GRRRL Music: Your music really evokes a nostalgic sense of home, in ‘Appalachian Mountains’, when the violins sweep into your vocals - it’s magical. Can you talk about your connection to Americana & folk and what it means to you?

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LOUNNA: Folk music = life! In all seriousness, thank you very much. As a teenager I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift, mainstream pop, Mayday Parade, and a whole lot of country. I even went through an Eminem phase. My songwriting at this time was vague and aimless as I never thought about what genre I wanted to write or what I wanted my image to be as an artist.

 

After high school, I discovered Mumford & Sons, and that was when my own songwriting shifted and started feeling purposeful. I had never listened to folk music before then and listening to the works of M&S, Gregory Alan Isakov, and Bear's Den provided a stable and grounded home for my songwriting. The intention in the lyricism, the gentleness yet steadiness of the guitars, and the overall calming aesthetic connected with me in a profound way that I hadn't yet experienced when listening to music. It felt like laying down on a feathered blanket beneath the evening sun after a very tiring day. I realized that I wanted my own music to evoke the same sense of a hazy, cozy nostalgia, and that led me to be intentional with my storytelling, music production, and artist image. If I hadn't discovered Mumford & Sons at 19, I can't imagine what my music would be like today, if I had continued to pursue it at all.

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GRRRL Music: A sophomore album can be intimidating to some artists, especially given that your music can be so vulnerable - what was your mindset like going into this project? 

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LOUNNA: I was very much looking forward to this project. My debut When I'm Home was fully DIY, being recorded and produced on my own in my living room. It was released back in the summer of 2022, and perhaps with haste as I quickly realized that it didn't meet its full potential nor my intentions. So, when it came time to work on my sophomore album, I was grateful to meet and work with another local producer and engineer, Daniel Blake. I stepped foot into a legit studio for the first time in the early spring of 2023 with a list of nearly two dozen songs that were candidates for album #2. At this time, I didn't have a solid concept for the track list, but the themes generally followed the same pattern of seasonal affective disorder, grief, and anxiety. Ironically with the vulnerability of the songs, I couldn't wait to share them with other people.

A summary of my personal story during the time Garden For Winter was written and produced: shortly after my debut released in '22, I experienced a chemical pregnancy, which is a very early miscarriage. I spent the next nine months writing a song titled "Lily Of The Valley", penning one verse every 2-3 months while I processed the grief and then wrote the refrain only after some time had passed. Another song, "Wildwoods", was written around those same months and began as a journal entry where I considered my life aspirations and purpose, having been prompted to contemplate those things after the miscarriage. While chest-deep in the production of the record, I experienced another miscarriage in the autumn of 2023. The album was nearly finished by January of 2024 when my husband was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, Burkitt lymphoma. I was hoping to release the record in the spring of '24 but postponed it until my husband completed chemotherapy. Given the nature of being human and handling these unbearable circumstances, the themes and songs of Garden For Winter became even more deeply connected to my personal story, more so than I initially intended when the process began in early 2023.

But the thing is that I still can't wait for people to hear these songs. One of my life intentions is to provide a safe connection and sense of home for other people, both in person and through my music. There are a lot of lessons in these songs, things that I never considered until brutally confronted with them, and I want to ease others into these lessons with gentleness and love. My husband is in remission now, we are making our way through the winter season, and things really do get better.

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GRRRL Music: The album really delves into personal tragedies and mental health, can you talk about how you came up with the album name, Garden For Winter? It feels like the perfect way to describe your resilience.

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LOUNNA: Thank you for asking this question. Resilience is definitely one thing that we need, and we can find this through self-love, self-forgiveness, and overall kindness in all situations. Garden For Winter summarizes the album's thematic elements and imagery with many of the songs referencing darkness, snow, the cold; it also summarizes the resilience and persistence of time's healing touch as referenced in the second half of the record. The true intent of the title: we are gardens. We are persistent, abundant, overgrown with love. We all know how to care for the garden in the warm months, and this album is the key to learning how to care for the garden in the winter. 

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GRRRL Music: What was your favorite song to write on the album and can you talk about your writing process? Are you methodical or do you lean into the creative Gods? 

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LOUNNA: I let the creative gods take full possession of my mind and body - haha! I had a lot of fun writing the first song on the album, "Sassafras". I wrote it in the spring of 2023 after a much-needed hike in a local state park with my husband. It was a beautiful, comfortably warm day in May, and we walked peacefully through the forest. There were little sprouts of sassafras trees all over the forest floor, which intrigued me. The word "sassafras" itself gave me a sense of nostalgia. My husband told me stories about how the roots used to be used to flavor root beer. I literally couldn't get the word out of my head until I sat down to write the song over the course of the next couple days. This is how my songwriting begins (most of the time): with a concept. Sometimes the lyrics come quickly and efficiently, like they did with "Sassafras", and other times the melody and instrumental parts come quicker. It feels very different every time I write, which is probably a good thing as that means that I am connecting to each song in a unique way. 

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GRRRL Music: Something that everyone should know too is that you’re a producer as well! Did the production side come before you were an artist or vice versa? Is there something you’d tell other artists about production that they should know?

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LOUNNA: I started songwriting as a young teenager. My first experience with producing came in 2019 when I started a little demo project I had titled "Sundry Demos". I used a very basic DAW, Audacity, and experimented with various instrumental overlays and sound effects. It was very sad-girl-emo-folk, but it taught me a lot about timing and pairing instruments together in general. This little demo project geared me up enough to produce my debut record, but I was still limited in knowledge and resources. Garden For Winter was co-produced with Daniel Blake, a process that taught me even more about music production and engineering. The most important things I've learned as a producer is that it is fully acceptable to get second opinions and to hire session musicians to play the instruments that you cannot, and that the best productions are sometimes a little strange when you listen up close to all the little details. Those weird little layers are what make a production special and unique to an artist's sound.