominated for Album of the Year at the Americana Awards. Yeah. But when it came out, the pandemic hit and shut the door on everything for everyone. So how did that feel?
SPEAKER_00Um, really depressing. Um, yeah, that was that was really unexpected because it was kind of a live album, and because so I'd only recently met those musicians. We'd just me and Kieran had been playing in Norway, and that came about like a producer contacted us and heard heard some of my songs and was like, I've got a band, I know we're gonna sound great together. I've never met this person, but anyway, we ended up getting together, and it was it was we all enjoyed the sound we were making. Again, like really roots, you know. The first time I played with a Hammond organ and pedal steel, so really roots uh instruments, and it was just so it was magical to hear my songs in that context. Um, so we decided to m to record it and capture what we'd done live. But you know, they're in Norway, we're in London. It was definitely gonna be a quick let's spend a couple of days in a studio and just do it, which is what we did. But because we've only just really met and it was all so new, that the album's a bit reticent and the songs are quite slow and it's you know, they're they're lengthy, and it's um it's definitely a record that you sit and spend a moment and time with. It's not like yeah, it's they weren't curated um in that way. So there's no kind of obvious single, there's no like it's just not that kind of record. Is that the last thing I expected was for anyone to really um not that they wouldn't like it, but for it to get any kind of uh recognition on that level.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I mean that's that's quite sunny to be nominated in that category for album of the year. You're up against some really stiff competition there from around the world, and uh you know it's well worth noting that at this point you've already appeared on the on the radar of some influential people. So um, yeah, that as we said, the the the pandemic put the carbosh on uh trying to get anything off the ground there, but um then with another clutch of great songs to share with the world, you quickly released About Time, which led to the track Car Crash from the album winning the award for the best song in 2023, earlier this year, those very award ceremonies. So were those songs already written and patiently lined up in the starting blocks, or were you is that just an example of you constantly turning out stuff of uh high quality?
SPEAKER_00Uh kind of a bit of both. I do know what I was at that time, I was um I was wanting to make um a different kind of album, and um I'd already been speaking to like Michelle Stoddart, who's um a good friend, a songwriter, um bass player of Magic Numbers. Um we'd we played some gigs together and we'd been talking about like collaborating and but you know the timings weren't working out for either of us. And the guys in Norway were just uh we'd been talking to them about doing make you know doing some recordings. So the uh in about time, it's there were there were songs that again they weren't didn't feel like there were any singles on there or any, but it they were just songs that were kind of knocking around that I wasn't really doing anything with and I had no plans for. So I thought we'd just let's just go into a studio and um yeah, I wanted to, I wanted to make something that I wanted to do something that was my own sound that I was produced myself because I'd never done that, and actually, as proud as I am of my other albums, they're they're very much the sound of you know, the producers, you know what it's like going in a studio, and a producer will kind of shepherd everybody and shepherd the sound, and it's so it's but it wasn't necessarily one that I would have made, and I wanted to do that. Um so I've been listening to some like some old sort of 60s music and uh Shangriars, and I just love that space and the drama, and anyway. So I thought I'm gonna I'm gonna take these songs and you know, some trusted credit like Kieran, obviously, and some of the guys in Norway. Um yeah, so we we put those together, but it was it was supposed to be, it was all my intention was to make uh a moment that you a real moment, a record that you can put on and have a moment with, and yeah, I didn't yeah, it wasn't again it wasn't like a single thing. I didn't know that I mean Car Crash is a five-minute song. Yeah. I don't I don't understand how it got any radio play or anything, but yeah, it did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well no, I know I know that you started working on recording the material for Sweet Revolution back in 2022. Now, bearing in mind at that time you've no idea that Car Crash is good enough to beat everyone else's songs at the awards in 2023. You're already recording some more truly great stuff. So, what's the story behind this new album, Sweet Revolution, and the people who are on it?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's um I mean it's so I'm working with uh obviously Kieran, who's been on everything, um and Michelle, who I had kind of just before the pandemic, we'd done a gig together, and it was a women's International Women's Day event, so we both invited as guests, and we kind of really collect musically, um, there's like a mu mutual respect there. Um and so we'd kept in touch and we we'd talked about doing some stuff together. Um and yeah, we she actually asked, Can I would you be up for me doing some production on it? And you know, like she really wanted to kind of get involved in a bit of a deeper way and and really connected with the songs, which was just amazing, and um so a bit of a hard thing to let go, um, but we worked we worked closely together and it was a real um collaboration. And actually working with a woman was very different because just that I don't know, just that natural like checking in constantly, very sensitive to each other's like what was going on for each other. Um so it was it didn't it wasn't like it didn't have its difficult moments, but anyway, we did we we did it together um and yeah it was the songs that yeah that just I don't know um maybe a little that I mean it's very different to that time, it's a bit kind of punchier and a bit some of the songs are bigger, I suppose, they're bigger songs. Um but yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well thanks for that. Hannah, it's been a real pleasure hearing from you today. And to give our listeners a chance to hear why these quality songs simply have to be released, I'm gonna play Chains of Ours. It's a single from Sweet Revolution with Kieran Marshall wailing away on guitar there at the end, and a perfect example of what to expect from the outstanding repertoire of Hannah White. Thanks for joining me today.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01You're welcome.
SPEAKER_03These are all ways where you walk in with the old ways of where we all begin. That's another logo for me. Father back on the point of view is a game as a wood as leather song. These others are nothing too. And another dog holds on me. When's a gingerbread man made fangles? When's it blown since time again? Still history.