Baltimore-based Americana-folk singer-songwriter Katie Callahan might just be your new favorite artist (and ours, too). Her brand new album, “The Water Comes Back,” just came out, and her delicious vocals and comfort-food-for-the-ears music is everything we didn’t know we needed in our lives. With Americana flavors, splashes of pop, and generous helpings of folk, Callahan has created a recipe that will serve many for years to come. Her lyrics, slicing into emotional depths and philosophical explorations, are wordsmithing at its absolute best. We sat down with her recently to talk about “The Water Comes Back,” took a deep dive into the beautifully reassuring single, “Lullaby,” discussed creating music with your heroes, her songwriting process, and the beauty in little surprises discovered through repeat listens.
Hi Katie! Thanks for joining us today. Your new album, “The Water Comes Back,” is really stellar. Tell us how you created this album.
I’m so glad to be here, and so glad it’s resonant. This album emerged — it’s sort of a wild story — after I, on a whim, reached out to Jars of Clay via their website, thanking them for a lifetime of inspiration after I’d worked for years to put out my first record, “Get It Right.” And to my total shock, I got a reply from Charlie Lowell (keys for Jars of Clay), and he said to reach out if I ever wanted to record down in Nashville. A few months and demos later, he connected me with Matthew Odmark (acoustic guitar for Jars of Clay) who runs Gray Matters Studio, and we started working on the album. It was right before the pandemic began, so we spent a lot of those lockdown months working on songs over Zoom and finalizing a track list, and, in January of this year, I went down there, and we sort of sunk ourselves into the project for the two weeks I was there, and I came home having recorded the whole thing.
The work is about identity and feminine strength; it’s about a significant faith transition I was and am experiencing. It’s about trusting in seasons and cycles and finding rest in letting go of control. It was such an enormous privilege to get to record this music in particular with my musical heroes in their space and hear their feedback and encouragement. It’s been a wild year.
We totally loved the song “Lullaby” on first listen. What inspired this song? Why did you write it?
Thanks so much, “Lullaby” has ended up being one of my favorite songs on the album. I first started it as a scramble to finish a new song for NPR’s Tiny Desk contest, but it took on a different life in the months that followed. At the time — and honestly still — I needed words of affirmation, I needed encouragement, and I needed to believe that the work I was doing in addition to mothering my two daughters was worthwhile, so this song has sort of become a steady reminder to me of those things. When my old friend (Buffalo-based filmmaker Erin Bagwell) and I were talking about the video, we wanted a real time-stamped, this-was-made-in-quarantine sort of story, but the the song, I think, transcends this moment and speaks a lot to parents and caregivers, creating and working in the margins of our lives, to remind ourselves of who we are.
What sort of a vibe did you want this song to have? Do you think you accomplished that in the final recorded version? If so, how so, and if not, what changed in it?
You know, I initially intended to write a sweet little song for my sisters and best friend to remind them of their worth, and I think I ended up with a sweet little song for myself, so in a way it came out the way I’d hoped. I worked with Louis Johnosn (Lone Waves, The Saint Johns, Lonas) on this one, and the first version was like six minutes long and really needed to be distilled into its most basic parts, which he helped me do. Matt (Odmark) really saw the spirit of the song and let it be a really pure version of itself, not cluttered, not overdone, just very simple, and the addition of the organ and then the mandolin (which happened after I left Nashville) was just the most perfect surprise.
Did you write the lyrics or music first for this song? Which way do you usually write, music or lyrics first?
For me, songs tend to come as little phrases, most often a little lyric about a specific thing and melody together that I record really roughly in a voice app and generally forget about for a while. When I come back to it, I try to tinker around and see what melody flows from that first line and how the parts fit together, building out the song as I go.
In this case, I think the first thing I wanted to say was, “Everything is going to be alright,” which evolved into the refrain at the end of the song. It felt like the most important message, and everything else sort of sets that up: you’ve been through it, you’ve been journeying, you’ve grown and it’s hurt, you thought things would be different, but baby let go — it’ll be alright. Those were the things I needed (and need) to hear, and I think it’s a message that resonates with a lot of folks. It’s a lullaby for grownups.
Aside from being a lullaby to yourself, what do you think the theme of this song is?
One thing that evolved for me over the last few years, from first realizing my own limitations in the context of my life, and then being isolated from the world because of the pandemic, is that art is the thing that keeps us together — as communities, sure, but also as fragile little emotional beings. “Lullaby” has become sort of the steady reminder for me that making art, in this case music, is both building my own life raft and then offering it to other people.
Your sound is so organic and natural. How did you settle upon the Katie Callahan “sound”? For the Amplify readers who are just meeting you for the first time, how would you describe your music?
That’s so kind, thank you so much. The “sound” of this album in particular definitely evolved from Matt (Odmark)’s understanding of the stories I was trying to tell and really leaning into that. I’m accustomed to just being me and a guitar, but with each track, Matt dug into the heart of the thing and helped me flesh out some of the vocabulary that will help me articulate what sounds I’m chasing in the future. I’m so grateful for his mentorship, and I was so relieved to be able to trust his insight.
More generally, at heart, I’m a folk singer, and my music feels nostalgic and familiar. But it’s sort of like a Where’s Waldo book: you can hear it once and think it’s nice, but if you look and listen more closely, there’s a lot more going on than maybe it first appeared. I like that little bit of surprise.
